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The government will legislate to introduce “significant reforms” to the NHS, King Charles III has said in his speech to Parliament setting out the government’s programme over the next year.
In his speech, delivered to Parliament on 13 May 2026, King Charles confirmed that the NHS Modernisation Bill will be brought to Parliament in the next 12 months. If approved by MPs and peers it will abolish NHS England, transfer pharmacy commissioning to integrated care boards (ICBs) and introduce a single patient record.
Supporting documents for the legislative programme, published alongside the King’s speech, said that the single patient record will bring together health and social care records into one place “to improve patient safety and experience”.
The documents also said that the single patient record will apply to those receiving maternity and frailty care by 2028, with learning from this applied to the wider rollout.
In its ten-year-plan, published in July 2025, NHS England promised to “increase the role of community pharmacy in the management of long-term conditions and link them to the single patient record”.
Commenting on the announcement, Amandeep Doll, director for England at the Royal College of Pharmacy, said: “The move towards a single patient record, as promised in the ten-year plan, will mean that vital information follows people wherever they access the NHS. With pharmacists providing ever more clinical services, managing long-term conditions, optimising medicines and preventing harm, it’s essential they are included in access to the record from the outset.
“Too often, pharmacists must make decisions without full sight of a patient’s medical history, recent hospital admissions or changes to treatment, which creates avoidable risks. Having read-write access to a single patient record is critical to safer, better-informed clinical decisions, which will improve care for patients.”
