The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7250 p719
24 May 2003

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Letters to the Editor

New Charter

The Society will become the DoH's poodle

From Mr G. S. Phillips, MRPharmS

For me the most significant aspect of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's annual general meeting was not the moving of the goalposts (apparently, the purpose of the AGM is not to approve the annual report or the accounts). Nor was it the fact that the President undertook merely to "note" the successful motion instructing Council to undertake a referendum of the membership before pursuing charitable status for the Society. (After all, this kind of Machiavellian manipulation has become de rigueur at Lambeth and should surprise no one.)

Most significant was the discussion on the proposed new Royal Charter. One of the current charter objects is "to maintain the honour and safeguard and promote the interests of the members in their exercise of the profession of pharmacy".

When asked why there was no such provision in the proposed new Charter, the Society's legal expert Robert Bulling said that only high level objectives should be reflected in the charter "objects". So there we have it. The Society claims for itself the joint roles (and all the finance that goes with it) of regulation and professional representation. Various members of Council repeat weekly their claims that both roles will be strengthened, and the Society's independent legal expert lets the cat out of the bag. Representation of the profession's interests is no longer a key objective. The so-called "dual role" will migrate, by stealth, to a single statutory role leaving our professional body as little more than a poodle of the Department of Health.

Graham Phillips
St Albans, Hertfordshire

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