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Sandra Gidley is a pharmacist and Liberal Democrat
member of Parliament for Romsey
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Party conference season has started. The media may concentrate on keynote speeches and party intrigue but behind the scenes there is some serious networking going on. Welcome to the world of the conference fringe.
For the first two days of the Liberal Democrat party conference the “health
hotel” was based in the heart of things, slap bang in the middle
of the main conference hotel. The initiative was funded by 36 organisations,
including patient groups, business organisations and professional representative
bodies. Fringes are co-ordinated, to try to maximise attendance, and
there is a range of stalls for delegates to access. There are health
hotels at all three main party conferences.
I met doctors, nurses, dentists, social workers, midwives, Unison representatives
and even physiotherapists. The organisations that participated also had
an opportunity to participate in a consultation exercise, chaired by
Baroness Neuberger, which will inform future Lib Dem health policy. There
was a real buzz in the room, which was quite a feat, since it was a breakfast
meeting and we had all enjoyed the hospitality at the health hotel reception
the evening before.
Delegates also had an opportunity to receive a cardiovascular health
check. This consisted of a blood test, blood pressure reading, body mass
index calculation and the dreaded waist measurement. The tests were performed
by nurses who explained the results, assessed your risk of dying from
cardiovascular problems in the next 10 years and provided some lifestyle
advice.
Despite the fact that there were no consultation rooms and the weighing
and waist measurement were very public there was a constant queue for
the service. Most people formed a positive opinion about the nurses.
I was left wondering why pharmacy had not grasped this opportunity.
The only pharmacists I met were at a dinner. They were from Boots, which
was funding a networking dinner, and the discussion was stimulating.
It is fair to say that that all the participants gained a great deal
from the cross fertilisation of ideas. If you are really passionate about
health then party politics are almost immaterial.
In addition to the above the Liberal Democrat health team had hour-long
meetings with nurses from the Royal College of Nursing and the Healthcare
Commission. The doctors managed to attract a number of members of Parliament
to a dinner and I had a one-to-one with representatives of the British
Dental Association. I also met people from the Family Planning Association,
Alcohol Concern and a number of patient help groups. Even then I had
to decline more invitations than I was able to accept.
Many MPs expressed the opinion that this year there had been far more
requests for one-to-one meetings than usual and it seemed that lobbyists
were also trying to justify the expense of attending three party conferences.
There were also a large number of fringe meetings devoted to health and
even these were opportunities for influence. A small number of determined
individuals made a point
of asking questions in the discussion part of the fringe meetings. The
determined
repetition raised awareness of their particular issue.
More crucially I have to comment on the fact that Lib Dem politicians,
and other conference observers, are all eager to go to see what a GP
from East London is doing in his surgery. Here was a man who wasted no
opportunity to let us know that he was doing something a bit different
and he was so passionate about his work that we all wanted to go along
and see for ourselves.
Where is the pharmacy equivalent? I am sure that he or she is out there
but nobody thought to send them along to the conference so that they
could enthuse and influence others.
The cynics among you will probably by now be thinking “Ah, she’s
wearing her politician’s head. Of course she will want everyone
to come to the conference because it generates money for the party and
she wants somebody to buy her supper.” I am sorry but that is rubbish.
In the manner of Worzel Gummidge let me don a different head for a moment — my
pharmacy head.
At a time when pharmacy has never faced so many political challenges
and pharmacists have never had a greater need to engage with politicians,
the absence of pharmacy at the health hotel and at the conference itself
was a real disappointment. This was compounded when I received a call
from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society on Tuesday asking whether I was
free for a meeting at the conference on Wednesday. Put aside the fact
that there were no health fringes, the health hotel had finished on the
Tuesday and there were no health debates in the conference hall that
day. That is bad enough, but most MPs had been declining appointments
for some time because their diaries were full. I think it is called “missing
the boat”.
Other professions managed to engage with politicians and generate a greater
level of understanding of their issues. Why not pharmacy? Control of
entry, the Foster review, the new pharmacy contract and practice-based
commissioning are all issues that will have a huge impact on the future
of our profession.
They are also issues that few politicians have a grasp of but the politicians
who attend the health events at conference are the most likely to be
our best advocates. If you doubt my assertion that allies are important
just cast your mind back to the recent Health Bill. There were clauses
that had a significant impact on pharmacy, facilitating future changes
in the regulations governing supervision, but all that most politicians
could talk about was the smoking ban. This is because it is all that
most of them actually understood.
It is also important to note that people need friends of all political
colours. Any organisation that is complacent enough to believe it can
rely on a comfortable working relationship with the Department of Health
needs its head examined and when we have a Government that appears hell
bent on turning the NHS upside down and inside out then any organisation
should leave no
stone unturned in its search for friends and allies.
Our representative bodies should be doing all they can to make sure that
key opinion formers are well-briefed on the issues. We need to do much,
much better. Returning to the Worzel Gummidge comparison, I can
tell you that there is a special head for this phenomenon too. It is
called an ostrich head. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal