Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-159)
Monday 9 June 2003
MR ELLIOT
MORLEY, MR
JIM SCUDAMORE
AND MR
MARTIN ATKINSON
Q140 Chairman: It is, but it does
not stop you making information available. I am just interested
to know whether you as Defra said, "If this comes to pass
and there is a separation and a transparency in the sale of these
products which might mean that some veterinary practices' income
is reduced, what do we think the impact might be?".
Mr Morley: These are really market
factors in relation to the operation of veterinary practices.
They are not regulated in that sense by Defra.
Q141 Chairman: No, but if somebody
took an economic decision, even if they are totally unconnected
with your Department, and it had an effect on the capacity or
the amount of veterinary practice that was available, bearing
in mind your earlier comments that things vary according to different
parts of the country, so that perhaps in leafy Surrey where there
is lots of profitable small animal work it might be less of an
issue than in sparse Cumbria where large animal work might dominate
but where incomes are inevitably going to be lower, I just wondered
if anybody had done any kind of impact study on the possible scenario
outcomes of the Competition Commission's work.
Mr Scudamore: When the Competition
Commission were meeting we learned their preliminary findings
and I asked for the opportunity to go to the Competition Commission.
I went and I used it as an opportunity to explain what the importance
of practice was to us. We went through the issues of the need
for rural practice, what rural practice delivered on our behalf,
and there is a whole range of areas of work that rural practice
does for us—they do anthrax investigations, they do abortion
investigations, they do TB work and a whole lot of other work,
and we pointed out to them that if we lost rural practices we
would not be able to deliver our work in terms of surveillance
and welfare. We emphasised the importance which we attached to
those things and we asked them to consider the impact of their
recommendations on the availability of farm animal practice. In
their report they mentioned that they did take into account what
we had said but their view was that cross-subsidisation was not
correct and that they would rather see transparency and professional
fees by veterinary surgeons go up to enable them to get their
income from that source than marking up on drugs.
Q142 Chairman: That is very helpful.
You have had the benefit of reading the report. Did they effectively
say that there would not be an impact on the capacity of veterinary
service to be offered anywhere in the country as a result of transparency?
Mr Scudamore: As far as I can
see they did not say whether there would or there would not be
an impact.
Q143 Chairman: So they did not listen
perhaps with the care they might have done to your advice about
the importance of veterinary practice in the way you have so clearly
described to the Committee this afternoon?
Mr Scudamore: The issue is that
we do not actually know, if the recommendations of the Competition
Commission come into effect, what impact it will have on veterinary
practice. A lot of people have said it will do this, it will do
that, it will do the other, but it is not actually clear. This
is a recommendation and if these come into force it is not clear
what impact it will have on rural practice. The difficulty at
this stage is knowing whether it will cause problems with rural
practice or not.
Q144 Chairman: This is definitely
a leading question and you may be uncomfortable about answering
it, but do you think it is right for people like the Competition
Commission to blunder into territory like this without a clear
idea of what the outcome of their recommendations is going to
be when they have had cogent professional advice that there could
be a deleterious outcome if the amount of surveillance were to
be affected? It seems to be fundamental to the recommendation.
Mr Morley: I think this is one
for me really.
Q145 Chairman: Very well volunteered.
Mr Morley: Absolutely. What I
can say on that is that the Competition Commission are set up
so that their prime responsibility is to look at issues of consumer
protection. There are issues of cross-subsidisation but of course,
as you will know, Mr Jack, this was an argument on bus deregulation,
for example, and one or two other issues which, if I remember,
was not considered relevant to legislation in the past.
Chairman: I would love to have a discussion
with you about buses. Perhaps when we do an inquiry into rural
transport that will be the time to do that.
Q146 Mr Wiggin: Why is the Chief
Veterinary Officer no longer head of the SVS?
Mr Morley: Because there is an
argument for having a division between delivery of service and
policy. In fact, in the review which is currently being carried
out by Lord Haskins it is one of his interim conclusions that
he has come to that there should be a separation between delivery
and policy. Jim Scudamore is the Chief Veterinary Officer and
is responsible for the policy side of veterinary issues within
this country, and Martin is responsible for the delivery side
in relation to the operation of the SVS.
Q147 Mr Wiggin: To what extent do
large areas covered by Animal Health Divisional Offices affect
the performance of the SVS?
Mr Morley: In what sense?
Q148 Mr Wiggin: You lose the local
knowledge if you have huge areas; that is what I am concerned
about.
Mr Morley: I understand the point.
Certainly local knowledge and local experience are of vital importance
and they provide a wide range of benefits. We have the Regional
Animal Health Offices but within those there are smaller areas
from the veterinary offices.
Q149 Mr Wiggin: There have been certain
closures, have there not? There were 24 Animal Health Divisional
offices across Britain and then there have been some closures
of some divisional offices?
Mr Morley: There has been some
rationalisation.
Mr Atkinson: An important point
here is the difference between amalgamating our administrative
functions into a smaller number of offices which was carried out
in the mid-nineties to get economies of scale essentially and
that sort of thing. At that time we did not withdraw people from
the front line offices so we now have veterinary officers and
Animal Health Officers located at sub-offices around the place
and most, but by no means all, of the locations which were Animal
Health Offices in the early nineties are still functioning as
the basis for field based staff. We have closed some but we have
also opened others as we respond to demand. The number of locations
at which I have field based veterinarians and field based technical
staff has not markedly reduced over the last decade.
