Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-193)
Monday 9 June 2003
MR ELLIOT
MORLEY, MR
JIM SCUDAMORE
AND MR
MARTIN ATKINSON
Q180 Mr Lazarowicz: Is that website
something which provides information about disease outbreaks as
well?
Mr Morley: All our information
about diseases is on the website.
Mr Atkinson: The main website
is a Defra website which does contain links to various parts of
Defra's organisation and has information on it. I would not describe
that as our main way of communicating with LVIs in practice. We
have a regular dialogue with them because, of course, we allocate
work and get work back from them on a monthly basis so there are
lots of quality control checks and dialogues going on in that
way. Most of our animal health offices issue periodic newsletters
to LVIs about matters of current interest. We arrange periodic
meetings for LVIs where we can discuss things in more detail.
We have a system of liaison visits where my veterinary officers
have a number of veterinary practices in a geographical area where
it is their responsibility to maintain liaison, look at medicines
records and that sort of thing. We have a lot of on the ground
contact like that.
Q181 Chairman: You will have gathered
the Committee are concerned about the resources available, particularly
in the context of dealing with major disease threats. Have you,
yet, with the profession started, in the light particularly of
post-FMD experience, to run any kind of full scale simulation
exercises to start testing out what we have learnt compared with
the resources we have available, new techniques and so on and
so forth and if you have, when did you do it and what was the
outcome?
Mr Morley: There have been some
exercises. We have done some ourselves within Defra, basically,
to test procedures as part of our training.
Q182 Chairman: Which diseases did
those cover?
Mr Morley: It was FMD we did actually.
In fact we did invite the Chair of the Select Committee to come
and witness what we were doing as a matter of interest because
we wanted to keep the Committee informed. I think you have done
some work in the regions, have you not?
Mr Atkinson: There have been lots
of local activities going on in terms of testing particular bits
of their local contingency plan. A lot of those have involved
local authorities and local practices in testing local arrangements.
At a national level, in terms of a large scale massive national
exercise, we are very conscious from an experience we had last
year of devising and running a head office based exercise, and
experience I had visiting Australia and New Zealand towards the
end of last year to investigate what they had done. We are very
conscious of the amount of time, effort and resource which needs
to go into planning a major exercise if you are going genuinely
to get something of value out of it. We have plans to run such
an exercise by the middle of next year and our planning arrangements
are under way to devise the best scenario so that we can learn
the maximum amount.
Q183 Chairman: This thing which I
see from the departmental report referred to as something called
the service delivery division, what does that do in this context?
Mr Atkinson: The service delivery
division, I presume, is the reference to an SVS service delivery
division?
Q184 Chairman: Yes?
Mr Atkinson: That is one of my
organisation units which reports to me in Page Street. It attempts
to co-ordinate all of our performance management type information
and agree the targets with people in the policy branches to ensure
that we are doing what people want us to do to find the right
measures to ensure that we can report on what we are doing, how
well we are doing, how much it is costing us to do. We are conscious
of the fact that we need to do a lot of work to get much better
at them so ministers and the CVO can be assured that we are using
these resources in the right sort of way.
Q185 Chairman: Are those reports
going to be made public?
Mr Atkinson: They are part of
my organisational unit. They do not issue formal reports as such,
they are working within the system to ensure everybody talks together
in the various programmes.
Q186 Chairman: Minister, are we going
to see a reference to this kind of exercise in the departmental
report? Will I be able to see some tangible manifestation of all
of this careful analysis to show we are doing all right?
Mr Morley: I think if you are
really interested in it, I am quite sure we can give you some
information on it.
Q187 Chairman: We are humble seekers
after truth and information.
Mr Morley: It is a question of
how big a report you want, whether a yellow page type report in
terms of all the activities which are going on.
Q188 Chairman: I think we have had
enough yellow page type reports for one day this afternoon on
the single currency.
Mr Morley: There you are.
Q189 Chairman: Perhaps one side of
A4 just to stimulate our interest might be helpful. In all seriousness
it would be very interesting for the Committee to know.
Mr Morley: We will take up what
you say in relation to the discussion. Jim, is there something
you want to say?
Mr Scudamore: Two points I want
to make. One is we are doing a lot of scenario planning, in other
words we are looking at if we get a disease like this, what would
we do, how would it spread, what action would we need particularly
in relation to vaccination policy on foot and mouth disease. We
are looking at about five or six different scenarios and trying
to work out what that would involve in terms of vaccine usage
and resources.
Q190 Chairman: Can I just ask you,
one of the quite frightening things which the Committee has had
put before it in various inquiries are lists of potential threats
to the animal herd in the United Kingdom.
Mr Morley: Exotic diseases you
mean?
Q191 Chairman: Exactly that and possibly
the spread of indigenous diseases which we have touched upon already.
Are you going to be publishing for comment and consumption strategies
to which you have referred as a result of your scenario activity
so that people can see what the game plan is?
Mr Morley: Certainly we will be
publishing. The FMD contingency provides a framework which a great
many of our disease responses will be built on. The FMD contingency
is, of course, for FMD but it is a very great detailed contingency
arrangement, as you will have seen. That framework will apply
for a whole range of diseases in terms of the basic approach.
Mr Scudamore: There has been a
perceived increased risk from avian influenza and, in fact, the
contingency planning is to look at that as a desk top exercise.
On our website we have got details of what the control measures
would be and what the instructions to staff are, in brief. I think
we have learnt a lot from the way we have dealt with FMD and the
intention will be to work through the diseases with the strategy
with the contingency plans.
Q192 Mr Drew: In terms of something
we have talked about before, bio-terrorism, to what extent are
the SVS, LVIs, brought into discussions of knowing what to look
for quickly if and when there is a potential incident?
Mr Morley: The most likely risk
in terms of animals in terms of bio-terrorism is an established
animal disease. We are aware within the Department of potential
bio-terrorism, therefore that does influence our thinking. But
in our general response the key issue is surveillance and having
in place contingency. Whatever the cause of the disease is, in
some ways the cause of the disease is irrelevant it is how you
cope with it and deal with it which is the important thing. We
have all those mechanisms in place.
Q193 Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you
very much indeed for the giving of your answers.
Mr Morley: Can I just say before
you finish, to save us writing to you, the item which we did not
accept in relation to the Competition Commission was, as I thought,
to do with prescription and distribution. One of the recommendations
was that the prescription should be widened just from veterinary
practices and pharmacists and included into wholesalers, for example.
Now in relation to controlling medicines we feel that the present
system works well and it is not one that we want to accept.
Chairman: Minister, thank you for that
final fact. Gentlemen, thank you all very much for your contribution
and our apologies for the delayed start but I think it was for
good reasons. Nonetheless we have enjoyed your company again.
Thank you for coming.
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