Health Bill [HL]

Briefly, I support the amendment and the one that follows. It is crucially important that this kind of inquiry, perhaps on a pilot basis, can define more precisely the needs of the pharmaceutical services in a particular area. The Committee will forgive me for going back to my point about the particular dispensing practice in the village where I live. It has a fascinating and wholly acceptable symbiosis with the local pharmacist, with an agreement which is obviously quite different from that in the village of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. If you get a prescription from the practice in the morning and you live in the village, you must take it to the pharmacist’s shop; they will not dispense from the individual practice. Dispensing from the practice is for people who live outside the village, a long distance away, or who go the surgery to get a prescription when the local pharmacist is closed. That kind of local agreement, which can be part of a pharmaceutical assessment scheme, is quite invaluable.