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Letters to the Editor
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The Council
Can we have a little vision, please?
From Mr A. R. White, MRPharmS
I am still trying to find out how the previous Council got our Royal
Pharmaceutical Society into the current position. I previously noted
a suggestion by David Sharpe, speaking at the annual general meeting,
that senior members of the Society’s staff might have been working
to a “hidden agenda” (PJ, 22 May, p653) and I had been intending
to ask for more information on this. However, I believe that I may have
found the source of many, if not all, of our problems.
It seems that I should look no further than Jim Smith, the senior pharmacist
working for the Government (PJ, 12 June, p727). At the Society’s
AGM, he was quoted as saying that the Government wants “a meld
of the Society serving the public interest and persisting in its role
... as an effective professional body” (PJ, 22 May, p653).
Yet he now says that (in his opinion) what seems to be the only practical
way of achieving this is not a “satisfactory proposal”. At
present the Society is an exception and, alone among all the UK health-related
professional bodies, has both regulatory and professional representative
functions. Surely someone in Government has enough vision to see that,
in order to continue with these duties, we need to continue to be (at
least a little bit) exceptional. I sincerely hope that those in the DoH
working on this matter will feel able to recognise that our new Council
has been given a mandate to achieve precisely what we are told the Government
wants and will work with the Society to this end.
Renewed reference (in recent letters) to the need for the Society to
act for the public benefit has spurred me to look at the websites for
the General Medical Council and the British Medical Association.
One is a charity, has legal powers under the Medical Act to act to protect
patients, is governed by a body with a small majority (54 per cent) of
doctors and has some responsibility for education and training. The other
has a scientific and educational function, is a publishing house and
represents and protects doctors’ professional interests. Which
one do you think is an almost precise equivalent of the Society that
was to be enshrined in the proposed new Charter?
Finally, I do not pretend to be a legal expert but I did find Mr Justice
Park’s ruling unsatisfactory. It appears from Graeme Smith’s
concise article (PJ, 29 May, p665) that the judge did not consider the
terms of the existing Charter. He says he had “no view about the
merits” of the new Charter and so, presumably, did not consider
any need to judge whether a proposal to “run” the Society
in a new way was in contravention of our existing one. That, as I understand
it, is what the Save Our Society campaign wanted to be considered. Perhaps
the judge thought this a matter of ethics and not of law. Hopefully,
if there is an appeal, we shall know.
Alan White
Gravesend,
Kent
Is the Council truly representative of the membership?
From Mr R. G. Medlow, MRPharmS
I agree with James Mearns (PJ, 12 June, p738) in his explanation of
how an organised group of candidates was able to capture all seven places
in the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Council election.
Two years or so back, the Council decided that we should revert to the
winner-takes-all X-voting system, thereby abandoning the single transferable
vote, introduced into the Society’s Council elections some 30 years
ago, which provides fair representation of all significant interest groups.
If the Save Our Society group organises itself in a similar way next
year and the year after, they will capture all the elected places on
Council. Do not say the membership would not allow this — it could
happen all too easily.
I have no particular position on the proposed new Charter. My personal
interest is that the outcome of an election should, as far as possible,
reflect the views of all the voters and not totally exclude a substantial
minority.
We should, next year, return to preferential voting as used by almost
all other health care professionals. But will a Council elected by the
winner-takes-all system vote for a return to a democratic representative
voting system?
Ron Medlow
Guildford,
Surrey
Failure will see the destruction, not the saving, of our Society
From Mr D. A. Hancox, MRPharmS
I am becoming increasingly pessimistic as far as the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society is concerned.
The continuing low number of members voting in Council elections, the
formation and actions of the Save Our Society group and the failure to
give an able president a second term of office (together with the vice-president
and treasurer) all combine to give me serious concerns for the future.
Although I have been disappointed by, and disagreed with, some decisions
made by the Council at various times I fully accept that my views are
simply my views and I have not been fully aware of the background and
the constraints within which the Council has had to act. Overall I believe
successive Councils have given leadership, policies and support to the
profession that has enabled it to go continually forward. That view extends
to the recent Council in respect of the modernisation issue and the Charter.
All Councils have a grave responsibility to enact sound policy and none
more so than the newly elected Council. Failure to secure a Society that
embraces both a regulatory and a representative role and that maintains
a membership across all areas of pharmacy practice will see the destruction,
not the saving, of our Society.
Douglas Hancox
Auckland,
New Zealand
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