New Petitions

I thank the convener for allowing me the opportunity to address the committee in support of my petition. As a pharmacist with over 30 years' experience in community pharmacy and as the owner of two independent family pharmacies, I felt that I should petition the committee in response to the OFT's report "The control of entry and retail pharmacy services in the UK". I point out that I am not an official lobbyist from any group. We lodged a personal petition that was supported by our patients. I am just a concerned pharmacist, not part of the legal process.In 1987, the Government introduced control of entry regulations for pharmacies in the United Kingdom. That was to provide a rational distribution of pharmacies in rural and urban areas and to avoid the counterproductive clustering of a number of pharmacies around GPs' surgeries. At present, all applicants for entry to the pharmaceutical list have to convince health boards that the proposed pharmacy is necessary or desirable in order to secure adequate provision and distribution of pharmaceutical services in the neighbourhood.Over the past 15 years, that system has worked well. The stability has produced a confidence that has encouraged pharmacists to provide a range of additional services in conjunction with local health boards. We have invested in upgrading our premises, adding consultation areas, training staff and continuing to seek ways to improve our service to the community. In fact, in line with the Scottish Executive's vision in "The Right Medicine: A Strategy for Pharmaceutical Care in Scotland", those initiatives have included palliative care schemes, care for the elderly, methadone supervision, non-smoking advice, repeat prescription services, a delivery service to housebound patients, domiciliary oxygen supply and helping with residential homes. Many other services would follow with the support of local health boards.Those services rely on a close relationship between the pharmacist and his or her patients, which can be fostered best in local, community pharmacies, as we have at present. If deregulation comes about, as recommended in the OFT report, we will return to the free-for-all in which there was no stability in pharmacy provision. Most important, it is likely that supermarkets would open pharmacies on their premises. Small pharmacies that are situated in urban and rural communities and that serve young and old alike would become less viable and in many cases would close.If the Scottish Executive accepts the OFT recommendations, the improvements and advances in pharmacy provision that have taken place in Scotland over the past few years will be damaged irreparably. Pharmacists and their staff throughout Scotland have been amazed by the support that the public have given to local community pharmacies by signing petitions that reject the OFT proposals. In our pharmacies, over a 10-day period our petition received about 1,300 signatures. Since we submitted the petition, it has received a further 500 signatures.I have received support from my MSPs Annabel Goldie and Trish Godman, who has been particularly helpful. I ask members to consider my comments. I hope that they will support the many community pharmacies and patients in Scotland who are united in opposing the OFT recommendations.

I endorse completely those comments. We have a good relationship with patients generally. I said that I was amazed by the support that we had received. Of 1,300 people, perhaps three said that they would not sign the petition. They may have said that because they do not sign petitions or because they work in supermarkets.I have not had this experience personally, but I know that many young pharmacists who work in supermarkets work shifts. Because there is no continuity in the pharmacist on duty, supermarket pharmacists do not have the same rapport with patients that other pharmacists have. I am sure that some very good pharmacists work in supermarkets, but I am told that the turnover of supermarket pharmacists is fairly quick.

We have medication records for most of our patients. If a patient comes in to buy a Lemsip—which they can buy off a supermarket shelf, because it is an over-the-counter product—we have access to their records. If there is a decongestant in the Lemsip that interacts with tablets for high blood pressure, we can say, "Mrs Smith, you should not take that." Similarly, we can indicate that there is paracetamol in the Lemsip and ask the patient whether they are taking other products that contain paracetamol.If I had my way, medicines would be sold only in pharmacies. Unfortunately, their distribution is determined by manufacturers. Manufacturers apply for licences for general sales list medicines. We sell general sales list and pharmacy-only medicines. Pharmacy-only medicines can be sold only when a pharmacist is on duty or in a pharmacy.

