The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 276 No 7384 p64
21 January 2006

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Failure to declare source of funds for APPG was accidental omission

The All-Party Pharmacy Group was named in an article in The Times last week as one of six all-party groups that does not list the source of its support in the parliamentary register. However, this oversight was accidental, according to the lobby group involved.

“All-party groups are required to register the names of outside organisations that provide them with benefits,” the article said. “Yet the entry for the APPG lists only Luther Pendragon, a lobbying company, as the provider of their administrative support. This would appear to be a clear breach of parliamentary rules that state: ‘Where a public relations agency provides assistance, the ultimate client [of the PR company] should be named’.”

Simon Whale, a managing partner of Luther Pendragon, told The Journal that the APPG has been open about the support it receives from the Company Chemists’ Association, the National Pharmacy Association, the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

“The APPG has been transparent and open about the support it receives from the pharmacy organisations. The Group’s website is clear and explicit about it. We asked that the accidental clerical oversight in the current register be corrected as soon as we were aware of it,” he said.

In a joint statement issued in response to the article, the CCA, NPA, PSNC and the Society said: “The pharmacy organisations provide support for the All-Party Pharmacy Group because it provides an opportunity to increase awareness and understanding of the profession and its services among MPs and peers. The support provided to the group by the pharmacy organisations has always been in the public domain.”