Further resources

Good evening, everybody. It's lovely that everybody's been able to join us this evening. Thank you so much.

I just wanted to start off, if I may, with a little bit of housekeeping. Just so everybody is aware of what we're going to do.

First of all, we are going to record the presentation this evening. We've had an awful lot of people who wanted to come and listen, but sadly, we've not been able to accommodate everybody. So we are going to record it and the recording will become available on the website as soon as we possibly can make that because we recognise this is very much a live subject. We want to give as many people access to that as we possibly can. We're very keen to take questions, but what we'd like to do is to take questions towards the end of the presentation to give you the opportunity to listen to all the information that we're going to give you and what we'd like to do in order so we can collate all of those. Bring them all together is we want to encourage you, if you will, to use the Q and A button that's going to be on your screens. Please don't use the chat function, if you will. We deliberately inactivated that so we can feed all the questions through the Q and A. We've already had a lot of questions before the meeting started, which is great to see. We'll try and get through as many questions as we possibly can. I promise you.

So, Ben, if you just move on to the next slide for me, this is our panel this evening. So good evening. I'm Sue Paterson. I'm president of the Royal College, and I'm going to be ably assisted by Eleanor Ferguson, who's our registrar and Ben Myring, who's our policy and public affairs manager. And what we're gonna do is a little bit of a tag team between and go through different slides, different presentations. The aim, really, is if we can to give you as much background information as we possibly can about our consultation around governance reform that was launched yesterday. It's going to run for six weeks. It's going to run until July the 22nd. It will close at 5 p.m. and I want to stress. Really? Right at the beginning. This is not a done deal. We very much want to hear from as many members of the professions as we possibly can. So, please, we would encourage you to contribute to the consultation. So we're happy to take questions tonight. We're happy to answer questions tonight, but please feed in your thoughts, your concerns into the consultation process. That would be absolutely great. OK, Ben.

So if we can have the next slide. So what I wanted to do really was just set the scene a little bit and just take you back to 1966. So in 1966 it seems an awful long time ago. Now England actually won the World Cup. Sadly, we've not won it since then. Back in 1966 the Beatles were at the top of the charts. They just re-released their Revolver album and they'd released singles Eleanor Rigby. And they'd also released Yellow Submarine. We had a general election, and in that general election we had Harold Wilson leading the Labour Party. We had Edward Heath leading the Conservative Party and we had Jo Grimond, who was leading the Liberal Democrats, the sort of the Liberal Party, as it was at that time. The first heart transplant took place in the States. It was an artificial heart that was transplanted into a human into a coal miner. And just 12 months later, Christian Barnard did his first human to human heart transplant. So that was 1966 and 1966 was when the Veterinary Surgeons Act became legislation.

Ben, if you flick me to the next slide, and that just gives you a feel, really, for how old the legislation is that we are actually working under as veterinary professionals. 1966 was when that legislation came into play, and we know that it's a hopelessly outdated piece of legislation. We want a new veterinary surgeons act. We've been working very hard with other stakeholders, including the BVA to get a new veterinary surgeons act as high as we can up the political agenda. We've been working with all the parties, and we've got really good cross party support. What do we want to do as part of a new veterinary surgeons act? Well, we'd like to regulate veterinary practices, and to that end we've set up our mandatory practice regulation working group that's already started work, and we're hoping to have some proposals later on this year. Really importantly, we want to protect the titles of our veterinary nurses and also of other allied professionals. And really importantly, we want to regulate those allied professionals as well. We want to empower our veterinary nurses. We know back in 1966 most of our veterinary nurses were cleaning kennels. But now we know they're highly trained, compassionate driven professionals who play a really key part in our vet led team, and we want to give them more responsibility under a new Veterinary Surgeons Act. The problem that we have, of course, though, is that our current royal college structure is enshrined in the current Veterinary Surgeons Act, and it doesn't lend itself to us expanding that role to be able to regulate the much wider veterinary team. And as we push government when we can, when we have a government again for a new VSA, what we want to do is to go with them with very well developed proposals as to what our new governance structure would look like, and that's why we're launching our consultation. We met our Royal College Council in January this year and we got a strong steer from our council about the direction of travel. We also at that meeting had input from the BVA and again they're pretty much aligned in their thoughts with Royal College Council. And what we now want to do is put that consultation forward to the professions for your thoughts and your concerns. And as I say, this is not a done deal. We want to hear from you and we will listen to you. I absolutely promise.

What I think we need to be aware of, though, is what's at stake. We need to move towards something that's much closer to the regulatory norm. We need to align ourselves with the sort of College council that actually is aligned with all the other medical health regulators. And if we don't do that and we don't satisfy the government that we're able to self regulate, then there's a real risk that we could have our current council replaced by an independently appointed council that may or may not contain veterinary professionals. It could, for example, contain 100% lay members. So it's important we put together a proposal that's acceptable to government. That's much closer to those regulatory norms. So what we want to do now is we want to talk you through our role as a college, our role as a regulator and talk about those changes. And then we're going to take some questions. So I'm gonna ask Ben if you want to take the next slide for me.

