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Oral evidence

Taken before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee

Vets and Veterinary Services Sub-Committee

on Monday 9 June 2003

Members present:

Mr Michael Jack, in the Chair
Mr David Drew
Mr Mark Lazarowicz
Paddy Tipping
Mr Bill Wiggin

__________

Memorandum submitted by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: MR ELLIOT MORLEY, a Member of the House, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State; MR JIM SCUDAMORE, Chief Veterinary Officer; and MR MARTIN ATKINSON, Director, State Veterinary Service, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, examined.

Q80  Chairman: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Minister, thank you very much for coming and giving evidence. You are a regular and much-welcomed attender at our meetings. May I thank you and your colleagues for your patience in delaying the start of this afternoon's session but I think colleagues wanted to be in the chamber until the conclusion of the opening exchanges on the single currency announcement. In addition to the Minister we have Jim Scudamore, the Chief Veterinary Officer, and Martin Atkinson, the Director of the State Veterinary Service. You are all very welcome indeed. I would just like to start my opening remarks by saying this: in my post today there was a letter sent to me by a practice of veterinary surgeons in Lancashire, sending a letter which has been distributed not in that practice but to some 250 farms who were the customers of another veterinary practice illustrating the problems being faced by veterinarians in delivering good large animal practice. Because of the problems they are facing this letter has gone out which says, "Our new assistants can't get the experience [large animal work] because we don't have the volume of work and quite naturally you don't want them 'practising' on your livestock. It has become common now in larger Veterinary Practices for a division into Farm animal, Equine and Small animal. We unfortunately are not big enough to do that and I can't do all the farm work alone". I do not think that practice, in sending that message out to its clients, its farmers and others, is unique. I am interested to know, therefore, what your assessment is of that because I think it is typical of some of the other evidence we have heard from those organisations who represent veterinary interests about the state of large animal work in the field of veterinary practice, and I might ask in that context what assessment your Department, Minister, has made, of the impact of the declining use of veterinary surgeons by livestock farmers on animal health, because it is clear that some farmers have said it is an expense that until there is a real problem we can do without.

Mr Morley: Taking the last point first, our animal health officers have been carrying out analysis of veterinary activity in their areas, and they have recently done a survey on whether they think that veterinary treatment has gone up or down in relation to livestock farmers and it is a very mixed picture. It is not across the board. In fact, I was talking at a meeting of vets in Yorkshire not very long ago where they were saying that in their particular area, contrary to perception, they were not having trouble in recruiting people into large animal practice. But that is not to say that there are not these changes and these difficulties around the country. It is also quite difficult to draw an evaluation of what is happening in terms of the interpretation of figures and spending on veterinary treatment because that is one of the indicators people use, spending by livestock farmers, as to whether or not their veterinary treatment is going up or down, and there is a whole range of reasons why spending may have decreased. For example, husbandry may have improved so you require less veterinary treatment; it may be the case that veterinary medicines have reduced or there have been changes in relation to the charging patterns; it is also true that, as a general rule, the larger the practice the bigger the percentage share of veterinary bills, but in all cases there is still less than, on average, 10 per cent of overall spending on livestock farmers. The biggest increase in veterinary activity is in the dairy sector and that might reflect the increase in intensification of dairy and therefore the increasing need for veterinary treatment. On your first point about attracting the experience, I was a bit puzzled about that in the sense that all veterinary students, of course, are given experience across the range of veterinary treatments, and some of them do start to specialise at veterinary college in terms of large animals. They make choices themselves in what they want to do. I did visit Liverpool University Veterinary College myself and the day I went there they were all working on large animals - they were doing work on cows' feet - so there is the part of the training they have, and I would have thought that getting the experience is to employ people within a practice, even a smallish one, and while it is true I suppose, if you have someone not experienced as other vets there might be a bit of a resistance from farmers, I think most farmers understand that people have to start somewhere and they do have to get some on-the-job training. Perhaps Jim would like to speak on this because he is on the Council of the RCVS which, of course, is the ruling body for veterinary educational training.

Mr Scudamore: You have identified an important issue which is when veterinary students graduate they have basic competencies, and the question is how they get additional training. In general, that has been gained in practices and through extramural studies. The College is very conscious of that and obviously will comment on this, but there is a strategy being developed to work out how people graduating after five years can then get additional expertise to go into large animal, small animal or equine practice. The possibility is there will be a system of houseman-type arrangements so they can get the additional expertise. I think it is recognised that there is a problem, particularly in the small practices, and the College is looking to develop a strategy for people to get additional expertise after they graduate in the first year of graduation.

Q81  Chairman: But, Minister, you picked up on what is the annexe to the note which DEFRA sent to the Committee and the survey that was done on practices and large animals, and I will just read to you from paragraph 17, the conclusion: "A majority of AHDOs in all 5 of the SVS Regions report a decline in the number of practices able to carry out large animal work although the problems are by no means uniform", and there is a lot of evidence to indicate that there are other areas of veterinary practice which are basically not being done. Now, as you will know from previous evidence sessions particularly in connection with foot and mouth, and from your own observations about the importance of increasing biosecurity, are you not worried about the decline in the availability of these large animal services, as confirmed by your own survey?

Mr Morley: Yes, it is a matter of concern, and we cannot ignore these kinds of trends although the survey confirmed what I say - that it is not a uniform decline. There is a decline being reported by each of the regions but it is not uniform, and that means we have to address where there is a potential problem. I think the reasons for this are really very complex. Part of it has been the changes in veterinary practices themselves: at one time, and this is more for the Royal College to put this point than me, but as I understand it a lot of suburban practices did both small animals and large animals and there seems to be a trend away from that; instead of having mixed practices there seems to be a trend towards specialising. The suburban practices, the urban fringe practices, seem to be going towards the small animals and there are less and less people who are providing the larger animal experience. That does have knock-on consequences, not least the point you were making, but the reason I was a bit puzzled is you gave me an example of a veterinary practice working with large animals but there are lots that are not, and in those cases people working there would have little chance of experience because they are not even working with those animals.

Q82  Chairman: Finally, in the latest annual report, in chapter 2 there is a pretty significant section about animal welfare, the challenges it meets and the way we are going to counteract disease risk. Do you believe we have the veterinary experience and capacity to meet those challenges or is what you are doing saying, "Well, I am not certain", therefore certain action has to be taken to address some of the issues which may threaten the achievement of the objectives outlined in your report. Do you discuss this with Mr Scudamore on a regular basis?

