Regulation of Health and Social Care Professionals Consultation

Education and training
4.39 Most constitution orders give the Councils powers to make provision in standing
orders for matters relating to the education and training of Council members,
including the ability to allow that education and training to be the responsibility of
another body.
Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland
4.40 Currently, the Pharmaceutical Society of Northern Ireland is unique in continuing
to allow Council members to be elected. Out of its 23 members, 18 are elected as
the representatives of pharmaceutical chemists, one is elected as the
representative of the registered druggists, two are nominated by Queen’s
University Belfast, one is nominated as a representative of the medical profession
and one is nominated to represent the wholesale drug trade. 25
4.41 However, the Northern Ireland Assembly has recently legislated to reform many
aspects of the Society’s legal framework, including its governance arrangements.
In the future, the Council of the Society will be appointed by the Department of
Health, Social Services and Public Safety and will consist of seven lay members
and seven registrants. The Council will delegate all professional leadership duties
to a new Professional Forum Board, which is a members-led body consisting of
eight elected members and three members nominated by professional bodies. 26
Provisional view
4.42 As noted in Part 2, our proposed scheme involves removing the formal role of the
Privy Council. In accordance with this scheme, Councils would no longer be
constituted by order of the Privy Council. Instead, we provisionally propose that
the statute would require that each Council must be constituted by rules issued
by the regulators. This would be subject to the requirement of public consultation
set out in Part 2.
4.43 On some matters where the effective operation of the General Council relies on
rules being issued we propose that a duty should be placed on each regulator to
issue such rules. These matters are the appointment of Council members and
chairs, terms of office, duration of membership, grounds for disqualification,
quorum for meetings, circumstances in which members (including chairs) cease
to hold office, are removed or are suspended, education and training of Council
members, and attendance requirements of Council members. Although the
regulators would be required to make rules on these matters, the content of the
rules would be left to the regulators to determine in the light of their own
individual circumstances and resources. On most other matters, the regulators
would have powers but would not be required to make rules. Moreover, the
regulators could set requirements for national/regional based appointments to the
Council, if they wish to do so.
4.44 As noted above, this proposal would mean that the regulators would be required
to make rules governing the appointment of Council members and Chairs.
Currently, the formal responsibility for doing this rests with the Privy Council but
25 Pharmacy (Northern Ireland) Order 1976 SI 1976 No 1213 (NI 22), sch 2 para 12.
26 Pharmacy (1976 Order) (Amendment) Order (Northern Ireland) 2012.
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