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Letters to the Editor
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The Society
Regulations will have to be challenged in courts
From Mr G. Southall-Edwards, MRPharmS
I should like to add my support to all those who, like David
Roberts (PJ, 29 January, p112), join issue with the “non-practising” declaration
that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society is requiring persons in his position
to sign, if they do not wish to remain registered as “practising”.
In my opinion, the Society is seeking to restrict the right of the person
to disseminate what I would call “the knowledge within their mind”.
The Society should be content to require those registering as “NP” to
restrict their activities to areas outside those where the law requires
(or has long required) that the person be a registered pharmacist. In
other words, to use David Roberts’s phrase, “preparing and
dispensing medicines”, usually in accordance with the order of
a duly qualified medical practitioner, in the way that pharmacists have
long regarded themselves as practising their profession.
In my opinion, a person “practises” his profession when he
or she does an act which, but for their registration as a practitioner
in that profession, the law does not permit them to do. Restrictions
which seek to go beyond this point are, I believe, none other than restrictive
practices and impinge upon the personal liberty of individuals and (possibly)
on their human rights.
I would also endorse other writers’ views that the Society is seeking
to reach too far: it is the regulatory body for Great Britain only. Those
who practise elsewhere in the EU do so by virtue of registration in the
appropriate EU country, as I do. Not only should the Society therefore
confine its activities to the EU (as Heather
Elliston suggests, ibid,
p113), but it should confine them to Britain.
I venture to suggest that sooner or later theses regulations will have
to be challenged in the courts; I predict that the Society will fail
to uphold its present definitions, in just the same way as it failed
against Boots in its attempts to restrict self-service in 1952 — see
PSGB v Boots Cash Chemists (Southern) Ltd, [1953] 1 QB 401. The problem,
as it often is with the Society’s rules, is that it lays down rules
that it probably cannot maintain at law, but the members are either unable
or unwilling to challenge them; resigning or “renaming” oneself
is not the answer. The answer lies in collective action to determine
what the Society can and cannot legitimately do.
G. Southall-Edwards
Barrister-at-Law
Tirol, Austria
Why such expenditure on the Council chamber?
From Mr J. E. Blake, MRPharmS
I decided to give the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Council one more
year before I chose to resign in protest at the huge increase in retention
fees, CPD (Compulsory Pharmacist Detention — well we do have to record
all the details after a hard day in the dispensary) and all the other contentious
policy matters that seem to have distanced our Council from the rank and file
members. But, just into the new year, we have yet another decision to spend
members’ money, unwisely in my view (PJ, 12 February, p182).
Any other organisation with due regard to its costings and needs would have
looked twice at any suggestion to involve itself in so much expenditure on
its Council chamber. I appreciate the need to accommodate six more members
of Council at its meetings. Would not an extension to the table and the purchase
of six more chairs to match the existing ones be adequate? To consider even
the cheapest option available will involve the use of an expensive architect.
(Does the Society not know that some other professions charge a lot more per
hour than the average pharmacist locum rate?) And does it really need the
Council chamber to be gutted and fitted with new modular furniture? The third
option of developing the first floor suite into a conference facility is beyond
comprehension.
Sorry, Royal Pharmaceutical Society! There will be another resignation next
year to add to the many already received.
John Blake
Caleta de Velez,
Malaga, Spain
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BERNARD KELLY, director of resources, Royal Pharmaceutical Society,
replies:
As Mr Blake acknowledges, the Society’s new Council will
see the addition of six members. The existing Council Chamber, built in
the mid 1970s, has served the Society well for almost 30 years but simply
does not have the flexibility or capacity to meet the organisation’s
changing needs. The Society will commission an architect, who will draw
up options for the Council to consider. |
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal