BBC Panorama: Unite vets speak out

With vet care in the spotlight once again after the BBC’s Panorama programme highlighted the subject this week, Unite’s British Veterinary Union (BVU) wants to set the record straight.

The latest episode of BBC Panorama, Why are Vet Bills So High?, is now available on BBC iPlayer and will air tonight on BBC One at 8pm.

While the BVU is pleased that Panorama has chosen to investigate skyrocketing vet bills, the union believes its investigation could have looked more closely at the solutions to the issues facing the veterinary sector.

BVU chair Suzy Hudson-Cooke was quoted, but speaking to UniteLive after viewing the programme, she feels disappointed by the context in which her contributions were shown.

“It’s heartening to see that Panorama has rightfully highlighted the issue of skyrocketing vet bills,” she said. “But it didn’t do enough to really look at the reasons why, and we feel it unfortunately could contribute to vet-bashing stereotypes.”

Suzy was quoted in the programme as noting that private equity firms, many of which now own vet firms, are more concerned about profit than veterinary professionals.

“I stand by these words, but we feel it is important to make a distinction between employers and the veterinary workers who work, day in and day out, to care for our beloved animals,” Suzy noted.

She added that there is no difference between the vet workers employed by independent veterinary practices and those employed by private equity-backed corporate-owned practices.

“Vet workers – including vets, vet nurses, admin staff and others – are just as qualified, and care just as deeply for the patients they treat, no matter who their employer is,” she said. “The media often suggests that it is somehow less safe to send your pets to corporate-owned vet practices, or that they’ll receive poorer quality care. This just isn’t the case. The problem is that all vet workers, whoever their employer is, are forced to work within a system that is unregulated, outdated, and often puts profit over animal welfare.”

The BVU believes that it is only through a root-and-branch overhaul of this system that pet owners can be confident in accessing safe and affordable veterinary care, wherever they choose to go.

At the top of the BVU’s agenda is the call for practice regulation, similar to the CQC system governing human healthcare in the UK. At present, vet workers are only regulated as individuals, meaning the practices themselves, and the companies that own them, cannot be held accountable when something goes wrong.

In practice, this means there’s no incentive for companies to put measures in place to ensure pets’ welfare comes first. Instead, it’s left to vet workers themselves, who often must put in hours of unpaid overtime to meet their obligations to the regulator.  

Another issue highlighted in the BBC Panorama programme is the cost of prescription medication. What the programme failed to fully explain – and what many pet owners don’t know – is that pet prescriptions are tightly regulated under an outdated ‘Cascade’ system.

In this system, vets cannot legally offer, as a first port of call, more affordable off-label or generic prescriptions to pet patients, as is often done, for example, in the NHS. The BVU wants to change this.

The BVU is moreover calling for the protection of the veterinary nurse title – at present, you don’t have to be registered veterinary nurse to call yourself a vet nurse.  And lastly, the union wants to see total transparency from large veterinary corporations about all their external business ventures.

Suzy was partially quoted in the BBC Panorama programme on vertical integration, but the show did not include her full explanation.

“Many pet owners don’t know just how deeply some of these corporations are invested in a multitude of connected pet services. The Competition Markets Authority (CMA) is calling for practices to be transparent about whether they’re owned by large corporations, but the BVU wants to go a step further.”

Suzy highlighted that, for example, “if a vet practice says that you can buy drugs more cheaply from a particular online pharmacy, the practice should be obligated to divulge if the pharmacy has the same corporate owner. Pet owners deserve to know.”

The BVU is now lobbying for these important changes to veterinary care to be made through a new Veterinary Surgeons Act. As it fights tirelessly for these changes, in the meantime, it is calling for solidarity from the pet-owning public.

“For those who are tuning in to Panorama tonight, we urge viewers to remember that the individuals providing care to your pets, whether they’re at an independent or corporate-owned vet practice, are ultimately deeply concerned about their welfare, and they’re working hard to help you. They’re just caught up in a system that’s not fit for purpose and that desperately needs updating.”

Let us know what you think about tonight’s BBC Panorama Programme by contacting us on [email protected]. If you miss it tonight, you can catch up on iPlayer here.

To find out more about Unite’s British Veterinary Union (BVU) visit their webpage here.

By Hajera Blagg