The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7185 p223-229
16 February 2002

Society summary

Members asked whether Society should split its regulatory and professional roles

A consultation paper published by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society this week asks for views on future options for the Society's structure that include splitting its professional and regulatory roles.

Published as a four-page centre pull-out section with this issue of The Pharmaceutical Journal (see Society's website), the paper has been prepared by the Society's Modernisation Steering Group to promote discussion and prompt comment from pharmacists and others with an interest in the Society's future remit and functions. The response will help the group formulate proposals to put to the Society's Council.

The paper's first section sets out the Society's current remit and functions, pointing out that the Society is unique in Britain in combining both regulatory and professional roles with law enforcement duties given to it by Parliament.

The paper says that the Society's Charter gives it roles in advancing the profession and providing benevolent support. But it also has an obligation to act in the public interest. The professions, and particularly those providing health care, are expected to justify the privileges granted to them and the trust placed in them. The state allows professions to regulate themselves to a large extent, on the implied condition that this arrangement best serves the public. Hence, any development of the Society's remit and functions would need to be set firmly within the context of the public interest.

The paper's second section considers the constraints placed on the Society's future options. After outlining the constraints imposed by the procedures for amending existing legislation or the Charter, the paper goes on to say that Government policy represent perhaps the most significant constraint.

Among factors that have influenced government thinking are the recommendations in the report of the public inquiry into children's heart surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary (the Kennedy report). The Government has endorsed the report's assertion that regulation is not concerned solely with discipline and poor performance but embraces safety, quality, standards and competence. Modern professional regulation should therefore be understood as comprising all the systems that combine to assure the competence and fitness to practise of health professionals. This would encompass most of the Society's functions, including many that might not have previously been considered to be part of regulation.

The final major constraint is the proposed establishment of the Council for the Regulation of Healthcare Professionals, which will oversee all the United Kingdom's regulatory bodies for the health professions, including the Society. Because it will be able to direct a regulatory body to change its rules, all regulators in the health field have begun to consider how they might reform their structures and processes. This includes the Society, even though pharmacy appears to come closest to reflecting the model described in the Kennedy report.

In the light of these constraints, the paper's third section sets out five potential future options and their pros and cons. The options are to:

• Maintain the status quo
• Retain the regulatory and professional roles within a reformed Society
• Give up the regulatory role and retain only the professional role
• Hive off the professional role and keep the regulatory role
• Merge the Society with one or more other bodies — which would also require the Society to give up its regulatory role

In its final section, the paper expresses an interest in receiving answers to five specific questions:

1. Are there other potential options for the Society's remit and functions that we have not considered?
2. Is the analysis of the points for and against each option valid?
3. Bearing in mind the existing constraints, what is your favoured option for the future remit and functions of the Society, and why?
4. What do you think needs to change about the Society, given the existing constraints?
5. Are there specific functions that the Society currently fulfils, which you would not want to see lost or changed? Why?

The paper asks for detailed comments to be submitted to the modernisation programme's project officer by 28 March 2002.

Online survey is here.