Insight Online – July 2024

PDA steps up campaign to protect Boots members’ pension rights
 

We have been advising and assisting members with benefits in the Boots Pension scheme, the closed final salary scheme subject to a buyout by Legal and General.Members have been advised to challenge the trustees’ decision to end the ability to take an unreduced pension from age 60 by submitting complaints through the scheme’s two-stage internal disputes procedure using template letters prepared by specialist pensions lawyers retained by the PDA.

Paul Moloney, the PDA Union National Officer leading this campaign, said, “We have always maintained that members had a right under the rules to draw an unreduced pension from age 60. This is our members’ understanding and, we believe, this should have been secured as part of the buyout process. The trustees have claimed an unreduced pension at 60 was in fact only possible at their discretion and therefore could not be safeguarded through the buyout. Scheme members have now been told they will have to wait a further 5 years until aged 65 before they can take an unreduced pension.”

P medicines for self-selection, are you concerned?
 

In 2012, ourselves and some other organisations successfully fought to reject proposals which would allow Pharmacy (P) medicines to be available for self-selection from open displays in community pharmacies, alongside general sale list (GSL) medicines and even non-medicinal items.Without warning, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) held a meeting in June 2024 to decide whether the current RPS policy and position in relation to the open sale and supply of P medicines should be changed.

Many PDA members have expressed concerns about this unexpected development and that this issue is now being reconsidered by the RPS and others. The PDA’s position is that there are many good reasons for the P medicines category and the fact that these medicines are sold from a more controlled environment in the community pharmacy has been good for patients, pharmacists, and the healthcare system.

To ensure that members views are considered in this debate, the PDA is now consulting its members. PDA members, please complete our survey by 2 August 2024.

PDA now significantly involved in medicines related humanitarian projects
 

Three years ago, staff at the Pharmacists’ Defence Association (PDA) would have been surprised if someone had said that it would become the leader of an international humanitarian programme that would be bringing many £millions of relief through medicines to victims of disaster, but life has a knack of producing some unexpected developments.

PDA is a member of EPhEU (Employed Pharmacists of Europe) whose membership is made up of several European organisations like the PDA. EPhEU was approached by its Ukrainian members and asked for help following the destruction of the healthcare infrastructure during the military invasion.

As the elected Secretary General of EPhEU, it fell to Mark Koziol (PDA Chairman) to propose and execute a plan for the EPhEU member countries. A campaign was launched which involved developing and promoting the display of ‘Medicines to Ukraine’ posters in pharmacy windows across all of the EPhEU member countries which invited members of the public to make donations. All the donations across the continent were pooled and handled by charities, ensuring that no pharmacy organisation ever handled any of the money.