In their report in May 2024, the committee said the Government must urgently reform the funding framework for community pharmacy if more clinical services are to be delivered and increasing demands for medication are to be met.

In its response, the Government says that NHS England are currently undertaking an economic analysis of the sector, which will inform future proposals for funding and contractual arrangements. 

The Government says it will take the committee's recommendations on the complexity of current arrangements into consideration in developing any future proposals for consultation with Community Pharmacy England. 

The committee in May called on the Government to address medicine shortages, which they warned risked undermining initiatives such as Pharmacy First by eroding public confidence in pharmacists.

In its response, the Government says that the DHSC is ‘working closely with NHS England, is taking forward a range of actions to improve our ability to mitigate and manage shortages and strengthen our resilience.' 

Among its recommendations the committee also called for an integrated and funded workforce plan for pharmacy to be developed. The Government states that it will ‘this summer… publish a refreshed Long Term Workforce Plan', and that it is ‘committed to growing the pharmacy workforce'. 

Throughout its response, the Government cites its 10 Year Health Plan, due to be published in the Spring of 2025, and says that the engagement on the 10 Year Health Plan ‘provides opportunity for gathering ideas and evidence to shape future clinical service models in community pharmacy'.

In response, the committee has sent a letter to the Department today, saying MPs ‘welcome... the fact that [the Government] are actively considering the role of pharmacies in the development of the 10 Year Health Plan' and they ‘urge the Government to be bold and ambitious when setting out its vision for the role that community pharmacies could play'. 

The letter also asks for clarity on their recommendation that NHS England should commission community pharmacies to provide all routine and seasonal immunisations for adults and children.

Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, Layla Moran, said: ‘The predecessor committee made important recommendations calling on the Government to act at pace to address the pressing issues in community pharmacy on funding, medicine shortages and challenges in the workforce. 

‘While we are pleased to hear the Government say that these recommendations will feed into the 10 Year Health Plan and the Long Term Workforce Plan, we are concerned that their response does not clearly reflect the sense of urgency on these matters which the predecessor committee derived from its inquiry.'

She added: ‘In the here and now, there are immediate questions that we have about the Government's response to the predecessor committee's report which we are following up in our letter to the Department of Health and Social Care today. 

‘In particular, we know that uptake of key childhood vaccinations is falling, so we are keen to know whether the Government sees more of a role for community pharmacy in addressing this challenge.'