Health secretary Wes Streeting has told the health select committee that community pharmacies and other privately owned providers of NHS care can expect to hear from him in January on whether his budget allocations will relieve their increased national insurance burden in the next financial year.

Addressing the health and social care committee (HSCC) yesterday (December 18), Mr Streeting defended chancellor Rachel Reeves’ decision to raise national insurance contributions and lower the eligibility threshold, which has been reported as delivering a possible £50m blow to pharmacies.

The chancellor’ decision on national insurance enabled her to pump an extra £22.6bn into the NHS budget, he said, adding that he was aware of business owners’ concerns.

“I haven’t set out funding allocations for the year ahead,” he commented. “We won’t know the net impact until I’ve done that… people should not be taking decisions ahead of seeing the allocation.” Clarity will come in January at the latest, he said.

“Everyone, whatever part of the health and care sector they’re in, is going hell for leather on saying ‘we need this sorted’” he said, adding that some are in his view “slightly jumping the gun”.

The health secretary said he will be meeting with Community Pharmacy England to resume 2024-25 funding talks in early 2025 and that he wished “to reassure pharmacists across the country that we are taking into account the enormous pressures they are under when thinking about allocations, so that we can stabilise the system and create the foundations from which to recover”.

His comments followed remarks the previous day from pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock, who told MPs he was “confident” long-delayed funding talks for the 2024-25 financial year will begin early in the new year.

In a House of Commons debate on Tuesday December 17, Mr Kinnock said he was “as frustrated as anybody else” by the delays in agreeing new terms for England’s community pharmacy sector, now overdue by almost nine months.

“I can say now that we are very focused on getting these negotiations started early in the new year,” he said, adding that he is aware of widespread interest in the outcomes “in terms of the contractual framework, the medicines margin and all of the funding”.

He said that on Labour’s side key priorities include the development of a prescribing service building on Pharmacy First and an overhaul of IT infrastructure “to make sure that the sector can more easily prescribe and refer”.

Many pharmacies 'will not survive the winter'