Government announces Spending Review Outcome

The Government’s Spending Review has concluded, with Chancellor Rachel Reeves today announcing the Government’s new spending priorities.

The announcement included a 3% real terms uplift to NHS funding, for each of the coming three years, with the Government reiterating its commitment to its three shifts for healthcare: moving care closer to home, from treatment to prevention, and from analogue to digital.

As always, the Spending Review has set out high-level Department budgets, with key projects identified. There will now follow a critical Departmental process to allocate funding across all parts of the NHS.

Community Pharmacy England has been influencing the Spending Review process via a number of channels including:

• Using the outputs of the significant economic modelling and analysis work undertaken by PA Consulting to make the value case for investment in community pharmacies to Government;
• Making formal submissions to the Treasury’s Spending Review process;
• Through meetings with the Minister and the recent negotiations; and
• Through our ongoing political influencing campaign, including briefing Parliamentarians and others who can influence policy, and working with the other primary care professions to underline the need for investment.

Discussions with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England are ongoing – with our priority remaining to work with Government to deliver the sustainable funding and operational model that pharmacies need to maximise their potential in supporting patients and the public, closer to home.

Janet Morrison, Community Pharmacy England Chief Executive, said:

“Today’s Spending Review announcement continues the Government’s commitment to delivering care closer to home. We support this: community pharmacy has so much to offer to improve care for patients and the public, in their local communities, contributing to all of the Government’s three healthcare shifts. Pharmacies have an astonishingly strong record on efficiency – the best in the NHS – and they have even more to offer if they can be properly supported, funded and integrated into primary care.

But years of underfunding and real-terms cuts have left community pharmacies struggling to cope, and even survive: we need the eventual outcomes of this Spending Review to put this right.

We do not yet have a clear path to the sustainable funding and operational model that community pharmacy so desperately needs, and which Government has committed to. We look forward to discussing this with Government very soon, and with the Spending Review now concluded, we want to see demonstrable action soon to show that progress is being made on the commitment to this future for community pharmacy.”