Official Report 605KB pdf
Agenda item 3 is evidence on the review of veterinary disease surveillance centres from Scotland’s Rural College. Our witnesses today are from the college’s commercial division, SAC Consulting Ltd. I welcome Mike Wijnberg, who is the managing director of SAC Consulting, and Brian Hosie, who is the head of SAC Consulting vet services. We will hear a short opening statement from Mike Wijnberg, then proceed to questions. Welcome, gentlemen. I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
Thank you very much. We are very pleased to have this opportunity to share our position with you.
You will be aware that the stakeholder consultation ran from 2 June to 10 July. We have considered very thoroughly the responses that we received. Some work arising from that is still on-going.
This process has inevitably resulted in a great deal of uncertainty for staff, particularly those at the affected sites. No decisions have yet been concluded with regard to our next steps, so no announcements have been made. Procedurally speaking, once we have reached a decision on our next steps, our staff and the unions will be the first to be made aware. A formal staff consultation would then be initiated. I respectfully request that committee members bear that in mind, given the public nature of this meeting.
I will outline SRUC’s role in the decision-making process on animal disease surveillance. SRUC, through its commercial division, SAC Consulting, delivers veterinary surveillance and public-good advisory services under a memorandum of understanding with the Scottish Government.
Following a recommendation from the Kinnaird report, the Scottish Government established an independent strategic management board to advise on the future of veterinary disease surveillance in Scotland. The three independent members of the SMB were appointed by the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Food and Environment and it is chaired by the chief veterinary officer for Scotland.
SAC Consulting has considerable technical expertise in animal disease surveillance. As the main operational protagonist, it works with and through the strategic management board on matters affecting the strategic direction of disease surveillance in Scotland. We have been doing that for the past three and a half years.
Under our memorandum of understanding with the Scottish Government, there are areas in which SAC Consulting is required to obtain specific permissions in order to proceed.
I will say a few words about disease surveillance itself. There are basically two broad areas of disease surveillance. The majority of our activities at our eight disease surveillance centres across Scotland involve vets, farmers, crofters and others submitting carcases and other specimens to our laboratory facilities as part of what is termed passive surveillance. That relies on the initiative being taken by the individual vet or farmer to submit material to us.
Active surveillance, on the other hand, is where the initiative is taken—perhaps by us or perhaps by others—to investigate actively what is believed to be a disease trend. That might be on the basis of information that has become apparent, and on the basis of data that is available. I highlight the difference between passive and active surveillance and emphasise that we have ambitions to use both forms of surveillance more closely as we go forward. We would be happy to talk about that.
Disease surveillance around the world has been receiving attention in terms of how it is carried out. Specifically on Scotland, I should make you aware that the disease surveillance infrastructure dates back to the 60s and 70s in many cases, since when, of course, the structure of farming has changed very significantly, livestock numbers have, by and large, decreased significantly and Government approaches to public funding—not just in Scotland, but in other parts of the world—have changed significantly, too.
There is now a need to modernise our approach to disease surveillance in order to deliver a high-quality output and the best value for money for the taxpayer. Indeed, that was recognised in the Kinnaird report, which was published in 2011. We need to make better use of passive and active surveillance and ensure that the widest and best use is made of the knowledge and skills of the broader veterinary and farmer communities. We believe that we should make better use of modern technology in order to join up that information and better co-ordinate it.
It was against that backdrop and, more recently, the acute pressure of budgetary cuts that, on 2 June this year, SRUC was prompted to move to a stakeholder consultation. That was one day after I started this job with SAC Consulting.
I have one final introductory point to make, which I hope provides clarity. SRUC bases various operations at Drummond Hill in Inverness. The first of those is a disease surveillance centre, which provides a post-mortem facility to local vets and farmers. The second is a laboratory facility, which tests the specimens that arise from those post-mortems and other samples that have been submitted by vets and farmers. A marine animal stranding team is also based there. Fourthly, there is an epidemiology team and, fifthly, there is a farm business consultancy office. Those are five separate groups. A total of 49 members of staff work at the site, 15 of whom are involved in the disease surveillance centre and the marine animal stranding team. The other 34 work in the epidemiology team and the farm business consultancy.
SRUC concluded that it would support the University of the Highlands and Islands science park in Inverness by transferring the epidemiology and farm business consultancy teams to the new campus, when it opens in the first quarter of next year. However, the disease surveillance centre was not included in that move, because at that point we were still in discussions with the SMB about the future of disease surveillance across Scotland.
