PJ Online | PJ Letters | Retention fee

A spectacular 53 per cent rise in salary costs for the Society’s senior personnel last year (C&D, 24 April) warrants further investigation. The 13.4 per cent rise in the wage bill for other employees is partly explained by a 5 per cent increase in staff numbers. And the 53 per cent in directors’ pay (including the Secretary and Registrar) is mainly due to the addition of another four directors.

At a time when members’ NHS remuneration has just been increased by a paltry 3.2 per cent, the wages bill for the Society’s directorates has increased by £254,000. These are some of the most difficult and challenging times in the profession’s history and we must have excellent people at the helm. But a near doubling of the number of directors coupled with the recent announcement of a huge increase in members’ fees leads to the belief that the Society is out of touch with reality. I believe that the people at the helm responsible for this need to be questioned. I wonder whether an organisation making a £1.5m loss can justify this expenditure. It should also be questioned how accountable these people are.

Some of the fattest cats in industry have been called to account for their salary bills recently, particularly when they have not been in line with performance. The entire board of Eurotunnel were recently sent packing by shareholders for their unsatisfactory performance. Perhaps it is time that our members asked for a measure of people’s performance at Lambeth. We need to know if we are getting value for money.

The Journal compares pharmacy with the medical and dental professions. The Government has given both substantial increases in remuneration. They are both highly unified professions able to negotiate on much more favourable terms. Pharmacy, with little apparent negotiating power, has been practically ignored. Pharmacists’ earnings are at the bottom end of the professional scale and yet the Society chooses to ignore this fact.

The Society should be sensitive to pharmacy’s needs at the present time. It might be better spending its energies looking at how it can assist in obtaining a better deal financially for the profession before increasing fees in this way and then attempting to justify it.

Harvey Bergson
Bournemouth, Dorset

Coincidental fee hike?

From Mr P. J. Lee, MRPharmS

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Council assures us that the profits from publishing activities, which have been subsidising membership fees for years, are not anticipated to decline. Even so, it decides to increase fees to £256 which, in mine and my wife’s case as “part-time” members, is a 121 per cent increase

Since I sold my non-pharmacy business 10 years ago, my wife and I have lived off the investment income from the sales proceeds supplemented by the occasional locum work undertaken by us both. The latter covers the difference between expenditure and investment income while leaving our pension fund to grow untouched. This has allowed us an excellent lifestyle, spending about five months of each year away on holiday. The advent of CPD has provoked my wife and me to consider ceasing to practise pharmacy altogether. This thought is compounded by the new contract which, as far as we can see, will require us to take the same courses in each primary care trust area in which we currently locum to acquire the accreditation to practice as necessary to fulfil the contracted “extras”. Our view is that we will cease to practise at the end of the year. So that leaves the question of whether we want to remain members at all with a non-practising member fee starting at £46 per annum rising to one-third of the practising fee in 2007. And what for? We will not need to receive and read The Journal, an essential part of CPD even if a mind numbingly boring read. As non-practising members, if we continue to help the “old dears” at church, neighbours and relatives to understand their medicines, we could be struck off because we have not done CPD. However, if as non-members we help them, it is OK. It is hardly a difficult choice is it?

How many other members are likely to leave the Society at the end of this year rather than undertake mandatory CPD and what will be the financial impact on the Society? Coincidental fee hike? I think not.

Just a final thought, when all of us part-timers or semi-retired leave the Register, where are the locums going to be found to fill the 100 hours per week generated when each supermarket currently without a contract is awarded one under the new 100 hours rule?

Peter Lee
Maidenhead, Berkshire

I shall cease to be a member

From Professor E. J. Shellard, FRPharmS

After a membership of 67 years — for many years an active membership, both nationally and locally — I regret that at the end of the year, unless the Council modifies its definition of a non-practising pharmacist, I shall cease to be a member.

As a retired professor of pharmacognosy, still with a good knowledge of herbal medicine, I am sometimes asked by relatives, friends and neighbours for my advice about herbal products. I willingly give them my advice without charge.

But this will now be contrary to the definition of a non-practising pharmacist, since the third schedule defines a non-practising pharmacist as a member who does not give advice in relation to the science of medicines or health care.

It is not my intention to pay a retention fee of £256 to enable me to do this in the future, should I be asked.

While writing I will mention one other point in the revised byelaws which interests me. Section II, paragraph 3 says that a pharmacist who on 30 December 1933 was a life member shall pay no retention fee. Such a member would be at least 92 years old and I just wonder how many such life members there are. I know there are members aged over 90 years. I am one myself. What a nice gesture it would be if the Society decided that non-practising pharmacists with more than 65 years’ membership need not pay a retention fee at all.

E. J. Shellard
Hounslow, Middlesex

Council should reflect on life at the sharp end

From Mr J. B. Nuttall, MRPharmS

Ivory towers or “Fawlty Towers”? Take your pick. The problem with the former is that occupants tends to find it a bit difficult to see the little people on the ground. The latter speaks for itself.

