Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department are taking to prevent community pharmacies making a loss when dispensing NHS prescriptions.

When market prices go up and pharmacies cannot purchase products at or below the Drug Tariff National Health Service reimbursement price, the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) can request the Department to reconsider the reimbursement price. If a new reimbursement price is issued this is known as a concessionary price. Concessionary prices are established using real time data from suppliers to generate prices that are reflective of the overall market.

Further, as part of the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework, pharmacies are allowed to keep £800 million medicines margin per year. Medicine margin is the difference between the reimbursement price and the prices paid by pharmacies. The Department assesses the overall medicine margin retained by pharmacies, through a medicine margin survey. If less than £800 million has been retained during the year an upwards adjustment is made to some reimbursement prices and if more than £800 million has been retained a downward adjustment is made.