Podcast - Get to know our new President

Abi Judd-English (00:24)
Hi everyone and welcome to the August edition of the RCVS podcast, where we give you the lowdown on everything that's going on across the College, explaining why we do what we do, how we do it, and how we can all work together as we continue to support the advancement of the veterinary professions. I'm Abi Judd-English, a member of the RCVS Communications Team, and today we're going to be getting to know our new president, Tim Hutchinson.

In this episode, my colleague Luke Bishop chats to Tim about his career to date, the path that led him to become RCVS President, and his hopes for his presidential year.

I'll then be joined by our Head of Insights, Policy and Public Affairs, Ben Myring, to discuss the publication of DEFRA's recent White Paper, which sets out the government's proposals for new legislation that would replace the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966.

We'll be speaking about exactly what a White Paper is, its contents, why it's significant, and how it fits into the wider process of creating and implementing new legislation.

But before that, I'll be providing you with our usual news roundup. I hope you enjoy the episode.



News update



Abi Judd-English (01:37)

This month, our fellowship has welcomed 39 veterinary surgeons to its ranks in recognition of their outstanding contributions to veterinary science and practice.

Of the 39 new fellows, 18 were welcomed to the fellowship for meritorious contributions to clinical practice, 19 for meritorious contributions to the profession, and two for meritorious contributions to veterinary knowledge.

The new fellows will formally be welcomed to our learned society at this year's Fellowship Day, which takes place on Thursday the 26th November, 2026 at One Great George Street, Westminster.

In other news, our online learning platform, the RCVS Academy, has launched a new 'Welcoming overseas nurses' course to help practice teams understand the registration process and how to support overseas qualified veterinary nurses completing a period of supervised practice in the UK. The launch coincides with an update to the RCVS Academy's Working in the UK for Veterinary Nurses course, which supports overseas qualified veterinary nurses through the registration process and preparing to practice in the UK.

The Academy offers a wide range of free CPD courses for veterinary professionals and can be accessed using your MyRCVS login details.

Elsewhere across the college, we've recently upgraded our customer relationship management system to improve how we store information about veterinary professionals and practices, how veterinary professionals can view and update that information, and how they can access other digital services via a new online portal called MyRCVS.

The new MyRCVS, formerly known as MyAccount, makes accessing a range of RCVS services easier, as they're all now available via a single login.

Current services available through the platform include OneCPD, the RCVS Academy, Stanley and the Veterinary Graduate Development Programme platform.

This September, to mark World Suicide Prevention Day, we're inviting members of the veterinary community to join us for our upcoming free Mind Matters Initiative research webinar, 'Changing the narrative on veterinary suicide', taking place online from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Thursday the 10th of September, 2026, with a recording available for those who cannot attend live.

Chaired by our Director for the Advancement of the Professions, Angharad Belcher, the webinar will feature research presentations from international expert guests and will explore the data, common myths and misconceptions regarding veterinary suicide, and how we can shift the narrative and how individuals, teams and organisations can contribute to evidence-informed suicide prevention.

For more information on all these stories, visit our News and Views section on our website, the link to which is in the show notes.

I've also included a link to our wider suicide prevention work, including further resources on this topic, as well as information about our new suicide prevention workplace standard.



Interview with Tim Hutchinson



Luke Bishop (04:26)
Hi, we're here today with Tim Hutchinson, who is the new RCVS president as of the third of July this year at Royal College Day.

So welcome Tim to the RCVS. I know obviously you've been here as a council member and junior vice president as well. But obviously you've got the big job now. So I hope you've enjoyed it so far. Just so the listeners can get to know you a bit, would you mind just giving us a bit of a kind of potted history of your veterinary career to date?


Tim Hutchinson (04:51)
Yeah, certainly. I grew up near Barnsley in South Yorkshire. My parents were both teachers and there was no family history of vets. In fact, one grandfather was a coal miner and the other one was a train driver. But had an early interest in veterinary life and in 1981 as a schoolboy in the school holidays, I took a bus into town and then another bus into another town and spent holidays in a vet practice and thoroughly enjoyed it. So in 1986 I applied to go to university and got the first set back which was five straight rejections.

