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

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Branch Representatives' meeting summary

Society should maintain its membership role

A motion calling on the Society to maintain or improve its role of representing the membership was carried unanimously.

MARK KOZIOL (Birmingham) said that during the consultation process on the Society's future role and remit the members had been served up a barrage of information indicating that the regulatory role was to be the Society's preferred "focus". When opposite views were expressed, Lambeth heavyweights would produce something to the contrary. Indeed, when the motion was submitted to the Society, the Birmingham branch had received a phone call from the Director of Public Affairs suggesting that the motion was ill-founded.

Why, in a modernised profession, could the regulation role not sit alongside an improved representation role? The Kennedy report contained nothing to suggest that the Society should not provide both roles. There was no pressure from the Government to abandon that representative role, no damning Which? report, no pressure from patient groups. He appreciated the work being done by the Society on modernising its regulatory affairs but the interests of the members could not be overlooked.

Mr Koziol said that, with the help of Sidney Holloway, author of the history of the Society, he had identified several relevant episodes from the past. In 1843 the Society's first Charter said that the Society's purpose was "protecting the permanent interests and increasing the respectability of chemists and druggists". In 1920, the judge in the Jenkin case said that a member was "entitled to ask for an injunction to restrain the commission by the Society of acts which are outside the scope of the charter which might result in the destruction of the Society."

The action taken by Mr Jenkin was a friendly action designed to assess the extent of the Society's powers under its Charter. The judgement exposed a serious weakness in the then Charter because it showed that it was only designed to protect the interests of chemists and druggists, ie, owners of pharmacies and not individual pharmacists.

In the 1953 Supplemental Charter the objective were changed to read: "To maintain the honour and safeguard and promote the interests of the members in their exercise of the profession of pharmacy." In other words, the Jenkin judgement was instrumental in the birth of the Supplemental Charter and the thinking behind it was to allow the Society to represent all pharmacists, individually or collectively.

Despite this, the modernisation steering group's interpretation of pharmacy history stated: "It has been clear that following the Jenkin case, the Society could only promote the profession as a whole and could not act in the interests of individual pharmacists." Desmond Lewis, a previous Secretary and Registrar, once said: "Pharmacy politicians have talked more rubbish about the Jenkin judgment than about any other matter in pharmacy." Was the man a prophet?

Mr Koziol said that in Mr Holloway's view (next week's Journal is to include an article by Sidney Holloway giving his interpretation of the history behind the modernisation programme) the modernisation group's version of the Society's history, which was being disseminated as an integral part of the modernisation programme, was "flawed by the attempt to make it useful and favourable to the dominant orthodoxy of the day".

The Society's leadership should think seriously about the consequences of stirring the membership on probably the only issue that still united all pharmacists — that the Society was the only body that still represented the interests of all pharmacists. Past Councils had fought vigorously to nurture the two roles of regulation and representation. He had no problems with the Society wanting to modernise regulatory affairs, but its leadership should use some imagination to make sure that it ended up with a modernisation proposal that allowed the Society to maintain, if not improve, its existing role of membership representation.

ANTHONY COX (Birmingham), seconding the motion, said that in 1941 Bill Adams, the Secretary and Registrar of the time, had said that the combination of representation and regulatory roles was a great source of strength. In 1986, the Nuffield inquiry had supported this view, saying that it was "very well put" and "as relevant today as it was 40 years ago." More recently, Mr Adams's view had been echoed by former Secretary and Registrar John Ferguson.

If one could learn anything from the history of pharmacy it was that the Society was first a representative body and only subsequently earned its statutory powers. The current Charter as amended was designed to give the Society a mandate to represent the interests of its members. The Jenkin case showed that individual members had the right to injunct the Society if its actions could lead to the Society's destruction.

There was no doubt that the Society had to modernise its disciplinary procedures, do something about continuing professional development, organise a fitness-to-practise system and beef up the remedies available to the Statutory Committee. But were there really no alternatives to a change of focus turning it primarily into a regulatory body?

MICHAEL BURDEN (Leicestershire and Rutland) said that the motion was as important for what it did not say as it is for what it did say. Clearly, the motion deserved support, but if pharmacists wanted someone to support them in an area of self-interest, then they should look to a trade union.

NICK WOOD (Chelmsford) said that there was clearly a great strength of feeling in support of the motion. Nobody would disagree with the Society acting in the public interest in terms of regulation. The disagreement was that the Society's prime function, according to its Charter, did not mention the public interest as such. It talked about the membership and the types of issues that were represented in the motion.

One had to be careful about saying the Society's prime function was to act in the public interest. The members needed to look carefully at what was being said in their name because it did not reflect the Charter.