PJ Letters: Statutory fees

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The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7163 p293-296
1 September 2001

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Letters to the Editor

Statutory fees (2 letters)

Comments and suggestions

From Mr J. P. Mason, MRPharmS

You report that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Council is seeking a 31 per cent increase in the individual member’s retention fee (PJ, 11 August, p209). I understand the reasoning behind the proposed increase and broadly welcome moves by the Society to ensure that the profession meets the Government’s quality agenda and the public’s expectations. However, I do have a few comments and suggestions, which I hope the Society will consider when implementing the proposed changes.

First, I would ask that the Society sets up a process whereby members can pay their retention fee in instalments by direct debit. I am sure that many members would be happy to pay an increased retention fee if they could pay in quarterly or six-monthly instalments. Being asked to pay a lump sum of nearly £200 the month after Christmas will not do much to cheer people up in the New Year. Not only that, but many employees receive their December salary a week earlier than usual so they have to wait nearly six weeks before their next salary payment at the end of January. Paying by instalments would also help the Society in that it would receive a regular income of money rather than an annual lump sum.

Secondly, I would like to request that we be given plastic cards as proof of retention on the register. With an increase in the retention fee there should be no problem with funding. Other professional bodies, with much lower retention fees, manage to produce cards, so why cannot ours?

Finally, you report that the increased retention fee would be used, in part, to resource continuing professional development. What about those members who are also members of organisations such as the College of Pharmacy Practice? Could some arrangement be made to ensure that such members do not have to pay twice for the same activities?

Jonathan Mason
Faversham, Kent

Rises driven by the Society itself

From Mr. P. Robinson, MRPharmS

Christine Glover fails to understand some of the more devious aspects of the profession (PJ, 25 August, p263).

Pharmacists, like all health care professions, must ensure that they act in the public interest, not according to their own ambitions. This is inherent in the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Byelaws.

Proposals to amend the profession’s disciplinary machinery and to introduce continuing professional development first emerged as part of the Society’s Pharmacy in a New Age process before the Government’s pharmacy plan was ever thought of (PJ, 6 June 1998, p815). It was clear that these proposals were put forward as much to ensure the fidelity of new roles and practices as to protect the public from miscreants.

There has never been any suggestion that this particular course of action was a response to pressures outside pharmacy. Indeed, Lambeth took great pride in starting the process and has never stopped boasting about it since.

Consequently, for the Society to seek ways of complying with “demands for greater governance and transparency” is not difficult, as it was planning them anyway. They are a convenience of fate, helping to facilitate the Society’s own minority preconceived ideas about the future roles of pharmacists.

If the Society is being asked to do what it has already told the Government it wants to do, and is prepared to seek Parliamentary time to get it done, then it should accept the blame for its own actions.

The Society’s Council may be able to sit smug in the knowledge that it can use the Government as a scapegoat, but its curious and clumsy deception is shameful.

I hope this helps Christine Glover understand that, with or without the Government, the processes inside Lambeth are the drivers for new fees, not the politicians.

Peter Robinson
Horsforth, Leeds

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