Thank you, Ben. Sure thing. Good evening, everyone. So, yeah, I'd like to take you back a bit to sort of first principles and definitions, if I can. And some of this stuff, you may just think is obvious, but I think it's good to sort of start at the beginning. And this is what council looked at when they were deliberating and determining what the proposal should be. So first of all, we need to ask what a regulator is. And again, it may seem obvious, but it's kind of worth kind of pinning that down, I think. So professional regulators. Their purpose is to give the public assurance. So they set and uphold professional standards. And they do that in the public interest. And they do that in a number of ways, which you'll all be very familiar with as professionals. So they keep registers, they create codes of conduct. They set educational standards and often go out and assess the bodies, the schools, the vet schools that deliver those standards. And they, of course, have complaints procedures and disciplinary processes that are all wrapped up in that. And so this is true of every profession. Pretty much every profession, a formal profession, at any rate has its own regulator. The question, though, of what is a royal college, is a little bit more difficult. I think a lot of people have a sort of an image in their head of what a royal college model is. But the reality is that there is no such single model. It's much more complex than that. I think at its core, the only thing that royal colleges have in common is that they're created by a royal charter, particularly delightfully archaic piece of legislation. And they're created to fulfil a particular purpose. And that purpose varies a great deal. So, for instance, the Royal College of Music is a conservatoire. The Royal College of Nurses is explicitly a trade union. The RCVS is neither of those things. Then you have some of the medical royal colleges, for instance who tend to focus on postgraduate education, which has a regulatory aspect to it. And that's something that the RCVS does do. And they also focus on clinical standards, which in the veterinary profession RCVS knowledge covers as part of its role. And, of course, RCVS knowledge has its own system of governance, so there is a sort of a different way of doing it in the veterinary profession. And it's also worth noting that royal colleges have quite a varied range of governance systems, so some of them, a minority of them have a predominantly appointed councils governing bodies. Most have elected councils, but some have a separate board from their council, for instance. So there's a great deal of variance there. And it's also worth noting that there's been a recent tendency among the royal colleges to increase the number of lay members that they have on those colleges and grant voting rights to those lay members. So as we'll see later, when we're looking at common governance systems in other regulators, there's a similar trajectory there for those I would suggest. And perhaps also worth noting that what a Royal Charter does is to create a royal college as a legal entity, a legal personality in its own right. So they're sort of self owning, if you like. They're independent both of government, which is a core part of self regulation, which will come on to, but also independent of their members. So we have a regulator. We have a Royal College. Whatever that may be, so what is it to to be a royal college that regulates and that is the primary function of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons? And we are a royal college that regulates. We and our Royal Charter in its objects for the college sets out that we are here to set, uphold and advance veterinary standards, which is again, the kind of core regulatory stuff, as well as the perhaps slightly vaguer promotion of the art and science of veterinary surgery, which gives us a little bit more remit to approach things in a different way and carry out additional activities. And as well as our royal charter, and this is another way in which we're unique. There is no other royal college that regulates. We have the Veterinary Surgeons Act, which underpins the regulatory activity, too. And again, as you were saying earlier, that's something that's very out of date and needs to be and needs to be updated. But both of those, the both the charter and the Veterinary Surgeons Act are enabling the college, underpinning the college to be some body that acts in the public interest. We're there to support animal health and welfare in the wider public interest. We're not a representative body. We're not a trade union. We're not a representative body in the way that the British Veterinary Association is, for instance, but the Royal charter does allow us to take a more holistic approach to regulation than other regulators do. So, for instance, we have award granting powers, which is very much a royal charter thing. And we have the RCVS fellowship, which can have a regulatory aspect to it, as well as a lot of the work it's been doing recently, for instance, on animal behaviour and how that links to acts of veterinary surgery. That has a regulatory dimension, too, and even a Mind Matters initiative that's there to support the profession. But you're trying to create a healthy, fit profession that can fulfil its public duties. So the point I'm trying to make here is that there's a it's everything falls within a grey area. It's very difficult to separate out our royal college and regulatory functions. Pretty much all of the activities that we carry out have got some aspect of regulation to them. But it's that combination of and royal charter that makes us that unique body. But at the centre of it all is that regulatory purpose. So we need to think about how other regulators carry out their governance when thinking about our reforms, and with that I will hand over to our registrar to talk you through some of that. Thanks very much.

