The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) is in talks with the government over plans to carry out mystery shopping tests on pharmacies, the regulator's chief executive Duncan Rudkin has revealed.

At present, legislation only allows the GPhC to conduct open test purchases, which could be seen as a blind spot for the regulator, Mr Rudkin told C+D in an exclusive interview on Friday.

Having covert powers, such as mystery shopping tests, would enable the GPhC to "leave no stone unturned", it said	More on the GPhC David Reissner: Why the GPhC wasn't first to POMs scandal Watchdog praises GPhC fitness-to-practise procedures GPhC suspends three pharmacists implicated in BBC POM exposé
	"We've had discussions about potentially being given access to [covert] powers because obviously we want to leave no stone unturned where we need to be doing that," he said.

The revelation came after a BBC investigation exposed nine London pharmacies illegally selling POMs such as temazepam and valium for cash in December, in test purchases made by an undercover reporter. At the time, shadow health secretary Andy Burnham criticised pharmacy regulation for failing to be "tough enough" and the BBC highlighted that the GPhC did not conduct secret shopper tests without prior suspicion of misconduct.

But the GPhC revealed it had been talking to the government about gaining further powers in this area - similar to local authorities - just before the story broke. And Mr Rudkin said the council had debated whether it was using "every opportunity" to conduct necessary investigations at its meeting last week (February 7).

"The kind of investigative techniques the BBC used were something that we, as a regulator, are not able to do," Mr Rudkin explained. "We can conduct test purchases, but they have to be overt."

"Some regulators do have additional powers to use covert surveillance and covert intelligence sources," he said. "The other healthcare regulators don't have those powers so, in a sense, we're not alone – we just need to discuss with the government whether there may be a case for us to have [them] because of our particular role."