Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to help maintain the availability of (a) pharmacies and (b) medication.

The Department is closely monitoring changes to the pharmacy network to ensure access to the services they provide on behalf of the National Health Service. Access to services remains good with 80% of people in England living within 20 minutes walking distance of a pharmacy and twice as many pharmacies in the most deprived areas of the country. Patients can also choose to access NHS pharmaceutical services remotely through any of the approximately 400 internet pharmacies, who are contractually required to deliver medicines to patient home free of charge. Every three years, local authorities in England undertake pharmaceutical needs assessments for their areas to ensure provision continues to meet their population’s needs.

We have well-established processes for managing and mitigating medicine supply issues, which involve working with the pharmaceutical industry, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, NHS England, the devolved governments and others operating in the supply chain to help ensure patients have access to the treatments they need.