I hope that that helps to set the scene.
Thank you. You have told us why disease surveillance in Scotland is important and how the DSCs relate to broader issues. You have eight centres in Scotland and you have said that you want to rationalise those. We will come to the detail of the different reviews that have been done. However, the point has been made about the Inverness DSC that it is there to support crofting communities and the work of the outbreak committee of NHS Highland. Will you tell us how that works or the level of work that is involved in that?
I can perhaps help you there, convener. The principal reason why we have our eight disease surveillance centres around Scotland is that we can engage with the local livestock farming enterprises and their veterinary practitioners. We operate through the veterinary practitioners—we are consultants to the private vets in the field.
To undertake our disease surveillance role on behalf of the Government, for which we get Government funding, we require to receive submissions. The most valuable submissions that we receive are, of course, post mortems, because they allow us to get down to the nuts and bolts—the details—of why an animal has died or failed to thrive.
It is by looking at that material in depth that we are able to monitor disease trends and look out for new or re-emerging diseases. We have a good record on that. Over the years we have picked up various things—a recent example is Schmallenberg virus, which causes deformities in calves and lambs. Before that we had bleeding calf syndrome.
You mentioned Inverness. With respect to individual sites, it is important that our vets engage with the community, which ensures that we get a good supply of material in.
In discussions with the strategic management board, with which we have been in close dialogue over the past three and a half years, we are recognising that the number of post-mortem submissions is the main determinant of whether a centre should be retained and what we need to do there.
12:45Unfortunately, we are not getting from Inverness the submissions of post-mortems that we would be looking for. It is at the bottom of our league table—if we want to use such a term—and submits fewer than Thurso and all of our other sites. In Inverness we are seeing about 240 to 250 post-mortem submissions in a year, across cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry and game birds. That has led us to ask whether there is a better way of dealing with the service to ensure that we are delivering for the area—that is where we have engaged.
If we look at cattle submissions for our centres across the piece, we are dealing with something like 1,300 to 1,400 cattle post-mortem diagnostic submissions in a year, but only 80-odd of those are coming to Inverness. That is the kind of driver that we need to be looking at to do our job, and why we have engaged in consultation to try to open up other opportunities for delivering services in the area.
You have said nothing about serving the crofting communities, or about working with the outbreak committee of NHS Highland.
With regard to the crofting communities, the veterinary practitioners—private vets—are supported through the Highlands and Islands veterinary services scheme. Freda Scott-Park has a leading role in managing that scheme, and she is also on the strategic management board: we have that engagement.
However, we are talking about the fact that the private vets do not want to take on a larger job with doing post-mortems.
Yes—that is what they have said. It is unfortunate that, in contrast with other parts of the country, they have closed their minds to that. It would have been nice if they had seen the opportunity to help their business. We will without a doubt have to go back and reconsider that, Mr Convener; that is part of the feedback that we got from the consultation. We will have to engage in a new way with the Inverness area. For any measures, be it the number of holdings in the area or the livestock numbers, if you look at the ratios to the numbers of post-mortems we are getting, Inverness is just not getting the submissions in.
We will have a look at that in more detail. There is an aspect that Graeme Day wants to take up.
Good afternoon, as it is now. While referring to the 240 to 250 post-mortems a year that Inverness deals with, Mr Hosie mentioned game birds. Do you deal in any way with the consequences of wildlife crime—raptor poisonings and that sort of thing—and if you do, are you seeing an upsurge in the numbers?
We support various people in carrying out forensic post-mortems and pathology across not just raptors but wild mammals as well. That is supported financially by our activities with the Scottish Government. We see roughly 200 wild bird carcases a year across our eight sites. It varies from year to year as to where it is busiest—as you might say—particularly when it comes to crime. Unfortunately, as the committee will know, in Inverness there has been a spate of raptor poisonings in the past wee while. Our teams work closely with the authorities on such cases. We have ensured that our veterinary staff have had appropriate training to give support to the fiscal if it comes to prosecutions, and to provide the correct evidence.
Mr Hosie gave a figure of roughly 200 bird carcases across the eight sites, but I would have thought that the majority of those would be concentrated in places like Inverness and perhaps Perth. The spread will not be even, will it?
Where the birds come in varies from year to year. I am not just talking about iconic species; we also get finches and other birds. One of my previous colleagues worked very closely with the RSPB Scotland on its garden bird survey. It is important that we see those carcases because we screen them not just for crime but for infectious diseases including avian influenza and West Nile virus. Samples are taken, as part of the Great Britain strategy, to see whether there has been an incursion of exotic viruses.