Sat my A levels and applied again and I'd always promised my music teacher at school that if I did get rejected from university that I would go and study music for a year. So I did A-level music and then applied again and eventually got offered a place if I was prepared to wait a second year. So then started at Liverpool in 1989. For that second year out I spent the year working as a school lab technician in a comprehensive in Barnsley which was a good way to learn various things about the world of work and also to get to play with all those chemicals that you were never allowed to play with when you were at school yourself which was great fun.

So Liverpool, 1989 to 1994, and coupled my studies with spending a lot of time playing music as well, various orchestras in the city. Graduated on Friday the 15th of July. I seem to recall I used my last £10 to buy petrol for going to graduation, so started work on Monday the 18th with a bit of a sub to go and buy groceries.

And then this was a city centre, four and a half vet, small animal practice in Wakefield. And I stayed there for four years before moving down to Oxfordshire and starting work at Larkmead Vets in June 1998 as a small animal vet in a mixed species practice, which at that point was predominantly a farm practice.

I joined the partnership on 1st January, 2000 and we undertook two fairly large building projects at our two main surgeries. We had quite a bit of upheaval from 2001 to 2003. Obviously 2001 was the foot and mouth year and being a practice with a lot of pig work everybody was called in for doing movement licences for being able to move animals off farms. So that added on all that stress and strain on top of the normal day job.

We then had the misfortune of the senior partner developing terminal cancer and lost two other partners for personal reasons, which then meant that the three partners who collectively had previously only owned 20 % of the practice suddenly had to take on the whole caboodle and learn how to run it together. Yeah, busy time. One partner was in and out on maternity leave, another working reduced hours due to childcare.

So it was a case of stepping up and learning the hard way how to run a vet practice. But I'd always had an interest in surgery so completed my certificate in small animal surgery in 2002 and became an advanced practitioner at its inception in 2014. I co-edited and authored a couple of the BSAVA manuals, the surgical principles manual in 2008 to 10 and then the manual canine practice in 2012 to 2014. And as the practice grew, I took on sort of other roles as well. So between 2010 and 2025, I was a director on the board of Excel Vets and chaired the board for the final of those three years.

Larkmead continued to grow and we're now a 40 plus vets independent practice with 35 partners and as the way the world is, we're now flipped from being 75% farm animal when I joined the practice, now to being 85% small animal.
 

Luke Bishop (08:41)
Yes, that certainly is the trend, isn't it? So I guess how have you found that transition from how you started your career to where it is now in terms of the clinical work?


Tim Hutchinson (08:49)
Very interesting. The clinical work, I've remained sort of focused in clinical work within the practice, although that clinical work changes. So initially it was a small practice doing very much bits of everything. More recently it's been much more focused as a much bigger practice that tends to do the more specialised surgical work, particularly a lot of orthopaedic work, and also developing the younger clinicians in the practice as they take on their share of the work as well.


Luke Bishop (09:20)
Absolutely. It sounds like you've pretty much got your hands full in your day job. So what made you decide to then become a candidate for RCVS council?


Tim Hutchinson (09:28)
Yeah, well having grown a practice from 10 to 40 vets, I obviously spent a lot of time in the leadership, management and business side of things. I also spent 17 years as a school governor and then 15 years on the board of a company like Excel Vets gave me a good grounding and insight into governance. So I felt that there was a lot of change in the profession and I was keen to get more involved and offer service to the wider veterinary community. So I put my name forward never expecting to be elected but was very pleased I was. And obviously with the CMA order being published and the potential for updated legislation it seemed a fascinating time to be involved at the heart of college and hoped that my background in clinical practice would also bring a useful perspective for both of these.


Luke Bishop (10:16)
And obviously you know it's one thing being a council member, then I guess making the move upwards towards becoming RCVS president via being vice president and the officer team. What made you I guess want to take your role further within the RCVS?


