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A Labour MP has called on the Government to “set out a road map for a six-year funding settlement of £600m” to close the pharmacy sector’s funding gap and facilitate workforce investment.

Speaking in a Westminster debate yesterday (September 9), North Somerset MP Sadik Al-Hassan – a pharmacist by profession and current chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on pharmacy (APPG) – said the funding plea was not “asking for charity”.

Mr Al-Hassan said: “Last year’s funding settlement was a great amount, but that has been eaten up by a great amount of costs, and the Government’s independent analysis found a £2 billion annual funding gap.

“Nationally we have lost nearly 1,500 pharmacies since 2017—a 15 per cent contraction of the network. In my own constituency of North Somerset, that story is written in bricks and mortar. We have six fewer pharmacies than in 2016.”

Conservative MP for Leicester East Shivani Raja, who brought the debate, told parliamentarians: “Pharmacy owners in my constituency are caught in a constant struggle between rising operating costs and completely fixed incomes. Over recent years, overheads have increased right across the board.

“To make matters more severe, the NHS reimbursement calculation works on the assumption that pharmacies receive massive bulk-buy discounts from suppliers. Large national chains may possess the purchasing power to make that assumption work, but such bulk discounts simply do not exist for a small, independent community pharmacy in Leicester East. Small pharmacies routinely pay more to acquire necessary drugs than the NHS repays them.”

“Although concessionary pricing mechanisms exist to adjust for market spikes, the delay in the adjustments means that independent contractors are constantly left bridging the shortfall.

“That disparity forces wholesalers to look overseas for cheaper stock, creating supply chain bottlenecks and leaving local pharmacists to face the frustration of patients when vital medicines are back-ordered for weeks.”

Ms Raja also said the recent decision to leave pharmacies out of the business rates relief package extended to some business owners was “a major oversight for essential healthcare workers operating right at the heart of our local economies”.

The debate also heard from former Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak, who said his experience of growing up working in his mother’s pharmacy made the issue “personal for me”.

Mr Sunak said more must be done to raise public awareness of Pharmacy First, also suggesting that the current age restrictions that apply to the Pharmacy First pathway criteria could be dropped to boost access for patients.

Pharmacy minister Diana Johnson cited the Conservative Party’s record of “year-on-year cuts” to pharmacy funding, commenting: “I think it is fair to say they made pharmacy payments practically a fixed contract.”

When told “You’re in charge now” by Conservative MP Gregory Stafford, Ms Johnson said that while the funding uplifts provided by Labour in the last two contractual settlements demonstrate “the priority the Government places on community pharmacy… I do not pretend the challenges will disappear overnight”.

She added: “Numerous Members raised pharmacy closures, and I can tell them that, according to recent data, there were 19 net closures in ’25-26 compared with 112 in ’24-25. There has been some progress, but I recognise that there is a lot more to do.”