Community pharmacy raised its voice in Channel 4’s special health debate ahead of the July 4 general election, which aired last night (June 24).

Host Krishnan Guru-Murthy announced yesterday afternoon before the programme aired that it would be “a politician-free zone” because health secretary Victoria Atkins had “declined” to debate shadow health secretary Wes Streeting.

Vote in week five of C+D’s election sentiment tracker here

Earlier this month, C+D reported that Channel 4 had called for pharmacists to apply to be audience members in the debate, saying that participants may be able to “grill senior politicians on their plans for the NHS”.

But in the absence of politicians, Channel 4 assembled a panel of experts including NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor, former chair of NHS Devon and former MP Dr Sarah Wollaston and Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) president Dr Adrian Boyle.

Community pharmacy contractor Ian Strachan and Community Pharmacy North East London (CP NEL) chief executive Shilpa Shah both asked questions of the expert panel.

Pharmacy “crisis”

As the debate shifted to the crisis in primary care and access to GP appointments, Strachan spoke up about the pharmacy sector’s “crisis of our own”. 

“Everything seems to be short-term in the NHS,” he said, as he asked the panel where the longer-term vision was for healthcare.

Shah meanwhile drew attention to the “huge number” of pharmacies that have closed in recent years and its impact on “health inequalities”.

Read more: C+D election tracker: Two weeks to go - Tories rally, but Labour commanding

She also asked how primary care was going to “future-proof” itself.

Afterwards Guru-Murthy, who had predicted “more light than heat”, said on X (formerly Twitter) that it was “quite damning of our politics that a debate without politicians is so refreshing, respectful and gets through so much detail”.

C+D contacted Ms Atkins for comment.

Read more: Channel 4 health debate calls for pharmacists to ‘grill’ politicians

It comes as C+D’s fourth round of election sentiment tracking for community pharmacy saw Labour continue to command an impressive lead and the Tories recover from 9% support to 14%.

C+D also this week revealed that support for “other” political parties among readers was split between the Liberal Democrat Party (31%), the Green Party (29%) and Reform (28%), with the SNP and Plaid Cymru together supported by 12% of respondents.

Be sure to add your vote as C+D’s weekly general election sentiment tracker heads into its fifth and penultimate week.