The media recently picked up on government discussions to amalgamate a number of healthcare regulators into two bodies. The first would be a joint organisation for doctors and nurses. The second proposal is for a high street regulator – a horrible term – which would include pharmacy, dentistry, optometry and chiropractic.

If I’m honest, I did not think that this prospect would elicit more than a grunt out of anyone, but this is important news, and I will tell you why.

We have probably all heard of the rebalancing board, which has struggled to deliver on its key objective – the removal of criminal sanctions for single dispensing errors. But that is not the only piece of work it has to focus on – the board will also consider the prospect of pharmacy supervision.

The legal requirements for a pharmacist to be present are so crucially entwined in the DNA of community pharmacy that most of us would not risk tinkering with a system which largely works, just to resolve a few anomalies.

The process of rebalancing was designed to move some of these rules from legislation to regulation, thus empowering the regulator, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC), to change them accordingly.

But these secret government talks about creating new regulators throw the whole rebalancing programme into jeopardy. Because instead of handing the power to the GPhC – a body which understands the specific world of pharmacy – the rebalancing board could end up handing over those powers to a completely new body, which doesn't even exist yet.

I would look at this as the equivalent of signing a blank cheque. Nobody should ever declare that they love their regulator, because this probably indicates that the regulator is doing a bad job, but at least we know where we are with the GPhC.

Plans for a super-regulator move the goalposts on the rebalancing board, and any of its future recommendations. Organisations which have signed up to rebalancing proposals, with the view that the GPhC is the pharmacy regulator, may be rightfully aggrieved if it feels like the Department of Health (DH) is orchestrating a bait-and-switch with these secret plans.

The rebalancing process matters, and we all need to wake up to the implications of the DH's proposals.