Tim Hutchinson (10:30)
I think it was sort of opportunity at the time as much as anything and also being a clinician from grassroots practice gave me that perspective to really know how things like the CMA order would be taken down at practice level so I felt that that perspective would be very very useful to bring to the officer team.


Luke Bishop (10:51)
And what's the most important thing that you've learned about the RCVS since joining council and the officer team and obviously, you know, all the various other committees that you've served on?


Tim Hutchinson (10:59)
I think for any vet or nurse sitting outside college it's very difficult to appreciate the full remit of all the college activity and the workload that's involved there. Essentially it's a really strong team of really good people doing a really good job and I don't think this is understood well by the wider profession.

It can be easy to sit on the outside and forget that it's a very human organisation, not just a blank face. And I often reflect in practice that our non-clinical staff are really the unsung heroes who turn up day after day, often in the most exposed frontline positions, and do so because they really care about animals. And in many ways I think the College is similar. Everyone turns up to do their part to ensure that the profession is fit to act in the interests of the public and animal health and welfare. And their work sets up vets and nurses to succeed and I think the senior leadership team of the college creates a really positive culture.


Luke Bishop (12:04)
Excellent. I guess a somewhat related question, but what's the biggest misconception about the RCVS that's out there? And you know, I don't know whether you've had these conversations yourself, but what would you kind of say to counter that?


Tim Hutchinson (12:16)
Yeah, I think the biggest thing there is that there's still enormous confusion about the actual role of the college.

The RCVS has two functions. Firstly, as a regulator and secondly, as a professional leadership body and it does these in tandem through the Act of Parliament, the Veterinary Surgeons Act and also its Royal Charter.
 

What the RCVS is not is a representative association for the profession. There are plenty of those and often that's the role of other associations such as the BVA. And I think there probably seems to be a lot of misinformed comments on veterinary social media sites that usually start along the lines of, you know, why isn't the RCVS doing X for us? And I think that probably everybody in both the veterinary and the nursing professions could help themselves by just pausing to reflect a minute or two before posting something and thinking actually is this something for the RCVS or is it something for say the BVA?


Luke Bishop (13:15)
Absolutely. And it's similar amongst animals owners I think, as well. You know, there's a slight misconception about what we are and who we're for and so forth. But it's always interesting communications challenge to counter some of those misconceptions.

Obviously you're coming in as president during a pretty kind of monumental time for the professions, obviously with the publication of the White Paper by DEFRA about a future Veterinary Surgeons Act. Could you just talk through why this legislative change is so important for the future of the of the professions?

 

Tim Hutchinson (13:43)
As we all know, existing Veterinary Surgeons Act dates from 1966 and not only is it very outdated, but there's so much detail in the Act that it prevents the College from being able to do many of the things that it wants to do, which would be in the benefit of the public, animals and the wider professions. As professions, I think we've been very fortunate that we still have a Royal College as our regulator, because it has enabled a creative approach to some of these challenges by being able to use the Royal Charter to deliver various things. For example, recognition of registered veterinary nurses was achieved through the Charter. It isn't possible through the existing Act. So, in short, we've only been able to keep going as well as we have with such an outdated Act because of our Royal College status, but that's really beginning to creak. You can take an outdated act only so far. So, 2026 is very different from 1966. The future will continue to be very different still and we need legislation that will give us a modern license to practise model and with overhaul of the currently punitive disciplinary system to be replaced by a forward-looking fitness to practice process.

Animal health organisations have changed radically and there's clear need for regulation of veterinary practices and businesses as well as the individual vets and nurses which work within those practices. And it certainly makes sense to bring in other animal health sectors into this umbrella of regulation. And I think finally it's really essential that we retain our position as both a regulator using the Act of Parliament, and a professional leadership body, the College with its Royal Charter, because this has proved to be such a versatile and essential structure, albeit with a bit of great clarification between the two arms so that there's better understanding about the role of the Royal College.