Mr Morley: I certainly discuss this on a regular basis with Jim and we have regular meetings, but Martin is on the operational side as the Director of the State Veterinary Service and Jim is on the policy side, and some of the points you mentioned are operational in terms of the experience events in identifying threat. It is true that they are only potential threats but we are aware of that which is why it was identified in the DEFRA report. It is part of in-service training and it is part of the interchange we have within DEFRA, our State Veterinary Service, and the private veterinary sector. There is a very close interrelationship between our State Veterinary Service and the private sector because, as you will be aware, something like 7,000 private vets that work for DEFRA as LVIs, so you have to have that interchange.

Mr Atkinson: I certainly would endorse the last point. We do see the future built around an improved relationship, an improved partnership, between the State Veterinary Service and the vets in private practice. What we might also mention looking to the future is the work that we are doing on developing animal health and welfare strategy. One of the key points is to get the balance right between the function of government and the private veterinary service and the industry itself. We can all see that the trends are not going in the right direction and we need to find a way of recovering the position, but that is going to be a partnership between all three parties concerned.

Q83  Mr Lazarowicz: Pursuing the issue of the links between DEFRA and the universities, we have been told by the Royal Society in one of their reports that whereas the Department of Health has a crucial role in supporting universities and training medical students and the provision of research, no government department has an equivalent royal with regard to university veterinary education, and this means, they suggest, the expertise in DEFRA and the Veterinary Laboratories Agency is uncoupled from the expertise in the veterinary schools and if they were brought together through joint funding, it is suggested, or even if a joint standing committee in education and research were created, it could do much to improve our national capability in the surveillance diagnosis and control of infectious diseases in animals. Do you agree, first of all, with that assertion and could you tell us a bit more about the way DEFRA does work with veterinary schools to ensure that vets are graduating with the expertise that is required for careers in the State Veterinary Service, and in large animal practice?

Mr Morley: I do not entirely agree with that. It is true, of course, that the veterinary schools are funded completely separately from DEFRA, that is absolutely right, but it is fair to say that we have, particularly in recent years, begun to incorporate some of the veterinary colleges, particularly in some of our surveillance work that we carry out, and there was also as part of the follow-up from the foot and mouth inquiries funding made available to veterinary schools as part of the surveillance work and as part of the work they do.

Mr Scudamore: We would agree that we need to work very closely with the veterinary schools and we have a number of initiatives on the go at the moment. In terms of working with them we are funding two veterinary investigation centre type units at London and Liverpool which will be part of the surveillance network, and we have a major joint programme with HEFCE and SHEFCE to provide money every year to develop initiatives on training --

Q84  Chairman: Could you remind us, for our greater education, what HEFCE is and - what was the other one?

Mr Scudamore: The Higher Education Funding Council which is the body that funds the universities, and they provide the funding to the universities to run the veterinary schools. SHEFCE is the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council.

Q85  Chairman: Thank you. That is helpful for those of us who are south of the border!

Mr Scudamore: They are the two funding bodies for universities and we have a joint initiative with those bodies to provide £5 million a year to develop training and research at the universities, so there is quite a lot going in the terms of links. There are also close links between the VLA, the Veterinary Laboratory Agency, at Weybridge which is one of our agencies, and the veterinary schools to work jointly in areas like pathology and epidemiology, so there are a number of initiatives where we are working with the universities but the difference is we do not have the NHS arrangements. The funding of the veterinary schools is entirely through the Department of Education, through HEFCE, and our funding is peripheral where there are specialised areas of work that we want doing.

Mr Morley: They are different structures in the way they are set up.

Q86  Mr Lazarowicz: Could it not be extended, or could not the work together be developed in anyway? You mentioned some initiatives but are there other things happening besides those or is that the sum total?

Mr Morley: There is regular contact between the veterinary schools and the State Veterinary Service and ourselves, and our agencies and laboratories. I think the principal difference is that, because of the way the Department of Health fund, they are funding the placement of doctors in hospitals and institutions as part of the NHS structure and we do not have an NHS structure for lifestock. That is a principal difference in the way the funding structures are laid out.

Q87  Mr Lazarowicz: What about the idea following the Royal Society about a joint standing committee in education and research? Would that be a good idea?

Mr Morley: There is some merit in that. It is something that could be considered.

Mr Scudamore: I have a number of points there. There was a research committee set up by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons which provided support to this initiative we have, the HEFCE and DEFRA initiative, in respect of what research was needed and what the priorities should be, so I think there are already various bodies in place to look at joint working together. We are also looking within the Department at scientific advisory groups. A lot of this is going to fall within the animal health and welfare strategy which is all about collaborating, working together and having partnerships, so we are working on a lot of these issues to identify the best partnerships with the universities, with stakeholders and with practice.

Q88  Mr Lazarowicz: Finally, a specific point made by the Royal College was the fact that at least four of the veterinary schools do not have viable farm animal practices with large caseloads, and have not been able to develop the level of expertise that now exists in a number of farm animal practices. Again, would you accept that is the case and, if it is, what plans do you have to ensure that the veterinary schools have adequate resources to allow students to undertake large animal work during their studies?

Mr Morley: Part of that is the responsibility of the schools in relation to the programmes they put forward to the funding councils in terms of what they want to do. I can see that some schools in relation to where they are based may have difficulties in relation to large animals. A lot of veterinary students got a lot of experience in the unfortunate foot and mouth event, of course, where many of the students worked for us, MAFF and then latterly DEFRA, and I do not know whether that is something that can be considered in relation to placements.

Mr Scudamore: We did have a scheme where we would accept veterinary students to work in the State Veterinary Service and in the Veterinary Laboratory Agency, because during their training they have to do extramural studies for a certain number of months with practices in different environments, and we need to look at that issue to see whether students can be placed in animal health offices and in the veterinary laboratory agencies, and how many can be placed there to get experience. On the point of the veterinary practices in schools, this really is an issue of the quality of the training, and that falls to the RCVS through their visitations to ensure that the schools can produce vets who have the right training to the right standard, but equally we do have a part to play and when I mentioned those initiatives we had, opening up a VI centre type place in London and Liverpool, the idea is we provide some of the resource, the university provides other resource, and by doing that material would come into the laboratory that students could look at. So I agree that it is important they get experience in large animal practice, but there are a number of different ways they can get it - either by the school itself having a practice, or by going out into practice, or by having placements in different parts to get different expertise.

Q89  Mr Wiggin: Mr Atkinson mentioned the consultation on preparing an animal health and welfare strategy for Great Britain. What sort of level of response have you had?

Mr Morley: It has been a very good response to the strategy and the stakeholder meetings that we have had. In fact, I would describe it as an enthusiastic response as a matter of fact. All sections of the livestock industry feel that this is a valuable exercise in terms of focusing on a proper animal health and welfare strategy, bringing together the work that we have done and also now we can make it more focused for the future.

Q90  Mr Wiggin: More than under national fallen stock proposals?

Mr Morley: Fallen stock is a completely separate issue!

