The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 272 No 7286 p186
14 February 2004

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  Which? report
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Letters to the Editor

SOS action

The Society’s Council is not just a cabinet

From Mr D. Simpson, FRPharmS

Steven Axon misreads the situation when he suggests that Council members should behave as if they were cabinet ministers (PJ, 7 February, p154). He fails to recognise that, as well as being members of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s decision making body, Council members are also (save for the three Privy Council nominees) elected representatives of the members of the Society. In other words, they are both “cabinet members” and “members of Parliament”. As part of their responsibilities as Council members, they have a duty to represent the interests of those who elected them. The members of Council who support the Save Our Society campaign were elected on a clear platform of preserving the Society as a representative professional association. The electorate would expect them to be consistent in doing so, despite challenges. It would not serve members’ interests if the SOS Council members resigned — rather it would serve the interests of those who would turn the Society into nothing much more than a regulatory body. The people who are “making a mockery of the democratic process” (to borrow Mr Axon’s words) are those who deny the members the opportunity to vote, in special general meeting or referendum, on the Charter issue.

Mr Axon uses Robin Cook as an exemplar. But Mr Cook, though having resigned his Cabinet post over the war in Iraq, is still in the Commons, where he continues to hold the Government to account.

Douglas Simpson
Beckenham, Kent
Member of Council, Royal Pharmaceutical Society

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