Ben and Ben's been talking about all the things that are unique about the RCVS as a royal college that regulates. And, yes, that is true. We are unique in that respect, but we don't operate in a vacuum. And so how other regulators operate is important. And also what's important is the direction of travel that government sees for regulation generally, but particularly in health care. That is also very important because I think we would be unwise to think that an arrangement that has been set up for the nine big health care regulators and that's something that developed has been developing over the best part of 10 years started in 2014 with the Law Commission report. There have been various consultations, reports backwards and forwards. It's very difficult to see that that won't be taken as something of a model, or at the very least, it's something that will be used as a mirror against which we will be held up when we come knocking, asking for new legislation, because although we are unique in many ways, we're not. We have exactly the same overarching obligations as the other regulators to protect the public, as Ben's been talking, animal health and welfare. But in the public interest, we're there also to promote and maintain confidence in the profession and also proper standards and conduct and elections. And having a majority of professionals and governing councils is not really seen as acceptable in this day and age. Back in the day, if we were talking back in the sixties and the other regulators would have done things the same way as we have done, but actually they have moved on quite substantially from then. And why is that? And it is because the accusation comes that with a majority of professionals, it's not going to be acting in the public interest. And that's something that I hear quite a bit of, and it comes to me and members of the public will say, Well, the college is just a bunch of vets deciding things for vets, and you're inherently sympathetic to the veterinary profession, so that can't possibly be you acting in the public interest. And the other health regulators, the ones we were talking about your NMC, GMC, all of these type of other and the big regulators. They no longer have any elections and haven't had for a long time. They have a system of appointed members, and that comes through an independent panel that is there completely at arm's length from the RCVS to make these appointments. So one thing I'd like to stress is that independence of the panel that makes the appointments because I think sometimes the word appointed rather suggests that somebody within the RCVS whether that be Sue, a future president, Lizzie or whoever will go around and say right, it'll be you, you, you when you. Actually it is not that at all. It has to be independent, and the emphasis in that independence and when you're looking at who might want to apply, is on having appropriate skills and expertise. And the whole ethos of all of that, I would stress, is like that appropriate skills, which is very different from the system that we have at the moment with elections, because when you have an election, people put forward their manifesto. They are saying, I'm going to achieve this and I'm doing it for my constituents and they're expecting to be measured by their constituents against their performance and what they've done and what they've set out their stall is what they're going to achieve, and that's not the same as acting in the public interest. But that doesn't mean that the voice of registrants is not important. It doesn't mean that the voice of registrants shouldn't be there to inform council and in all of its decision making, and that can be through a huge range of ways that it could be done. It can be done through committees. It could be done through non voting members. It could be done through having representatives on meetings for specific areas on specific topics. And so it's absolutely not about shutting down the voice and the input of registrants into that decision making process. But it's having that message going through loud and clear that what you are doing is acting in the in the public interest. And usually again, I said some of the questions that we saw when they were submitted in advance, we're talking about what's going to happen when we have no veterinary members on the council. That's not what we're actually talking about. What we're talking about and this would be in line with the majority of the modern regulators, is something around a 50-50, 50-50 professionals to lay people. And the point of having that non majority is it gives assurance to the wider world if you like that. The profession is not simply there in the interests of the other professionals and is not marking its own homework. And Sue had pointed out that we have to be careful where we go with all of this in terms of being reasonable in the proposals that we put forward, because I think sometimes there's a feeling if you push it too far, you might push it too far against what are considered the norms. What are the expectations of government and that might end up with something that you absolutely don't want, which is something that could look like the social workers where they have entirely. But that is not anything that is in the proposals that we're looking at at the moment. And with that, I think I should be handing back now over to Sue, to talk a little bit more about what these proposals look like.

Thank you. Thank you, Eleanor. So, Ben, if we flip to the next slide, that would be lovely. Thank you. So what are our proposals for reform of council? And there are four things that I've highlighted really on this slide. The first of those is we want to retain a council of 24 members. That's larger than other regulatory bodies, other health regulators, and that allows us to have a little bit more flexibility. If you look at things like the GMC that's got 11 members, of which six are registrants, which includes the chair and five lay members. If we look at the Care Quality Commission that has 15 members on its board, seven of those are members of the executive. Nine of those sorry, eight of those are non execs, of which five are and three are registrants, and those registrants are doctors and nurses, and they are people in primary care practice, for the most part, contributing to that council. So that's something that we want to do is keep that slightly larger number just to give us that flexibility. As Eleanor has said, we want to replace our current system of elections with an independent appointed system. And as she said, if you think about the way in which elections work, the way that people stand on a manifesto promising great things when they're actually elected, that really isn't how Royal College Council works. You know, elected members are not there to represent a constituency. They're there as part of our regulatory function, and therefore that's what they're there for. To protect the public interest and maintain animal health and welfare. It was interestingly, we did a similar presentation at BVA last week at BVA Live. And after we'd done our presentation and we'd taken questions from the audience. Quite a large number of people came up to me afterwards and said, Do you know, actually, I'd put my name forward for an appointed council because I'm always terrified of an election system when you have to put yourself up there to be shot down, but I'm really interested in getting involved. I'm really interested to contribute to the regulation of our profession, and an appointed council will be something that I would consider putting my name forward. And that's something I think we have to think about, because at the moment, you know, I would argue that we've got some fantastic members on our Royal College Council. But, you know, we could probably get even more with that are more representative of our professions, you know? So we currently have nobody from Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland has its own special challenges. It would be really good to have those included in our council. We have nobody from Wales. We have nobody from the public health sector and we make a lot of decisions around that aspect of royal college regulatory work. We do have small animal practitioners, but we don't have many from production animal or equine practice. So it would allow us through an appointed system to actually select people that were truly representative of our profession. So rather than you know this tap on the shoulder, you'll do, it will very much be the people that are actually going to input and contribute to council. The other thing that's down there is moving to parity of lay members with perhaps a small professional majority that is in the consultation. And we're really keen for people to feed back and tell us what you feel is most appropriate. When we took that decision to our Royal College Council, it was very much split between a 50-50 vote of parity and a slight increase in professional majority. So please tell us what you would like to do around that. What we're aiming to do at the moment is we look at our current council as we have 13 elected vets. We have two appointed RVNs who come from our VN council. We have three vet school council representatives who are appointed, so we have 18 professional registrants and we also have six appointed lay members. Our aim is to replace those 13 elected veterinary surgeons with appointed veterinary surgeons. We will move our vet school council members onto probably our education committee so we can make best use of their skill set to actually enhance the way our education committee actually works and what we're hoping by changing the composition of council and keeping this larger council. It means, as we hopefully start to regulate other allied professionals, we will be able to include those as part of our regulatory council, so their voices can also be heard as well. The aim being, though, that we want to keep vets as the largest number of professionals on our council, so they are well represented. Next slide, Ben. So in addition to those reforms of Royal College Council itself, we also want to, under a new act, change the composition of our VN council as well. And the good thing about the VN Council is it's already closer to the regulatory norm. We want to reduce the numbers down slightly to about 12 members, and what we want to do is we want to replace all of the current elected members with appointed members. We already have appointed members on VN council, and then if you speak to those nurses, all lay members who've gone through that appointment process, they will assure you that it has been robust. It has been independent, and when they put their applications in when they went through their interview process, the things that they were assessed on was their skills, their knowledge and their experience, because that way they can do the most to contribute to the workings of the council. The other thing we also want to do is to try and have parity between lay and VN members. So, Ben, I think our last slide. So we're opening up the Q and A. Please, if you want to put questions into that, we're really happy to take questions around any aspects of the consultation. If you want to learn more, there's a lot of information on our on the Royal College website. If you want to have a look there, you can also feed back to us. We're really keen to hear from people. So you have on the screen in front of you here the way in which you can contact us. But the most important thing is to feed into the consultation. We want to hear from you. It shouldn't take you long to complete it. Please. You've got until the 22nd of July to be able to complete that. So please give us your thoughts. We really, really would value that. OK, so I think we've given everybody enough time to put a few questions in. Let's go to our questions and see if we can take some of those. Let's have a look and see what we have, what we've got coming in. So let's have a think. A lot of these actually have already been have already been answered. So here we have one question that's come in. I'm probably gonna address this one, I think, to Eleanor. 