One assumes that there has been an upsurge in recent years in such things as raptor poisoning post mortems in Inverness.
There is greater realisation of the importance of wildlife crime. I do not know whether there is more of it; in fact, the evidence from the Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture data is that there is an encouraging downward trend. It is good that there is general acceptance in the community of the importance of tackling the issue.
I would not like the committee to think that we are not cognisant of the fact that we deal with such cases, but the principal reason why we have our eight DSCs is to support veterinary practices and livestock farming. Dealing with wildlife crime and wildlife as a whole is very much seen as supplementary. People who are willing to bring in carcases from wildlife species are often willing to travel that bit further.
I will tease out a wee bit more about the Inverness site and the distances that are involved in getting anywhere in the Highlands and Islands. That may be part of the reason why people, lots of whom have very small holdings, find it expensive, difficult and time consuming to get to Inverness. Those folk will find it even more difficult, expensive and time consuming to get to Aberdeen, Thurso or the central belt to take animals to a DSC.
There is a general principle that we need to bear in mind: if we always base our decisions about Highland facilities on the fact that they are a bit smaller than facilities in the rest of the country, we will continue to denude the Highlands of facilities. The logic will be that the small facilities always have to be the ones to go. We need some reverse thinking if we are to develop and build the Highlands and Islands—and they need a lot of help, believe you me. That is my first point.
To follow on from that, and from looking at the map of your site locations, it seems to be far more logical to keep the Inverness site open and shut the Edinburgh DSC, because there are another four DSCs down in the central belt that cover a good geographical spread. It is relatively easy for folk to travel there, because the roads are far better and it is easier to drive down a motorway or dual carriageway than to come from Skye on pretty poor Highland roads. I put the point first about a bit of reverse thinking.
Thank you for that suggestion. We are alert to the fact that there are disadvantaged areas, and the SRUC and SAC Consulting are alert to the needs of the more remote and disadvantaged communities. We have our advisory service throughout Scotland, which includes the Outer Hebrides and Skye. We are alert to such problems.
We are asking whether there are better ways of working by taking advantage of new technologies to support practices in the Highlands and Islands and provide a better service. You are right that there are many small units in the Highlands and Islands; we reckon that 5,500 livestock holdings, or 25 per cent of the Scottish total are in the region that the Inverness centre serves. Because of exactly the point that you made about distances and the fact that farmers tend to be willing to travel about 30 miles or 50km, most of the area’s work comes, unfortunately, from only about 20 per cent of holdings, 1,000 of which are in this catchment area and some of which are not very large businesses.
Sixty per cent of holdings are more than 100km away from Inverness. We are starting to say that there is a disadvantage all the way through and we have been asking how we can do the job better. We have been exercising our minds and speaking to our strategic management board and we have had the consultation responses. We are working up ideas about how we could do the job better, to mutual benefit. We can provide our disease surveillance activities only by working with practices and farmers to deliver to them a diagnostic service that they can benefit from, while we benefit from the surveillance information.
That does not fully answer my question. If you do away with the Inverness DSC, all the farmers and crofters who use it will certainly not go to the next nearest centre in Thurso or Aberdeen. You will lose all those people if they will travel only 50km—you will immediately get rid of all that area and have no data from the Inverness and west Highland areas coming into your system, which would not be very clever.
It would not be at all. We are exploring alternatives, some of which were raised in the consultation. Somebody suggested that itinerant services are needed. Should our vets be based up there but working out in the community? We cannot just switch on such ideas overnight—we have to do our homework and make sure that we have things sorted out. One of the benefits of the consultation was that we had some really helpful responses. I think that committee members received a summary of the responses in today’s meeting papers.
Since you are trying to save money, would you see any benefits in your overall costings from closing your Edinburgh DSC, with its workload going to the four DSCs round and about it?
We are working with the Kinnaird recommendations, which were produced in 2011 following a two-year review. One of those was that we should work with the vet schools. We are fortunate in Scotland to have two world-class vet schools, in Edinburgh and Glasgow. It makes sense for us to maintain the facility in Edinburgh so that undergraduates, who are after all our future veterinary surgeons, have greater exposure to veterinary pathology, including live veterinary pathology—real cases and not the sort of pickled specimens that I, unfortunately, had to deal with when I was an undergraduate 40 years ago.
