Hard pill to swallow

0:00Wake Up To Money from BBC 5 Live. Hello, welcome to Wake Up To Money. Now, despite the Bank of England talking about rates continuing to be gradually cut, expectations are that today they're going to hold them. So we'll have a look at why that might be. Elsewhere, more and more pharmacies are reducing their hours to save costs and the price of many familiar drugs is on the up. And a similar story at some of our zoos as fewer visitors are contributing to financial struggles. Wake Up To Money with Sean Farrington. Good to have you on BBC Radio 5 Live right now. Good morning to you. It is Wake Up To Money, Thursday the 5th of February.

0:39We are not far off, 20 to 6. Hope you are well. Hope you're lined up for the Bank of England interest rate decision at lunchtime today, etched in your diaries. I know we had a decision from the bank in December and they decided to cut interest rates then to 3.75%. That was the bank rate. That's what it is at the moment. The bank also talked around that time in December about a gradual path downwards in interest rates. But it doesn't seem like expectations are there's going to be any further move downwards today. If you look at the investment world, they seem to be expecting that interest rates may well stay just about the same.

1:23Colleen McHugh with us this morning, investment consultant to Wealthify. Very good morning to you, Colleen. Good morning, Sean. What are you expecting today and why? Yeah, it's just really, as you said, as your news mentioned earlier, yeah, expect a hold today, considering, as you said, we did have a cut in December. And really, the point to make here is inflation is still above target. But I do think the direction of travel is definitely for some more cuts. And the reason being, unfortunately, the hiring is weakening and pay growth is cooling, which should take the heat out of service inflation.

2:00So I guess, you know, to summarise, Sean, hold for now. And yeah, hopefully a couple, maybe March, maybe April. It seems to be we pick and choose our moments when we say, oh, inflation is the thing that is concerning us or not at the moment. So the rate at which prices are rising. Because when the Bank of England has this target of trying to get prices rising overall on average at 2 % every year and we're still a bit off that and still a bit above that. Yet they have been cutting and they still give us the impression they are going to be cutting, even when inflation might not be at that target rate.

2:40Yeah, it definitely can be a bit confusing, can't it? But the whole idea of the Bank of England and indeed other central banks really around the world is that they're supposed to be forward-looking. They're supposed to be looking at data now and trying to analyse where will inflation be in a little while from here. And by all accounts, or certainly the forecast that I'm looking at, is that they do expect quite a significant drop in inflation, potentially down to 2%, that 2 % target by sort of April-ish. And on the basis that a lot of these big price pressures, you know, energy and water bills, those prices will be coming down.

3:17So we'll see, but it looks like we have some cuts on the way. Fingers crossed. Changing tack a little bit, Colleen, a theme of the next 20 minutes will be how businesses that we take ourselves to, whether it's on the high street or in the entertainment industry or the hospitality industry, so pharmacies and zoos particularly, we're going to be looking at this morning, have been struggling financially. Now, there are going to be specifically different reasons for a pharmacy to struggle and an aquarium to struggle. But overall, are you seeing a trend there that those places where we decide to go and spend money aren't doing quite so well as they once were?

4:02Yeah, it's a very mixed picture. You know, certainly if you just read the headlines, it would paint a very, very negative picture. but then in lots of instances you know you try to get a reservation for a restaurant or whatever and you can't get one um so it is very mixed um and yeah it's it's it's it's i would say i i guess sean it's um it's it seems more negative than than positive but then the reality feels a little bit different on occasion yeah it's been interesting hearing about you know that that reservation question depending on where you are in the country, what kind of restaurant you might be at the moment.

4:46So yeah, everybody's got a very different story. Let's get into pharmacies a little bit more. So more and more cash-strapped pharmacies are reducing their opening hours in order to cut costs. There was an analysis of some NHS data done by the Financial Times that shows the number of late-night pharmacies in England has fallen by more than 90 % in just three years. Now, the National Pharmacy Association that helped crunch these figures estimates that 7 million hours of pharmacy care has been lost in the last two years. And we've got the chair of that association, Olivier Picard, with us, who also owns four pharmacies himself in Berkshire.