So Eleanor. How long would a council member's term be? So how long would that appointed council member serve on Royal College Council? It would probably be quite similar to what we have at the moment. So you have terms of about four years, and at the moment people can do three terms of four years. The norm is more closer to eight, so you could have a term of two terms of four years within any 20 year period. So it's not dissimilar, and it's not like it's somebody comes on for a year. You chop and change. You chop and change. It's a slightly more longer period of around the four years, similar to what you have now. OK, thank you. So this one is from an RVN. Who says I've been through the VN appointment process for council. Sadly, I wasn't successful, but I found that it favours those who were older and had more experience. Is there accommodation for that? So is that something we're going to allow for when we start to look at that independent process? So sorry, Eleanor. I'm gonna pick on you again. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, it's up to us to define what skill sets and competencies we want. I mean, what we want is the best person for the job, whether they are younger or older. But you could say that you would want to have somebody at the more newly graduated end to mix in and to get that fully representative range. So all of these things are up for grabs in terms of what is possible. And I suppose if we think about it, some of the decisions that we make around educational policy, you know, it may be useful to have perhaps a new graduate on Royal College Council. Who knows? I mean, I think the devil is gonna be in the detail, isn't it really? What we're looking at is this appointed process. But if we felt that a younger person would add that context because we are a relatively young profession and there's no reason why that perhaps couldn't be something that we could write in, couldn't it? 

