Game, set and match?
There cannot be a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society who has been watching events unfold at Lambeth who will not be pleased — and relieved — that the Council has managed to come to a near unanimous agreement about the rewording for the new Charter. Members will have the chance to see and study the full document when it is published in next week's issue of The Journal together with an explanatory commentary. The main changes and reordering of the Objects, however,
can be read on p41 and the discussion at the Council meeting that led
to the decisions on p68.
There are two other significant developments that emerged from the discussion
members of Council had last week on 29 and 30 June that culminated in
the special Council meeting.
The first is that the membership will have a chance to express their
support (or otherwise) for the Charter rewording in a ballot that is
to be conducted by the Electoral Reform Society. Papers are expected
to be distributed at the end of next week. The results will form the
basis of the Council decision — to be taken at another special
meeting in September — on whether to proceed with this new revised
Charter, or not and go back to the drawing board.
This is an outcome that many people have been looking for, including
The Journal (13 December 2003, p800) and supporters of the Save Our Society
group.
Secondly, The Journal understands that representatives of the SOS group
on Council have had to concede that the Government really would not find
a delegated regulatory board (fulfilling its requirements for lay membership)
acceptable. In other words, the two-board model — much vaunted
as the solution to the Society’s modernisation ills — is,
as the former Council, the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for England and
many others have emphasised over the past two years, a non-starter. A
non-starter, that is, if the Society is to continue to fulfil its joint
roles of regulator and professional body, which is what a clear majority
of the profession said it wanted when it was first asked the question
at the start of the modernisation process.
The modernisation steering group and the former Council have been unequivocal
about the Government’s views on the two-board structure. Some may
still argue that this means that the Society has been, and remains, in
the pocket of the Government but, if this is the case, it appears to
be a comfortable enough pocket for the SOS representatives on the Council
to climb into.
So, although it could be argued that the former Council lost the communications
game, events suggest that it may never have been that far from winning
the set. It will be up to the membership to finish the match.
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