Q150 Mr Wiggin: What steps are you
taking to integrate SVS with the rest of Defra?
Mr Morley: The SVS is very well
integrated within Defra in the way that it works. Increasingly
these days you need to have a more integrated approach in a whole
range of policy delivery; that is true, but certainly in my own
connections, both with Jim and with Martin, there is good integration
with SVS.
Q151 Mr Wiggin: What about relocating
SVS functions to the regions? Have you any plans to do that?
Mr Morley: It is a regionally
based service.
Q152 Mr Wiggin: What I am talking
about is reducing the number of vets based in central London and
increasing the number of posts in the regions.
Mr Morley: That has happened over
some of the reorganisation that Martin has mentioned in that the
vets who are based in London are on the policy side; they are
not generally field vets. Like a lot of things, I have an open
mind in relation to where we locate our services. There are practical
recruitment issues in London and the south east as there are on
all sorts of issues. There are arguments for having centres devolved
but you do need to have a number of key policy personnel based
within the London headquarters and as part of those you need policy
vets.
Q153 Paddy Tipping: Surely those
policy vets ought to belong to Mr Scudamore?
Mr Morley: They do. They are all
in Page Street directly under Jim.
Q154 Paddy Tipping: You mentioned
Lord Haskins' review of Defra and its agency. I think you told
us a minute or two ago that it was his preliminary report. Where
is his preliminary report?
Mr Morley: It has been made public.
It is just a series of principles that he is working to.
Q155 Paddy Tipping: So there is a
series of principles so that you know more about what Lord Haskins
is thinking than anybody else?
Mr Morley: Not necessarily, no.
Q156 Paddy Tipping: What is the timetable
on Lord Haskins' work? Will we be seeing it shortly?
Mr Morley: That is probably a
question that he will answer. I cannot give you the exact timetable
because at this stage he has carried out a number of investigations,
he has met with a wide range of people, he has produced this interim
report which is just a list. It is very simple. It is just one
side of A4 which is seven key principles, but number one key principle
was the separation in relation to policy and delivery.
Q157 Mr Drew: If we could now concentrate
on the SVS itself, some of us got to see the organisation close
up during the foot and mouth breakdown and personally I was very
impressed by many of the things I saw but I think it is fair to
say that the organisation, even before foot and mouth, was somewhat
demoralised because they would argue that they had had a moratorium
on the number of staff, that the organisation was ageing and there
were difficult terms of reference for recruiting new people in.
Dare I say that I did find a degree of snootiness amongst the
private sector that they did not always feel that the best people
were within the SVS. What are you doing in terms of recruitment
and, secondly, how are you trying to at least re-model the ethos
of the SVS to give it a bit of a new lease of life?
Mr Morley: You cannot control
their snootiness wherever it comes from, Chairman, but what I
can say is that I think the SVS does an excellent job and I think
it is widely recognised internationally in terms of the quality
of work that it does. Ironically, our recruitment has improved
post-FMD. One of the reasons for that is that many vets in this
country who have experience of working within the SVS structure
were impressed both in terms of the way that it operates and also
the important national role that it has. I think it is fair to
say that the SVS has not had the kind of profile I think it deserves,
particularly in recruitment of new vets. I think that Rolf Harris
and Trude have been a lot more effective in terms of promoting
particular sectors of the veterinary profession and the SVS has
not had that kind of profile, nor indeed has the public health
sector which also does a valuable job in relation to vets who
work within that sector. It was quite encouraging to see that
many vets, as I say, having experience of working within the SVS,
decided that they would like to make it as a career and our recruitment
has really improved quite significantly.
Q158 Mr Drew: Can I be clear about
this? I have asked a parliamentary question and I cannot remember
the answer but what is steady state in terms of numbers of full
time equivalents, roughly? I have got 230 in my brain.
Mr Morley: It is between 230 and
240.
Mr Atkinson: I have what we refer
to as a complement of permanent posts of field veterinary officers
and at the moment it is 234. I have actually got many more vets
than that working for me at the moment because quite a lot are
casual.
Mr Morley: The LVIs and everything
else, yes. That is the front line SVS which has been pretty steady
since 1990.
Q159 Mr Drew: In terms of the relationship
between the full time people and LVIs, what are the terms and
conditions of contract that LVIs work under?
Mr Atkinson: As I said earlier,
that is an issue that we are reviewing. The LVI system is quite
an old system. It has been running for 40 or 50 years now and
it is quite an unusual situation in that it is not entirely clear
what the legal status of LVIs is in employment terms and it gives
various other people severe headaches when we are trying to ask
them questions about their precise relationship and whether NIC
should be charged and all that sort of thing. There has been a
history of grumbling issues of that sort which the BVA and ourselves
have been conscious of for a number of years. We had started to
look at modernising the system prior to the foot and mouth disease
outbreak and you will understand that it was put on hold a little
bit for the duration of that, but we have now taken up that work
and we are working closely together to try to devise a modern,
contractual arrangement which will maintain all the good things
that we all recognise about the relationship but get rid of some
of the anomalies and give us a sound basis for placing work in
the private sector as the strategies develop.
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