Jhoots Pharmacy

Luke Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

Only this weekend, the National Pharmacy Association chief executive, Henry Gregg, said that he is concerned that

“reports of Jhoots Pharmacy branches across England failing patients risks damaging community pharmacy’s reputation and could imperil its ability to secure a good 2026-27 funding settlement.”

Communities across the country have been left without functioning pharmacies. Doors have been locked without notice, patients have arrived to find no pharmacist, no prescriptions and no stock, and staff have gone unpaid and been threatened with the sack. Jhoots Pharmacy faces allegations of not paying wages, having premises repossessed and serious regulatory breaches. The General Pharmaceutical Council has already intervened several times, yet for many patients it is too late—they simply cannot get their medicines. This is not an isolated business failure; it exposes a deeper fragility in the community pharmacy network on which local people depend for basics and often lifesaving care.

I have four questions for the Minister. First, when was NHS England first made aware of these closures, and has the Minister met the Jhoots leadership? If not, why not? If he did, what was the outcome? Secondly, has the Department assessed how many people have been left without local pharmacy access as a result of Jhoots’s actions, and what is the Minister doing to remedy this, considering it is happening across the country? He mentioned ICBs, but there are several involved. Thirdly, what mechanisms exist to ensure continuity of care when a contractor collapses or walks away? Again, he mentioned ICBs, but is there a national contingency plan? Finally, will the Government now review whether the current model, under which chains are expanding rapidly through acquisition and debt, is fit to safeguard community pharmacies in the long term? Linked to that, can the Minister definitively confirm that the funding settlement has not been compromised?

The 10-year NHS plan states that it wants to move more care into the community, yet it is completely missing a delivery chapter on how to achieve that. At the same time, we have issues such as Jhoots. I hope the Minister will be taking steps to investigate this issue in its entirety and to safeguard against this type of incident happening again, and will spell out the delivery aspect of the 10-year plan.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the shadow Minister for his questions. He asked about first awareness of what was happening with Jhoots. He will be aware that it entered the market through the purchase of a number of Lloyds pharmacies that were no longer a going concern in 2023, so the question about due diligence on Jhoots as an operator is probably something he should be asking one of my predecessors from his party, which was in power at the time. Since those purchases, Jhoots has expanded rapidly, and that has been where we have seen the question marks around its ability to operate and the serious downgrading of services.

I have not met the management of Jhoots. We are looking at a whole range of legal and regulatory enforcement procedures, and the decision we have taken is that it is better not to interfere in any way in those processes, but I am certainly monitoring that very closely. If we receive legal advice that suggests that such a meeting would be a good idea, I will of course be open to it. However, the current legal position based on the advice we have received is that it would not be appropriate at this time.

On local pharmacy access, integrated care boards have a statutory responsibility to ensure adequate pharmacy provision. Some ICBs, for example, have allowed dispensing GP practices to provide dispensing services to affected patients, while others have worked with local GP practices to advise patients to nominate alternative nearby pharmacies for their prescriptions. We have looked at the impact geographically, and our view is that in most cases there is alternative pharmacy provision to Jhoots within striking distance. However, there are four or five areas of the country where that is not the case, including in the constituency of the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello), who secured this urgent question. I am very conscious of that. In those cases, extra provision needs to be made through ICBs and GPs—that may be through distance selling or by other means—to ensure that patients have pharmacy access.

The shadow Minister asks about continuity of care and national contingency. The situation is challenging because, as I mentioned in my remarks and as officials have said, we have not seen this rapid decline in service before. We are working at pace to strengthen the regulatory framework and we are looking at contingency plans. I do not see any reason why the overall funding settlement for pharmacy should be undermined. We will continue to protect community pharmacy as a crucial part of our NHS.