Luke Bishop (15:39)
Absolutely. It's the kind of marriage isn't it of the upstream and downstream regulation elements. So, the kind of professional leadership work does filter its way into the more regulatory side of what we do. In your opening speech as RCVS president, you spoke about very eloquently about contextualized care and how that can work to counter some of the complexities that are currently facing the veteran professions. Just wondered if you could expand on that a bit and also perhaps, give some personal examples of how contextualised care has, worked for you personally in the practice setting.


Tim Hutchinson (16:08)
Yeah, I clearly recall as a young, ambitious and probably highly impetuous graduate that I was focused and driven to place the animal at the heart of everything that I did and I think that's entirely understandable. I also recall a sage older collie gave me some great advice by pointing out that there are two ends to a dog's lead and you need to treat both of them.

It was the wake-up call I needed to recognise that the way I could be most effective for the animal was to ensure that I structured how I worked around the needs of its owner.

And the modern veterinary profession is, I think, simultaneously blessed and cursed. We have so many tools at our disposal for investigation and treatment and a really vast range of effective medications.

This can create a bewildering complexity at times and we need to be able to tailor the approach and select what is in the best interest of both the animal and its owner and deliver that approach with simplicity and clarity. More than ever I think we need to recognise the importance of the human factors of communication and relationship building and these go to the heart of everything. If we're building relationships with those animal owners who place their animals under our care and make the extra effort to build continuity of care through face-to-face and other forms of communication with those animal owners, it will really help us to understand what investigations and treatments are going to be the most effective for each individual context and they are all very different.

And this will ultimately give better results and with better results comes greater job satisfaction. And I've certainly experienced it. I think it can be very difficult for younger graduates that the more complex a case might be and the more uncertainty there is around it and the greater the lack of confidence that an owner may display that actually the solution to countering this is often to, you know, get a successful outcome through the time that we invest in nurturing those real human to human empathetic bonds.


Luke Bishop (18:13)
Do you have any other kind of priorities for your presidential year and I guess, you know, what you plan to do with the year that you have at your disposal?


Tim Hutchinson (18:20)
Yeah, looking at my career over the last 32 years now, a large part of it's been spent working with students, both on EMS and MIMR placements, and younger graduates in their early careers. I'm really fortunate to have a large growing practice which has a culture of employing and developing new graduates. In fact, I think it's 10 of our 13 partners, it was their first job.

I'm one of the unusual exceptions to that. And building on this then, one of the most fulfilling parts of the Presidential year comes right at the start, attending the degree ceremonies and leading the vets and nurses through the process of making their professional declaration. And it's an opportunity to encourage them and to remind me as well to think deeply about the words that they state in that declaration.

After all, historically we became professionals because we professed an oath, that's the derivation of the term. And everything that's captured in the declaration is that unique and special thing that differentiates us as being professionals from merely being graduates.

Also the presidential year obviously involves chairing council, working behind the scenes within the college and its various committees and this year has the exciting twin tasks of implementing the CMA order and working hard to build recognition of the need for the new legislation. It will also be packed with many opportunities to meet really many, many interesting people. Really dedicated people and I think that's going to be a very enriching experience.

So yeah, I'd encourage anybody when you see RCVS attending events, come along, say hello. We don't bite, it is a very human organisation. Come and share what it is that's special for you about our unique profession.


Luke Bishop (20:10)
Absolutely. So there'll be plenty of opportunities to talk to you for, all of our listeners over the course of the year.


Tim Hutchinson (20:15)
Yeah, and I very much look forward to speaking to anybody. Come and find me out and have a chat.


Luke Bishop (20:21)
Excellent. Well, thank you very much for your time, Tim, and yeah, look forward to working for you - working with you rather - for the year ahead.


Tim Hutchinson (20:28)
Thank you.



DEFRA’s White Paper explained


Abi Judd-English (20:44)
So next up, I'm here with Ben Myring, who is our Head of Policy Insights and Public Affairs, who's going to be speaking to us all about the recent publication of a White Paper from the Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, more commonly known as DEFRA. So Ben, the publication of this White Paper has obviously been a long time coming. sets out the government's proposals for new legislation that would replace the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 and revolutionise veterinary regulation for the benefit of animal health and welfare and also for the public and the professions as well. So, it's a monumental moment for not only for the professions but for the UK as a whole.