OK, so there's one here about remuneration, which says, Who is going to pay for the appointed members? So I think probably if you just wanna run through how it works at the moment and how the system may or may not change once we have appointed members. I don't really think it's going to change a huge amount in the sense that all members of council are paid for their time, and at the moment it's a day rate. Some other organisations work more on a kind of stipend on a kind of annual basis, for depending on what role somebody has. They might be turning up at a lot of committees, so they get X pounds a year. And that is exactly what happens now. So I don't think that's going to be radically different in the future. It's not that we are not paying anybody at the moment, and all of a sudden we're going to start paying people. And it's exactly pretty much as we have at present. And that's written into our budgets, isn't it? So there's governance charges that are actually incorporated into that. If people have a look at our accounts, they'll be able to see that. So we have another one here. I'm going to. I'm going to address this one to Ben. So, Ben, I think this is an interesting one because it talks about numbers of nurses and numbers of vets, and I'm assuming the question refers to Royal College Council. And so the question really is saying, you know, if you consider that we have almost as many RVNs on our register as we have vets on our register, how can we balance that on Royal College Council? Should there be as many nurses on an appointed Royal College Council as there are veterinary surgeons? So just just share your thoughts around that one, if you will. It's a really good question, I think, though to again to go back to those first principles and remember that the role of somebody on council isn't to be a representative. They're to be representative of their professions, but they're not there to represent them. So the numbers of people or the balance of different kinds of professionals on council oughtn't to be determined by the number of them in the professions. What we're suggesting is that of the professional member components of council, the largest number, indeed, the majority, are to remain veterinary surgeons as it's the vet team. They're the lead professional, but that it can be rebalanced. And there should be that flexibility to rebalance it over time so that as we come on to regulate additional allied professions and we have that as one of our recommendations, there would be space there for at least some of those to also be on RCVS council to bring their knowledge and wisdom to that process of governance. So yeah, and it could be that eventually there are. There's so many that you might not be able to have somebody from each allied profession on council at all times. But remember that they just like veterinary nurses council exists already, each one would have its own council that was responsible for the governance of that allied profession sitting underneath RCVS council that did most of its business and the role of RCVS Council would be to focus on the real governance aspects to make sure that the policies have been developed in the proper way with the proper due process and with proper consultation, rather than the detailed policy development itself. I think as well at the moment, one thing we perhaps forget is that a certain amount of decision making is delegated down to our councils, isn't it? So VN council does have the power to do. Eleanor, what specific things can you recall that VN council actually have the to decide on already without it having to go through to College Council? Registration fees are something that they can have input. They have input in that, and obviously importantly around VN education, they are very strong in relation to all aspects of the education. I mean, what I think is envisaged. I think what Ben is talking about there is a structure where it's not the if you have got a VN or other allied professionals, they are not likely to be just sitting on College Council. There is going to be underneath that, in the same way as you've got VN council. You might have one for different allied professionals, and they will be doing the same sort of activity. So the VN council at the moment does an awful lot quite independently itself. It does a huge amount, and so I think that that's the sort of model what we are thinking of in terms of going forward. OK, OK, so let's go on to another question. Change the subject slightly now. And obviously I think this is something that came up on Friday when we spoke at BVA Live and was coming up now as a very common question. It's about this independent appointment process. So again, it's who appoints the independent assessors who decide who can sit on Royal College Council and I know that's a really difficult one to actually answer. But, Eleanor, I know you gave a really good answer to that on Friday. So I'm gonna throw the ball back to you. Just give us a feel for how these people are appointed and perhaps draw some parallels, perhaps with our appointments around disciplinary committee. Yes. So we already, as Sue just mentioned there, we already use independent panels. And when we are talking about our preliminary investigation and disciplinary committees, and that's both for vets and veterinary nurses. And so what happens is is that at the moment we draw up, if you like a spec in terms of the job so that you can tell somebody what it's about. Tell them things like the day rate. Tell them you know how many meetings are likely to be a year and we then kind of hand it over then to recruitment consultants who run the process. So we are bowing out at that stage, and the crucial question, then, is who gets to sit on the panel who makes the choice now? And that would likely be something that would be made by the RCVS. And I can almost hear everybody saying, Ah, but ah, but the difficulty there is somebody, somewhere has to make the decision. Because if you don't do it that way, then somebody and this, I think, came up at the discussions at BVA Live was, well, if you're not careful, you're looking for a panel to appoint the panel that appoints the panel. And where do you stop with all of that? What tends to be and what we certainly have in terms of the way we've worked things with our other existing committees is around having if you like somebody who is the great and the good for a better way of putting it in terms of chairing it. You might have somebody on the regulatory side. If you're looking for somebody on vet council, you might have a vet who was just with broad experience, and it can be the key to all of it is is that there is no meddling in it. In the decision making of that panel, they are given the control over all the candidates. The agency works with them, sifts the candidates, they do the interviews. They make the decisions, and they then make their recommendations back as to who should be appointed. So essentially they won't know who the individuals are, who those personalities are. Whether they're, you know, apart from their CV, they won't know if they're famous or infamous. So what they're doing is they're looking at their skill sets, their ability to contribute to. And quite often it looks a little bit more contrary to the sort of manifesto thing where somebody sits and makes up and you've seen it in the council elections not so long ago, there will be a set of kind of competencies, so it looks a little bit more like a kind of a bit more akin to a job application than a party manifesto, if you like. And that's what the panel is looking for in terms of it very much against skills and experience. And that potentially is why perhaps younger members of the professions may not perhaps do as well because they don't have the experience. Perhaps that's what people are looking for when they're looking at appointing people onto a council with this responsibility. Would you agree? Yes, and I think that's one of the things that we've talked about in the past in terms of how do you get that experience then? Because you can't sort of magic it out of thin air. And that's where you know, getting involved in other college activities, getting involved in committees and as a kind of stepping stone might be one way of doing it. And some other regulators have got particular direct programmes to encourage people at committee level to get that level of experience so that it's not that feeling that you just get dumped down on to that high level without really any thought or kind of familiarity with the processes. Thank you. So another question, which I think we've partially answered. But I'm gonna throw this one back to Ben, really, just to see if he wants to add to anything he's already said. He says. Why is it thought that vets should always be the largest force on council? Does this not downplay the role of other groups we want to bring within the regulatory framework? And before you on to that, Ben, I think that was highlighted, wasn't it in our discussions at Council, where the decision was very much split straight down the middle on that as to whether we should have vets in the majority or whether it should be equality between lay members and professional members. So do you wanna share any thoughts around that, Ben? Do you? What should we have? Vets as the largest majority? Sure. But before I do, just to add one more thing to the previous question, just to remember that the sort of panel appointment system that we're talking about is, you know, it's used by every other regulator. It's not particularly controversial. And the systems are based on principles that the Professional Standards Authority has set out as well. So it's not like we're creating something out of whole cloth here. But on this question, I think it's a good one. And there's two aspects to it. One is the balance between lay and professional members and having around 50% of lay people is important for that public assurance bit as we've mentioned. That's the making sure that it doesn't look like the profession is setting and marking its own homework. And then the other aspect of the question is the balance within those professionals. And