Getting in on the Act again

Addressing the RCVS’s annual general meeting earlier this month, Stephen May, the incoming president, referred to society’s high expectations of the veterinary profession and pledged that the RCVS would continue to promote and develop its professional regulatory model to make it fit for the 21st century. Professor May will be chairing the RCVS Legislation Working Party, which will be taking ‘a fresh look’ at the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 (VSA) and considering whether the time has come to seek new legislation to regulate the modern veterinary profession. The working party has been set up at the recommendation of the College’s Brexit taskforce, which suggested that, in light of the UK’s decision to leave the EU and what it described as ‘many remaining deficiencies in the existing legislation’, it would be a good time to review the VSA.The RCVS has been down this road before. It has long maintained that the VSA is in need of reform and in 2003 and 2005 it consulted with its members about whether new legislation would be desirable.The possibility of a new Act seemed close in 2003 when Defra sought views on reform but, despite saying it was convinced that the Act needed modernising, it did not bring forward proposals for new legislation.The RCVS …