Living in a rural area like ours, we all know the difficulty of accessing healthcare services when we need them.

Not only do we sometimes find it difficult to get an appointment; some facilities are also no longer on our doorsteps – meaning we must travel to get treatment.

That is why community pharmacies are vital. They offer immediate help and advice on a range of conditions, enabling people to get help quickly for more minor ailments. They also ensure you can get your prescriptions when you need them, a vital lifeline for older people and those with long-term conditions. Our local pharmacists - chemists as we often used to call them - do a great job looking after our health and wellbeing, while also taking pressure off our overstretched GP surgeries.

However, these important facilities are under threat, and we are risk seeing them disappear from some of our high streets altogether. More than 1,000 pharmacies across England have shut their doors since 2015 and many more are facing an uncertain future as funding for these services has been cut by 30 per cent in real terms over the past seven years. There's a vacancy rate of 14 per cent in community pharmacies in the West Country, compared to eight per cent across the UK. Communities like Axminster have already seen one of their pharmacies closed, leaving residents having to queue out of the door to get help from the sole remaining pharmacy in town, and in Sidmouth the news that Boots was giving up on their Woolbrook Road pharmacy caused considerable concern.

Yet despite these pressures, the Conservative Government in Westminster seems in denial about the issue. I raised this with Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt MP earlier this month. The Government is now piling extra pressure onto these hard-pressed services, in a bid to relieve pressure on GPs. This simply isn’t sustainable. The Government is trying to burn the candle at both ends, without ever worrying if the wick will flicker out.

Liberal Democrats demand a better deal for pharmacies in rural and coastal towns and villages, including proper funding to ensure they can meet their rising costs and continue to serve our communities. The Government needs to plan for the long-term. We need a plan to recruit more rural pharmacists and ensure people can continue to access their prescriptions locally – without having to travel miles or pay a premium for home delivery. Otherwise, we risk seeing people unable to access the important medication they rely upon