I read with dismay the Council’s decision to increase membership rates and abolish the part-time rates. While most of us will sigh at the prospect of an increase in the full-time rate it appears from the many letters received that there is substantial risk that many part-time pharmacists will simply stop practising. For a multiple pharmacy operator, this will doubtless place even more pressure on an overburdened workforce.

Perhaps the Council needs to reflect on life at the sharp end, the decisions it makes and the real or perceived impact of these.

John Nuttall
General Manager
United Co-op Pharmacy

Members should resist fee increase

From Mr D. A. Rosen, MRPharmS

It beggars belief to read in the PJ that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society is seeking to raise membership fees by 25 per cent. In spite of the reasons for the increase given by the Society, it is in my opinion hardly warranted by the service on offer to members at the present time, let alone the future. To compare the fees with those paid by doctors and dentists is risible in view of the salaries received by the above compared with those in pharmacy.

The Society encourages pharmacists to offer any number of services under the “professional banner” without the consideration of a professional fee, something that no other professional would accept.

This may not financially penalise some in the “profession” of pharmacy but it is swingeing and derisory for locums and managers, who do not receive adequate remuneration.

I would strongly recommend that this proposal is resisted by all members of the Society.

David Rosen
Northwood, Middlesex

A serious financial sanction

From Mr W. C. McGovern, MRPharmS

It seems the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Council wishes to discourage experienced pharmacists who, in retirement, are willing to undertake locum duties for their colleagues still in practice.

I have been in this position now for several years and accept locum duties only in cases of genuine difficulty. My contacts are aware of this and restrict their requests accordingly. Even so I can assure the Council that approaches are frequent and reflect a clear need for the service pharmacists like myself can provide.

It is not a problem to maintain continuing professional development in retirement. Indeed the time now at my disposal allows me to be selective in terms of subject matter and to conduct this requirement in a rational and selective manner. The abolition of the part-time fee, however, is a serious financial sanction. It demonstrates once again that problems facing practising pharmacists are seen as subordinate to financial and other considerations. This, in my view, has been a feature of Council policy during the 50 years I have been on the register.

Campbell McGovern
Glasgow

Overmanned Lambeth management

From Dr T. J. Benson, MRPharmS

In mitigation of the proposed retention fee increase, does the Royal Pharmaceutical Society intend to lobby Mr Blair et al for an across-the-board 25 per cent increase in pharmacist remuneration? Is the Society going to further the interests of pharmacists in the above manner?

Does the Society really think that to have a retention fee on a level comparable with that of other health professionals, then it must portray us as important as they are? Does it think us stupid?

Utter tosh, I say, to all the mooted excuses for this proposed increase. This act is purely a means of funding the overmanned Lambeth management. Nothing else. I wonder what would happen if all the members refused to pay this increase?

I think I have already paid my last retainer unless the Society can convince me of the real need for these gross increases.

T. J. Benson
London SW7

A sad day for the profession

From Mr P. H. Millar, MRPharmS

On reading about the proposed new membership fees I was none too pleased to realise that as a retired hospital pharmacist I am no longer regarded as a functioning member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and as such I am to be cast onto the scrap heap and pay an extortionate price for the privilege.

I have been proud to belong to an honourable profession and have always striven to fly the flag of pharmacy over 43 years on the register. Often I upheld the values of pharmacy, sometimes against belligerent opposition, but I believe mostly won. Even now in retirement I have given talks on pharmacy and, socially, people have benefited from my experience.

So now the august Society decides I am a “non-practising” pharmacist, put down in status, told that the fee I have been paying is no longer economical. What a travesty this so-called professional Society has turned out to be. All my professional career I have believed the Society not to have the interests of its members at heart. Now I have been proved right.

If this Society was indeed honourable and august, it would venerate its retired members for their loyalty and good practice and grant them free membership for life.

The only decent thing the Society has done for its members is to provide The Pharmaceutical Journal and now I am to be denied that because there is no way I can afford the fees proposed by the Council.

This is a sad day for the profession of pharmacy.

Peter Millar
Durham

Why bother protesting?

From Mr P. J. Sealey, MRPharmS

Why do pharmacists write to The Journal to protest about retention fee rises? Have they not yet learnt that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society pays little attention to its members, except when it comes to such things as reprimanding them, striking them off or demanding large quantities of their cash?

And as for your editorial (PJ, 14 August, p208), headed “Remarkable value for money”, I suggest a future career in fiction writing might be appropriate.

Philip Sealey
Warwick

Spurious argument

From Mr E. Smith, MRPharmS

Many would say that £256 for two days’ locum work is cheap at the price (PJ, 14 August, p208). To say that membership of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society is remarkable value for money compared with that paid by doctors and dentists to their associations is a spurious argument, bearing in mind the huge differences in remuneration and status between pharmacy and these professions.

E. Smith
Knutsford, Cheshire

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