Sorry for—
Just one final point, please.
It is not very far from Edinburgh to the Borders. The map shows that it is less than an hour to the Borders, so students could easily go there for the experience that they need in a DSC.
If you want to raise money from the valuable Drummond Hill site, you could move the Inverness DSC to Dingwall. You could still get a good price for the Drummond Hill site and you could probably get a much cheaper site and a new facility in Dingwall. I ask you to consider that.
That is a fair point about Dingwall. One thing that came out of the consultation was that many vets and farmers feel that the existing site at Drummond Hill is in an inappropriate location and that access is poor, because the centre is in an urban situation beside a primary school. Those respondents were keen that we should consider somewhere such as Dingwall as more of a natural hub for the area. Those were positive points.
I will re-emphasise the point that Dave Thompson made and cut through this. I have looked on social media and in other places at the commentary on your announcement from the people in the Highlands and Islands who have used your service. That commentary is entirely negative; people do not want the closure to happen and your service users do not want it to happen.
This is a little unfair to you, because you came to the committee to address one issue, whereas those of us who are Highland members see lots of other issues, but I regret that you are simply confirming what takes place regularly. Organisations say that they do not have enough critical mass in the Highlands and Islands, so they will move somewhere else, and they tell people that they will provide a better service because they have new technology. That could be the case at some time in the future, but it is not the case now. It will not be the case for many people in the Highlands and Islands whose access to broadband and mobile phone technology is poor.
Therefore, until there is a clear alternative, about which your users say, “That’s much better. That’s really what we’re looking for,” you should not be closing the Inverness centre. It is as simple as that. I speak as a Highlands representative. Highlands representatives need to say, “Stop withdrawing services and make sure services are provided near to us.” As Dave Thompson said, if organisations have to close places, they should close the places that have an alternative within easy travelling distance.
It is an open and shut case. I am sorry to be blunt, but there are circumstances in which it is necessary to be blunt. You have to pay attention to what the people who use your service want; they do not want it to close.
13:00
Let me respond to that. Since arriving in my post, I have spent a considerable time travelling around the Highlands and Islands and I now have a good idea of some of the area’s demographics, as well as the topography and the remoteness of some of the areas that we cover. In light of the consultation that we have had, I am also aware of the sensitivities about depletion of services and all the issues that you mentioned.
I will try to explain our concerns from the veterinary perspective. Our focus here is on disease surveillance and the technical aspects of that in the context of the budgetary constraints that we have. We have also started to think—much of this thinking has come out of the consultation—that we can segment the services that we provide. If I may, I will sketch out where we think we could go in the longer term.
Do we have that information? Could you have given it to us in writing before the meeting? In the future you will move to a service that might well develop in a particular scientific way, but the immediate issue is that centres are under threat as a result.
Let me respond very—
I have the greatest respect for the arguments that you make, and I am sure that, by your own parameters, you believe that they are correct. However, there is an equal and opposite point of view from the people who use and require your service, and the issue of rurality weighs heavily on the scales. I am sure that the committee will read what you provide to us, but the weight of evidence from my constituents, Dave Thompson’s constituents and Rob Gibson’s constituents is heavily against your proposed changes. I hope that your organisation will bear that very much in mind.
We recognise that and we will bear it in mind. That certainly comes across strongly in the consultation responses. In our thoughts about where we are and where we are going, we do not have an immediate intention to leave an absence of access to our services. The key service is the availability of a facility for post mortems—
I am sorry, but I must press you, because the phrase “absence of access to our services” is not the same as saying, “I’m sorry; we’re not going to take this action because it is the wrong action for the people who use us.” What you said implies that you think that there are different ways of delivering services and that you will just do what you propose. However, there are people who say, “We do not want you to change what you are doing because, with the greatest of respect, we do not believe that access will be adequate.” That is the position that I, Dave Thompson and others are representing.
I will bring in Angus MacDonald and Sarah Boyack; we will broaden the discussion out to the whole-Scotland review in a minute.
With that in mind, I am conscious that Auchincruive has not been mentioned. I am not sure how many submissions you received in the consultation, but I have no doubt that you noticed the submission from my colleague Adam Ingram, who is the member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley. As you would expect, he thinks that the Ayr DSC should be retained at Auchincruive. He made a number of strong points in the submission. He said:
“The farming community in the South West of Scotland are bitterly resentful at what they see as the forced expropriation of a valuable part of the farming infrastructure which sustained their activities. They wish to see the existing centre maintained at Nellie’s Gate ... It is clear the removal of the comprehensive post-mortem service and sample processing facility at Auchincruive will significantly reduce demand for the services in one of the most livestock dense areas of Scotland. This will impact very negatively on livestock disease surveillance in Scotland. The risks to Scottish farming far outweigh the benefits to be accrued from small cost savings.”
