Tory MP Nick de Bois has rebuked his colleague's attack on pharmacy, dismissing Phillip Lee's claim that the profession is paid to count Smarties.

GP Dr Lee had based his call for doctors to take over dispensing on "simplistic assumptions", MP for Enfield Mr de Bois said in an exclusive interview with C+D.

Conservative MP for Bracknell Dr Lee had failed to see the substantial opportunity to improve care by working together, argued Mr de Bois, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on primary care and public health.

"I think it just isn't dealing with the substantial opportunity to improve the whole patient experience" Nick de Bois, Conservative MP	More on dispensing Pharmacy slams MP's 'counting Smarties' slur Peter Dawson: I'm a Smartie counter, apparently NHS Alliance chief: focus on services over       dispensing in new NHS
	Mr de Bois' comments came a week after GP and Bracknell MP Dr Lee argued that taxpayers were subsidising pharmacies to "check the box and then sign". Dr Lee said he couldn't understand why all GP practices could not be dispensing as it was just "like counting Smarties, you don't have to be terribly intellectual to be able to do it".

"To make a challenge like that based on such a simplistic assumption... I think it just isn't dealing with the substantial opportunity to improve the whole patient experience," Mr de Bois said at the APPG's annual reception on Wednesday.

Mr de Bois urged GPs to stop seeing pharmacies as purely profit-making ventures. "We need a complete package of care and, through the role of pharmacists, we can improve the patient experience," he said.

"The problem is we look at GPs, pharmacists, nurses and physiotherapists [as separate groups] and actually we should be looking at them as a whole."

He added that pharmacists were particularly well placed to offer preventative care and tackle chronic illness. "The more we make use of pharmacists' skills, the more that will be to the patient advantage," he said.

The Conservative Party has not responded to Dr Lee's comments officially, but the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has written to the Prime Minister and government chief whip to seek confirmation that the comments do not represent party policy.