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Local pharmacies are at the heart of our communities – and they are close to my heart too, as my mum set up and ran our local pharmacy in Southampton when I was growing up.
I was proud to help out there as a teenager, delivering prescriptions and doing the books. I saw the bonds of trust that developed with local people and how the pharmacy acted like a community hub, with my mum providing a ready ear and a helping hand for anyone worried about their health.
There are 11,500 local pharmacies just like the Sunak Pharmacy across our great country, run by skilled healthcare professionals who have studied for at least four years at university and then trained for an additional year to gain their expertise.
I know what a tremendous resource this is for our NHS, and I am convinced it can do even more to provide great care for local people.
So on Wednesday, we are launching Pharmacy First across England – starting a mini revolution in high street healthcare.
This new service will make it quicker, easier and more convenient for millions of people to access NHS care for common conditions. It will save people time and hassle to get the straightforward medication they need quickly.
For seven common complaints – including a sore throat, earache, shingles, sinusitis and urinary tract infections – you can now just pop down to the pharmacy. No need to call ahead. No need to make an appointment.
Pharmacies will even be able to deliver this service remotely where it is medically safe to do so.
Community pharmacies already deal with a range of minor conditions, such as stomach upsets or conjunctivitis, and they do a brilliant job.
As of December last year, pharmacies are also providing the oral contraceptive pill direct, so women no longer have to speak to a nurse or GP first.
And we’re delivering an additional 2.5 million blood pressure checks in community pharmacies by spring 2025, which could help prevent more than 1,350 heart attacks and strokes in the first year alone.
With Pharmacy First, we are raising our ambitions even more – and we will invest up to £645 million over the next two years to help pharmacists deliver the new services.
These are simple reforms, but they add up to the biggest change in pharmacy services for years, with benefits that will flow out across the NHS.
Most people – eight in 10 – live within a 20-minute walk of a pharmacy, many of which have private consultation rooms to put patients at ease. So making it easier for pharmacists to help local people will have a huge impact.
Together, these changes will free up around 10 million GP appointments a year.
They will therefore make it easier for people to see their GP when they need to, helping to deliver our recovery plan for primary care, which includes ending the 8am rush to book GP appointments and improving the NHS app.
This plan is already delivering – in October, months ahead of schedule, we exceeded our target to provide 50 million more GP appointments every year.
Making real progress
Crucially, all this will also help our efforts to cut waiting lists across the NHS. Last January, I set bringing down waiting lists as one of the Government’s five priorities. There is still more to do, but we are making real progress.
Despite the effect of strikes, which have seen over a million appointments rescheduled – and over 100,000 in January alone – we have virtually eliminated two-year waits and got 18-month waits down by 90 per cent.
In November, the first strike-free month for a year, waiting lists fell by more than 95,000. That shows what NHS staff can do. And that shows why we are working to end these strikes – because without them, and with our ongoing investment in the NHS, we can continue to bring waits down.
The NHS is the birthright of every person in this country. That’s why we are putting in record resources, both for the NHS and for social care.
It’s why we have delivered the first ever long-term NHS workforce plan, and delivered ahead of time on our commitment to increase the number of nurses in the NHS by 50,000, while also training more doctors, more dentists and more GPs than ever before.
And it’s why we’re delivering this vital new Pharmacy First service – to provide routine care more quickly and closer to home.
Convenient, quick, local. Good for patients and good for the NHS, and proper Conservative reform of our NHS.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article reported that NHS 18-week waiting lists were down by 90 per cent. This was a production error and should have read 18 month waiting lists. We are happy to correct the record.
Pharmacy First is good for patients – and good for the NHS
Mini revolution in high street healthcare will make NHS care for common conditions quicker and easier for millions