I will just pick out another point. Adam Ingram said:
“My understanding of the Kinnaird Report findings was that the Strategic Management Board were tasked with creating and implementing a new strategic vision for veterinary surveillance in Scotland which may include the reduction in the number of DSCs. This consultation fails utterly to place the potential closure of two sites in the context of delivering any kind of vision. It appears simply to be an exercise in cost cutting by centralisation.”
I am keen to hear your view on the Auchincruive facility, given Adam Ingram’s view.
I spoke to Mr Ingram on the telephone during the consultation. The Ayr Auchincruive DSC is one of our busiest centres. In contrast to our Inverness centre, which receives 244 submissions of carcases per year, we are looking at 600-odd submissions at Auchincruive. The situation is very different there; the centre serves an important livestock area.
You suggested that there is a lack of vision, but the vision that we adopted was laid out in the Kinnaird review, which was conducted over two years from 2010 to 2011. In that was the thought that there would be benefits in working closely with the two vet schools—Auchincruive would work with the vet school in Glasgow—so we have had a close dialogue with them and they were actively involved in the consultation. They attended the meetings that were held at Ayr racecourse with farmers and veterinary surgeons from the area.
We are taking the concerns on board. If a PM facility was created at Glasgow vet school, some farmers would benefit because they would be closer to it and we could service them better. Unfortunately, that would be to the detriment of some who already enjoy easy access. We are working with the University of Glasgow to find another way of working together that will meet the aspirations that are laid out in the Kinnaird review for undergraduates to benefit from access to post-mortem material.
I say with respect that undergraduates have to be sent out into all the conditions that they are likely to meet around the country, where we need to encourage them to take up posts. We cannot get private vets in the Highlands because people are dissuaded from doing large animal veterinary medicine. Vet training might be based in two places but, if students are to have the opportunity to find out what the rest of the country is like, they have to go out to it, so whether the vet service is close to the colleges is neither here nor there.
You need to give us a cost benefit analysis of what you propose. We have not heard that and that is the nub of the matter that we need to get to now. I am beginning to lose the point. There are a lot of questions to ask and time is short. We need to know why you have adopted this approach.
The SRUC has a track record on the issue. Back in 2003, it wanted to close Auchincruive and Thainstone and centralise things in Edinburgh. We were there at that time and we are seeing it happen again now, so give us your cost benefit analysis right now.
There is no doubt that we are under significant budgetary pressure, which has a bearing. In effect, 10 per cent of our budget is being withdrawn, which has undoubtedly had an impact on decisions that have been made. That is a reality that we have to face.
As for the service’s infrastructure, we are thinking through the process in a slightly different way so that we can retain access to facilities in the areas that are covered at the moment. We will do everything that we can to retain a location where farmers can take animals to have a post mortem done. That is our current thinking.
We still believe that we can go some way towards doing that; we have not yet entirely finished the exercise. In the process, we are under pressure to find savings.
I am not getting an answer on what the cost benefit analysis is, so perhaps Alex Fergusson should ask his question.
You might also want to go to Mr Hume, convener.
A lot of the ground has been covered on the topic that I was going to ask about. However, with the best will in the world, there seems to be an element of putting the cart before the horse, especially given the amount of time between the publication of the Kinnaird report and the consultation. If we look at the situation in Inverness, it appears that the decision has been taken to make the changes that you put forward, yet the suggested alternatives, such as greater use of private vets, have not been tested. Brian, you said that local private vets have basically closed their minds to working further to improve that situation—I am horrified to hear that.
You have put forward a solution without putting forward the alternatives. Mike Russell is right: if people are aware of the alternatives and have confidence that they are going to work, they will be accepted, but the proposal that you have made is the reason for the angst and anger that are evident around the table.
We have worked through those plans. You are right to say that it took two years for the Kinnaird review to come up with the proposals. The cabinet secretary then set up the strategic management board, which is now in its fourth year of operation. We have come up with various proposals at the board’s request and are being guided by the board on how we can adapt and modify the surveillance programme within the increasing budgetary constraints.
