Unanswered questions
At last the Government has come clean and explicitly said that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain — which has served the pharmacy profession well or well enough for nearly 170 years — is no longer fit for purpose. In a White Paper published on 21 February it sets out its stall for the future regulation of the health professions.
For pharmacy, it has decided that the separation of the functions of
regulation and professional leadership is not enough: a
separate regulatory body must exist in order to satisfy the Government’s demands
to protect the public (p207).
There will be pharmacists who will find this cause to celebrate because
they share the anxiety that there may have been some conflict of interest
within the Society and that professional regulation has for too long
dominated the agenda. For them the establishment of a General Pharmaceutical
Council is a step in the right direction. The Society can turn its attention
to what it is meant to do: lead the profession and help pharmacists grasp
the clinical opportunities now available, in the style of a royal college.
Other pharmacists will be dismayed at this decision — the Society
was not really broke so there was nothing to fix. There will also be
pharmacists who cannot understand why the Society and this Council, in
particular, seem to have accepted what the Government wants apparently
without a murmur of complaint. They may wonder what has happened to the
promises made to involve the membership in all decision-making. However,
every Council learns, some by a harder route than others, that the wishes
of the Government of the day prevail and that it has no obligation to
consult the members of bodies such as the Society when it is implementing
policy. The vast majority of pharmacists probably do not care — at
the moment. It will make little difference to their professional lives.
However, running two bodies is likely to be costly. Will the Government,
since it was its idea, at least pay for the split, and subsidise the
extra fees that pharmacists may be forced to pay? When pharmacists realise
that this exercise may cost them considerably more money than they pay
at the moment — sometime around 2010–11 — they may
take notice.
In the meantime, there are many issues to be sorted out. How are the
assets to be split? Will 1 Lambeth High Street remain the headquarters
of both bodies? Is there life yet for the Society as a membership body,
or will it be disbanded, too? Who will make that decision? While the
Charter stipulates that any decision made by the Council must be supported
by the membership, it is silent on changes initiated by the Government
through the Privy Council. How these issues are resolved, how happy members
are with the outcome, how much the Government will compromise on the
detail and what funds it will provide are key issues. One critical question
is who will lead the Society through the turbulence of the next few years.
Whoever it is must ensure that the members buy into the new reality if
the profession is to advance.
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