5:23Olivier, very good morning to you. Thank you for joining us. Good morning, Sean. My pleasure. How are you? I'm okay, thank you. What have you done regarding opening hours at your four pharmacies in recent times? Yeah, so I don't have one of those long opening hour pharmacies, But over the last sort of three, four years, we have reduced our hours at the weekend primarily. You know, Saturday, we used to open till 6 p.m. in one of my pharmacies. We reduced that to 4 p.m. in the afternoon. Two of my pharmacies used to open till 5 p.m. Then I closed at 1 p.m. in a Saturday afternoon. And there's one that we are now considering closing on a Saturday altogether.

6:03The issue that this faces is patients are affected, access is restricted. But unfortunately, due to the complicated funding model and 90 % of my income coming from the NHS, I'm hanging on by my fingernails here and so are many of our members. And despite the recent funding uplift which was given to pharmacies last April, with the increased costs that we have seen, you know, employers' contribution, living wage and business rates, that has sort of hoovered up pretty much all of that uplift. And whilst a restaurant and a cafe may reluctantly increase the prices, my prices are fixed by the government.

6:51The government tell me what I will be paid for a drug and I don't have the flexibility of increasing or passing any increasing costs to my patients. Is there demand there from patients wanting to use your pharmacies across your membership at those times that are now no longer available? Indeed, and we have seen, you know, nine out of ten pharmacies cutting their hours because of exactly that. But if you think about your listeners today, you know, it's 5.30 in the morning and many of them will be on their way to work. and some pharmacies may open later than they used to. So access will be difficult.

7:31I work probably from 7 a.m. to late p.m. If my local pharmacy opens 9 till 6, what chance have I got? So there are many patients who will enjoy pharmacy opening at weekends, longer hours, evening, and they are no longer able to do so due to financial constraint. Now, our contract with the government is in need of reform. We've been calling for this at the National Pharmacy Association for a long time. And what does that reform mean? You've given us a hint about how you get your funds at the moment and how the price of what you can charge is fixed. What would be the big change and how might that impact people using them?

8:13Well, currently, community pharmacies, primarily, the activity that we have is to dispense prescriptions. the government has the ambition to use community pharmacy for more services and that would be either managing long-term condition or maybe low acuity stuff like pharmacy first you know a urine infection an ear infection in a child that kind of of things and and by doing that pharmacies will be able to sort of justify opening longer hours and at a time when patients want to use it and that's the ambition of the government. It is not something that necessarily pharmacy wants to do. The problem that we have is pharmacies are currently not on a sustainable footing.

8:58And if we want to help the government introduce clinical services in pharmacy, we need that reform to happen. Pharmacists can prescribe medication. The government want to use the skills of pharmacists. But in order to do that, they need a network of pharmacy open and trading, not closing at an alarming rate. We've lost 1 ,400 pharmacies since 2017 and we're still seeing two a week shutting every day in 2025. So it is a stark and complicated picture and we are asking the government to take a good long hard look at itself and really invest in community pharmacy rather than let them close at alarming rates.

9:39Does there need to be sort of a radical change in our relationship that we have with pharmacies and the medication that we need, with the ability to get things delivered within a day, within a week, certainly things that you know you might need in a certain amount of time, that we should be relying a lot more on a postal service for actually just getting hold of medicines and perhaps relying a lot more on the ability to send photos, have video calls with experts that perhaps don't need that traditional high street pharmacy the way we've known it in the past. Yeah, and that's an excellent point and that would be probably 5 % of the population that is healthy, well and will require an occasional contact with a pharmacy for a prescription.

10:33What you're talking about is prescription. What I'm talking about is deprived communities who need to have a face-to-face contact, vulnerable and elderly resident, and we know we have a growing and elderly population that require the support, and they can't access their GP, they can't see an NHS dentist. But our pharmacy's doors are open, and these are the very people I'm talking about.

11:04Your AI or digital or postal service will work for a minority of patients. The majority of my patients, they come to my pharmacy not because they have no other choice. The choice of having a prescription posted to you already exists. They come to the pharmacy for healthcare advice. They come to the pharmacy to have their blood pressure check. They come to the pharmacy for travel health advice and weight loss advice. And we heard from your previous person on the show there from Gusto around the relationship we have with food. You know, I talk about diet and nutrition in my pharmacy all the time.

