Numark chairman Harry McQuillan has criticised Keir Starmer for delivering a speech during Labour’s party conference that lacked “significant detail” on his vision for the NHS and failing to reveal the role he sees community pharmacies playing in years to come.

The prime minister spoke broadly about how the government will improve the health service, briefly mentioning his ambition to reduce NHS waiting lists, stop late cancer diagnoses and put in place reforms to give patients “more control over their health.”

Starmer also referred to Labour’s 10-year plan for the NHS which the government is reportedly aiming to complete by next spring. McQuillan (pictured) described this lack of detail as “a missed opportunity.”

“Keir Starmer’s speech at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool offered a broad vision for the NHS’s future and, in my opinion, lacked any significant detail,” he told Independent Community Pharmacist.

McQuillan was also critical of health secretary Wes Streeting for failing to offer specifics in his speech during the conference about how the government intends to achieve its goal of preventative care.

“The specifics on how the Government intend to achieve these goals were notably absent,” McQuillan said.

“This feels like a missed opportunity, not least given the growing importance of pharmacies in treating people close to home and in doing so, alleviating NHS pressures.”

McQuillan: Pharmacies need “more than just political rhetoric” 

McQuillan said underfunded community pharmacies remained “an untapped resource” and insisted the sector needed “more than just political rhetoric” to allow it to “unlock its potential” in supporting the NHS to improve patient outcomes.

“As the NHS faces unprecedented strain, community pharmacies are a crucial, underutilised resource. It also must be recognised that the network is underfunded, to varying degrees across the four UK countries,” he said.

“Pharmacies can offer much-needed support through the opportunities that independent prescribing will undoubtably bring and services that provide minor ailment care, and preventive interventions – areas that could significantly see community pharmacy as the first port of call to access NHS care and as a bi-product ease the burden on GPs and hospitals.”

McQuillan said pharmacies were “well positioned” to help Streeting realise his ambition of shifting the NHS from “sickness to prevention” but warned the government needed to produce “concrete policy decisions” and the funding to deliver them.

“Without these changes, community pharmacy will continue to be an underused resource and primary and secondary care will only face increasing challenges,” McQuillan said.

He said the 12 principles laying out how community pharmacy can be better integrated into primary care, recently published by Numark, “will serve as a framework to allow pharmacies to deliver against” Labour’s 10-year plan.

“We would urge all community pharmacies to consider how we prepare for and support reform because I am sure it will come. It has to,” McQuillan said.