| • Retention fees (3)
• Pack sizes
• Supervision (2)
• Safety (3)
• Locum pharmacy
• NHS and pricing (3)
• The Society (2)
Letters to the Editor
|
Retention fees
Ballot box can be a powerful weapon
From Mr P. R. Breame, MRPharmS
I write regarding retention fees. Perhaps the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s
Council could arrange for the following details to be published at its
earliest convenience:
• Names, not the number, of Council members voting for the increase
• Names, not the number, of Council members voting against the increase
• Names of Council members threatening to resign as a result of the increase — as
if
• What it plans to do as a result of a further reduction in pharmacist
numbers from part-time pharmacists leaving the Register — perhaps
put up the fees again to recoup the loss of revenue?
• Where it thinks full-time members will be able to find the money to
pay the increased fees immediately after Christmas
I am sure that many members will want to know this information so that
they may be able to exercise an informed judgement at the next Council
elections. Pharmacists are not traditionally militant, but the ballot
box can be a powerful weapon. Paul Breame
Clacton-on-sea,
Essex
| |
HEMANT PATEL, President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society,
responds:
It is helpful to have this opportunity to clarify the
way the Society’s Council takes votes.
It is not possible to supply the names of Council members voting
for or against the recommendations on the fees. The Standing Orders
of the Council allow for
a named vote to be taken on the motion of a Council member duly seconded.
However,
no such motion was made for the voting on the fees recommendations at the meeting
on 1 November 2007. Therefore there is no record of how individual Council
members voted.
In any case, Council members are collectively responsible
for a decision
even if they have voted against it, abstained from voting or were absent as
set out in the Council Governance Handbook 2.1.2.
Regarding the proposal to set the 2008 headline retention fee for
practising pharmacists at £395, an increase of 39.6 per cent instead of 50 per cent
(as proposed in June 2007), Council voted 18 in favour and four against with
one abstention.
There is no escaping the fact that this is a large fee increase and it was
a difficult decision to take. The Council would have liked to have gone further
in reducing the fee but also had to be mindful of the financial pressures that
are facing the organisation at this time. The consultation and communication
process has attempted to explain to members the background to the situation
that
in part we have inherited and in part is due to external circumstances.
We are aware that one of the effects of the fee increase might result in
a reduction in pharmacist numbers.
However, in direct response to the consultation,
fees
were reduced across the board to help particular groups, such as preregistration
trainees, non-practising members and overseas pharmacists.
With regard to part-time pharmacists, the Council took the view that provision
of a part-time or low-income category of membership should be investigated,
although it should be borne in mind that the costs of registration and
maintaining membership
for a part-time person and a full-time person are the same.
If the Council
were to introduce part-time fees, this would have to be subsidised by
the full-time members. Before moving forward with this, the Council
would need
to establish,
through a consultation, whether there is “general contentment” within
the profession for such a move.
The Council has listened to members’ views that informed the decisions
taken on the fees. Over two thirds of respondents to the consultation identified
staged payments as a major issue to members and the Council agreed a timetable
to take this forward for 2009 fees, subject to legislation.
We will continue to plan ahead to design a professional body based on
the needs and views of our members. As well as encouraging members to
vote
in Society
elections — we
also want our members to join the new body. |
Fees not in line with the retail price index
From Mr M. R. Price, MRPharmS
Pharmacists may be breathing a sigh of relief now that retention fees
are not increasing above the psychologically important level of £400.
They are only going up to a much more reasonable £395. Yes, “just” £1.08
per day — the cost of a day’s Sky subscription or an over-priced
loaf of sliced bread at the local convenience store.
I thought I would take a look at how the increases of this first decade
compare using one of the many excellent online UK inflation calculators.
Using
the calculator on aptly named www.measuringworth.com,
and entering the fee for 2001 (£142), the calculated figure for
2006 (the most recent year supported) is £162 using the retail
price index (RPI) and £184 taking gross domestic product (GDP)
growth into consideration.
Taking more recent inflation data from the
Financial Times website, I have been able to calculate more up-to-date
figures and have plotted
our actual fees against what we may have expected if the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society had increased fees in line with the RPI. The result is a graph
which shows the fee for 2008 would be in the region of £175.
The graph illustrates the astounding and relentless super-inflationary
increase in our retention fees, year on year.
This exercise raises a number of important questions. First, are we truly
getting value for money? Will pharmacists of tomorrow be that much better,
that much safer, that much more professional than in 2001?
Has expenditure
been allowed to get out of hand? In 2001 were there pharmacists with
criminal tendencies that we are now able to identify through continuing
professional development?
Thousands signed the online petition and the official consultation
was responded to by over 1,000 members. I do not know the answers to
the
above questions, but I suspect that costs and benefits are now mismatched
and simple acceptance of this large increase is tantamount to collective
madness. Mike Price
Chepstow,
Gwent
Should everyone pay the same income tax as well?
From Mr P. A. Clarke, MRPharmS
I was disappointed to learn the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s final
decision on the extortionate retention fees this year.
Unfortunately, we as a membership are almost equally to blame after the
meagre response to the consultation document. However, it has not gone
unnoticed that the majority of respondents were pharmacists from the hospital
sector.
Considering that community pharmacists greatly outnumber those
of us in hospital, this only goes to show how this issue affects lower
paid hospital pharmacists to a much greater degree, since Boots The Chemists
or Lloyds will not be paying our fees. Is it so wrong to have a payment
system more representative of salary?
There are those who argue that everyone should pay the same since we
are all provided with equal services. However, are these people also
saying
that everyone should pay the same income tax, regardless of salary? After
all, we all get the same services from our Government.
Our society is
based on the premise that wealthier individuals can afford to pay more.
Mr Gush,
maybe you could learn a lesson from your Government counterparts. Peter Clarke
Sunderland Royal Hospital |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal