The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7161 p227-229
18 August 2001

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  Statutory fees
  Dry mouth

Statutory fees (3 letters)

Charge businesses, not individuals

From Dr D. K. Scott, MRPharmS

In your report (PJ, 11 August) and comment (PJ, 11 August) on the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s proposed statutory fee changes, you state twice that new graduates will have a reduced fee for registration, something for which many of us have been campaigning for many years. On closer inspection, however, the total cost for a student to undertake training, examination and registration has risen, not fallen.

It is unfortunate that you gave a misleading impression, but it is much more deeply disappointing that there is another rise for a section of our profession that is already burdened by debts from their education. A £100 decrease in their fees could be paid for by around £3 per annum (less tax) from other members, a redistribution in which these new members would share, in their turn.

If it is no longer argued that the fees should reflect the Society’s expenditure on the payer, then is it not time that the premises fees, which can be set against taxes, should be increased to subsidise individual members? After all, the monetary value to a business of having their premises registered is very considerable, far more than the £97 they are charged.

David Scott
Regional Training Pharmacist,
John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford

Recovery of RPM defence costs?

From Mr L. Flint, MRPharmS

Extra funding, from 31 per cent increases in the retention fee of full- and part-time members is being sought “to resource constitutional change and new areas of professional and regulatory activity that meet the Government’s quality agenda and modern public expectation of health professionals” (PJ, 11 August).

The increase for those like myself aged over 60 and not employed will be 5 per cent. Hence my sigh of relief at the knowledge that the increase will not precipitate my early retirement from the register and, with it, loss of receipt of my weekly, comic relief, reading matter.

No mention is made of the need to recover the excess of £1m quoted by Stuart Anderson in his article (PJ, 9 June) on the cost of the defence of resale price maintenance which, to quote his words, “will have far reaching implications for the profession of pharmacy as a whole”.

As an ex-industrial pharmacist I am mindful of the Council’s attitude to the funding or rather non-funding of The Industrial Pharmacist and The Agricultural and Veterinary Pharmacist and of the words associated with Dr John Evans, “Society’s finances verging upon quite serious disarray”, and Dr Gordon Appelbe, “the Council seemed hell bent on doing things it could not afford”.

Am I naive, or is there in fact a war chest of gold bars locked away for rainy days in the vaults of 1 Lambeth High Street?

Les Flint
Alton, Hampshire

The Society is itself responsible

From Mr P. Robinson, MRPharmS

I read your recent editorial “No gain without pain” with interest (PJ, August 11, p180). To imply that the proposed increase in retention fee is due to the cost of meeting new Government legislation is an over-simplification. As I understand it, the Government has, almost exactly, proposed the new plan for pharmacy according to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s own recommendations. In effect, then, the Society itself is responsible for the ultimate outcome.

This being the case, why does the small minority of pharmacists who voted for change not pay for the implementation themselves? I am sure they would be glad to. Perhaps those who come round lecturing on the virtues of change would also like to pay.

The Society is supposed to strike a balance between its regulatory functions and its obligations to members. It has done very little for me personally, except to subject me to significant over-regulation, a great deal of extra work and a lot of unpaid, overtime, continuing professional development.

Peter Robinson
Leeds

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