(on-file) charge. she was ordered to pay a fine of £300. the appeal judge noted the large impact of events on the sheller and lee families, and also the 'very many letters which speak of her good character and many good works'. by the time of the appeal lee had taken a job as a cleaner in her church, having decided never to resume as a pharmacist, cancelling registration (kept by the rpsgb). ministerial comment and early day motion shadow minister for health and pharmacy, lord howe, said in june 2009 that the risk to the public comes not from dodgy pharmacists, but from potentially dangerous working practices. tesco seems to be noticeably reticent in admitting that they may have had some contribution to the error that occurred. when a pharmacist is made to work regular 10-hour shifts, you cannot put the entire blame on that one individual. supermarkets and major pharmacy multiples cannot wash their hands of the health and safety implications which their pharmacists are subject to. the all-party parliamentary group for pharmacy met on 16 june 2009 in the house of commons to investigate the impact of the lee case on community pharmacists. the chairman, howard stoate mp, tabled an early day motion calling for a change in the law. he said i don't think anybody quite appreciated what could happen to a pharmacist who made a simple human error just on one occasion and is automatically criminalised by the current law. as far as i'm aware there are no other professional groups, certainly within the nhs to which that applies. aftermath and impact on pharmacy in the uk the main code for prosecutors was updated in february 2010 and the similar, more detailed, protocol was published three weeks after the appeal hearing, on 21 june 2010. this added the factor strongly indicating against prosecution of: "has regulatory or remedial action been taken (against a pharmacist or technician), or is it likely to be taken?". lee's prosecution caused concern that it would lead to non-reporting and under-reporting of dispensing errors by pharmacists, impacting patient safety and the ability to learn from mistakes. in june 2009, well before lee's appeal hearing, the rpsgb carried out a survey which found that almost half the pharmacists questioned would reassess whether they would record dispensing errors in an error log. more than 12,000 pharmacists signed a petition calling for the law to be repealed. issues with workplace pressure also surfaced, with 4% of pharmacists in a survey carried out by chemist and druggist saying that they had contemplated suicide as a result of the stress. a national effort to decriminalise dispensing errors was catalyzed by the case. one report said of lee, "it's up to us to complete the job and ensure her legacy is as the pharmacist who brought an end to criminal prosecutions for dispensing errors." this backstop law has not changed and can be applied, in heavily investigated, extreme cases, where on the facts, a prosecution can be seen to be in the public interest, as confirmed by the court of appeal. responsible pharmacist regulations at the heart of the guidance (protocol) is the regulation that it is the responsible pharmacist (rp) who is now required to establish, maintain and keep under review procedures to ensure that a pharmacy is operating in a safe and effective manner. the rp will need to demonstrate that he or she had put in place and operated written standard operating procedures, defining individual responsibilities and accountabilities, establishing procedures for identifying and remedying poor performance and ensuring that members of the dispensary team are suitably trained and competent to undertake the tasks for which they are responsible. reality sometimes differs. many community and hospital pharmacists have employers extremely reluctant to allow their rps to have this level of control. a pharmacy, in which they work, might be controlled by their employer or by someone other than the rp. the defence association has cases where rps confront discipline by employers, or dismissal because the employer does not allow them to exercise their statutory duties under the rp regulations. notes and references footnote the whole section, deemed by the court of appeal to concern a manufacturer's affixing of labels and other packaging is now governed elsewhere and so repealed by the human medicines regulations 2012, schedule 35