The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7407 p12
1 July 2006

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Letters to the Editor

Statutory Committee

Why does the disciplinary process take so long?

From Dr M. King, MRPharmS

Why does it take the Statutory Committee so long to bring people to book?

In a recent issue of The Journal there was the case of a pharmacist who had a complaint brought against him by the Council regarding a letter he had written in December 2003 (PJ, 17 June, p735).

This is not the only case I have noticed in the past few years. It seems that an inordinate amount of time elapses between the “offence” and the “punishment”. My major concerns are for those pharmacists who have to face a lengthy period with the case hanging over their heads only to be found “not guilty” and those who have been naughty boys and girls but who get to carry on practising only to be found “guilty” sometime in the distant future.

I was under the impression that the processes had been streamlined in recent years.

Come on Royal Pharmaceutical Society! Move these cases through quicker.

Martin King
Cardiff

Disparaging remarks

From Mr D. R. Thomas, MRPharmS

I was both surprised and saddened to read the concluding remarks made by the chairman of the Statutory Committee (Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, QC) in the case of Sarju Patel (PJ, 17 June, p735), in which he described Mr Patel as an “insolent young pup”. You might expect to read this type of remark in a novel by Somerset Maugham, made perhaps by one of his characters, say, a colonial magistrate presiding in court during the time of the British Empire. Whatever the circumstances of the case, I would have expected the chairman to refrain from such disparaging and patronising remarks, as befits his position.

David Thomas
Hanworth Park, Middlesex

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