Members will see the financial figures in the documentation. We produce those figures for the Government on a quarterly basis as part of our reporting on the grant in aid that we get. We try to be open and clear and I am distressed by the suggestion that we are hiding something.
We receive significant amounts of taxpayer funds, which have been reduced so that we are now on a flat funding programme. In effect, that means further cuts. We have a network that was established many years ago and which is ragged at the edges and needs to be refreshed and enhanced. My staff and I have given many years of service to the SAC—I have given 32 years and many of my colleagues around the country have given up to 40 years or more—and we are distressed to find ourselves working at facilities that are well past their sell-by date. We need to make some hard decisions on the way forward.
People deride us for coming up with other suggestions because they do not like the idea of us changing. However, the reality is that we are working in extremely difficult circumstances. People are putting in well beyond contractual hours in an effort to hold things together.
I do not doubt that. As you are well aware, I have shared many of your 30-odd years with you, in various roles.
Yes, I am afraid that you have.
The point that I must make, although it has been raised already to an extent, is that if you want to bring in such changes, you must bring people with you. In order to do that, an acceptable alternative must be in place. I come back to the example of Inverness, but there are arguments around many of the other issues, such as Auchincruive in particular. I used to use Auchincruive a great deal—indeed, rather too much for my financial comfort. If the alternative had been to go to Glasgow, I do not think that I would have been doing that, given that I lived 25 miles south of Ayr. All of those arguments come into it. On the Inverness situation, which is the really big one here, the problem is that you are not taking people with you. It is as simple as that.
We accept that, and I think that I clearly recognised that point in my summary of the consultation. You are right that we have to think again.
Before I bring in Sarah Boyack, Jim Hume has a question on annual budgets.
13:15
Those who know me know that I come from a rural background. I still have nightmares about foot-and-mouth disease hitting the south of Scotland in 2001 and its impact not just on the economy and animal welfare but on the mental welfare of many farmers who are still suffering to this day. I am therefore totally opposed to what is going on today.
We have heard from the NFUS that there have been no details of a cost benefit analysis and no reference to alternative options that might have been considered. We have heard that private vets could be used to carry out post mortems but that they are united in their opposition to that.
Mr Wijnberg, you said that there has been a 10 per cent cut in the money from the Government, but up until 2011-12 there was no cut and, since then, £3,773,000 has been allocated every year by the Scottish Government to fund veterinary advisory services. Time and again, Mr Hosie has said that the aim is to improve services, but we are hearing that the changes are to do with cuts. Can we have an honest answer? Are the changes being made purely for financial reasons or to provide better services? If they are being made to provide better services, nobody here has yet heard how those better services will be delivered.
It would also be interesting to hear what will happen to the estate at Auchincruive and Inverness. Will it be sold? Have you valued the estate? Is this a case of selling some of the silver to provide income?
We will answer your questions in two sections. I will sketch the bigger picture and Brian Hosie will respond specifically on the budget amounts.
Let me provide some perspective on the reference to everything that we are doing to provide better surveillance. The strong initiator is the fact that we are under budgetary pressures. Brian Hosie will talk about that in a moment. We have an opportunity to consider where we are with disease surveillance overall in Scotland—we have talked about the infrastructure being worn out, tired and needing to be reorganised or replaced. We also have an opportunity to consider some of the things that are going on internationally in disease surveillance.
There are opportunities for us to operate in a different way. In our epidemiology unit in Inverness, we have a world-class team that is not being fully utilised in the analysis of data—the active surveillance that we spoke about at the beginning of our evidence—and we should be using its services more. This is an opportunity for us to take stock of how things are being done and to take a slightly different approach; it is not about trying to take away the services that are provided locally. We are doing everything that we can to maintain those services while making the changes at the same time.
The budget provisions are in table 1 of the figures that the committee has been given. You will see that we had a £36,000 cut in 2011-12 and a further cut of £300,000 in the following year but that, since then, we have had flat funding. We were fortunate to be given supplementary income of up to £300,000-odd by the Government, but we have been told that we should not rely on those contingency funds going forward.
I should make it clear that we are told about the funding that we are going to get from the Scottish Government very much at the last minute before the new financial year starts. We normally expect to get the figures in November or December so that we could plan for the financial year starting in April. I do not know the figures that we will be working with in the next financial year and I understand from the press that we might well get that information quite late in this financial year. We are trying to work within those limitations. Those are the figures that are reported through the system.
