Health Bill [HL]

We come to an issue presciently raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge. The amendment is designed to flag the issue up. As I argued earlier, if we rely on localism to determine what pharmacy services there should be in an area and how they should be delivered, they are unlikely—subject to the regulations, which I look forward to reading—to have a recipe for national consistency in the configuration of those services. There is another aspect of localism that causes concern, as the noble Baroness said—the power that the Government propose to confer on PCTs to set standards and regulate pharmacy premises. By giving considerable discretion to PCTs to decide the standard of pharmacy services needed in an area and who should and should not provide those services, there is scope for substantial argument, or even litigation. The natural question that arises is who regulates pharmacists. Is it PCTs or is it the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain? If it is in effect both, which body takes precedence? I see the potential for confusion here, and I should be glad of the Minister’s comments, which I hope will reassure me in some measure. I beg to move.