The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7202 p855-856
15 June 2002

Society summary

Your views sought on Council's future responsibilities and composition

A discussion paper issued by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society this week asks for views on the future responsibilities and composition of the Council in the light of its decision last month that the Society should retain both its regulatory and professional roles within a reformed structure firmly based on the public interest (PJ, May 25, p739).

The paper seeks comments on whether the Council's future responsibilities should cover all the processes that combine to assure competence and fitness to practise and whether it should change its composition to fulfil the requirements for a modern regulatory body. Among other things, the paper asks for views on the Council's size, on the proportion of pharmacist members on the Council, on representation for pharmacy technicians and on the possible involvement of the Government's chief pharmacists.

Published as a four-page centre pull-out section (PDF* 165K) with this issue of The Pharmaceutical Journal (between p854 and 855), the paper is the first in a series prepared by the Society's Modernisation Steering Group to promote discussion and comment from pharmacists and others with an interest in the governance of the Society. The response will help the group formulate proposals to put to the Society's Council.

Comments are sought by 15 July 2002. A second paper, looking at achieving the right balance within the Council structure, is scheduled for publication next week, with written comments sought by 25 July. The Journal is to distribute a questionnaire with the 29 June issue to obtain a snapshot response to questions raised in both papers.

Background to the issues

The first paper begins by outlining the background to the Society's modernisation process, the current situation and the proposals previously made by the Council's former Health Act Working Party after an earlier consultation. It then goes on to look at the Council's responsibilities, pointing out that although the existing responsibilities remain valid, consideration needs to be given to the modern definition of professional regulation, which includes a broad range of processes that combine to assure competence and fitness to practise. The paper suggests that, if the Council is to retain its overall control of the Society, it needs to be able to take responsibility for this wider, more integrated regulatory role for the future.

Need for change

The next section, which begins an examination of the Council's composition, suggests that the Council's make-up must change if it is to fulfil the requirements for a modern regulatory body and thereby retain its strategic, policy-making and co-ordinating roles across the Society's professional and regulatory functions. Delegating a range of regulatory powers to new statutory committees would effectively leave the Council without the authority to fulfil the role of a modern regulator. Such committees could not work effectively without an overarching Council that would have a strategic, standard and policy-setting role and would ensure consistency and co-ordination between the committees and consult with external stakeholders.

The paper says that, if the composition of the Council remained unchanged, there would be a need for some sort of board, with a significant lay membership, to co-ordinate and monitor the Society's statutory functions. It would be this board, not the Council, that would have the power to make rules and to set standards for the practice, education and conduct of the profession. It would govern most of the Society's activities, and a Council as currently constituted would be left with a much reduced remit, little authority, little credibility and little relevance to most of the Society's functions.

If the Council is to retain its over-arching responsibility for the functions of the Society, the paper says, its future composition would need to satisfy the Ggovernment's requirements that such bodies should be small and have much greater lay membership. An increased lay input could strengthen pharmacy's voice, ensure that policy is robust and help to maintain and reinforce public confidence in pharmacy. But the reduced number of pharmacists on the Council could decrease the engagement of the profession in some of the Society's activities, such as those relating to competence, performance and the development of the profession's role. Mechanisms for overcoming this problem would need to be considered once the responsibilities and composition of the Council had been established.

Size of the Council

In a section on the size of the Council, the paper says that it needs to be small enough to be strategic, effective and an efficient decision-making body but large enough to give a reasonable spread of experience and include adequate representation of the range of stakeholders. The paper suggests that a membership in the range of 21 to 31 members seems the best solution.

The next section, which examines the proportions of professional and lay members on the Council, says that new structures of the regulatory bodies for other health professions have a professional majority on their governing councils ranging from 52 to 60 per cent. The paper notes that the models for a number of these bodies have a professional majority of just one, but it suggests that, because the Society's functions as a regulator are integrated with those of a professional body, its Council would need a larger professional majority than most other professions so as to assist it in engaging the profession in its functions and promoting and enforcing high quality standards.

Pharmacy technicians are the subject of the following section. The paper suggests that, because the Council has agreed to move towards the regulation of pharmacy support staff, its constitution needs to be amended to allow for the inclusion of pharmacy technicians within its membership.

The next section looks at the position of the chief pharmacists of the Department of Health, the Government's Scottish Executive and the National Assembly for Wales. It points out that the Government's chief medical officers have attended General Medical Council meetings as observers and the chief dental officers are to be "associate members" of the new General Dental Council.

  * PDF files on PJ Online require Acrobat Reader 4 or later.