Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is planning to take to utilise community pharmacies to reduce the backlog of cases in primary care.

Under the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework 2019-24 five-year deal, community pharmacy will be more integrated into the National Health Service and deliver more clinical services. Since 2019, NHS111 can refer patients to a community pharmacist for minor illness or the urgent supply of a prescribed medicine. In 2020, we extended this service to general practitioner practices, who can now also formally refer patients to community pharmacy for consultation. We expect to introduce more clinical services in community pharmacy that will relieve pressures on the NHS during the recovery from the pandemic.