Pharmacies to be able to prescribe medication under plans to free up GP appointments
Patients will be able to receive prescription medicines and oral contraception without seeing a GP under new plans to ease the strain on surgeries.
It is hoped the measures – which could be rolled out across England as soon as this winter – will help to free up 15 million slots at doctors’ surgeries over the next two years.
Under the proposals, pharmacists will be able to write prescriptions for common conditions including earache, sore throat and urinary tract infections without needing the approval of a GP.
The measures – which are part of what ministers are calling an “overhaul of primary care” – are backed by £645m of spending over two years and come alongside efforts to end the 8am “rush” for appointments.
They are being announced just days after the Conservatives suffered from a punishing set of local election results on the back of high inflation, a cost of living crisis and record high levels of unhappiness with the NHS.
Ministers hope almost half a million women would no longer need to speak to a nurse or GP to get oral contraception under the new plans and that the number of people able to access blood pressure checks in pharmacies would be more than doubled to 2.5 million a year.
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Self-referrals will also be increased for services including physiotherapy, hearing tests and podiatry, bypassing the need to see a GP.
The proposals could be in place this winter pending a consultation with the industry.
The prime minister said “transforming primary care is the next part of this government’s promise to cut NHS waiting lists”.
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The government plans to train GP receptionists
“I know how frustrating it is to be stuck on hold to your GP practice when you or a family member desperately need an appointment for a common illness,” he added.
“We will end the 8am rush and expand the services offered by pharmacies, meaning patients can get their medication quickly and easily.”
NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard said the reforms would “help us to free up millions of appointments for those who need them most, as well as supporting staff so that they can do less admin and spend more time with patients”.
Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting criticised the announcement as “merely tinkering at the edges” and said it did not deliver the “fundamental reform” the NHS needs.
He pointed to figures from the Chemists’ Association which reveal that 670 pharmacies and 343 surgeries have closed since 2015.
Mr Streeting said: “13 years of Conservative failure has seen hundreds of pharmacies close and 2,000 GPs cut.
“Now millions of patients are waiting a month to see a GP, if they can get an appointment at all. Expecting the Conservatives to fix this is like expecting an arsonist to put out the fire they started.
“Rishi Sunak is completely out of touch with the problems facing patients and the NHS. He has no plan to address the shortage of GPs, or to reverse the cut in the number of doctors trained every year.
“The Conservatives’ announcement is merely tinkering at edges, in contrast to the fundamental reform the NHS needs and Labour is offering.”
Mr Streeting said Labour would abolish the non-dom tax status and use the proceeds to train an extra 7,500 doctors and 10,000 nurses every year.
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The idea of giving pharmacists the power to prescribe without GP approval is not new.
Therese Coffey, who was health secretary during the short period of Liz Truss’s premiership, floated plans to enable pharmacies to manage and supply contraception prescriptions last September.
She also pledged that patients would see a GP within two weeks of making an appointment – although she did not set a target for when that should be achieved by.
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
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In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
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The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
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Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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