Q91  Mr Wiggin: When will this strategy be published?

Mr Morley: It would be in the next month or so.

Mr Scudamore: We are drafting out the strategy now and we hope to publish in the next month or so. It will be an interim strategy, and the intention is we will consult and produce the final version in March next year.

Q92  Mr Wiggin: What steps are you taking to make sure that farmers do not see this as being imposed upon them?

Mr Morley: Mainly by making sure they are fully engaged in the process - as they have been through their organisations and also the comments we have received. But I can honestly say that I do not believe the health and welfare strategy is perceived in that way. The involvement we have had has been genuine and enthusiastic.

Q93  Chairman: Can I pursue you a little on this, Minister? We looked a little bit at the question of the available capacity within the private veterinary profession to deliver the kind of strategy you are talking about, and in paragraph 9 of your evidence to the Committee, you say: "Clearly farmers trust their veterinarians as communicators of animal health advice. However, one of the major issues is whether farmers and private veterinarians have the capacity to deliver this desired outcome through more on farms, perhaps through herd or flock health and welfare plans". So in your own evidence you cast doubt on whether there is enough capacity to deliver these plans, and then you use this wonderful word "perhaps" which suggests an element of doubt as to how this great strategy is to be delivered. What are you doing as part of this work to see whether capacity matches demand, and also the ability for farmers to afford to be part of it?

Mr Morley: We clearly have to evaluate capacity as part of any animal health and welfare strategy - both in relation to ourselves and also within the private sector. That is part of that. It also involves delivery or potential delivery of such things as whole herd and flock plans, although I would say there are a number of assurance schemes that farmers belong to that already have those schemes in place. On the pig side, for example, the State Veterinary Service provides some of the validation of those plans so we believe that you can implement this approach but it is true that you have to look at the overall resources available.

Q94  Chairman: You say you have to. Are you?

Mr Morley: Yes.

Q95  Chairman: And when this plan is published, will we be able to see the evidence that financial ability to purchase veterinary services is sufficient from within the farming community to make this work?

Mr Morley: That is a separate issue in relation to the ability to purchase the veterinary treatment --

Q96  Chairman: I am not talking about medicines now.

Mr Morley: No. I understand what you are saying but the profitability of livestock operations is an aspect of the health and welfare strategy. It is recognised.

Q97  Chairman: I am not quite certain what that means because elsewhere in your evidence you talk to us about plans which will come possibly from within the EU that will put, if you like, a whole farm hygiene plant - and I do not want to anticipate David's area of questioning - in place, and I am still not clear whether we have the resources and the affordability in place, which with all these requirements are probably very well meaning and all trundling down the farm track, to implement them thoroughly or not?

Mr Morley: Affordability is a matter for the sector in relation to its dealings with livestock farmers. Profitability for the sector has improved over the last two years, though I would not want to be complacent about that.

Mr Scudamore: I mentioned that we are presenting an interim strategy. The intention is that strategy will summarise what people have said and what they think are the key objectives of the strategy. We are then working from now through until next March to produce the final strategy plus a plan on how we will deliver it, and I think this meeting now is at the very beginning of that: the discussion on what people want and what the emerging themes are is what will come out in the next month. The question of what will be delivered and how it will be delivered will be for discussion over the next six months which is why this particular committee meeting at the moment is particularly appropriate, because one of the issues is we cannot deliver everything people want.

Q98  Chairman: So we can write in our report that the farming community should tell Mr Scudamore and Mr Morley what they can afford against a wish list of what they would like?

Mr Scudamore: They will be given the opportunity, as they have been, to comment on the strategy. Some of these are practical issues which you have identified which will clearly be at the forefront of many farmers' minds, and they will be free to comment to us in relation to not only what should be done but what realistically can be done as well.

Q99  Mr Drew: Why did you not use this methodology when you were doing fallen stock? It seems like you consulted widely, you have done it all nicely and yet ---

Mr Morley: We consulted on fallen stock for over twelve months.

Q100  Mr Drew: Yet only 25 per cent of farmers you wanted to comply have joined the scheme.

Mr Morley: That suggests that maybe there was not as big a problem as some people were making out in relation to the question of fallen stock.

Q101  Mr Drew: If we can look at herd health planning, as I think it is referred to, where has this idea of licensing gone? Obviously the Royal Society talked about this and we have discussed it on a number of occasions - I am pretty sure we will have asked you what your views are - but could you bring us up to date on what the current thinking is?

Mr Morley: The issue of licensing is an aspect of policy which is still under consideration in a range of measures which follow on from FMD, and that includes such things as animal health insurance, animal disease levy and licensing of livestock holder, which is part of that general approach which is still basically for consultation, and is up for consideration. There is a practical issue, however, on licensing of livestock hearings which is on database management, and this did come up in relation to our discussion on fallen stock, in that as part of this health and welfare strategy it is clearly going to have to be concentrating on making sure we have accurate and up-to-date database management, and one way of addressing that is certainly through some kind of licensing or registration scheme. So we have to consider it as an issue but at the moment it is still very much at the formulation stage and there will have to be a consultation.

Q102  Mr Drew: And would it be likely that this would have a de minimis level because obviously part of the problem, and I keep raising it, is we are not talking about what most people would concede as farmers: we are talking about, to use a pejorative term, hobby farmers who could be keeping one animal rather than anything we would technically call a herd. Is this the sort of thing we are talking about?

Mr Morley: That we would have to look at very closely because on the one hand you would not want to have a regime that imposed bureaucratic burdens on people who just had a couple of animals more as pets than anything else. On the other hand, when there is a disease risk and an epidemic, whether animals are pets or commercial, they are still at risk and we do need information on where they are in relation to managing any disease risk, so we have to give careful thought to that.

Q103  Mr Drew: In terms of the opportunity we have already had a debate on how these things are to be afforded. Is it possible that if you went for whole herd planning you could look at this coming into cross-compliance within the changes within the EU? I suppose the qualification would be how would you ensure, if you were going to look for registration or a licensing scheme, that the non supportive sector would have the incentives to be included, or would want to be included? Is this being actively followed?

Mr Morley: You have touched on a problem in the sense that you have supported livestock sectors and unsupported livestock sectors. Now, you could theoretically make a case in relation to changes under the CAP and you could have cross-compliance in relation to animal health plans, but then you could only apply cross-compliance to the supported sector, and you have sectors - pigs and poultry - which are unsupported, for example, although ironically there is probably more evidence of health plans in the pigs and poultry sector than in the supported sector at the present time. But the health plan approach is desirable and will certainly feature in the consultation on animal health and welfare strategy, and has already been embraced by a number of assurance schemes.