11:42I can do that remotely, but patients still enjoy that face-to-face interaction. They want to see someone. They want to speak to someone. And in order for me to be able to be there, I need the NHS to look after pharmacies. You know, the NHS is enjoying a 3 % real-term funding uplift every year for the next three years. and community pharmacy is getting real-term cuts year after year. How is that possible? There are lots of things that the government can do from reducing business rates. There are things that the government can do that doesn't necessarily cost them actual money, but unfortunately they currently don't do it.

12:23Olivier, just while I have you, a story that many may well have noticed over the last day or so is the community pharmacy in Northern Ireland warning that there's a growing shortage of some essential medicines, including prescription strength cocodamol. Is that something you're seeing right across your membership across the UK? Yes. So the NPA represent members in all four nations. So we are exposed to these kind of shortages throughout the UK. The situation is the same in England. The reason that we're seeing shortages of cocodamol and even aspirin more recently, where I used to pay, you know, or be paid 68p for a packet of aspirin and the price has gone up to over£3.90 now.

13:06And the reason we're seeing those price rises is because drug manufacturers have limited capacity and there's genuine increased demand worldwide in Europe, in the world in general. And then the UK has managed to get the cheapest medication in Europe. So if you're a drug manufacturer and you've got limited capacity and suddenly the UK has sort of battered the price so low for the medicine, you know, you can get a packet of aspirin or blood pressure medication for like cheaper than the Mars bars. So if you get to that situation, the manufacturer turns around and said, you know what, I'm not going to supply my drug to the UK because I'm not making a return here.

13:43What I'm going to do is concentrate my efforts on France or Germany where I'll be getting a better price for my drugs. And that creates shortages. And what those shortages do is that it pushes the price of drugs in the UK up, which the government has to pay, or in many cases, causes pharmacies to dispense medicine at a loss. That means I am now buying the medicine for cocodamol, for example, more expensive than the government will pay me back for it. So every time I dispense cocodamol, I basically prop up the NHS funding because the NHS doesn't pay enough for the drug. And that's a problem that's been created over a decade of underfunding by successive governments.

14:26Just on that briefly then, what would you expect to happen to the price of those perhaps, what would you call it, over-the-counter drugs that people might regularly look to get, the likes of paracetamol, ibuprofen, and Cocodomol being dispensed by yourself and pharmacists around the UK in 2026. What will happen to the price of those? Yeah, everything will probably go up in price. The manufacturers are pushing the government to pay more for the drugs. If that happens, the prices will go up. That means that my purchase prices will go up. Now, I said to you, I can't pass any of those costs to the government.

15:09but obviously if someone's coming to buy a packet of aspirin or paracetamol, I can adjust my prices according to what I pay. Unfortunately, we are still seeing, you know, you can go to my pharmacy and buy a packet of paracetamol for 60p, 50p. You know, that is not sustainable. Many countries in Europe, if you go to France, you'll pay two, three euros for a box of paracetamol. And that is why we're seeing those drug shortages because the price has been lowered so much. We are racing ourselves to the bottom here. And can I ask, Olivier, on that hay fever tablets, as people start thinking as they get into spring about that, are they going to be higher in price this year than last year?

15:53Every year, seasonal medication, especially generic medication like your generic cetirizine and loratadine, they do increase in price as the demand rises. So in the winter, they fall down in price, and in the summer or spring they go up in price. I'm expecting prices of medicine over the counter to rise in 2026. Compared to a year before, so taking away the seasonal nature. Yeah, and I'll give you an example. Aspirin, which is a medication that is used to protect people from heart attack and stroke, the price of aspirin over the counter has gone up from probably one or two pounds in a pharmacy to nearly£20 today if you wanted to buy it.

16:36That is the reality of where we are. £1 or£2 to how much? To about£20. So my cost price, I've gone up 10 times in the last sort of three or four weeks. And that will happen to more and more medication as we go forward. Would you have a percentage figure in mind for, say, those hay fever tablets? You know, year on year, spring on spring, how much more they might be this year than last year? It's very difficult. I can't predict the market and I'm always the last one to know when a price rises because generally I can't get the medication for the price that I used to. So I then realized that, you know, I've got a bit of legacy stock on my shelf and when that runs out and I reorder, the price goes up.

