Council to consider creating English board, too
The Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society is to investigate setting up an English board to join the Society’s executives in Scotland and Wales. A proposal for a new board for England is contained in the
report of the Society’s Devolution Review Group, which the Council
formally received at the February
Council meeting. The Council asked
the office to prepare a forward plan for instituting a consultation
on setting up a national board for England.
The review group’s full report is available from the Society’s
website.
Its conclusions and recommendations are published in this issue of The
Journal, with a summary of its other
sections (p184).
Presenting the report to the Council, the chairman of the review group,
Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, QC, began by stating that the review group
was conscious that the constitution of the Council was to change. Because
it was the current Council that had requested the report, it was appropriate
to present it now, but the group was not trying to bulldoze the Council
into an early decision.
What the review group had tried to do was to set up a relatively simple
structure for the Society that would accommodate the needs of members
of the Society not only in Scotland and Wales but also in England. “We
regard that last point of emphasis as being particularly important,” said
Lord Fraser. “That seems to us to be a valuable change that we
are suggesting.”
Lord Fraser said that as the review group took evidence he had been pleasantly
surprised to see an almost universal desire for the Society to maintain
its pre-eminence throughout Britain. The group had been slightly worried
that it would receive suggestions for breaking up the Society because
Britain now effectively has three national health services. But the urge
for a common core of pharmaceutical activity across Britain, led by the
Society, enjoyed almost universal support.
The structure the group suggested would help maintain the Society’s
status, Lord Fraser suggested. In broad measure, the group was suggesting
that the Council should remain but there should be additional bodies
for Scotland, Wales and for England, because they all had different health
services. At the moment, albeit with different degrees of emphasis, they
all ran in much the same direction. But at some point in the future one
constituent part of Britain might start pulling off in a different direction.
Lord Fraser added that, although the Scottish Parliament currently had
markedly greater powers than the Welsh Assembly, the group had assumed
that in time the Welsh Assembly would have similar powers.
The review group had detected a degree of resentment in Edinburgh and
to some extent in Cardiff that the Society’s headquarters tended
to equate what is good for England with what is good for Britain. If
one could clearly identify what is Scottish, Welsh and English, much
of that frustration would fall away.
In Scotland, in much more than just embryonic form, was a Scottish Executive
that could take over a lot of the responsibilities desirable for a Scottish
board to do. There was a good comparable organisation in Wales. But there
was no comparable body in England, and the group suggested that provision
should be made for an English board. It was not suggesting some massively
expensive new organisation. With one or two exceptions, most people employed
by the Society in Lambeth would continue in their roles but should be
clearer as to when they are engaging in an English matter as opposed
to one of application across Britain. Lord Fraser had some concerns that
there was not always the clearest separation of thinking. What was needed
was not so much a constitutional change as a change of mindset.
There were good reasons for the proposals. For example, because Scotland
was keen to put pharmacy at the forefront of the NHS, it was consulting
regularly — and over short time-frames. If those responsible for
the Scottish NHS consulted and wanted an answer in three weeks, there
was no time for the Council to reflect on it. The Society would lose
its pre-eminence if it made a habit of responding late.
The review group had no difficulty with the idea that matters exclusively
Scottish, Welsh or English should be dealt with by a national board in
the relevant country. The big question was how to handle an issue that
arose in one of those countries but clearly had a British import. What
if the Welsh suddenly had to face up to the abolition of prescription
charges? The Society had paid lip service to abolition, but when the
Welsh actually had to sit down and think about it, all manner of problems
might arise. And in Scotland there was a bill coming before the Parliament
on euthanasia. These were issues on which the Society needed a policy
on a British basis and not just a Scottish, Welsh or English basis.
The best the group could suggest was that a national board faced with
such an issue should devise a policy that would then be adopted by the
Council until such time as it might choose to modify it, taking account
of the broader interest. The Council needed to avoid taking a different
view from the national board because officials would spot the difference
and take up whichever attitude they liked best.
One issue the group could not come to a conclusion about was the make-up
of the boards for the separate countries.
Lord Fraser added that, whatever names were chosen for the boards, the
review group strongly recommended a change of name for the Scottish Executive
to avoid confusion with the Government in the Scottish Parliament, which
is also called the Scottish Executive.
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