Q104  Mr Drew: To what extent are the assurance schemes including the right criteria that we should be judging the health and welfare of farm animals by? Are these in their own way too minimal to make that much of a difference, or would you think that this is something that could in due course be registrable and would do a lot of the groundwork and save some of the costs, and undoubtedly would be one of the arguments against doing this on a proper comprehensive basis?

Mr Morley: We will be consulting on the particular issue of whole herd plans as part of the strategy and those are the kind of issues we do need to think very carefully about.

Q105  Mr Wiggin: DEFRA is responsible for policing animal welfare. Can you tell us if the number of cases of poor farm animal welfare is increasing or decreasing?

Mr Morley: I am not sure we have figures that will say whether they are increasing or decreasing. We do get a number of cases every year as you can imagine of cases of animal cruelty and neglect. They are a very small proportion in relation to the overall livestock sector; nevertheless some of them can be severe and we do have powers for dealing with this. The principal power is the improvement notice under Section 11 which is issued by the State Veterinary Service whereby the livestock farmer is under an obligation to take steps to rectify any weaknesses that our State Veterinary Service has identified in relation to their care. If the improvement notice is ignored there are other powers under both animal health legislation and the 1911 Act. There are some weaknesses which have been identified in some aspects of this which we could address in the animal welfare book.

Q106  Mr Wiggin: I would appreciate, even if you do not have exact figures on the number of cases going out --

Mr Morley: We can write to you on that estimating what we do have.

Mr Scudamore: As far as I am aware it is more or less level, but we do have annual statistics and we can send you those.

Q107  Mr Wiggin: I was about to ask you for an estimate of the number of farms on which animal health standards need to improve. Might that fall into the same statistic?

Mr Morley: That is very difficult because you have standards that you can clearly measure improvement against where there is a very clear sub standard care, and you are into the realms of illegality there. Then you have a very grey area of standards which may not be illegal but may not rank with the best, and that is a difficult area in terms of how you evaluate that and, again, quality assurance schemes and the animal health and welfare strategy are ways that we can set standards based on good standards and the best standards and help people achieve those, not only in terms of prosecution but in terms of encouragement and education as well.

Q108  Mr Wiggin: On this subject, what sort of sanctions can you impose on farms that do not improve?

Mr Morley: They can have the animals confiscated and can be banned from keeping animals.

Q109  Mr Wiggin: Will the Animal Welfare Bill be published in draft and be subject to pre legislative scrutiny?

Mr Morley: That is my intention at this stage. As you appreciate, there are procedures which it has to go through in order to receive authority for this but having had the consultation which is very good, and having had a lot of response from the general public and from organisations, there is a lot of support in principle for an improvement in streamlining of legislation which goes back to 1911, and the way I would like to address this is to bring forward a bill in draft and allow another round of consultation on it.

Q110  Mr Wiggin: Lastly, in some parts of the country it is possible that there will be an absence of veterinary cover that would normally be available through the private sector. Would the State Veterinary Service provide veterinary cover for farm animals where private practices do not exist any more, and what implications would that have for State Veterinary Service routine work?

Mr Morley: It is not the function of State Veterinary Service to step in when there is no private veterinary cover available. Have we been asked to do that?

Mr Scudamore: No.

Q111  Mr Wiggin: Would you do it if you were asked?

Mr Atkinson: Certainly we would take on the statutory functions carried out by LVIs at the present time, and we are doing that in one or two areas where we are finding difficulty in getting LVIs to do tubercular testing but we would not have any role in provision of routine veterinary care to the animals on the farm.

Q112  Chairman: Can I get some handle on the amount of contact that what I might call the world of the official vet has with livestock farms, either directly through State Veterinary Service vets or LVIs? Mr Wiggin was talking about welfare standards but, first of all, how many livestock farms are there which potentially you can go and visit?

Mr Morley: 150,000 approximately, but we can give you the figure on that.

Q113  Chairman: This is not meant to be a trick question but let's say it is 150,000 plus or minus whatever the margin for error is, how many of those in any one year might be expected to have some form of "official" visit?

Mr Morley: They would not expect to have one every single year --

Q114  Chairman: That is why I said in any one year.

Mr Atkinson: It would depend on the sector. We have routine tubercular testing of cattle herds and the frequency of that testing depends on the status of the herd, so if you were a cattle farmer in the south west you would probably have an official visit every month or so at the moment but in other parts of the country where we do not have a TB problem the routine tubercular test may be once every four years. If you were a sheep farmer you might never have a visit unless there was a suspicion of a case of an exotic disease which we were tracing or following up or if there was an allegation of poor welfare, a complaint - that is a visit from the State Veterinary Service. As we have already recognised, there are about 7,000 LVIs out there, and many of their activities are paid for by the State Veterinary Service such as tubercular testing. Many of their other activities, such as export certification, although they are doing it in an official capacity they are paid for by the client, but that gets them out on the farms. However, these are, of course, the individuals who are the private vets for the livestock industry and therefore they will be attending as and when requested to do so by the farmer, and we do not have really any information about how big the service that is needed might be.

Q115  Chairman: Do I get the impression from what you have just said that if the strategy in whatever shape or form emerges it is going to require a lot of self-policing by the livestock industry of whatever elements go into it, because if there are 150,000 potential places to go and visit you have not either with State Veterinary Service or LVIs got enough capacity to go round and check up to see if whatever comes out of the strategy is being adhered to?

Mr Morley: That is true to a certain extent but it is worth saying that most farmers will have their local vet on their farm on regular occasions. Private vets are given guidance from DEFRA and through the State Veterinary Service on a whole range of issues - welfare and disease surveillance - and we would expect vets to use their professional judgment, and if they felt there were problems in particular areas to draw them to the attention of the State Veterinary Service for further investigation.

Q116  Chairman: So does Mr Scudamore submit a report every so often headed The State of Animal Welfare in Britain? Does he give you a sort of overview from time to time?

Mr Morley: There is an annual overview in the country which we discuss, and we do have an animal welfare division within the Department who I meet with regularly in relation to their vets, and they discuss with me areas of concern and trends within the sector, where ever they are.

Q117  Mr Lazarowicz: This links to the question of the Department's surveillance strategy and you rightly refer to the role that private vets play in that, and in your own strategy document which you launched last year you emphasised the importance of improving collaboration with vets in private practice. Could you give us information on how you envisage doing that, and generally sharing information more widely?

Mr Morley: At the moment the strategy is not published and it will be in draft, but there is already a great deal of contact between the Department and the State Veterinary Service and the private veterinary sector. As I mentioned there are guidance notes, correspondence and interchanges; our ministry vets do attend a range of veterinary conferences; they present papers to various conferences in relation to aspects of animal care, diseases and epidemiology; there is a lot of regular contact between the State Veterinary Service, DEFRA and the private veterinary sector, and we do want to develop that. Again, going back to the follow-up from the independent reports, there are issues of making sure we have a list of private vets who are available to help in the event of a disease outbreak; there is a need to have updates in relation to training on being familiar with exotic diseases and identifying them; and that is an on-going process in relation to our relationship between DEFRA and the private sector which is very close.

