Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to bring forward a statutory instrument proposed in his Department's consultation of 16 March 2022 to allow the operation of hub and spoke dispensing models across different legal entities so that independent community pharmacies may compete on a level playing field with vertically integrated group pharmacies and have the capacity to deliver on the Pharmacy First proposals in his May 2023 Delivery Plan for Recovering Access to Primary Care; and if he will make a statement.

We are committed to pursuing legislative changes to level the playing field and enable all community pharmacies to make use of hub and spoke dispensing arrangements. We consulted on this last year and are currently finalising a response to the consultation, our aim is to publish this as soon as possible. The timetable for bringing forward the implementing legislation will be dependent on the availability of parliamentary time across the four nations.