New Health Secretary: Lincolnshire MP Victoria Atkins
You will have seen that Victoria Atkins, MP for Louth and Horncastle, has been appointed as Health Secretary.
As an LPC, we have been very active in ensuring our MPs are aware of the issues in Community Pharmacy. We facilitated the attendance of Ms Atkins at the last year’s Community Pharmacy England (CPE) drop-in event on the hypertension case-finding service, having personally invited her to the event.
Victoria Atkins with our Chief Officer, Dr Tracey Latham-Green at November 2022 CPE event
Prior to the Autumn event, she had visited a local pharmacy in July last year. She was very interested in the work done in community pharmacy and spent some time speaking to the team.Victoria was impressed with the range of services provided which we discussed with her, including both advanced and essential services, noting that pharmacy could do more but that there were increasing funding pressures year on year, with an actual and continuing real terms cut in funding since 2014 when contractors have been faced with inflationary pressures and an increasing national minimum and living wage.
Victoria Atkins speaking to team members at Lincolnshire Coop pharmacy in Louth
We also discussed workforce pressures and the need to ensure adequate recognition of the skill levels both of pharmacists and within pharmacy teams, noting that all pharmacists are clinically trained for at least four years, whether they work in community pharmacy, secondary care, within Primary Care Networks or other parts of primary care such as GP surgeries. You can read more about this visit in the 4th August 2022 newsletter here.
We have a constructive relationship with her office which we hope will assist in ensuring her full understanding of community pharmacy's needs. We will continue to support the work of CPE in relation to MP engagement with Ms Atkins and the other six MPs across the county.
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