You get around £4 million per annum to fund veterinary advisory services. Is there not a risk that you will face an ever-decreasing circle if there is no vision of where you are going? I do not think that we have seen a vision. If you are providing a lesser service to less of the country, is there not a risk that the Government may provide even less funding? I do not speak for the Government—I oppose it, of course—but are you not at risk of losing even more of your funding if you provide a lesser service to cover the country?
The one thing that we have had a good opportunity to do in the light of the responses to the stakeholder consultation is to take stock of our vision. Particularly as I take up a new role, I understand that it is incumbent on us to put ourselves in a position where we can articulate our vision much more clearly to everybody, taking into consideration the disengagement that there is from some of the veterinary surgeries and so on. We recognise that. We have a vision for where we are going and we need to communicate that intelligently in order to get broad engagement from everybody.
Could you address the point about the fact that decreasing your footprint in Scotland risks decreasing your funding?
Part of our vision is to do everything that we can to ensure that the footprint does not decrease. We want to maintain the availability of the facilities to do post mortems—in other words, we aim to ensure that the man with a dead cow who has been used to being able to take it into a facility in Edinburgh or wherever to have it attended to will still be able to do that.
There are issues relating to the fabric of buildings and so on that we need to deal with. We believe that we can get some savings through a reorganisation of laboratory facilities and a concentration of know-how and the capital that is required to fix those facilities. That might be a direction of travel, as we think about these things in the longer term.
Have you done work to value the properties in Auchincruive and Inverness for sale purposes?
We have an informal evaluation on the property in Inverness—in fact, we will have that for all our properties. Plus, we will also have estimates of the maintenance requirements for those buildings projected over the next 10 years.
It would be quite interesting to see those figures, if possible.
Next we have a member for the Lothians.
My question is about how the responses to the consultation have changed thinking about the future of disease surveillance centres in Scotland. It has been interesting to listen to the conversation around the table. Obviously, there is the challenge that private vets do not want to take over the work that you have suggested. I get the sense that people are working flat out to make the existing system work, and that that is not possible within the current financial envelope. However, that is the contracted position.
The work has been contracted to SAC Consulting. Given the strong responses, the knowledge around the table and what we have read in the submissions, I wonder whether the work is doable to people’s satisfaction within the financial envelope. That is a question on which we could probably spend longer being unhappy with what we are being told. However, unless the financial envelope changes, or someone has some clever thinking about an additional plan that allows new investment in places that are currently not fit for purpose, I cannot see us being satisfied with any of the responses that we get today. I say that not as a Lothians member but as someone who is looking at the issues and is thinking about farmers, the private veterinary world, training for new vets and the crucial link between animal husbandry, health and welfare, and human health. Jim Hume’s point about the disease outbreak in the early years of this Parliament is spot on. We can learn lessons from such an outbreak, but the financial and human costs at the time are massive
It is rare for committee members to be so unified on an issue and I wonder whether we need to communicate our thoughts on this issue to the cabinet secretary. I was not expecting us to have this kind of discussion, but it has been quite useful.
Those are fair points. From the point of view of my neutral role as the convener of the committee rather than as a local member in the Highlands, I think that it is important that the cabinet secretary engages with us on the basis of the discussion that we have had today and the views that have been put forward. However, it is necessary for the cabinet secretary to know about the access to services point and about what the strategic vision is. It is impossible for us to tell at this time exactly where this is all leading, except that it is a contraction of particular services that we have at present.
There is some confusion about the overall roles within the organisation. I understand that the SRUC is not now going into a merger with the University of Edinburgh. It has absorbed three colleges, in which matter I have had some involvement. The relationship between the consulting arm and the academic arm is at times porous, one way or the other. There needs to be much greater clarity about the overall role of the SRUC—its overall vision and its contribution. As Jim Hume has indicated, money is going one way to do the veterinary work, which is entirely legitimate, while money is going another way to college and academic work.
We need clarity about this because, although all institutions are under pressure—and I say to Brian Hosie that I do not think that anybody is criticising individuals—the best response to that pressure is not always to retreat from the periphery. The response to that pressure should sometimes be to ask how the organisation can reconfigure and look at its role in a different way. It is time that the overall vision of the organisation is expressed in a way that can be understood by Scotland.
Do panel members want to make a final response. We are trying to finish by half past one.
We have not touched on marine issues, which are a fundamental question. I need to ask those questions.
Okay. We should do that.
