§ Mr. CROOKSasked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that the bye-law made by the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society, and approved by the Privy Council in February, 1920, in pursuance of Section 4 (6) of the Poisons and Pharmacy Act, 1908, deprives all persons holding the assistant's certificate of the Society of Apothecaries who have served with His Majesty's Forces during the late War from being registered as 1409W chemists and druggists and restricts registration to persons who have been continuously employed in a strictly limited number of institutions and so deprives many fully-qualified persons from registration, contrary to the express intentions of the 1908 Act; and whether he will request the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society to amend their bye-law so as to provide for the registration as chemists and druggists of all the assistants of the Society of Apothecaries who held certificates at the time of the passing of the Poisons and Pharmacy Act, 1908, provided that they have been engaged in dispensing for a reasonable period, not necessarily continuous, since 1908, so as to admit of the registration of ex-service men?
Mr. BALF0URI have been asked to reply to this question. The bye-law in question aims at meeting an old complaint of the Certified Assistants to Apothecaries against the Pharmaceutical Society, and was accepted as a fair compromise by the Society and the Association of Certified Assistants. There is no power to induce the Society to go further on the road of concession.