Alex Sampson, Plymouth Socialist Party
Last year, Boots announced that it was going to be streamlining its business, meaning the loss of about 300 local pharmacy locations. This comes after Lloyds closed 90% of its pharmacies in 2023, including all those located in Sainsbury’s shops.
This latest round of pharmacy closures is part of a larger trend over the last decade. Community Pharmacy England, an industry body, found over 1,000 local pharmacies have closed in the last seven years, and that the trend is accelerating. They pointed to a squeeze in funding, with NHS funding to pharmacies seeing a real-terms cut of 30% over this period, as the main cause.
Most pharmacies, of course, now offer online and delivery services, but local pharmacies have always been an important part of the community. They have played an integral role in identifying and treating minor ailments, and are increasingly taking on procedures previously done by over-encumbered GP services. The ability to walk into a pharmacy for advice is a valuable service for the elderly and more vulnerable who may find accessing online services difficult. Having to commute up to three miles for access to these services will be problematic for many.
A country of poor health
Thanks to a decade of Tory austerity measures, Britain is becoming a country of poor health. Last year, the number of working-age adults declared long-term sick hit a record high of 2.6 million and, with limited access to GPs and long waiting times for hospital appointments, this figure will only keep climbing.
Cutting local pharmacy services will only add to these pressures, increasing the workload of already busy pharmacists struggling to find many necessary medications due to NHS drug shortages (including for type 2 diabetes, HRT and now vital breast cancer medications). These closures will increase the negative health outcomes for the poorest, elderly and most vulnerable members of our society.
Neither the Conservatives nor Starmer’s Labour are interested in investing in the health of the people of this country, focused as they are on opening more of our health service to private vultures.
Pharmacies, like other necessary services, should not be run for profit and their locations should not be at the whim of big business. What is needed is a fully funded, national pharmacy service, run as part of the NHS and easily accessible to all. A democratically planned health service, including nationalising the pharmaceutical companies, would be able to put the wellbeing of us all over the private profit of a few.