Mr Atkinson: I see three initiatives at the moment which have a bearing on this. The first we have already talked about which is the development of the animal health and welfare strategy which is going to be quite key in determining what the respective roles are and what the partnership might look like in the future. The second is the development of the veterinary surveillance strategy which you referred to earlier which, again, is at a consultation stage where there has been lots of input, and that input is being considered and I am sure further consultation will be taking place in due course. Thirdly, we are jointly undertaking a review with the DVA into the nitty gritty of the contractual arrangements that we have with local veterinary inspectors where we recognise that, although this system has worked and served us well for many decades, it needs revising and modernising and bringing into line with the modern employment of traditional practice, and there is work ongoing there to try to define the nature of that relationship so that, as the emerging strategies begin to shed light on the precise role of these vets, we have a framework within which we can deal with that.

Mr Scudamore: On the surveillance strategy we put out a consultation document and we had about 41 responses which we are analysing. It is our intention to produce a report on the consultation we have had and what the issues were that people raised and what the impact of those will be on the strategy. Then we will produce the final strategy, hopefully in the autumn, and we will also develop a computerised system for collecting and analysing information. There are two issues on surveillance: one is targeted surveillance where you specifically go and look for something, the question being "Is the country free from disease X" and we will do a survey, either through abattoirs or farms, where we could, if we were looking for clinical information, use practices to do that work for us, or we have continuous on-going surveillance where we are continually getting information in and looking to see if there are new events or new emerging diseases. So both of those areas we are looking at and both have an important role to play but so do other organisations like the abattoirs where we look at animal carcasses to see what diseases they have so there are areas we can look at there. There is one other area which might be of interest to you: one of the comments we had earlier was that the coverage by the veterinary profession is getting worse. We do not know that we are not getting the surveillance we want so we are going to produce livestock population maps and on those we are going to map the submissions we get from the species so that we can get some baseline to work out whether we are getting the information we want and whether it is getting worse, or what is going on, and then if we do find there are areas where we are not getting material we will have to see what action we can take to get the surveillance information we need.

Q118  Mr Lazarowicz: We were told by the Royal College in the evidence they gave us that they felt that DEFRA should be developing a strategy for measuring the incidence of a whole range of endemic diseases. What is your present thinking on the role DEFRA should play in the surveillance of non notifiable diseases? Should that come out of the strategy? Have you got views on this at the moment?

Mr Scudamore: At the moment DEFRA does play quite a big role in non notifiable disease in that samples which are submitted by veterinary surgeons to the Veterinary Laboratory Agency are examined to find out what the condition is, and we have a computerised system where all the diagnoses are recorded so, from the samples submitted by vets there is a record of the diagnosis and in the past few years we have modified that so there is a record of why the sample was submitted because often that is quite important if a new syndrome or new disease is developing. For example, with BSE you would be looking for nervous signs in cattle so we would try and put in place a system that will pick up abnormal clinical disease and equally that will record what was found in terms of the diagnosis. So it is important that we do look at non notifiable disease because often the first occurrence of the disease will be non notifiable as happened with bluey pig disease. There was a new syndrome around which then became notifiable while we investigated it and then it was denotified when we had a good idea of the cause, so it is very important we do look at non notifiable disease and that needs to be built into the way the surveillance system is expanded and developed.

Q119  Mr Lazarowicz: One area of concern is how you develop the surveillance network in the area of animals kept as pets - livestock, cats and dogs, and everything else. What is your current thinking of how you can include pets in the surveillance system to identify the potential threats, both to the animal health and possibly human health as well?

Mr Morley: This is an issue raised by the British Small Animal Veterinary Association so we are familiar with this and there are steps being put in place.

Mr Scudamore: There are a number of different issues here. One is the pet farm animals that are kept, the pigs and the sheep, because a lot of people have pet sheep these days, and it is a question of what surveillance we can put in with those. Really we are looking at a complex of surveillance and education because I think the most important issue, if we are looking for notifiable disease in pet animals, is that the owners recognise they have a problem and do something about it, so in that case education is going to be the important issue. The question is how we get information to all these people, and that is an issue which has caused us some difficulty in knowing where they are and having the information of where to get to them, so we then come back to the question of registration and knowing where these animals are so we can go and see them and get information to them. I think in those cases a lot of the surveillance for the notifiable diseases will be by education of the owners to recognise abnormal conditions and report them to their veterinary surgeons and also to the government.

 

Q120  Chairman: Can I follow up on the National Animal Disease Information Service? Help me to understand that. Do you fund that?

Mr Morley: Not that one, no. That is funded by the veterinary schools.

Q121  Chairman: How many vets do you think contribute to the National Animal Disease Information Service?

Mr Morley: It is a voluntary scheme which is run by a number of vets. It provides a very useful service although it does not provide comprehensive surveillance.

Q122  Chairman: Do you plug into its results?

Mr Morley: Yes. We are holding discussions with the organisers at the present time. We have a scheme that is radar, which is what Jim was mentioning. That is a surveillance scheme that we fund from Defra. It is a new one which is still under development radar, so that there may be ways that we can co-operate in relation to the two schemes.

Q123  Chairman: How many vets are on your radar screen then?

Mr Scudamore: Going back to the first question, there are about 40 private practices involved in NADIS. With the schemes we have, which is where the private vets take samples and send them to the VLA, there are reckoned to be about 370-380 practices which regularly submit samples to the Veterinary Laboratory Agency. The NADIS scheme is 40 private veterinary practices and the farm animal practices of the six veterinary schools, because each of the veterinary schools does have some form of practice.

Q124  Chairman: The reason I ask this question is that there is a very interesting letter by a Mr Andrew White, believe it or not from Preston, in the Veterinary Record of March 29, in which he extols the virtues of this scheme, and I was intrigued to know where this information surfaced from. He goes on about his little tape recorder and he sends information in every two weeks and he tells us that he is a trained scientist and he has a sixth sense to observe things. I was getting terribly excited about all this and then I suddenly realised I did not quite know where this information ended up. Where does it end up? Does it end up just for the benefit of those who produce it?

