Chief Executive’s Blog: June 2024

By Chief Executive Janet Morrison

It’s hard to believe that we’re already more than half-way through a six-week General Election campaign. And as the intensity of politicians’ debate increases now that the manifestos are public knowledge, so too are the efforts to get community pharmacy talked about on the doorstep – and to prepare for what comes after this election.

Thanks to all pharmacies and LPCs who have helped to host pharmacy visits for Parliamentary candidates over the past few weeks, and also to the thousands of you who have already completed our Pharmacy Advice Audit. If you haven’t done this one-day audit, please do take a look now as there is still time to take part: the audit will be critical to show the next Government just how much Pharmacy First is driving extra workload in pharmacies.

Find out about the Advice Audit

There are also still lots of ways to get involved in the political work, both before and after the General Election.

It’s safe to say that, until the middle of May, you wouldn’t have found many people willing to bet on a summer election – including those in Westminster. But despite coming a little earlier than expected, we had been gearing up for a UK General Election for many months and the past few weeks have seen some of the results of that.

We set out clear asks for the future in our Four-Point Plan for Community Pharmacy in February and these were re-affirmed in the joint #VotePharmacy Manifesto. Following our busy Pharmacy First drop-in event in March we co-ordinated a cross-party letter to Government about the pharmacy funding crisis, and in May the stark findings from our Pressures Survey Medicines Supply Report made front page national news.

We have been briefing Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians on key issues such as prevention, medicines supply, and the state of primary care, for many months, and it has been a real step-change to see specific pharmacy policies coming through in all their manifestos. Pledges have ranged from expanding Pharmacy First, as promised by the Conservative Party, to extending prescribing rights and public health services, as pledged by Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

We will need to build on this support in the next Parliament, and our focus now is on work to influence whatever Government emerges from the General Election for the benefit of all community pharmacies. This will require a number of tactics:

1. Relationships – which we have been working for many months to build, supported by others in the sector and at a local level by LPCs;
2. Evidence – which we have gathered on an ongoing basis and continue to do, currently via the Pharmacy Advice Audit;
3. Leverage – playing off the enormous value that pharmacies offer, their essential role in local communities, and the strategic importance of Pharmacy First;
4. A strong case to present to the new Government – the vision we commissioned last year supports this, along with all our financial analysis and ongoing pressures data; and
5. Influencing the next Government Spending Review – which we are doing through both our influencing work and via a significant economic project being carried out by independent consultants.

Our Committee will be spending most of their June meeting discussing this work, and we’ll then be embarking on a series of regional events to talk directly to you all. If you haven’t done so already, please do sign up to attend one of our engagement events to come and speak directly to me and to our Committee Members.

Find your local event

And there are lots of other opportunities for you to get involved and help amplify our lobbying efforts, even before the General Election. As they say: “a week is a long time in politics”.

How you can help

LPCs and pharmacy owners can still make contact with their local election candidates to ensure they recognise the significance of community pharmacy. A raft of tools and resources are available to help you do this.

If a candidate does visit your pharmacy, we’d be keen to hear about it: we’ve set up a new form for reporting your Parliamentary candidate engagement to us.

We also need your help to help us monitor the impact of Pharmacy First and increase the evidence to support our ongoing call for more funding. Our Pharmacy Advice Audit is an important tool in showcasing the huge amount of unpaid work community pharmacy teams do for the NHS. Such data is persuasive: previous audits formed part of our original business case for Pharmacy First. Please get involved in the audit today.

And finally, if you would like to learn more about the work that Community Pharmacy England is doing on your behalf, to ask questions of the team and to share your views, please do sign up to attend your local engagement event.