The committee has received two submissions on marine issues relating to the SRUC’s brief and work: one from the Marine Animal Rescue Coalition and one from Whale and Dolphin Conservation. I will raise three points from those.
First, in their view, the reviews have had a terrestrial perspective but not a marine one. Next, there are EU obligations on marine issues that need to be honoured—I am in no way suggesting that they are not being honoured, but they need to be in future too. Finally, again highlighting the concern about Inverness, I note that the submissions suggest that the rapid response facility and the work on animal welfare issues in relation to the shooting of seals and strandings of other mammals such as whales, and post mortem analysis of those, are extremely valuable. There is a plea that retaining at least the post mortem work should be considered. That point is specifically in relation to marine animals and is not in any way to pre-empt the comments that have been made about terrestrial services that have been put forward by members. Do you have any comments on those concerns?
We recognise all the concerns that you have mentioned and we have met the Scottish Government. A different funding stream is associated with the marine strandings operations. There is a small team of three people who are involved in that. To date, they have used the same facilities that are essentially there to cover terrestrial mammals. We have one or two issues to work through, but we are working hard to make sure that we retain that team and the services that they provide in the area.
I will add that we have spoken to Marine Scotland, which is the funding body for that work, and we have made clear that, given all the points that Ms Beamish has just made, it would be better to have a longer-term plan rather than the rather short-term one to three-year contracts that we operate under for that work. If we are to provide a long-term service, we need long-term funding. A succession of one to three-year contracts puts us at a disadvantage in that kind of planning.
If you accept that the emphasis of the review was terrestrial, do you agree that that implies that there should be a considerable amount of further consultation on the marine aspects of this? You say that you have spoken to Marine Scotland but, as far as the way forward is concerned, if your business plan and your outlook do not take the marine issues into account, as one of the submissions has suggested, that is a cause for concern.
13:30
We recognise that the focus of the consultation has been on terrestrial animals—that is fair to say—but I emphasise that we are not neglecting the marine aspect. The work that has been done in that area has a lot of merits, whether in regard to EU commitments or the quality of information. If we allow ourselves to think a little bit further, we recognise the potential that exists in that area in terms of the interface with students, bringing people into that area and providing a broader role for the public. The marine aspect is probably being looked at as a slightly separate issue, but I emphasise that it is not being neglected.
We have to finish soon, so perhaps we can follow up on some of the issues in writing, but Graeme Dey has a short supplementary on the marine budget.
You referred to additional funding from Marine Scotland. Which budget heading does that come under in the table?
It does not come under that one at all.
So the figures in the table are not an entirely accurate reflection of the income.
No. The figures in the table relate to the funding stream under the veterinary advisory service budget. We get grant in aid, as I have explained, and we get other income, which is fee income. Veterinary practitioners will pay a fee for blood tests, worm egg counts or post mortems at a subsidised rate. The funding comes partly from the laboratory fees and partly from the Government’s grant in aid. Some aspects are fully funded by the Government’s grant in aid. For example, the veterinary expertise that we provide to the Government on new and emerging diseases will be fully funded. You mentioned work on wildlife crime. If there is police involvement, forensic pathology or appearances in court, that has huge costs, and those are fully funded by the Government.
Sixty-two per cent of our funding is through the veterinary advisory service stream. That is what the figures in the table relate to. That includes the grant in aid and the laboratory fees associated with that work. Thirty-eight per cent of our income is outwith that. It covers the marine strandings and the work that we do on health schemes and health planning, which we call commercial income. The testing on dogs, cats and horses is outwith the Government funding, but we make use of the facilities in order to give us greater flexibility in responding to a national crisis. We do those tests on a bigger scale and we engage with the community and support veterinary practices by giving them additional opportunities to add value to their visits by doing blood testing for health schemes and the like. We also give private farmers opportunities to add value to their livestock. I am sure that Alex Fergusson will be alert to that kind of thing, which involves giving health stamps and accreditation to enhance the value of the stock.
We will value the opportunity to read your evidence. As you will have gathered from the discussion that has taken place, there are strong views; it is not personal in any way. We thank you for your evidence. There will be further discussions about the proposals with the SRUC and the cabinet secretary. Thank you for appearing before us and for understanding where we are coming from.
Our next meeting will be on 7 September in Portree, when we will begin taking stakeholder evidence on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill. Like all committee meetings, that is a public event and tickets are available through the Parliament’s website.
As agreed earlier, we will now move into private session.
13:34 Meeting continued in private until 13:55.Previous
Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1