Collective action: NI minister to meet pharmacists over NPA ballot

Community pharmacists are set to meet with a Northern Ireland Office (NIO) minister to discuss the sector’s funding crisis after the National Pharmacy Association’s (NPA) ballot received near unanimous support in favour of collective action.

Northern Ireland flag
99% of NI respondents voted yes to “limit services in the interests of patient safety"

Ulster Unionist peer Lord Rogan will lead “a delegation of local pharmacists” to meet with NIO minister Fleur Anderson after pharmacy owners voted in favour of reducing services due to a “lack of government funding”, he announced last week (November 15).

The NPA last week revealed the results of its ballot where 99% of respondents in Northern Ireland voted yes to “limit [their] services in the interests of patient safety, if adequate funding is not forthcoming”.

Read more: NPA gives DH ‘time to digest’ results of 99% ‘Yes’ collective action ballot

Lord Rogan criticised the “major cost burden” that community pharmacists will face following the government’s recent budget, which introduced a rise in employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) and the national living wage from April 2025.

“Ministers have refused to cover these extra costs for pharmacists – despite agreeing to do so for other parts of the NHS,” he said.

“Dispensing at a loss”

“For far too long, local pharmacists across Northern Ireland have been dispensing prescriptions at a loss while dealing with other rising cost pressures,” Rogan added.

This has “placed their very existence at risk” and put “innumerable” pharmacies, especially those in rural areas, “in a potentially unsustainable financial position”, he said.

Read more: NPA protest ballot: Government ‘committed to working with sector”

Lord Rogan added that he led a similar delegation to meet with an NIO minister last year to “try and find a resolution”, but it was “to no avail”.

“This is not a matter for Stormont but a problem created by UK ministers,” he stressed, adding that “only they have the power to fix it”.

Read more: Editorial: Pharmacy is a perpetual victim of someone else’s confusion

“I look forward to a constructive meeting with Fleur Anderson and hope that a positive outcome can be achieved,” Rogan said.

The government last week admitted that the system is “no longer supporting” pharmacists and said that it is “committed to working with the sector”.

But MPs have urged the government to “go back to the drawing board” and “invest” in community pharmacies as concerns grow about the upcoming tax hikes.

“Anger and desperation”

The NPA ballot overwhelmingly approved taking collective action in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – some 93% of respondents voted yes in Wales and 99% in England.

The membership body said that 63.5% of its membership in the three countries took part, representing “3,399 independent community pharmacies”.

And NPA chief executive Paul Rees stressed at the time that the result showed “the sense of anger and desperation among contractors that has been intensified by the impact of the budget”.

Read more: Minimum wage to rise 6.7% as National Insurance hike confirmed

Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ budget last month revealed that in April 2025:

  • The national living wage will rise by 6.7% to £12.21 an hour
  • The national minimum wage for 18–20-year-olds will rise by 16.3% to £10 an hour
  • Employer NICs will increase by 1.2 percentage points to 15%

Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA) chief executive Dr Leyla Hannbeck described these two changes as “a wrecking ball to the sector that is already struggling for survival” and warned that they will cost pharmacies more than £125 million.

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