But before we get into that in a bit more detail, I think first if we can go back to real basics. So, what do we mean by white paper? What exactly is it? Because I think sometimes people don't always understand that. mean, I don't think I did fully.


Ben Myring (21:33)
That's a perfectly reasonable question. It's a bit of an archaic name, but basically a White Paper is the official government document that sets out what government policy is on a particular issue following a consultation. So back in the day, you would have two things. One was the Green Paper, which was the consultation itself where the government's asking questions. And then the White Paper sets out their conclusions from that consultation. In other words, it sets out what they plan to do about a particular problem. And in practical terms, the contents of that White Paper may not be entirely set in stone. It sort of has a dual role where, the government's formally setting out their intentions but on the other hand they're sort of informally inviting people to express an opinion on those intentions which allows them a little bit of discussion and thinking and tweaking before a bill is drawn up.


Abi Judd-English (22:19)
Okay, yeah, that's great. That's good to understand and get a general foundation before we discuss things in a little bit more detail about this. So now we've established what it is.

Can you give us, if you can, maybe a challenge, a brief summary of the content of that paper and what our sort of initial thoughts are around it from a College perspective?


Ben Myring (22:36)
I'll try. There's a lot to it and I'm not famous for short answers, but I'll try and summarise. So I guess the gist is that it covers all of the recommendations that the RCVS has been making for many years. And kind of tying it all together is the central feature that it's a modern piece of legislation, which is much more flexible and future proof than our existing Act. So the regulator would have much greater freedom of action without needing new legislation every time we need to put up our fees, for instance.
 

So that applies across the piece. But then the government in the White Paper have grouped the recommendations into four broad areas.


Abi Judd-English (23:11)
Okay.


Ben Myring (23:12)
So the first is around the regulation of individual professionals, which we already do as you know.

But it modernises the way that they do this, including things like protection of title, including the VN title. It'll modernise the way we hold registers of professionals so that they have a new licence to practice, basically, where the regulator gets to determine the requirements for them to practice. And also it'll modernise the disciplinary process into a modern fitness to practice model in common with other regulators. But the White Paper here also sets out where government intends us to regulate additional professions in future as well, in addition to vets and VNs, so for example musculoskeletal therapists and equine dental technicians so there will be that power to add new registers over time.

And, sort of as part of this single umbrella regulator for the sector idea, they're also proposing that farriers will fall under our regulatory umbrella too. They currently have their own regulator in the Farriers Registration Council, but the idea is that those functions would be brought under the remit of the RCVS. I think a final bit to mention when it comes to individual professionals is that it will introduce conditional licences of one kind or another as well. So that could be additional supervision for newly licensed professionals or it could mean the ability to increase access for people with disabilities as well.

So, lots of changes there.

 

Abi Judd-English (24:31)
Yeah.


Ben Myring (24:31)
Secondly, out of those four groups though, is the quite important new reform that would allow us to regulate businesses and practices as well as individuals. So this is the bit that the CMA were particularly interested in, right? So having reforms that increase transparency of ownership and costs, reforms to allow us to enforce practice standards through a scheme that would allow sanctions on businesses, for instance, that could be fines, that could be conditions or other measures. So that new legislation could see new duties to consider competition and the consumer when making and enforcing standards as well. And practices would be expected to have a license holder and also a separate responsible person that looked after the sort clinical side of the business.


Abi Judd-English (25:14)
Okay, yeah, so moving on to the third stage, what's that all about?


Ben Myring (25:17)

The third part then is additional support for consumers and that overlaps a bit with the business regulation section. That would be looking to implement the CMA's order into primary legislation basically. And that's where you'll see proposals for consumer redress. You know, they'll want every practice to have a complaint system of their own and they'll want every practice to engage with mediation like our existing VCMS. But they're also looking at introducing a binding arbitration scheme where the first two don't work.

