Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 74:"Page 22, line 12, after ““done,”” insert ““but may not provide for or authorise the absence of any pharmacist from the place,””" The noble Baroness said: In moving this amendment, I shall also speak to Amendment No. 75. We have now reached the clauses on amendments to the Medicines Act with regard to the regulation of pharmacists and community pharmacy practice. As the Minister knows, there is widespread support in the NHS and in the pharmacy profession for the proposal in the Bill to widen the role and make better use of pharmacists’ extensive clinical and public health training in the safe supply and monitoring of medicines. We have already begun to see the benefits of the widening role in such things as the chlamydia screening programme in London undertaken by Boots. These things are excellent. There has been extensive consultation from the department, as well as helpful notes, on how the Bill will be translated into regulations. My amendments to these clauses are probing amendments to explore some of the remaining anxieties expressed by the Pharmacists’ Defence Association, which knows only too well how matters sadly go awry, and by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. I am hoping that the Minister will provide clarity of intention on the record and reassurance that regulations will be tight enough to prevent some of the abuse that a redefinition of pharmacists’ responsibilities might bring. Some of what I will say not only relates to these clauses but might be repeated later when we look at the role of responsible pharmacists. Clause 25 relates to the possibility of remote supervision. I do not think that anyone has a quarrel with remote monitoring arrangements for vending machines, electronically monitored automatic robotic dispensers and other such modern miracles. But the possible absence of the pharmacist while medicines are being dispensed, particularly the 20 per cent that do not fall into the pills and potions currently in standard packs, raises a more worrying scenario. Under the current proposals, it would be possible for a pharmacy owner—often running a small business, with two or three shops—to supervise two or three pharmacies without employing full-time pharmacy cover. We know that at present in many areas the front-line pharmacist is a rapid high-street consultant. While many of the tasks may be delegated to responsible technicians, I am not convinced that these provisions will improve primary access to the high street customer. Rather, they might make access considerably worse. I have one short vignette describing what I witnessed the other Saturday in a country pharmacy in Norfolk. Could the Minister explain how the regulations might cover this situation? I was waiting for a prescription for myself. A woman carrying a pack of pills said to the dispensing assistant, ““You gave me these yesterday. I normally have the blue ones, but these are white. Are they different?”” She mentioned the name of the pill, with which I was familiar, so I pricked up my ears, because the white and blue pills are substantially different. The assistant looked at the packs and said, ““Oh, it’s the same thing, but a different manufacturer””. As she was speaking, the pharmacist quickly leapt out from behind the glass screen and said, ““It’s a different dose, I’ll just give the surgery a ring to see if it’s right””, which he duly did. It was the GP’s error on this occasion. How will that kind of incident, which we know happens a dozen times every day, be dealt with when there is no supervising pharmacist on the spot? The changes to the supervision requirements are being proposed at the same time as a new Section 60 order, which will, for example, enable pharmacists to undertake repeat prescriptions and widen the dispensing responsibility of technicians. Can the Minister reassure me that the issue has been thought through to ensure that access to the pharmacist remains as good as and, I hope, better than it is now? I beg to move. [The Sitting was suspended for a Division in the House from 4.41 until 4.50 pm.]