17:18However, you know, it is not uncommon to see price of hay fever medication double or triple, my cost price doubling or tripling in sort of March, April time for hay fever medication. That doesn't necessarily mean that the price on the counter will go up by two or three times, but it definitely is very likely to go up and that could be a pound or two per box. and for some patient, that is going to be the reality of looking after yourself. Olivier, thank you for your time this morning. Really appreciate it. Olivier Picard there, who's the chair of the National Pharmacy Association. Now let's talk zoos.

17:5740 % of zoos and aquariums in the UK have raised concerns about financial struggles since 2022, according to BBC Research on 129 accredited zoos. We've got Justin Morris with us, who's chief executive of Bristol Zoo, where they've been experiencing financial difficulties contributing to the closure of one of its two sites back in 2022. Justin, good morning. Good morning. So what is the state of play right now then? You know, a few years have passed since the closure of that last site. Have you been able to get on top of things? We have and we are in a relatively unique situation because we as a conservation charity were operating two zoos.

18:37So as you mentioned, one of our zoos in Clifton in central Bristol closed in 2022 but we also operate another zoo on the edge of Bristol which is much larger in size and we took the decision to close one zoo in order to focus all of our resources and time and money on the other zoos. So we've got the benefit I suppose of being able to raise some capital investment in particular through the sale of our old site to invest in the new one but that's a relatively unique situation for zoos at the moment. Does it feel like an investment or does it feel like using money to paper over the cracks for a few years?

19:18Yeah no it's a good question. It feels like an investment because the reason that we closed the old zoo was partly because we needed to raise money for capital investment but it was also a very small Victorian zoo and the one that we're investing in is at least 10 times larger. So from an animal welfare perspective, from a conservation perspective, and actually just in terms of where it's located and the number of visitors that we can attract, it's got far more potential for the long term. So it feels like we are making an investment, but like everyone operating in the kind of tourism, leisure, hospitality sector, you know, we've got to be competitive.

19:59It's a very competitive market. People have got less money in their pockets than they had pre-COVID. And so we've got to continue to invest in order to attract more visitors as we go forward. When you say, you know, there's some upsides there from an animal welfare perspective, that does give the impression that if there is a competitive market and people are feeling the squeeze in the amount they can spend at zoos, that actually animal welfare is one of those things that has at some point, maybe even at your other zoo that you had to close, not being at the levels that many in your industry would like them to be at?

20:36Yeah, I don't think it's that. I think over time, as zoos have become more knowledgeable understanding of the needs of animals, welfare has had to improve, and that's a good thing. And with the site that we're investing in, because it's much larger and it's got a greater diversity of habitats, we can be confident that we can provide spaces which are going to be suitable, not just now, but for the long term. And I think, obviously, that's hugely important for zoos. And so next up, what is the concern? I mean, is there an animal concern? What happens to those animals that were at your other zoo?

21:17And do you necessarily have the capacity to take them all in? if there's a general shrinking of the overall space in the UK for these animals? Yeah, so the way that zoos work is that zoos in the UK work with zoos across Europe and most animals in zoos are part of breeding programmes where somebody in a zoo, either in the UK or Europe, is essentially managing a stud book and they're recommending each year where animals should move to different zoos in order to breed and in order to sustain that population within the zoo community. So it's very common for animals to move between zoos. And in the event that a zoo was to close, for instance, or something along those lines, then actually what happens is that those animals move to other zoos because they're already part of those programmes.

22:14Thank you for your time, Justin Morris, Chief Executive of Bristol Zoo. That's it from Wake Up To Money. Wake Up To Money from BBC Five Live. That's it from Wake Up To Money. You can download the podcast every Monday to Friday, so please make sure you subscribe. We'd also love it if you left us a review when you do. Get in touch, keep the conversation going any time as well on social media. Use the hashtag WakeUpToMoney. Five Live Sports. Go to the end zone, touchdown! NFL. Touchdown, Philadelphia. Great play design. I think you just have to go out there and be the best that you can be. We're going to go out there and lay it all on the line.

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