And whether still at the end of those processes disagreement between clients and the practice the ombudsman could arbitrate the problem basically and that would be binding and we would sort of have those powers as a regulator but they would be delegated to an ombudsman service of one kind or another.

And finally then the fourth area is around structures and governance of the regulator so this was the area that we were least certain about going into the consultation and while there are still some significant questions you can now see the preferred direction of travel is increasingly clear and importantly for us that means that the lead option is keeping all of our public interest functions under one umbrella as a Royal College that regulates, you know, it's all under one roof and there would continue to be a single fee for individual registrants that paid for most of those functions albeit with clearer accounting and budgeting across the piece.

And there would be a single governing board responsible for all the functions and a single executive to deliver them. So that's very important to us. But alongside that, we would expect to see a number of quite important changes. Firstly, as the college has been calling for for a long time, the governing body is going to change. So at the moment we have this big RCVS council that's majority elected vets, that's going to be replaced by a much smaller board of 12 people with parity between lay and professional members. So half will be vets or VNs or other professions that we regulate, the other half will be lay people. That's sort of best practice in common with other regulators.


Abi Judd-English (27:09)
Yeah.


Ben Myring (27:09)
But then in addition to that we're expecting that there will be a sort of fairly light touch division within the college into two arms with branding for different names to make it clear what the roles are for those two arms. So one arm might just be called the veterinary regulator for instance, to make it very clear what it's doing there. Whereas the professional leadership role would have a different name, that might be a Royal College name like we have now but it could be something else.

And there may be an additional name for the overarching body as well that sits over those two arms but some of that still needs to be figured out and will involve reforms to our Royal Charter as well as the Veterinary Surgeons Act. The Royal Charter was last refreshed in 2015 so we could expect a further round of consultation as we dig into the details of the structure and objectives on that arm. It's not yet clear how that will be sequenced in respect of the Veterinary Surgeons Act so we are still working away at figuring out how that's going to work. But the third thing that's probably worth mentioning here is that in exchange for us having greater freedoms as a regulator, we will have greater oversight too. That's the balance that has to be struck there. So there will likely be an oversight body of some kind. That could be the professional standards authority which oversees the health professions, or it could be something else. I don't think there's an appetite to create a new body entirely from scratch. It's likely to be something existing.

And alongside that we'll need to produce annual reports for Parliament and the devolved administrations and also DEFRA ministers will have the power to issue steers to us that we would need to pay due regard to. But fortunately these are not legally binding and it'll be just a steer. 

That's a good thing. think us and BVA were quite concerned that that was going to be too much of an intrusion on our regulatory freedom. But we pushed back on that and it's looking a little bit more realistic at this point. So yeah, there's a lot and that was just touching on some of the really broad top level things. As you know, I could probably talk about this for 24 hours straight, but I think those are the highlights.


Abi Judd-English (29:03)
Yeah, that's great. Thanks, Ben. It's really interesting to hear you go through all that because I know obviously, in a lot of the media coverage, I you touched on the consumer stuff quite lightly within that because obviously that was quite front and centre of all the coverage in the news. But there is so much more to it than that, isn't it? Like, obviously, that was the thing that got it onto the agenda isn’t it really?


Ben Myring (29:21)
I think that's right. The CMA investigation helped to put this on the map and helped to encourage government to pay attention. But the bits that the CMA are interested in, although they're important, it's just a small part of the wider piece. It is important. But when you look at the bill in the rounds, it's the most important animal health and welfare bill in several generations.

And yeah, that's what makes it significant, I think.



Abi Judd-English (29:43)
Yeah, for sure.
 

So yeah, obviously that makes it really significant. What else is significant about this? Like why now? Why is it important? And because I know this is something that we've been talking about for such a long time. Why is the White Paper such an important milestone for us to be reaching?

Ben Myring (29:58)
Yeah, it's good question. So I think I have a tendency to play things down a little bit as I don't want my sort of to allow myself to take any wins until we've actually got the new legislation before parliament.

