General Election campaigning update: four weeks to go
The General Election campaigning period is an important time for building supporters in readiness for the new Parliament.
The team at Community Pharmacy England is continuing to work hard to ensure that community pharmacy has a cross-party group of advocates in the new Parliament and that all political parties are committed to the sector.
Supported by LPCs, we have already made contact with a number of Prospective Parliamentary Candidates with an interest in health and social care across all political parties. Our CEO has set out our priorities for the election in a recent statement and we have been pleased to see commitments to Pharmacy First and recognition of the pressures that the sector is under already being made by politicians.
We know many of you are keen to help build support for community pharmacy during this election period, and pharmacy owners and LPCs are encouraged to contact their local Parliamentary candidates and offer them a pharmacy visit.
To support this, we have updated the politician visit guidance and policy briefings on the Political engagement section of our website. Any pharmacy owners or LPCs who would like to contact their local candidates and arrange pharmacy visits are encouraged to make use of these resources.
If you do organise a visit, we’d be keen to hear from you. A new form for reporting your Parliamentary candidate engagement is now available.
Here LPCs and pharmacy owners can share details about pharmacy visits they have arranged or participated in, helping us to map progress in engaging with different parties and candidates. Tracking these visits will help with our national campaigning and lobbying work both during the election and when the new Parliament is formed.
Open letter to party leaders
We have also co-signed an open letter to political parties, urging them to invest in community pharmacy and save the sector from crisis. Sent jointly with the Company Chemists’ Association, the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS), the letter warns of the dire need for action to protect public access to healthcare, expert advice and vital medicines via the pharmacy network.
The letter references the findings of the recent Commons Health Committee report on pharmacy and urges all political parties to adopt the six-point plan outlined in the joint #VotePharmacy Manifesto, which is in line with Community Pharmacy England’s Four-Point Plan for Community Pharmacy.
Open letter to political parties ahead of the General Election
Tools and Resources
Engaging with politicians and election candidates
Information for politicians, including our collection of policy briefings
Report your Parliamentary candidate engagement
