Veterinary Surgeons and Animal Welfare (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Trees

Wednesday 6th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak on the veterinary surgeons and animal welfare regulations and I strongly support them. We are all well aware that there is some division on whether Brexit is a good or bad thing, but I respectfully suggest that this consequence of Brexit, this SI, is a good thing. It will help to ensure high standards of animal health and welfare and, most importantly, protect the public, which is the purpose of professional regulation.

Up to now, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons has had the power to ensure that all those whom it admits to its register to become members of the Royal College, which is the legal requirement to practise in the UK, meet certain quality assurance standards. In particular, they have to have been trained in a professionally accredited institution. This applies to all graduates of every vet school in the world, including the UK, except those from EU member states. By virtue of EU law, all graduates of any institution recognised by the member state Government have to be automatically granted admission to the register of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, whether or not that institution has been subject to a professional accreditation process. This SI will eliminate that anomaly.

There is an accreditation process in Europe, run by the European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education, or EAEVE. Under the SI, the RCVS will be able to acknowledge graduates of EAEVE-accredited schools as meeting the RCVS quality assurance standards, thus admitting them to membership of the Royal College—and it has committed to this. However, a minority of vet schools in Europe have not been EAEVE accredited; they have either submitted and failed, or have not submitted to the accreditation process. For the first time, graduates of such schools will not be automatically admitted to the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons register. They will have an alternative route, which is currently used by graduates of many vet schools throughout the world: namely, sitting the statutory examinations of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. I would submit that all this is eminently consistent and fair.

There is a small downside. Currently, about 13% of EU vets admitted to the MRCVS register are from EU schools which are not professionally accredited in any way. Therefore, this SI may slightly reduce the number of vets able to work here. I submit that that is a small but worthwhile price to pay to assure the public that any MRCVS vet meets proper professional quality assurance standards. We face a shortage of vets in the UK and that is likely to be exacerbated by Brexit. However, lowering standards is not the way to respond to this. A new graduate stream of vets from the University of Surrey will enter our labour market this summer and a new vet school in the Midlands is planned at the Universities of Keele and Harper Adams. In the immediate future, the solution to our workforce shortage is to facilitate the employment of vets from EU or global institutions which are accredited to the satisfaction of the RCVS. Those vets are available and keen to come to work here. The Home Office needs to enable and facilitate that, and a first major step would be to restore vets to the shortage occupation list.

In summary, I strongly support this regulation. It will remove an anomaly, strengthen animal health and welfare and strengthen the assurance of the public.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I am happy to join the noble Lord, Lord Trees, in welcoming the veterinary surgeons regulation, and I also support the farriers and animal health regulations. I have just one comment, which relates to a point I raised on the fisheries regulation we discussed earlier. Our attention there was drawn to Annexe B, which summarised the effect of the amendments. I cannot help noticing that we do not have such an annexe for these regulations. I wonder whether the Minister could see if we could have such an annexe in future cases, because it is extremely helpful when one has a very telegraphic list of things, no doubt according to the usual practice. One finds that in both of these regulations; the first operative part amending the Act is a series of omissions and phrases with “or”, without any guidance on what they are talking about. The inclusion of an annexe would have been extremely helpful for understanding the general effect of the proposed amendments.