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Sydney Holloway, a former senior lecturer in
the faculty of social sciences at Leicester University, is the
author of ‘Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain
1941–1991’
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Let us start with two obvious facts: first, that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has only one Charter, the Charter granted in 1953 and still in operation; second, that this Charter does not contain a single reference to regulation or the regulatory role. You may read the Charter from beginning
to end, but no mention whatever of regulation, whether as a purpose,
function, power or object, will be found. Although the Statutory Committee
had been in existence for 20 years before the 1953 Charter was granted,
neither the committee itself nor its disciplinary function is mentioned.
Regulation is not now and never has been one of the Society’s Charter
objects.
The story of the origins of the 1953 Charter reveals why this is so.
The grant of the Charter was synchronised with the enactment of the 1953
Pharmacy Act. The intention of the Act was to disentangle the constitution
of the Pharmaceutical Society from its statutory duties. Lord Haden-Guest
said in the debate in the House of Lords that “the effect of this
Bill will be to put the statutory duties into the Act and the constitution
into a new Charter”. The Society’s Committee of Enquiry of
1937–41, which may be said to have started the reform process,
made a distinction between the Charter and statutory objects of the Society.
The Charter objects were the principal objects of the Society and the
statutory objects were subordinate to them. “The Charter objects
are concerned with furthering the interests of pharmacy as a branch of
knowledge, as a profession, and as a means of livelihood,” the
committee declared. “The statutory objects are concerned with the
administration of Acts of Parliament affecting pharmacy and involve the
application of policy which is decided not by the Society but by Parliament
or a Minister or Department of State.”
Relevant distinction
In 1986 the Nuffield Report considered this distinction “as relevant
today as it was ... over 40 years ago”. The pursuit of its Charter
objects, the Nuffield Report decided, “gives the Society its character
as a professional body”. The report also examined the powers and
duties assigned to the Society by statute. “Under the Medicines
Act 1968, the Society is responsible for maintaining the Register of
Pharmacy Premises and for disciplinary control over bodies corporate
and others carrying on retail pharmacy businesses, whether or not they
are professional pharmacists”. Acts of Parliament, the report observed,
bring under the jurisdiction of the Society people and bodies which are
not themselves members of the Society. The Statutory Committee, the disciplinary
tribunal of pharmacy, deals with cases of individual pharmacists and
of bodies corporate carrying on pharmacy business.
Although there is no reference to regulation in the Society’s Charter,
the interests of its members could scarcely be more prominent. The third
of the four chartered objects is: “To maintain the honour and safeguard
and promote the interests of the members in their exercise of the profession
of pharmacy.” That phrase, “the interests of the members”,
was chosen after careful deliberation. Sir Hugh Linstead, the Society’s
Secretary, had explicitly aligned the objects of the new Charter with
those of the British Medical Association. In 1953 the BMA’s Memorandum
of Association declared its purposes to be “to promote the medical
and allied sciences, and to maintain the honour and interests of the
medical profession”. But the BMA was a voluntary association, registered
under the Companies Acts, which sought to represent the whole medical
profession, not just its own members. The Pharmaceutical Society, on
the other hand, was a chartered body comprising all pharmacists. The
BMA’s wording was designed to enlarge the constituency it protects
and fosters; the wording in the Society’s Charter was intended
to restrict protection and support to its members. The company chemists,
limited liability companies (even if owned by pharmacists) and drug manufacturers
were all excluded by this formulation. If such bodies could claim to
be, in some way, part of the profession of pharmacy, they could not,
however, claim the protection of the Pharmaceutical Society. Nor would
the Society’s Council have the power to devote any of the Society’s
resources to safeguarding or promoting their interests.
During the debate in the House of Commons on the Pharmacy Bill in April
1953, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, Patricia
Hornsby-Smith, spoke of the great danger of the limited companies “demanding
a voice in the professional running and conduct of the Pharmaceutical
Society, which at the moment they have not”. Sir Hugh Linstead,
then MP for Putney, agreed that “the extent to which corporate
bodies should have a voice in the affairs of the Pharmaceutical Society” was “an
important point”. But he was gratified to notice that the Parliamentary
Standing Committee had “decided that it would be wise as far as
possible to keep the Society what it was intended to be — namely,
a professional society of individual practitioners — and not a
mixed organisation partly representing corporate bodies and partly representing
individuals”. There is, he continued, “a great deal to be
said for keeping a professional body restricted to its professional members”.
The words of the 1953 Charter were subject to rigorous scrutiny by the
members. The new Charter underwent a long
process of maturation (PJ,
19 April 2003, pp554–5). The changes in the Society’s constitution
were discussed from 1945 onwards as part of a wider debate on reconstruction
after the war.
These discussions occurred mainly in the branch representatives’ meetings,
which in those days were well attended and provided a lively forum for
democratic debate. Although controversial issues emerged, the debates
among the members and the dialogue between them and the Council were
conducted in an atmosphere of mutual trust, based on the confidence that
everyone had the same basic objective: the creation of a modern, representative
professional association. “The healthy way of promoting the interests
... of a profession, and at the same time serving the public properly,
was to have a body looking after the interests of its members,” said
Sir Hugh Linstead in 1948. In 1953 Dr Somerville Hastings MP, a leading
light in the BMA, accurately described the Pharmaceutical Society as
one of the oldest and most important of the professional associations. Council was more responsive
In the 1950s the Society’s Council was much more accountable and
responsive to the members than it is now, and nearly 40 per cent of members
voted in Council elections. Then, the permanent staff in Bloomsbury Square
consisted of little more than a handful of secretaries. Now we have a
group of highly paid administrators which appears to have created its
own exclusive club culture. In the 1950s, there was no imbalance of power
between members and administrators with so much control in the hands
of such few people.
Compare the recent Council decision to petition for a new Charter with
the way the 1953 Charter was finalised. On 2 December this year a divided
Council decided to forge ahead without daring to seek the approval of
the membership by either an SGM or a referendum. In January 1951 the
then Council published its final revised draft of the Charter, and unanimously
agreed to submit it to an SGM in the spring. “Whatever may be the
position technically under the existing constitution, the Council do
not, and would not, contemplate presenting a petition to the Privy Council
for the grant of a Supplemental Charter to effect major changes in the
Society’s constitution unless the terms ... had first been approved
by the members in general meeting. ... The SGM will be free to make
whatever amendments it may wish to the drafts.” The SGM on 17 May
1951 went through the draft, clause by clause, and the amendments passed
were incorporated in the final version.
That version is the current Charter of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. |
