Professional Conduct

The EC Directives require Member States to ensure that the duties of Qualified Persons are fulfilled, inter alia "by making such persons subject to a professional code of conduct". 

The MHRA/VMD have decided that failure to undertake satisfactorily the duties of a Qualified Person "might be a matter for consideration by the appropriate professional body to which he/she might belong, as a matter of professional misconduct".

As well as the specific Code of Practice, produced jointly by the three professional bodies:

• Royal Society of Chemistry
• Institute of Biology
• Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain

each professional body also has a disciplinary procedure to deal with cases of alleged professional misconduct. 

In a serious case a member could be expelled from membership of the professional body (and removed from the statutory professional register in the case of pharmacists), and would thereby be removed from the Register of Eligible Qualified Persons. The MHRA and VMD would be notified in such an event.