How many times have you heard some variation of the phrase ‘pharmacies can do so much more’ over the past few years?

I’m guessing it’s a lot. These words are often trotted out by politicians, the government and even pharmacy bodies, although I must admit to feeling slightly irritated whenever I hear them. After all, what exactly is meant by offering ‘more’? More clinical services? More prescriptions? More advice on minor ailments? More what exactly?

Read more: Primary care recovery plan: Barclay wants pharmacists to do 'even more'

I’ll admit that my frustration is almost certainly borne out of pedantry. The sentiment behind these statements is that community pharmacy is an untapped well of clinical knowledge. This is especially true now that so many pharmacists are investing their time into an independent prescribing (IP) qualification.

So, yes, pharmacies could offer more on a purely aspirational level. But despite the sector's huge potential, it’s laughable to imagine that teams could take on a bigger workload right now while workforce and retention issues are so serious.

Yet that’s exactly what NHS England (NHSE) seems to be doing as it pushes the idea that patients should make pharmacy their “first point of call” while strikes and other pressures push emergency and critical care to breaking point.

Read more: NHSE: Pharmacies should be 'first point of call' during junior doctor strikes

The pressures on secondary care have grabbed headlines over the past few months, and for good reason. But the enormous weight on primary care services like community pharmacy are less well publicised and repeated calls for patients to visit their local pharmacy are doing nothing to change that.

Take for example, a recent NHSE advertising campaign encouraging patients to see their pharmacist for minor ailments advice. Cue the sound of pharmacists around the country screaming into a pillow out of frustration.

Because although pharmacy teams desperately want to be able to provide this service for patients, the reality is that years of real-terms funding cuts have made that impossible.

There comes a point where the only sensible thing to do is to step back and make it clear that enough is enough. And it seems that the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) is taking steps towards doing just that.

On Monday night (March 13), it revealed it has urged the government to halt the upcoming Pharmacy Quality Scheme (PQS) until its funds the sector fairly.

Read more: Halt PQS until pharmacy funded fairly, PSNC tells government

How much this will do to push the powers that be away from the apathy they have shown on pharmacy funding in recent years is anyone’s guess, but it’s good to see the negotiator taking a stand.

The government can’t keep on talking about how much more pharmacies could offer if it won’t take the steps needed to help the sector do just that.

Until chronic underfunding issues are fixed, pharmacies are going to have to start saying no.

Beth Kennedy is editor of C+D