you know whether it is right, the vets are the largest number or the majority within those professionals. I think there's a strong argument for them being the largest number as the lead profession and the vet led team. You know, they're the ones that need to be in normal circumstances carrying out the clinical assessment, you know, the animal needs to be under their care and so on and so forth. But then I also hear persuasive arguments from people that say, you know, it is the veterinary team, not the vet led team. And perhaps, I mean, I've heard a number of thoughtful vets say this, that we should be thinking beyond that lead profession model. That's not what Council are proposing, though. They are proposing to keep the vet led team model. And I know that BVA are also very supportive of that. But if you take a different view, if you think that we're being overly conservative in this, then please do tell us in the consultation. It would be interesting to see if there's a significant number of people that feel that way. Yeah, that is one of the specific parts of the consultation, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. So another one here. This one is actually about lay members. And this one is asking in terms of lay members, what qualifications would they have and would they come from other professions? So Ben, do you wanna take that again? Are you happy to take that? Well enough, I can start, and then Eleanor can chip in. I think the usual, what we're looking for, as with our current lay members, is people that have expertise in regulation and a background in it. And that's very often developed through other professions. Either as professionals, like one of our lay members was formerly a nurse or it's people that have worked in that sphere and understand regulation so that when they're appointed, they can hit the ground running. That lay members don't necessarily need to have a real deep understanding of, at least at the beginning of the sector, that they're regulating. The importance for them is to bring that understanding of what the proper process is and to ensure that that proper process is being followed. And the due consultation is happening. So again, like the governing body should be focused on governance, not the sort of nuances of operational matters. And I'm assuming they all agree that our lay members bring an awful lot to council as it is. You know, they can bring that outside perspective and make people think, oh, actually, you know, are we just following the same old line, or is there another way of looking at this? And I couldn't agree with you more, Ben. That's one of the things that I've learned. Being on council, I've learned a huge amount from all lay members. They're measured. They're thoughtful. They contribute enormously to our discussions on Royal College Council. They are absolutely invaluable. Eleanor, do you want to add anything to Ben's? I don't think so. I mean, they don't have to be professionals, but it may well be that they are likely to be. And as the only stipulation for being lay is that you are not a member of the profession that we are talking about and are not eligible to be nor have not qualified or the usual rules around it. That's really the only stipulation. And other than that, it's back again to matching it against the skills that we're actually looking for as that governing body. OK, thank you. And one that was something that I actually touched on during my little bit was talking about representation, looking at representation from the different home nations. And the question's come in about Northern Ireland. And saying we have very unique challenges. Would you consider ensuring that there's representation from all the devolved nations? So, Eleanor, Ben, thoughts on that one? I mean, I think the answer to that is yes. It's certainly something that other regulators are toying with at the moment. I think where they're heading down is to have it as a would like, but not an absolute requirement. But I think it is certainly something that is important. And it's again about getting that representative of everybody being involved in it. So yes, it's definitely something there in the mix. Yeah, I forget which one. But I'm almost 100% certain that one of the existing regulators already does have that requirement that there needs to be at least one from each of the constituent nations of the UK. Yeah, I think it does. In its latest report that the government is working on in their sort of after their most recent consultation. I think there was a little bit of argy bargy, and some people felt this was a would be a very, very good idea. Some people felt it was not such a great idea and that it should be not a hardwired rule, if I can put it that way, but certainly something that people would be expected to be considering. Let's put it that way. And I suppose we could say that's one of the another of the weaknesses of the elected system. If you're a vet or a vet nurse and you're based in Northern Ireland, then very few people are gonna know you. You've got a very small pool of veterinary professionals who might vote for you. Whereas if it was written into our terms of reference for our council that we needed to have someone from Northern Ireland on our council, then obviously, that would make it a much more level playing field, as far as that's concerned. So let's go on to have a look here. So this one, I think, is looking at how would appointed member's input be assessed? So could they be dismissed? And who regulates the regulators? So I suppose that boils down to feedback and appraisals and stuff. So, Eleanor, your thoughts around how would the appointed members be assessed. And there's obviously set protocols in place for that sort of thing, isn't there? Yes. I mean, you can. There would be internal appraisals, the same thing that people are familiar with. But actually, councils already have a code of conduct they're expected to adhere to, so that it's not that any of this is going to be particularly strange and wonderful in terms of people being expected to, for example, turn up to meetings when they're meant to be turning up to meetings in terms of contributing in terms of behaviours in terms of all of that sort of thing. And that is already in place and, in point of fact, at its most recent council meeting it was one of the things that comes up for regular review. Are people happy with that? Do they want to have a look at it again, particularly having an eye on any complaints processes? So I don't think that any of that would be any different in the future. In fact, I think it might be more likely to be something that would be strengthened going forward in a more structured organisation that we have now because it's difficult when you've got an elected person. Yes, they can come under the code of conduct, but it's a slightly different way of looking at it in terms of when you've got the people assessed against the skills and competencies that they were brought on to meet up to. Yeah, absolutely. And just to reassure people, we already do that sort of process for our college members, council members. I have catch ups with our members twice a year. They're allowed to talk about problems, concerns. They have opportunities for further training if they feel there's gaps in their skill set that they want to work on. And it's also an opportunity for me to address any problems that we've had. If perhaps they've not been as diligent perhaps as we would want them to be. And I would say that I've not had any of those conversations, I should hasten to add. But we already have a similar process in place, and I think an appointed members would be very similar would be very similar to that. So let's move on and have a look. OK, so this one here again, we're talking about representation on Royal College Council. We've talked about, you know, representation from all of the devolved nations. The next one really looks at how we could make sure that we have independent veterinary practices represented within council. That's obviously based on the fact that we have a partially corporatized industry now. So how can we make sure that we hear that the voice of the independent veterinary practice is represented on council? So I suppose that comes back to pretty much what we've said. It's exactly the same. I think it's. And I think that goes for all different types of practices, all different types of species or anything. And I think it's trying to encapsulate all of these things. I mean, you can't get everybody on all of the time, but it's trying to make sure that you've got that right balance throughout. Yeah. And Ben, do you want to just sort of share with us thoughts around what we put in primary legislation and what we put in secondary legislation and how that gives us flexibility, perhaps to change the composition going forward? Because I don't think that was something unless I missed. Was that something you mentioned or? It wasn't, no. But it is perhaps a point that's worth making. One of the many ways in which the Veterinary Surgeons Act is out of date and dilapidated is that it's a very old fashioned piece of legislation in the way that it's written so it has a farcical amount of detail in it. So the fees for veterinary surgeons and the syllabus of the statutory membership exam. You know that sort of thing is in there. So when we want to change anything, we have to get legislation to change it. And quite often, primary legislation. And the composition of RCVS council is one of those things. So many of you may recall that we did change the composition of council a few years back and brought it somewhat more in line with other regulators. Reduced the size, increased the number of lay people and so on. But to do that was a humongous effort. We had to use the legislative reform order, and it takes years. It's very hard to be future proofed to move with the times to do the sort of thing we've talked about, where you might want to gradually rebalance council over time, to reflect the people that Council are regulating. So we're proposing that, as with a lot of the other measures we're asking for, there's enabling legislation there. 

