Excluded Agreements

Part of Orders of the Day — Competition Bill [Lords] – in the House of Commons at 5:10 pm on 8 July 1998.

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Photo of Colin Breed Colin Breed Liberal Democrat, South East Cornwall 5:10, 8 July 1998

I shall not reiterate what has been said because I agree with much on both sides of the argument. We all support community pharmacists, large or small, urban or rural, and we want them to be able to function with some security. The people who use them should have access to them not just for the next five years, but beyond. The proposals that we are debating will lead to a lack of security. If resale price maintenance fails the public interest test, that could be the end of many community pharmacists. The alternative is a five-year stay of execution.

We would have more sympathy for the Government's proposals if, during the five years, they offered an opportunity to look at ways in which to fund pharmacists and provide them with security. However, after five years, pharmacists will be left to the marketplace, and that would not provide the security that they seek or leave the communities that they serve with the feeling that such pharmacies will remain.

If the five-year transition period were used positively to prepare plans for the funding of pharmacists, that might enable us to support the proposal. Pharmacists in my constituency feel that convenient access to medicines for people who have been to their doctors is a vital part of primary health care. It is an anomaly of the health care system that that one part is not included in health care operations. That is because we regard pharmacists as small chemists and take the view that resale price maintenance is the best and only way to fund them. Many pharmacists feel that their qualifications and experience, and the valued support that they provide to GPs by way of health education and even diagnosis are worth more than just the protection of RPM on over-the-counter medicines. They should be considered as part of primary health care.

Resale price maintenance has served pharmacists and their communities well. We will support the amendment because it would ensure, at least in the short term, the continuance of RPM and, therefore, the protection of pharmacists. RPM will be under constant commercial attack, and those challenges may be the pathfinders for many more. Such insecurity may prompt some pharmacists to give up. Pharmacists who are thinking of retiring in the not-too-distant future may be feeling fearful about their ability to sell their businesses. Pharmacists who have received their qualifications and are looking for new opportunities may feel distinctly uncomfortable about taking on positions in small chemist shops that may be under threat in only a few years.

That insecurity is the reason for this debate. Although the Minister has provided good protection for a short period of years, if it is needed, he has not looked in the long term—at the long-term provision of pharmacists and access to them, which is at the heart of what we are looking for. On this occasion, we support the Opposition amendment.