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The Society
Council members could find there is no Council table to sit at
From Mrs C. Glover, FRPharmS
The summary dismissal of the claim in the High Court last week, which
determined that the Council had acted properly and cleared the 16 defendants,
allows me now to write and express my concern about the current situation.
When the papers were served in January they arrived with no prior warning
and no letter of explanation. They also stated that Royal Pharmaceutical
Society money was not to be used to fight the case and asked for the
value of my house. This struck me as real bullyboy tactics.
My concerns are about the future behaviour of the Council and its members.
The stakes are much higher now than just the reputation of 16 Council
members and the value of their homes. Now the whole profession’s
reputation is on the line.
If pharmacy wants to keep self regulation and all that goes with it — education,
ie, undergraduate, postgraduate, standard setting, continuing professional
development, etc — then it is crucial that the new Council members
put the profession first and their own agendas away. “The world
has moved on”, to quote Mr Justice Park, who presided at the summary
judgment hearing.
We now have the Council for the Regulation of Healthcare Professionals
(CRHP) flexing its muscles. A split, dysfunctional Council or one bent
on putting pharmacists’ interests before the public interest will
be a prime target for the CRHP. The court case will have already alerted
people to look hard at what we do now and how we do it.
The membership needs to realise that if self-regulation is lost then
the profession’s regulatory arrangements could be subsumed into
the Health Professions Council, along with physiotherapists, occupational
therapists, etc, a total of 11 professions and soon to be increased to
13. Pharmacy would also lose its voice and its seat at the CRHP table.
Other people will decide what is appropriate for pharmacists; this cannot
be what the profession wants.
It is vital that the Council demonstrates that it is worthy of the authority
vested in it. It must send out clear signals not only to the membership
but also to the world outside that it is acting for the profession in
the public interest.
If it does not then all Council members will find themselves with no
position at all and even those who are recently elected, whose arrival
was plainly influenced by direct canvassing on their behalf, will find
there is no Council table to sit at and it has all come to nought.
The membership may or may not believe that the 16 members of Council
who have just spent four months under the threat of litigation have served
them well. They should reflect that these pharmacists who acted on their
behalf certainly had the long-term interests of the profession at heart
and petitioned for a new Charter in order to guarantee some autonomy
for the Society and to ensure the profession was its own master in 20
years’ time. How the Council behaves in the coming year will determine
whether the profession continues to be self-regulating or becomes part
of the Health Professions Council in the future.
Christine Glover
Member of Council
Royal Pharmaceutical Society
Is the Council not as informed as in the past?
From Mr A. R. White, MRPharmS
Few members of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society could have been happier
than I to have read the PJ last week.
However, as well as reading (several times) about the results of the
recent elections I also read all the reports of the annual general meeting.
This has, I believe, helped me towards understanding how the Council
of the Society managed to go so far down the road to (as I saw it) irretrievably
ruining our Society. I refer to the comments by David Sharpe, whose time
as president of the Society I can remember. It was one which was not
without controversy, but it seemed to me, as an ordinary member, that
then the Council was led by a knowledgeable president supported by a
strong-minded and equally knowledgeable, but invariably silent, secretary
and registrar.
Mr Sharpe is reported as saying: “Perhaps Council members were
being led by the nose by senior staff, who could have [had] a hidden
agenda with the Department of Health” (PJ, 22 May, p653). I wonder
whether running the Society has become such a mammoth task that Council
members cannot be as informed as they were able to be in the past.
Alan White
Gravesend,
Kent
Council election results should be viewed with extreme concern
From Mr E. J. H. Mallinson, FRPharmS
The outcome of the recent Council elections should be viewed by members
with extreme concern. The election of all seven candidates who campaigned
under the Save Our Society banner, by just 14 per cent of the membership
(according to the Chemist & Druggist, 22 May, 60 per cent of the
votes cast were for SOS candidates) means that we now have a Council
of which 42 per cent of its membership was elected on a single issue
ticket (three having been elected last year). The council of any society
needs members with a breadth of experience and vision, not just those
on a mission to right a perceived wrong. The only winners this year are
the silent apathetic majority.
Much as the issue of the Charter is important and has taken up a great
deal of the Council’s energy and time over the past two years,
it forms only a small part of a far wider agenda of governing our profession.
The annual report, presented by the President on 12 May, is testament
to the wide range of issues that have to be addressed by the Council
and staff at Lambeth. For this we need a degree of continuity and, although
change in the composition of the Council is a good thing, it should be
gradual thus allowing the new members to ease themselves into its workings
with the support of those members who, to put it into common parlance,
have “been there, done it and got the T-shirt”. In other
words, we do not want to fall into the traps of the past as a result
of inexperience.
Your editorial of 22 May (p628) is correct when it states “The
pharmacy landscape has changed — maybe for ever”; I only
hope that we can retain the best of the achievements of the past two
years, although I am not optimistic that we shall.
E. J. H. Mallinson
Glasgow
Time for Society's staff to support the wishes of the membership
From Mr M. P. Smith, MRPharmS
Congratulations to all the newly elected members of the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society’s Council. I hope that the permanent members of staff at
the Society will give them all the support they require in carrying out
their role.
I also hope that the Council will remember why the membership elected
it and that a new period of openness and inclusion will follow this election.
I am somewhat at a loss to understand the comments in the leading
article in last week’s Journal (p628). Who are the apocalyptics mentioned
in the article and why are their opinions so important? How are these
beliefs of an unnamed group suddenly turned into a fact in the penultimate
paragraph of the article? Surely the election showed that the membership
will be heard and it is now time for the whole of the Society’s
staff to support the wishes of the membership and work to help the new
members of council fulfil these wishes.
It is also poignant to note the latest brief from John Reid,1,2 which
states that 5,000 jobs will be axed from NHS agencies in addition to
1,400 civil services posts already being removed. It includes mentions
of quangos, which numbered 42 in 2003 and stating that some of these
have already been merged. This shows that when the Government finds it
expedient it does what it wants.
Mel Smith
Hull,
North Humberside
References
1. Reid to axe 5,000 jobs in NHS quangos: bureaucrats will make way
for doctors and nurses. Available here (accessed
25 May 2004).
2. Arms length bodies to be reduced by 50% and saving £0.5bn by
2007/08. Available here (accessed 25 May 2004).
What happens next?
From Mr C. P. Butler, FRPharmS
A significant number of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s membership,
myself being one of them, have been increasingly concerned during the
past three years at the way in which the modernisation agenda and the
move towards a new Charter has been handled by Lambeth. This much is
obvious from the results of the Council elections, both in 2003 and again
in 2004, such that we now have a Council comprising two large factions
that apparently hold almost irreconcilable views on these major issues.
Nevertheless, many who may have used the ballot box to provide changes
within the Council will now want to see these factions moving together.
Inevitably, the more conservative Save Our Society faction may be tempted
to eliminate the influence of the modernisers within the Council and
to underpin that with a change of President. If that is the case, then
those members of Council so persuaded should also bear in mind that the
same electorate which voted them in could also vote them out again unless
some evidence of healing within Lambeth is quickly discernable.
Although there is much still to be achieved, Gill Hawksworth has begun
to succeed in her first year as President to adjust the Council’s
focus and to engender a spirit of unity within the profession. I hope
the new Council will appreciate the dire need for a period of stability
and that it will afford her an opportunity to continue the process she
has so ably started. The SOS faction should recognise Dr Hawksworth as
a force for realism and unification in this period of turbulent change.
Please, Council, do not throw out the baby with the bath water.
Charles Butler
Chairman
Chiltern Region,
Royal Pharmaceutical Society
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