NPA chairman Ian Strachan has justified the decision of the NPA to withdraw from Pharmacy Voice by saying that “pursuing unity and a single voice [in pharmacy] is fine but not if the price of that unity compromises our ability to defend the interests of independents, particularly when the threat of the Government’s measures will affect independents the most.”

He told Sigma delegates that, in his view, it was difficult to achieve aligned agendas and shared values [within Pharmacy Voice]. “I would rather lobby from outside the establishment and influence politicians and civil servants without the handicap of that illusion of unity sometimes.”

It is not personal, Mr Strachan said, but the scale of the threat to the sector is so fundamental to its future that “we haven’t time to get things wrong”. Pharmacy policy development should sit within the negotiating umbrella and, as far as the Government’s reforms are concerned, “I would rather have no policy than bad policy”.