Health and Community Care Committee, 04 Feb 2003

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 4, 2003

Official Report 219KB pdf

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Retail Pharmacies (Report)

The next item, on the Office of Fair Trading report on retail pharmacies, will be taken in public, as agreed.

Last week, on my train journey to Inverness, I sat beside a pharmacist. He had three and a half hours in which to lobby me on the issue.

The report has far-reaching implications for Scotland, and particularly for rural areas. It is important for the committee to have a view. However, first, we should seek clarity.

The report is by the Office of Fair Trading. I appreciate that the matter is reserved, although health is a devolved issue in Scotland. Before we go any further, I would like it to be clearly stated what part of the report and recommendations is reserved and what is devolved. Given the work that we have to do on the Mental Health (Scotland) Bill, I do not see any point in discussing a reserved matter.

I also seek clarification on the 90-day consultation period. I am sure that I read that views should be given before 28 February. Then I heard that the period was 90 days, which would take us beyond 31 March. How does the 90-day consultation period tie in with the purdah of the Parliament?

Finally, can we have a separate Scottish solution to the issues raised by the report? Given the implications of the report, it is important that the committee should take evidence and present a view on the report. Having said that, we must have legal clarification and I suggest that we get it as soon as possible.

The 90 days that you are talking about is the 90-day period within which responses have to be sent to the OFT.

That period ends on 17 April.

The OFT is required to consult the devolved health departments and the Scottish Executive health department has come up with 28 February for the end of its consultation period.

So pharmacists and anyone else in Scotland who has concerns must get their responses to Frank McAveety by 28 February, so that those views can be fed into the response going to Westminster by 17 April.

Yes. It is a staged process. I have spoken to pharmacists in my constituency. If they miss the 28 February deadline, there is nothing to prevent them from sending their concerns to the UK Health Department.

I would be concerned if there was only one opinion from Scotland—if all the views go to the minister and only one view is sent to Westminster. I hope that the minister will present all the views. Obviously the supermarkets are in favour of the proposals and the small independent pharmacists are very much against them. I hope that the minister will submit a broad and impartial view.

You seem to be saying that, given the amount of work that the committee has to do on the Mental Health (Scotland) Bill, we need to ask the minister what his intentions are and whether 28 February is a flexible date.

I am concerned about the implications of the OFT report. I understand the time scale and the consultation process; the Scottish Executive will seek views until 28 February and they will then be fed into the 90-day consultation.

I would appreciate clarification on who takes the decision. My understanding is that although the OFT report deals with consumer issues, which are reserved, whether to change the control of entry to national health service prescribing is a health matter and therefore devolved. I am confused because if the Scottish Executive is just feeding into a UK consultation, that implies that the Executive believes that the decision has to be taken by the UK Government. I would have thought that the opposite was true. We need clarification about that.

If the decision lies with Scottish ministers and not the UK Government, we should know what the time scale is beyond the consultation period: in what time scale is the minister intending to take the decision? We need some speedy clarification from the minister so that we leave ourselves time to feed into whatever consultation is going on and try to influence the decision.

It is difficult to extricate all the information from the OFT report. From what I have seen of it so far, the OFT has not considered the issue of dispensing NHS prescriptions. It considered the wider issues—some might even say that it considered the peripheral issues.

I, too, have been lobbied, but not on a train.

There are local pharmacies in cities, so the issue is important not just for rural areas but for the survival of many local pharmacies in towns. They, too, are concerned.

The clerk's note says that it is for Scottish ministers to determine what action, if any, should be taken regarding the statutory arrangements for control of entry to NHS lists. Does that mean that before any change could happen, a statutory instrument would have to come before the committee?

Yes.

We cannot just let the matter slip through. We need a briefing about the full implications of such a statutory instrument so that we know what we are voting on. Would it be possible for us to block such a statutory instrument?

Yes. Could we agree that we should ask for extra information before we decide what we are going to do? Is it agreed that we give the committee clerks two weeks in which to get a response from the Executive?

Members indicated agreement.

Given that Executive responses are not always expeditious, can we emphasise in the letter the time scale and the committee's concerns?

Yes.

I will see you all tomorrow morning at 9.30.

Meeting closed at 11:49.