But if I do allow myself to take that step back, it is a big win. This is the first time since the 1966 Act that a government has committed to wholesale reform with the express intention that there's going to be a new bill when parliamentary time allows. And crucially, this is a bill that's going to contain all of the new and updated functions that we've been calling for since our Legislation Working Party reported many moons ago, which we and BVA and BVNA and so many other stakeholders have been pushing for so long.

So it is a crucial milestone and though we're not at the end of the process yet or perhaps even the beginning of the end, maybe the White Paper is the end of the beginning in a sense. The consultation period is over, policy formation on a high level at least is over. Now we're thinking about how to implement the policy.


Abi Judd-English (30:56)
Yeah, sure. Slowly, slowly moving along. I guess any progress at this point is good progress, isn't it? So, yeah, so following the White Paper, I know we're not getting too excited about how quickly things will be moving from now on, but what are the next steps in this process? What would that include?


Ben Myring (31:13)
So for it to become law, you need to have a draft bill that can be put before Parliament, before the House of Commons and the House of Lords, who hopefully will turn that bill into an act of Parliament. But to get a draft bill, that will be drawn up by a group of skilled lawyers within government called Parliamentary Draftsmen. But first, definitely to produce what are called instructions to those draftsmen. It's sort of a technical legal term that they use for them bridging the gap between policy and law basically. So their lawyers will draft exactly what they want the bill to say that takes the White Paper and turns it into slightly more legal language. And I think we'd expect to have some input into that process. At both the instructions and drafting stage actually, there are likely to be questions about the detail that will be raised that may not be entirely clear in the White Paper and that we can help with, you know, where the regulator’s input will be needed. But then all being well, there will be a draft bill ready for next spring, maybe. And while that work is being done on drafting the bill, DEFRA will be bidding for what's called the bill slot, right, so the government gets through about 20 bills a year and DEFRA will be hoping that this is one of them and trying to persuade number 10 that it should be.

So that's the big remaining hurdle, I think. So that's the reason I'm not counting any chickens.

Abi Judd-English

Yeah

Ben Myring

But if they get that bill slot, then hopefully the bill will be mentioned in the King's Speech in around May next year. And if that happens, then we're off to the races and we know that we really need to start thinking about how it's going to be implemented and looking at the details there. Because even when the act passes, that won't be the end of it, you know, we still need to reform the charter, as I said, to bring it in line with the Act. And then we just need to think about secondary legislation and regulatory rules and so on to bring a lot of this stuff into force. And hopefully we'll be able to do that in a gradual and sequenced way rather than having everything rushed and trying to deliver everything at the same time. So this degree of negotiation still to happen there. So yeah, still a long way to go, but maybe we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.


Abi Judd-English (33:11)
Yeah, amazing. Obviously, at the beginning, I was saying it's a monumental moment, but but I guess it is because like you say, it is kind of the end of those beginning stages. And that's what's going to allow us to progress. And hopefully, next year, things will start moving. So it's so we'll see. But well, thank you so, so much for your time, Ben. And yeah, I'm sure we'll have you back on sometime soon to keep us updated on everything that's going on.


Ben Myring (33:34)
My pleasure, hopefully I can come and talk about the actual bill and the King's Speech.


Abi Judd-English (33:39)
Yes – this time next year maybe.


Ben Myring (33:40)
Maybe even little sooner. Keep your fingers crossed.


Abi Judd-English (33:42)
Great, thank you very much.

 

Outro

Abi Judd-English (33:57)

That's a wrap on today's episode. So thank you so much to Luke, Tim and Ben for their time and their contributions. I've included the link to Tim's RCVS Day speech in the show notes and also the press release providing our initial response to the publication of DEFRA's White Paper.

If you have any questions about this podcast or any ideas for future content, please do get in touch at [email protected]. Don't forget that listening to this episode also counts towards your CPD. So be sure to record and reflect on the OneCPD app.

As always, thank you for listening and I hope you enjoyed the show.