Mr Scudamore: No. The information is sent, I understand, to London School where it is transcribed for analysis and then it is published in a publication called UK Vet, on the website of NADIS, and it is also put into the local farming press. We have an interest in this because it is the set of practitioners who are collecting information and there is in fact a pilot project going to be established with Defra to see how we can use that practice network to undertake targeted surveillance using clinical science; in other words the vets will go out, we would want surveillance doing for a certain clinical picture, they would report it back and we would look to see how we could work with that. There are pros and cons in this arrangement. The advantage is that there is a network, people send material in. The problem we have, though, if we are collecting information for surveillance purposes is that it has to be unbiased wherever possible, it has to have data quality, and one of the difficulties with clinical observations is that unless you have a standard mechanism you can have misleading information. The case definition is an equally difficult problem to solve. The situation, as I say, is that we will be working with them on a pilot study to collect information in and as part of the surveillance strategy it is critical that we do work with organisations like this and other organisations to collect the information in.

Q125  Paddy Tipping: The Competition Commission has been having a look at veterinary practice and prescription medicines. What is your take on their report?

Mr Morley: I think it came to reasonable conclusions. From a Government point of view we can accept them all bar one in relation to their recommendations. I think they have taken a balanced approach in relation to the needs of veterinary practices and the need to have proper control over medicines, and also are taking an appropriate look at what can be sold on a non-prescription basis in relation to reducing costs to people.

Q126  Paddy Tipping: What is the one recommendation?

Mr Scudamore: I cannot remember which one it was.

Q127  Paddy Tipping: It was not a top line one?

Mr Morley: It was to do with something on prescribing. I can certainly make sure you get it.

Q128  Paddy Tipping: There does seem to be an issue in the report which seems to suggest that vets are overcharging for prescribing and maybe not being straightforward enough in charging for visits. Do you accept that?

Mr Morley: I do not really know. That was the whole idea of the review. It is a matter for the Commission to decide whether or not the charges were excessive. I am not in a position to judge. That was the whole idea of having an independent review of that kind. It is certainly true that there were complaints about the level of charges, which is why the Competition Commission looked into it.

Q129  Paddy Tipping: What are the consequences if the report goes through with one recommendation that you are not prepared to accept? How do you think it will change practice, particularly in rural areas? There was a discussion earlier on about whether all farms would be covered by the private sector. If you do not make your profit out of the prescribing is there an issue there?

Mr Morley: There is certainly an issue in relation to the profitability of prescribing. It is not one which is unique to rural veterinary practices. There are many rural health practices where prescribing is very important to them as well in relation to that and there are similar arguments. It is a bit hard to judge what the impact will be. It is certainly true that there are some large users, and perhaps the agricultural sector is one, which may find that they can obtain some medicines at cheaper prices from alternative suppliers if it is not prescription only. On the other hand, for many people it is convenient, when they see their vet, just to get the medicines from the practice. It is very hard to say that it would have a huge consequence. We will have to see how it develops before we can ascertain that.

Q130  Paddy Tipping: Remind me: the report is to the DTI?

Mr Morley: It is a DTI report.

Q131  Paddy Tipping: What is the next step forward for your Department?

Mr Morley: The recommendations are to us and those are ones that we will have to consider in relation to implementation.

Q132  Paddy Tipping: The European Commission has a view on this. There is a suggestion that all drugs prescribed to animals ought to be prescription only.

Mr Morley: Yes, that is right.

Q133  Paddy Tipping: What is your view on that?

Mr Morley: I am not sure that that is necessarily the case. There is certainly an argument that in these days of concern about food and residue levels in relation to veterinary products there is a need to have proper control and to have a professional input, and of course that is the argument for prescribing. I think the Competition Commission addressed those issues in a very detailed way in terms of the conclusions it came to.

Q134  Paddy Tipping: So you would not go along with the Commission's view?

Mr Morley: Not for every single medicine, no.

Q135  Mr Drew: I have now begun to be contacted by vets, I have to say vets mainly in the pet category rather than the larger animal category and it is even more true now in the larger animal sector, and I just wondered what was the mechanism by which they can try and look at this issue of what they do through the market place as against what they do where there are social benefits. We all accept that if you just run veterinary services entirely through the market place there would be some adverse consequences. Is this a debate that you might have with the DTI as a result of the Competition Commission report?

Mr Morley: Are you talking merely about small animals?

Q136  Mr Drew: No; I am talking about both because there are practices that specialise in either but there are some that perform in both sectors. There are some interesting issues here about how they make their money, the degree to which there is cross-subsidisation, is this overt or is this covert? If you did make it a more stark series of decisions based entirely on what the market would bear what implications would that have, particularly for what we are talking about here, the larger animal sector, because we all know it is a sector that is under some pressure at the moment?

Mr Morley: I think there is a distinction to be made between the commercial sector, whereby veterinary treatment is part of a business cost in relation to the business of rearing livestock and, as I mentioned, Chairman, it is, on the figures we have, generally speaking a fairly small overall business cost of any kind of livestock operation, and the small animal sector. On the small animal side, it is true that you may have people on very low incomes and there is a social issue there in relation to a market driven veterinary service, but in the small animal sector on the social side, as we all know, there is a range of charities who provide veterinary care for people who, for various reasons, find it difficult to afford.

Q137  Chairman: What economic studies have you done looking at private veterinary practice to try and find out what proportion of different types of practice income come from the sale of medicines and what proportion come from the sale of their services?

Mr Morley: It was touched upon in the Competition Commission study. It was not quite as detailed as what you have laid out. What they were looking at was more in relation to the value to the practices in relation to the sale of medicines. I am not sure that I am aware of a study which has broken it down in that detail.

Q138  Chairman: The reason I ask that question is that Mr Drew touched on a very interesting point which you did not respond to, which is this question of cross-subsidisation. In other words, if the practice says, "What is our total income in relation to our outgoings?", and it says, "Sale of veterinary services, sale of medicines, sum total, we can keep in business", the worry is if that opportunity is taken away and put in strictly commercial terms, they might still be able to sell some things but they might not be able to sell everything. I just wondered what impact study had been done looking at various scenarios that could occur as a result of the competition analysis.

Mr Morley: How veterinary practices operate in relation to that element of cross-subsidy is a decision for them in relation to what is a competitive market with regard to veterinary treatments. I do not know if Mr Scudamore is aware of any studies like that.

Mr Scudamore: The only studies that the surveys that the Competition Commission did were where they looked at whether professional fees were subsidised by a mark-up on drugs. We have not done any studies on that.

Q139  Chairman: Am I not right in saying that Defra will have given a view to the DTI in adjudging on this matter, or even to the Competition Commission in its work? Did you have any input into this?

Mr Morley: The Competition Commission is completely independent.

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 offices and Animal Health Offices 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 and it gives employment lawyers and 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.

Q160  Mr Drew: What are the attractions of working for the SVS rather than working in private practice, because of course you want this movement backwards and forwards?

Mr Atkinson: I would reiterate what the Minister said. A large number of private vets came and got a close-hand view of what we were doing during the foot and mouth disease outbreak and since then we have had a tremendous response to any recruitment advertising that we have done and we have placed some really high quality people.

