UniteLive's 12 days of Xmas: Vets call for fair fees, fair pay

Each day throughout the holiday season, UniteLive will feature one of our twelve stories of the year. On the seventh day of Christmas, UniteLive looks back at a wide-ranging interview with the BVU’s chair Suzanna Hudson-Cook, who highlights the issues facing vet workers and pet owners alike. Please note that the deadline for contributing to the consultation referred to in the article has now passed. The outcome of the consultation will be published next year.

The UK is undeniably a nation of pet lovers – a majority, 60 per cent, owns a pet. Over a third of the population – totalling 13.5m households – keeps at least one dog. Almost just as many households – 12.5m households – own cats (or to be more accurate, are owned by cats). The UK even leads the world in reptile ownership.

This huge popularity of pets translates into big business, with income generated from veterinary activity in the UK totalling an astonishing £6.73bn in 2024. But workers under enormous pressure – from vets, to nurses, to admin staff and others – are getting a vanishingly small piece of this pie, while big businesses are lining their pockets like never before.

Practice regulation

In 2013, only 10 per cent of practices were owned by large corporations. Now, 60 per cent of veterinary practices are owned by only six companies, many of them private equity outfits, which continue to buy up smaller independent vets.

This total transformation of the sector in only a few years has gathered pace since 1999, when for the first time businesses were allowed to own veterinary practices instead of only vets themselves. Over time, prices have shot up too, with vet bills skyrocketing by 60 per cent between 2015 and 2023 – double the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, veterinary salaries have not risen anywhere near the rate of inflation over the same time period.

These alarming trends prompted the Competition Markets Authority (CMA) to investigate the sector, with provisional remedies published in October. Unite’s British Veterinary Union (BVU) – the UK’s only union representing all workers in the sector – welcomed the remedies, but is asking the CMA, and the government, to go further.  

The BVU is now urging its members, as well as the pet-owning public, to contribute to a consultation ending on Wednesday (November 12) before the CMA makes its final decisions.  

UniteLive caught up with BVU chair Suzanna Hudson-Cook, who explained the issues of most concern to its members. For Suzanna, one thing is clear.

“We must have mandatory practice regulation, similar to how human health care is regulated through a body like the Care Quality Commission (CQC),” Suzanna explained.

At the moment, 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 veterinary practitioners themselves.

“What ends up happening is that vet workers put in substantial unpaid overtime to meet their obligations to the regulator, while the companies in charge have absolutely no responsibility,” Suzanna explained. “If we had practice regulation, businesses would have a financial incentive to do the right thing.”’

Prescriptions

The BVU is also calling for a complete overhaul of the way veterinary medicines are prescribed. The current system, Suzanna explained, is out of date, and has in many cases, made medicines for our beloved pets prohibitively expensive.

“The current system, called the cascade, was devised in the 60s when the vast majority of vet services were for farm animals that would go on to be part of the food chain,” she noted. “As part of this system, vets must, as a first port of call, prescribe medicines that are licensed for a specific animal with a specific condition.”

This system was originally devised to be overly cautious because of concerns about the effects a medicine could have on eggs, milk or other parts of an animal that humans consume. Now, the pendulum has swung the other way, and the vast majority of vet work is for companion animals.

“In the NHS there’s a big push for generic and off-label medications to make them more affordable, and they’re just as effective,” Suzanna noted. “What the public fails to understand is that because of our cascade system, vets cannot do the same for our pets.

“Pet owners are angry that they’re being forced to use these licensed, brand-name medications when cheaper, nearly identical alternatives are available. It contributes to the popular myth of ‘money-grabbing vets’, but in reality our hands are tied by prescription rules.”

The BVU is now calling for two separate systems for the prescription of veterinary medicines, one like the current regime for farm animals, and a separate system for companion animals, with a lot more flexibility for off-label use.

‘Vet-bashing’

Suzanna went on to express frustration about the narrative around vets that’s become entrenched in the public’s mind, both through the media and a concerted agenda pushed by vet-owning companies.

“It’s this narrative of vet-bashing,” Suzanna explained. “The companies that own our vet practices, many of them private equity firms, would have you believe that the sector isn’t particularly profitable. They say that the only reason vet fees have skyrocketed so dramatically is because pay and conditions in the sector have improved, and that that is a huge cost, a burden.”

This narrative is echoed in the media, too, where many of the headline stories on vets focus on pet owners who had to pay exorbitant fees for routine care, but that don’t tell the full story.

“You read about people who had to pay £12,000 when their dog broke their leg, not about how a veterinary receptionist is being forced to go to a food bank, or how a huge chunk of that £12,000 is ultimately going to line the pockets of distant executives and shareholders.”

Ultimately, these narratives obscure the essential truth in the veterinary services sector – that it is, in fact, significantly profitable. But those profits are being funnelled out of our veterinary practices, into other corporate investments. They aren’t adequately being reinvested into animal care, or the people who provide this care.

Suzanna said she was heartened to see that the CMA provisional report has begun to acknowledge this reality. The report, for example, says that the CMA analysis shows “direct evidence that price increases are not sufficiently offset by the costs involved in any investment in quality. In a well-functioning market, we would expect more of these profits to be competed away through lower prices or greater investment in quality”.

This acknowledgement is a start, but the BVU wants to see a greater emphasis on the fact that vet workers are not to blame for skyrocketing prices. While it is featured in the CMA provisional report, it is not highlighted in summaries or press or other public-facing material.

Consultation

Beyond changes to the way veterinary medicines are prescribed, as well as the call for mandatory practice regulation, Unite’s BVU has made a number of other calls, which you can read about here. Among these is that the BVU has a seat at the table in discussions about an updated Veterinary Surgeons Act. Astonishingly, the BVU has to date been excluded from all official talks, even though it is the only organisation representing all veterinary workers.

You can back the BVU’s calls by contributing to the CMA’s consultation. The deadline is tomorrow (Wednesday, November 12). It is an open consultation to which anyone can contribute. To assist in contributing to the consultation, the BVU has published a template letter, which you can access and edit to describe your own experiences with vet care, here.

“We urge both our veterinary members and all members of the public who are concerned about the future of pet care in this country to contribute,” Suzanna said. “We stand in solidarity with pet owners, calling for fair fees, fair pay and smaller profits.”

By Hajera Blagg