I could not say, but there is a scheme to support small pharmacies in rural areas. For example, if the supermarket were 10 miles away and some of the many people who travel by car start to use it, even in a small way, small urban and rural pharmacies become less viable. Once pharmacies lose their viability, can pharmacists afford to open for as long as they used to or afford to deliver prescriptions to housebound people? I have been in the profession for over 30 years and it is changing. It has changed in the past 15 years. In fact, those changes have become more rapid recently, and we are looking forward to them. My daughter is a pharmacist in our business and she is looking forward to becoming more involved with those changes.Returning to Mr Gallie's point about closure, the OFT said in its report that for every supermarket pharmacy that opens, it expects two pharmacies in the surrounding area to close. That defeats the idea of distribution and access to pharmacies.

Yes.

Supermarkets are easy. We all use supermarkets. We are all busy people in a hurry, so we will take our trolleys down the supermarket aisle and buy our toothpaste, shampoo or whatever. I could not quantify how much has been taken from my business. However, we pharmacists are a resilient lot. If something goes, we will replace it with something else. We have been going to the continent for years and have seen that pharmacies used to be much more professional than we were.

That is right. However, 80 per cent of our turnover is NHS work. We cannot make it any easier because the Government checks discounts and claws back money if it thinks that pharmacies have made any extra money out of that work. Therefore 20 per cent of turnover is over the counter, and probably only 5 per cent of that is over-the-counter medicines. Therefore the OFT has looked at pharmacies as a whole, but it should be looking at the 5 per cent sales of over-the-counter medicine. It has said that those medicines will become cheaper if they are sold in supermarkets because of the competition. I suggest that the range of medicines that would be available in supermarkets would be much smaller than is currently in pharmacies. Supermarkets may well sell some goods at a discount, but they sell loss leaders in bread or toothpaste anyway. It is easy for larger organisations to cut prices to get the business. When the business is theirs, they do not have competition, and prices start to rise. To return to the price of medicines, there are proprietary medicines, such as Benylin products, but pharmacies have own-brand goods that are a fraction of a price of those over-the-counter proprietary medicines. If someone comes in to a pharmacy and asks for a high-priced branded paracetamol product, we will offer them a paracetamol product for 55p. We have been doing that for a long time, and will continue to do it, but we would hope for some support from you.

I suggest that it came from large organisations that have lots of money to spend and have lots of professional people lobbying for them.

Yes.The town where I work has three pharmacies. We are all very friendly, although we are competitors—we are all individual businesses. We are members of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. Many such pharmacies are also part of the National Pharmaceutical Association. We do not come together to lobby all the time, but there have been things that have—

I cannot possibly say that—

As Dorothy-Grace Elder suggested, if it ain't broke, why try to fix it? I have no idea. I have not previously been involved in anything to do with the matter—

I have not read it in full, although I have read extracts.

I cannot see that there is in the document any rationale for the proposal, aside from the fact that someone somewhere, or some large supermarket groups somewhere—I could name them, although I do not suppose that that is important—have been building up a pharmacy profile. The entry qualification is simple at the moment; it need only be shown that the need or desire for a pharmacy exists. I have been on both sides of the issue in the past: I opened my business before the contract changed and I then bought a pharmacy at the going rate and paid for it over a long period of time.I recently applied to a health board for a contract in a place where I thought there was a need for a pharmacy. I went through the process of appearing before the health board's committee, which listened to my argument. I also listened to the questions that were asked of me and, as things turned out, that committee decided that there was no need for a pharmacy where I wanted one. I accepted that decision. I had the opportunity to appeal, but I thought that the point had been made. If there was no need for the pharmacy, there was no need for me to spend more time and effort on it.

If the OFT recommendations were implemented, a major supermarket could set up next door to me. I have been on site for 16 years—I have built up a lot of business in the area and I have loads of patients. If the proposal goes ahead, a supermarket could and probably would open a pharmacy and the chances are that my business would be halved overnight. I would like to think that that would not happen, but it could. A supermarket could quite easily wipe me out. I might eventually have to close. The patients that have come to me over the years would lose me as a pharmacist. I would not sell up and the supermarket and I would both have contracts, which would cost the health board more money because there would be two pharmacies where previously there had been only one.

It appears that there would not.