Oral Answers to Questions

David Tredinnick Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine]

The simple answer is that it is because it is a rural constituency. On the Lloyds Pharmacy announcement, when I first heard that news my thought was not to play any politics with it but for the staff who will be affected by it. As I said at the all-party parliamentary group on pharmacy, chaired by the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Sir Kevin Barron), Lloyds has made a commercial decision. We do not yet know which pharmacies within its portfolio will close, but we do know that 40% of pharmacies are within a 10-minute walk of two or more others.

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

T10. In December 2014, the Secretary of State said to the Health Select Committee: “There are GPs who prescribe homeopathy and GPs who prescribe acupuncture, but the system we have is that we allow GPs to decide whatever they think is in the clinical interests of their own patients.”Is that still the position? Is the Minister aware of the parliamentary petition in favour of homeopathy that has 22,000 signatures?

[Steve Brine]

Consistency personified, Mr Speaker. It is the responsibility of local NHS organisations to make decisions on the commissioning and funding of any healthcare treatments for NHS patients, such as and including homoeopathy. Complementary and alternative medicine treatments can, in principle, feature in a range of services offered by local NHS organisations, including general practitioners.