The primary legislation says that there will be a council, but the definition of who is in the Council is in secondary legislation, which for non parliamentary lawyers, it is just a much more flexible. It's much easier to amend that. Sometimes it could just be amended by ministerial order after proper consultation, or sometimes there will be all the checks and balances. But it doesn't involve an act of parliament or a substantial legislative reform order to make those changes. So as with all things that we're asking for, except for the real kind of key should be less like acts of veterinary surgery to veterinary surgeons except where they can be delegated or protecting the titles of these professionals. We just need much more flexibility, as is the case in nearly all modern legislation. So we've had more questions coming in about the composition of council, about whether we can make sure that we get through representation, and I think we've probably covered all that. So people asking about different types of practice independent, corporate, different levels of qualification. So, specialist et cetera, I think we've covered all of that. But one thing I think I would like to pick up on because again, this is something that's come across as quite a theme is a question about we've heard a lot about the regulatory side. So obviously, that's college's activities under the VSA. What about plans to ensure the royal charter aspects are not sidelined? Might this be an opportunity for the profession to nominate members in this respect? And that's certainly something that we're thinking about. I don't know, Ben. Do you want to comment on that? I can perhaps chip in a bit afterwards, but, yeah, sure. It's a really good question. I mean, I'd go back to the start, though, which is that there are, it's mostly a grey area. There are very few things that are purely regulatory or purely royal college. Or rather, there are. There are plenty of things that are purely regulatory, but a lot of the things that people tend to think of as Royal Charter or royal college activities, actually have a regulatory aspect. That said, there are some things that are more about that advancing and promoting the art and science of veterinary surgery bit. And a lot of those are covered by our advancement of the professions Committee, which looks over things like, you know, our global agenda, Mind Matters initiative, our academy and so on and so forth. And I think there is the potential there for either retaining some elected element at that level. Or you could cut it another way. You could say that the actual representative bodies could have nominations onto that committee, for instance. There are different ways you could look at that, and we can do. I mean, the focus at the moment is on the council itself and looking at what the best practice should be there. But there are ways of being of representing or rather, manifesting the royal college that regulates, that unique aspect that we have of having some of that at committee level, in all sorts of nuanced ways. Yeah. No, I would completely agree with that, Ben. Obviously, it's slightly conflicted here because I chair the advancement of the profession committee. But obviously that's we deal with things like sustainability. We deal with things, for example, like innovation, our global programme. RCVS knowledge sits on that, and I think there's a real opportunity for us to potentially elect or nominate people for their specific skill set. 

