Exeter’s Labour MP Steve Race will chair the reconstituted All-Party Parliamentary Group on pharmacy (APPG), it announced last week (September 19).

Pharmacist and newly elected Labour MP for North Somerset Sadik Al-Hassan will serve as an elected APPG officer alongside Liberal Democrat life peer Lord Scriven and Conservative Party life peer Baroness Cumberlege after the group reconvened on September 10.

The APPG is an “informal group” of members of both houses of parliament that serves to “raise awareness” of the sector within parliament, it said.

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It promotes “pharmacies’ current and potential contributions to the health of the nation” as well as highlighting the sector’s “challenges”, it added.

The group is funded by the Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA), the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA), the National Pharmacy Association (NPA), Community Pharmacy England (CPE) and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS), its website said.

The APPG’s previous chair Taiwo Owatemi, also a registered pharmacist, now holds the post of Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury, according to parliament’s website.

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Last week, C+D reported that the Department of Health and Social Care (DH) could not say when it will resume talks on the community pharmacy contractual framework for 2024/25, nearly six months after the last five-year deal expired.

And earlier this month, Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran was elected as the chair of the new health and social care select committee (HSCC).