Scotland West District Member's Report from Guild Council Meeting 20.9.2001

In Remembrance
Before the meeting commenced, Council observed a minutes silence in remembrance of Walter Smith and Tony Furber, both of whom had recently passed away.
It was agreed that the President should send a letter of condolence to the American Society of Health System Pharmacists after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

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Professional Secretary Resigns

It was reported that Ian Simpson, Guild Professional Secretary,would be resigning on 9.11.01 to take up the post of Chief Executive of the College of Pharmacy Practice. There were discussions about taking forward the process of employing his successor. Council wished Ian success in his new post and noted that he will be sorely missed.

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New Section General Secretary and Administrator

Section General Secretary, Barry Jones, was attending his first full Council meeting and was accompanied by Pauline Burke, the new GHP Administrator.

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Agenda For Change
The Organisation Terms and Conditions Committee had a presentation by Colin Adkins, MSF researcher, on the progress with Agenda for Change, the proposed new structure for pay in the NHS. The latest word is that discussions will be concluded by the end of the year and consultation with members will take place early next year. It is hoped that some early implementers will be ready to go by June 2002.

• Job Evaluation - once the second tranche of jobs have been evaluated, a new ranking order will be produced.
• Pay Progression - Management want to link progression to performance. There will be a competency gateway, based on a skills and knowledge framework. Success in attaining the standards in the framework will allow the individual to progress to the next scale. MSF have tried to ensure that staff have rights to time and funding for CPD so that management cannot prevent staff progressing by denying them the chance of training.
• Terms & Conditions - There will be a harmonisation package and it still has to be decided what factors should be decided locally. After initial problems, management appear to have adopted a more reasonable stance.
• Implementation - The big question is whether it should be staged or 'big bang'. Management are saying that they do not have the manpower for the 'big bang' approach.

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2002/03 Pay
The next round of Whitley Council 'negotiations' will go ahead as in previous years. Preparations for this have now started. Part of the discussions will involve an equal pay claim asking for parity with Speech and Language Therapists. Throughout their protracted legal battles, SALTs used pharmacists and clinical psychologists as comparators. However, they now have better rates of pay than pharmacists, so the claim is being made by pharmacists for parity.

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Royal Pharmaceutical Society Pharmacy Prescribing Task Group
The President informed Council that the Guild had been asked to write the chapter on hospital pharmacy prescribing for the Group.

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GHP Strategic Direction and web site
The 5 year GHP strategy and the new GHP website are due to be launched at the British Pharmaceutical Conference next week.

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Day Conference 8.2.02 & Group Delegates Meeting 9.2.02
Both events will take place in Leicester with the final confirmation of the venue due soon.

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Membership Survey
The Section General Secretary reported that he was about to launch a membership mapping exercise for pharmacists. I discussed the progress in Scotland with Barry and will forward the information to him.

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Membership Does Matter!
In his last report for Council, the Professional Secretary reported that he had been contacted by two senior pharmacists who found themselves in employment difficulties, but who had allowed their Guild membership to lapse some years ago. After careful consideration by the SGS and himself, they decided that they could not represent them. It was noted that MSF policy is that they would be unable to represent members in a major dispute within 6 months of the member joining. This is negotiable to a certain extent, but is to prevent people only joining when they have a problem. The analogy with house insurance was made. You should not let it lapse either!

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SEHD Short Life Working Group on Dispensing of Blister Packs
Don Page has been asked to sit on this group which is to look at the pricing rules and patient packs with a view to stopping any cutting of blister packs.

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Electronic Prescription Transmission
It was noted that it is now legal to transmit prescriptions electronically. Temazepam, however, is the only controlled drug for which this is the case. This also, obviously, means that an electronic signature is now legally valid.

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Weekend School
It was noted that the Weekend School would now be known as the Annual National Conference. It was agreed that members of the Association of Pharmacy Technicians would be eligible for GHP member rates. It was pointed out that pharmacy technicians who were members of MSF were already eligible for GHP member rates.

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