So Mind Matters, for example, sits under the auspices of APC. Although there is overlap with a lot of these with our regulatory function, and it would be great to have people with real interests in driving those particular subjects who could actually become involved in that aspect of our royal college work. I also think as well, something again, and again, this is not really for this particular consultation because we're talking about VSA here. But it's also an opportunity, I think, to bring people through the ranks for people to gain experience for people to have that training around you know, contributing to committee work, looking at some leadership training, looking at financial assessments, all the sorts of things that help contribute to people being able to put themselves forward for Royal College Council itself. So I think there's a real opportunity for us actually to bring members of the profession through and actually increase our engagement as far as that's concerned. So, yeah, that's not off the table. But that's not what we're discussing. Not what we're discussing at the moment. I don't know whether Eleanor you wanna comment on that at all. No, I don't think I think you've covered it all. Excellent. OK, what have we got here? So how can reform of the RCVS compare to what is in place? So I mean, I suppose there's a question here around the CMA. And the question relates to whether governance reform for college would actually help address some of the problems that have been highlighted by the CMA report. So obviously the CMA report highlighted that the legislation wasn't fit for purpose, but there was all sorts of other things that was highlighted around transparency, of ownership, around pricing and the like. And and I suppose Eleanor, really, when we're looking at pricing, that's not really the remit of the regulatory body is it? No, it's not directly. And then nor is the sort of competition between practices and geographical regions. I think one of the areas where the CMA did comment was around the legislation not being fit for purpose. And this is where we're looking. And I think I think it was Ben that mentioned it. Maybe it was yourself, Sue, was around mandatory practice regulation in terms of that being one of the areas which we have been looking for throughout the entire legislative reform. So I think it's partly it's the I think everything will impact on everything else but what we won't be able to impact directly. It's not that all of a sudden the RCVS is going to be setting the prices in the future. I don't think that's going to be the situation that we're in. But I think something where whatever the CMA report comes out with at the end of the day, one of the things that we've been aware of is around the public and how they approach practices and their expectation of practices and how they actually, people think that all practices are regulated already, and that is very much into the kind of consumer area that is the sorts of things that the CMA is looking for. The transparency, et cetera. That's something that is already there, but I think there's more that could be done through practice regulation. Thank you. That's great. And I've just had a reply from the person who actually asked about our college activity to say that that sounds really good. And will there be a separate consultation on this later? That's always a possibility. Yes, I think if we were going to do something like that, but obviously that's a long way in the future. This is all really about getting a new Veterinary Surgeons Act, looking at reforming our governance for our regulatory activity. So we're almost up to time. I think we can probably just take one more, and I think we've possibly covered this already. But I'll just throw it out anyway. So what's been the main driving force in looking to overhaul the RCVS governance process? So has it come from public perception or internal pressure within the profession? So, Ben, I think we've sort of covered that, really? Because it runs alongside our our bigger piece of work around veterinary surgeons act, doesn't it? That's exactly it. Yeah, the as I said earlier, the composition of council is actually laid out in the Veterinary Surgeons Act. So at the point where a future government, and I don't think any of us can imagine who that might be in the really close to an election that's coming up to us. But whoever that may be, if let's say they decide, OK, we're going to we're ready. We're going to take forward that veterinary surgeons act. We have the whole suite of recommendations and the BVA thoroughly behind those as well. But they're going to say, oh, hang on a minute. You know, the existing current veterinary surgeons says this is what council looks like, what should it look like in a future act? So that's that's why we had to think about it. Because, I mean, you could just say the status quo. But then I think if you do that, given how far away we are from the regulatory norm, there's a risk then that they would perhaps raise an eyebrow and say, OK, well, you know what? What kind of systems have we created for the newer regulators, like the social workers? So it seemed incumbent upon council to really do a deep dive on that, go back to first principles and say, what should the governance look like for a royal college that regulates, you know, maintaining, representing those unique elements but coming closer to the status quo? And I think there are really good reasons for considering reform. It is a long way away from what is expected and the best practice models of giving public assurance. So it's very good reasons for looking at it. 

OK, we've gone through all the questions that have been submitted. We've had lots of duplications in our questions. So I'm hoping that we've managed to cover pretty much everything that's been submitted today. Please remember, you can put questions, queries, concerns into the consultation. There is lots of space there for you to include that as part of your feedback. And please encourage everybody to get involved with this. Traditionally, we can get some really poor responses to our consultations. But this is so important. The more people we can see engaging, the better. It would absolutely be, as I say this has been recorded. So it gives you the opportunity to perhaps talk to your colleagues and say, look, you know, have a listen to the webinar, even if they just listen to the first half of it to our presentations. Hopefully, we'll provide some clarity around some of the questions. I know the thing that's worried people the most is the switch from elections to appointments. And I'm hoping that the questions that we've answered and the presentation we've given today has given people assurance around that whole process. And it is an improvement I would suggest, certainly, in my opinion, on what's going on already. So we're just about up to eight o'clock. It just reminds me to say thank you so much for attending. Thank you for listening. Thank you for putting your questions to us. We're happy to continue the process. As we go through this whole consultation period, there will be more information going out across our social media channels. There's lots of information already on our website, so please take the opportunity to have a look at that. So as it comes up to eight o'clock, thank you so much, everybody. Enjoy the rest of your evening. Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good night. Good night.