The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7200 p781-786
1 June 2002

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Branch Representatives' meeting summary

Society asked to put Statutory Committee judgements on website

The meeting asked the Society to put Statutory Committee judgements on its website.

ANTHONY COX (Birmingham) moved that details of Statutory Committee decisions should be published on the website in a timely manner and that transcripts should be freely available to the public and profession from the website. He said that the Society's website carried limited information about the Society's regulatory role and no reports of Statutory Committee meetings. In contrast, medical and nursing regulatory sites placed press releases on their sites, sometimes on the day a decision was made. Should the public not expect such information to be on the pharmacy regulator's website in a timely manner?

Transcripts of the committee's meetings could only be obtained for a prohibitive price. The Council for the Regulation of Health Care Professionals would want to ensure that self-regulation was open and transparent and allowed for robust public scrutiny. The current system did not do that.

The availability of transcripts would demystify the Statutory Committee process and provide useful material for clinical governance and risk management.

EDWARD MALLINSON (Lanarkshire) moved an amendment to the effect that only the committee's judgements should be published. Full transcripts were boring and complicated. At the end of any judicial process the chairman of the panel, be he a judge or the chairman of the Statutory Committee, had to produce a judgement. That was the document that was ultimately used in an appeal. It was concise, it was accurate, and it put all the relevant facts on paper. The website should not carry all the gory detail of the proceedings.

ROGER MILLS (Slough) said that while it was right for the judgement to appear on the website, it was still important that transcripts should be freely available to the public and the profession, and not necessarily only from the website.

PHILIP WALTON (Manchester, Salford and Trafford) said that in his opinion the decision document sometimes missed out vital statements.

The amendment was carried by 55 votes to 46 and the amended motion was carried.