Pharmacy Minister speaks at Community Pharmacy England event

Community Pharmacy England is back in Liverpool to engage new and returning Labour MPs at this year’s Labour Party Conference.

This follows on from the Liberal Democrat Conference, which we attended last week and ahead of Conservative Party Conference, which we’ll attend next week.

Community Pharmacy England Fringe Event

This year, we partnered with the think tank – Reform – to hold a panel discussion titled: ‘Proactive and patient centred, a health system close enough to care’.

In addition to our Chief Executive Janet Morrison, we were delighted that the panel of speakers included the Pharmacy Minister, Stephen Kinnock MP, Chair of the Parliamentary pharmacy group, Steve Race MP, as well as The King’s Fund CEO, Sarah Woolnough.

The Minister outlined his three priorities for reforming primary care and bringing ‘care closer to home’ including shifting from processes from analogue to digital, changing the culture from sickness to prevention and critically for us hospital to community. He described community pharmacies as ‘vital’ and was concerned about the number of pharmacy closures. He said that discussions with Community Pharmacy England framing the negotiations and on medicine margin are ongoing.*

The Minister also said that we have to get GPs and pharmacists as well as the Government around the table to ensure working is collaborative, not competitive.

He then went on to say that the forthcoming NHS 10 year plan is partly about ensuring we can turn the piecemeal into the systemic and ensure we get the ‘best to the rest’.  He suggested this will require culture change and reform.

Read a summary note of the event

Great to partner with @reformthinktank at the @UKLabour Conference. Our CEO @JanetMorrisonUK was delighted to sit on a panel with @SKinnock, @steve_race and @swoolnough to discuss ways pharmacy can help bring care closer to home. pic.twitter.com/K3E0rSJhDe

— Community Pharmacy England (@ComPharmEngland) September 23, 2024

Other conference engagement

Outside of our panel event, we will be attending a number of fringe events over the course of the conference with a focus on ensuring that Labour MPs fully understand the pressures that pharmacies are facing as well as the consequences of inaction by the new Government.

We were glad to hear the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting MP, suggest recently that Government is committed to increasing the proportion of health spending that is spent on primary care. We hope to hear the same message at this conference and will be making the case for increased investment in all of our meetings with think tanks, health charities and patient groups. In addition to our panel discussion, Janet Morrison will speak at an NHS Confederation roundtable on prevention.

*Community Pharmacy England is in regular dialogue with the Department and NHS on all critical issues. Formal negotiations on the CPCF are expected to recommence soon.