Q161  Mr Drew: So you need some more crises?

Mr Atkinson: I think it is true to say that most people go to veterinary college with an image of not quite Rolf Harris and Trude Mostue but certainly with an image of doing clinical work, of treating sick animals and making them better. Very few people go to veterinary college with the idea of working for government or becoming a civil servant and therefore it is not really in the frames of reference of most people who go through veterinary college. There needs to be some stimulus to get them to consider a career in the public sector. We do not pay huge salaries which offer an incentive to people to join us but what we do have is a breadth of work and a very interesting category of work that people do not normally get in practice but people in practice are not aware of that unless something draw it to their attention, and what happened in foot and mouth disease was that they did get involved and get to appreciate what we do and found it attractive.

Mr Morley: You have to be a bit careful, Martin, because the conspiracy theorists will be saying that we started foot and mouth just to boost the SVS recruitment.

Q162  Mr Drew: Do not worry: that has been put to me on many occasions.

Mr Morley: I have heard all the conspiracy theories. I could write a book on them. In terms of some people who have been interested in the SVS, the SVS is very much a team working based thing and I think sometimes you can be working on your own in some practices and for those people who like to work as a team the SVS offers that. There is also this issue, which is very serious, that we are talking about national surveillance, we are talking about combating serious economic and welfare threats to the livestock and indeed wildlife of this country, and it is an important job and I think many people have recognised just how important and how fulfilling it can be and that has helped with the recruitment.

Q163  Mr Drew: This question is not tongue in cheek but a very serious issue. How much longer can we have SVS reporting to Defra, the Meat Hygiene Service reporting to the Department of Health, environmental health officers reporting to a district council, trading standards officers reporting to a county council, if you have got two-tier authorities, and then Health and Safety which may be called in? This is a bit of a muddle, is it not?

Mr Morley: I think there is a logic in this. It is important that you do have proper co-ordination and co-operation but the MHS vets report to the Food Standards Agency for very sound reasons and it is part of the concept of separating food safety from what could be seen as a department which is also sponsoring the food industry, so that you separate that completely so that food safety is then accountable to the Department of Health. I think there are very good and sound arguments for doing that and it does not mean to say that you cannot have co-ordination and proper links in with this and of course the environmental health departments in departments of local authorities are of course distributed right across the whole country and have that local involvement and are involved in local enforcement, of course, which would be very difficult to do from the centre. Again, I think there are very good arguments for having that devolved to local government. I do not think we should underestimate the value of local government in terms of policy delivery and animal welfare and safety for consumers. Although there are those differences in relation to accountability and structure, I personally think there are good reasons for that.

Q164  Mr Drew: I accept what you say and I presume that this is regularly reviewed by Government.

Mr Morley: Everything comes up for review at periodic intervals, generally at five-yearly intervals.

Q165  Mr Drew: My concern would be that if you bring in the RSPCA as well how many people are potentially going on to farms, which is always an issue when you talk to farmers, but also how many people, given that sort of complexity, can get at the other end of those that keep livestock, which we have already alluded to, that is, keeping one or two animals? The danger is that with five agencies it is very easy for none of those agencies ever to be brought into looking at someone who is mistreating their pet sheep. Where do we begin to draw the line because this is quite an issue?

Mr Morley: You are absolutely right and, as I mentioned to the Committee, this is one of the things that we are giving some current thought to in relation to our general approach on animal health and welfare strategies. It is a difficult one. When we have had outbreaks in the past the SVS has been quite successful, working with local authorities, in tracking down people who have had the odd pig or the odd sheep because we need to know this. In the classical swine fever outbreak there were a number of people who had some backyard pigs and it was absolutely essential that we knew where they were and that was done. It is challenging and I think there are issues that we need to consider about how we improve that. Probably the simplistic answer is local knowledge and that if you have local knowledge people tend to know who has what and where you may find it, but even the most effective local authority in the country is not going to know where every single backyard pig or sheep is.

Q166  Mr Wiggin: We have just been talking about the number of vets. Earlier on Mr Atkinson said that he was having trouble with tuberculin tests. This concerned me because obviously tuberculosis spreads very quickly and I wondered whether he had enough people or, if he does not, what steps are being taken about that. What is the real story?

Mr Atkinson: Most of the tuberculin testing is done by LVIs in practice. Perhaps I ought to record that over the last year when we had a backlog of testing built up the local veterinary practitioners did a tremendous job in boosting their efforts and dealing with a large number of those additional tests. Dealing with tuberculosis and the consequences of breakdown takes up quite a high proportion of the time of the SVS. It is true that we need to look at the priorities for our activities, as Jim said earlier. We cannot do everything that everybody wants us to do. Most of the things that we do somebody places a high value on and places a high priority on and we work closely with Jim and our policy colleagues in trying to determine the priorities for putting resources in. There are one or two offices which at the minute with the increasing tuberculosis load are under a fair bit of pressure. I do not think the right answer is to go out and get more vets, which is perhaps the context in the question is often posed. It is worth remembering that I have 230-odd front line field vets but I have a thousand other staff in the State Veterinary Service, technical assistants, administrative people, and actually a lot of the constraints are on that level of staff, not necessarily on the veterinary side.

Mr Morley: That was one of the reasons, you may recall, that we put forward the idea of lay testers and there has been an extension of lay staff in a number of veterinary procedures. That is one area that we want to explore with the RCVS.

Q167  Mr Wiggin: So where would you put the tuberculin testing in your list of priorities? You were talking about having a list of priorities.

Mr Atkinson: It is not so much the tuberculin testing, the majority of which, as I say, is done by the local practices. It is dealing with the consequences of that which causes the pressure - getting large numbers of reactors valued, slaughtered and what-not. There is a lot of processing involved there which is perhaps not done by veterinary staff but done by my administrative staff. Tuberculosis is one of the highest priorities but I would say that essentially we agree the priorities with our policy customers and essentially it is in discussion with Jim and Ministers that the overall priorities are established. Protecting human health comes at the top of our list, so things like dealing with TSE cases, feed surveillance and that sort of thing is at the top of our list, closely followed by ITB.

Q168  Mr Wiggin: One of the things you have just said there was quite alarming. You called Jim a policy customer. The real customers, I think, are all the people. The next group of customers presumably are the farmers rather than the policy makers. How will you turn to Jim and his team and say, "Look: I am sorry; we have not finished dealing with the tuberculin test problem. We are still dealing with the slaughter backlog", and all the other points you made? Who is pulling the strings here? That is what I am getting at.

Mr Morley: The priorities in relation to how we allocate resources are matters in the end for Ministers with the advice of the Chief Veterinary Officer.

Q169  Chairman: How much does SVS cost a year?

