The health minister Stephen Kinnock has admitted the government does not know how many community pharmacies have dispensed medicines at a loss in each of the last three years.

Kinnock’s admission on Monday in response to a written parliamentary question from the Conservative MP Rebecca Smith calls into question whether Labour has a clear picture of how supply issues and the increasing price of medicines is impacting already financially stretched pharmacies.

In response to Smith’s question ‘how many and what proportion of community pharmacies have dispensed medications at a loss in each of the last three years,’ Kinnock (pictured), whose ministerial portfolio includes pharmacy, said: “We do not hold this information.”

He also said community pharmacy reimbursement arrangements “do not aim to ensure that every pharmacy is paid as much or more than it paid for every product.”

Instead, he said, it “aims overall to reimburse as much as they were bought for, plus the allowed medicine margin.” Community pharmacy leaders have called for the retained buying margin, the profit pharmacies can earn on dispensing medicines through purchasing, to be increased from its current £800 million a year.

Kinnock said pharmacies were “allowed to retain £850 million from the medicine margin” as part of the 2023-24 contractual framework “on top of what they are paid for the medicines they purchase as part of providing NHS services.”

“The Department assesses the medicines margin retained through a quarterly margin survey, which has found that more than the amount agreed as part of the CPCF has been delivered in total across the previous four financial years,” he added.

Kinnock’s remarks drew an irritated response from some pharmacists. Calum Polwart posted on X: “Time to fess up then. All you pharmacies that say you make a loss on apixaban or whatever it is this month, have you been raking it in on other stuff instead?”

With more than a hint of sarcasm, Adeel Sarwar replied: “Yes, we've been making it all up for the last five years. Even managed to convince a whole new con called serious shortage protocols and we have been pretending we can't get important medication, putting patients at risk.”

Image: www.parliament.uk