What happens next?
With all seven Save Our Society candidates now elected to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Council (p629 and p649), the total number of pharmacists who support SOS
principles rises to 11. Ten further pharmacists and three Privy Council nominees make up the Council complement of 24. Although the SOS pharmacists do not have a clear numerical majority, they certainly hold the stronger hand because, without doubt, the members who are interested in the affairs of the Society have made their views known. The pharmacy landscape has changed — maybe for ever.
What might happen next? The new Council meets in the first full week
in June. By that time Mr Justice Park should have handed down judgment
on the call by the Society and named Council members to have a summary
judgment made in the pending SOS case against the Council’s petition
to the Queen for a new Charter. Will the summary judgment be appealed
(by either side)? Will the new Council decide to withdraw the petition
to the Queen and start again? Will the legal proceedings stop? Or will
the SOS plaintiffs decide that the issues raised are so important for
the governance of the Society that they need to have a judge sort it
all out? There are just some of the questions. But whatever happens next,
the coming months, years even, will not be plain sailing.
The apocalyptics believe that the Society, with such a decisive election result,
is already looking down a path that will inevitably lead to it splitting into
separate regulatory and membership bodies. They see regulation being governed
by a Section 60 order and the membership arm becoming a voluntary body that may
only really appeal to certain pharmacists in the community sector. The clock
cannot be put back, they argue, because the health landscape has changed and
pharmacy had only one chance to change with it.
If the new Council does not want that to happen but wants to retain the regulatory
and representative functions, it may find it has as challenging a job as the
outgoing Council has had over the past two years.
One thing is certain. Future Councils, whatever external pressure they are under,
whatever Government threats they perceive, however noble their aims and honourable
their intentions, will ignore calls for referendums and discount resolutions
carried at general meetings at their peril.
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