Mr Atkinson: My administrative running cost budget for the year that we have just started is £46 million and on top of that I have the budget which pays for the LVI fees of a further £22 million, off the top of my head.

Q170  Chairman: So state spending on veterinary activity on this basis is £68 million. When the wheel falls off, like foot and mouth, and we rack up a four billion pound bill, do you think £46 million to four billion is a proper relationship in trying to minimise risk in this area? Everything you have said has pointed to a more sophisticated strategy to improve animal welfare, to improve bio-security, to minimise the risk that another disease could have a devastating effect on whatever part of the UK livestock industry it might choose to visit upon. If we were taking out household policies and we were looking at a risk expenditure you might think this was a very low premium to cover what can sometimes be an enormous risk.

Mr Morley: We recognise that and that is exactly why we have launched the Animal Health and Welfare Strategy. We recognise that in terms of preventative spending in relation to the SVS then of course you can be protecting the country from huge additional costs and problems and the industry itself. I know you were not saying this but it is important to stress that of course it is not just the responsibility of the SVS. It is a shared responsibility within the whole livestock sector.

Q171  Chairman: It is quite an interesting question that we have as a state-run responsibility a veterinary service. You could say, "We, the Government, will lay down a set of requirements for you, the industry, to follow - disease surveillance, self-reporting, analysis, all the rest of it", and just come out of the veterinary business. It is interesting that you do put £68 million into providing a quality State Veterinary Service.

Mr Morley: Yes, that is sometimes forgotten, you are quite right. I think you are always going to have to have a state involvement because, of course, as Martin pointed out, there are a number of statutory obligations which have to be carried out in relation to the livestock sector. Whether it is LVI inspections for animal transport or whether it is a range of other disease issues you do need a state body to ensure that those statutory functions are carried out. A lot of that is actually carried out by the private sector which is supervised by the SVS so in terms of it core, it is a comparatively modest core because it involves a great deal of the private sector but, of course, it has to be paid for and that is where a lot of that funding comes from. You are right in that there has to be a partnership in terms of minimising disease risk and it cannot all fall on the SVS or indeed the state.

Q172  Chairman: Let me ask you a straight question before I move on to one or two points of detail about LVI recruitment. Do you do any kind of risk analysis where you compare the resource to deal with risk with the value of the risk you are trying to protect?

Mr Morley: Certainly we carried out risk analysis in relation to importation of disease risk, that was carried out in some detail. It is quite complex but certainly we have done that.

Q173  Chairman: What was the outcome of that in the context of veterinary expenditure? Did it say "about right", "not enough", "we want more"?

Mr Morley: It did not quite present it in that way but what the outcome was of the study that was done - this was on importation - was that while there were risks of importation, and they tried to evaluate those, there were much larger risks within the livestock sector, much larger risks. In that sense you do have to be able to address that, of course, both in terms of our responsibilities from Government, which we accept, but also in relation to the industry as well.

Q174  Chairman: The reason I am driving at that is I am interested in the resources we have available because it is a circular subject. I was going to ask about whether you had any difficulties in recruiting LVIs? Have you got enough of them to do the job that SVS is supervising through LVIs within the country? If we do not have enough vets with the right experience therefore we cannot have a pool of people from which to recruit and if we have not got enough business we just go round and round in circles.

Mr Morley: I understand what you are saying. I will bring Jim in in a moment. What I was saying the LVI recruitments are, generally speaking, overall not aware there is a major problem. As Martin has mentioned where there are areas of pressure, such as certain parts of the country where there is big demand for TB testing, for example, then there can be some problems of availability. Also you get the odd problems, I remember at Dover, in relation to live animal exports because live animal exports are very controversial, as you are aware. The exporters found difficulty in recruiting LVIs to do the inspections. They are some odd pressure points but on recruitment, generally, it is not too bad. Jim, do you want to say a word?

Mr Scudamore: I just want to clarify a number of points, if I may. We talk about the SVS costing £68 million, there are a lot of other agencies that do similar work. So, for example, the local authority do the enforcement work on behalf of the SVS and that all has to be costed in as well. We have just developed a framework agreement with local authorities regarding enforcement services, particularly with reference to consistency and a risk based approach because I think one of the issues is if you have got 20 jobs to do you need to work out what the risk of not doing one of the jobs will be and then balance that against the resource you have got. We are trying to develop that as a risk based approach to the work that is and is not done. On the risk work, we have done a risk assessment on import controls and, interestingly, that showed that if we doubled the resource input we will put a huge amount of extra resource and it will not make a lot of difference to the risk. Interestingly, you can use the risk based approach to assess if you do a lot more work will it make much difference to the risk and sometimes it might not. We are doing a lot of risk work, also, on the movement controls. We had the 20 day controls, we have got now the six day controls, all of which will be a combination of risk and cost benefit for the benefits of the controls as against not having the controls. I think there is a lot of work going on in those areas. Also we have the Veterinary Laboratory Agency which is a surveillance network as well as the SVS so that needs to be built into the costing as well. When you add all these in there is quite a lot more money spent on veterinary work in this country in terms of surveillance and controlling disease.

Q175  Chairman: On LVIs, have you got enough?

Mr Atkinson: By and large, yes, I think the survey the Minister referred to at the beginning of the discussion we are having this afternoon - the survey we carried out in the animal health offices -

was related to any problems they were having in finding LVIs to do the work that we needed to do. What that recorded was that although the number of practices might be reducing we were not having difficulty in getting the LVI services delivered, except in one or two areas.

Q176  Chairman: When a veterinary practitioner takes on the role of the LVI, does he get paid personally or his practice?

Mr Atkinson: The practice, for the work that we pay for, of course, as we say we do not pay for all LVI work.

Q177  Chairman: I appreciate that. In terms of a way of bolstering private practice then in some areas LVI work is rather important?

Mr Morley: I would think it is very important to some.

Q178  Chairman: The British Cattle Veterinary Association proposed a partnership between the SVS and specific farm veterinary practices in order to address this question of supply. Is that something you have looked at?

Mr Atkinson: Yes, it is. The British Cattle Veterinary Association is a sub-division of the British Veterinary Association and influential members of the BCVA are participating in the various working groups we have got at the moment looking at potential models for how we might do it. The BCVA are on record with that and speak very eloquently about it at all sorts of BVA gatherings. I have to say it is not universally supported by other sectors so there is still a selling job. It is a proposal which has some positive features which certainly need considering.

Q179  Mr Lazarowicz: How does the SVS actually go about communicating with the private vets? What is the main method of communication for you? Have you got a website where they can find out about information that is available?

Mr Morley: There is a website and there is also direct communication direct to practices as well.

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, an 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 description and distribution. One of the recommendations was that the description 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.