Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to his Department's press release entitled New services for patients under record pharmacy funding deal, published on 31 March 2025, what proportion of the additional funding for community pharmacies was allocated to meet the cost of increases to (a) employer National Insurance Contributions (b) business rates and (c) National Minimum Wage in (i) 2024/25 and (ii) 2025/26.

We have taken the necessary decisions to fix the foundations in the public finances at the Autumn Budget, which enabled the Spending Review settlement of a £22.6 billion increase in resource spending for the Department from 2023/24 outturn to 2025/26.

The Department has considered the increases in the National Living Wage and employer national insurance when consulting on the funding arrangements for community pharmacy. We have now agreed with Community Pharmacy England to increase the community pharmacy contractual framework to £3.073 billion from April 2025. This deal represents the largest uplift in funding of any part of the National Health Service, at over 19% across 2024/25 and 2025/26.