Published: 03/04/25

You may remember that in January our Chairman, Martin Green, co-signed a letter to the UK Chancellor along with 47 other Scottish organisations, highlighting the impact of planned employer's National Insurance Contribution (NIC) hikes on businesses and charities who largely deliver public services.

Unlike other private businesses, our members cannot directly pass on cost increases to the end user (patients in our case), so the impact of this change to NICs is potentially disastrous.

We are pleased to see that the House of Lords recently held a debate which used community pharmacy as a central talking point, eventually voting overwhelmingly in favour of granting an exemption to this rise in business costs.

There are several more steps in the legislative process, and the House of Commons is not obliged to accept this recommendation - but we are more optimistic today than we were last week about impending cost increases.