Interview: Nigel Gibbens

Who are they?

Government veterinarian surgeons are animal health specialists who work across departments and agencies. New recruits must be accredited by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, and once in government become members of professional group the Government Veterinary Service (GVS).
And what do they do?

A range of activities requiring veterinarian training, including undertaking animal health inspections on agricultural sites, checks on abbatoirs and meat handling facilities, laboratory-based research, and advising central government on policy.

Government vets are, says the head of profession, an “interesting bunch”; they are certainly more widely spread than a newcomer to the subject might imagine. The greatest proportion work, predictably enough, for Animal Health: the executive arm of the environment department (Defra) which has responsibility for the health of agricultural animals in England, Scotland and Wales. But the rest are spread in varying numbers across other departments and agencies, down to the solitary vet working for the Department for International Development (DfID).

Chief veterinary officer Nigel Gibbens, who doubles up as head of profession, gives some examples: “There are vets in the Home Office, ensuring welfare standards in relation to research animals, and vets in the Ministry of Defence, including some working on the [military’s] ceremonial animals.”

Even within Animal Health, the work is varied, says Gibbens; from inspecting plants handling animal by-products – such as processed fats for the cosmetics industry – to dealing with a “sheep on a remote hillside”.

“The agency has organised itself so that vets are able to carry out the full range of work,” he explains. “They can also specialise – by species, for example, so they might really understand the pig industry or the game bird industry. We encourage people to develop knowledge of particular areas or industries.”

So the profession includes not just vets out in the proverbial field, but also a huge selection of laboratory-based roles and a small number working close to the centre of government, providing policy advice in Whitehall. Given this, Gibbens wants vets in the civil service to take more advantage of opportunities to move between departments and agencies, in order to build their experience.

While some areas of veterinary work – such as disease control and epidemiology – require highly specialised postgraduate training, the chief vet thinks there is scope for significantly more secondment and interchange. “Moving people – like the guy who might have been out on a hillside with a sheep – into policy teams brings hands-on experience into policy-making,” he says. “Because vets operate in such a variety of roles, being able to work constructively in all kinds of different ways is really important.”

So, hasn’t that kind of movement between jobs been possible in the past? It has, Gibbens says, but structural changes – including the growth of arm’s-length agencies and quangos – have made it more difficult. The solution, according to the head vet, is to create a much stronger awareness of community. “The veterinary world is quite spread-out, and in some places quite small in number. What I’d like to do is create much more of a cadre of people. The government veterinary service is there to make all those links work.”

One way of fomenting those links is the Government Veterinary Service (GVS) steering group, which includes Gibbens – responsible for the whole of the UK – and the chief vets for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as senior vets from other departments and agencies.

The group meets twice a year to discuss broad policy issues, along with common learning and development schemes for vets. Similarly, Gibbens says, building relations with the professional body, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, and UK vet schools is important in ensuring levels of training.

How does the civil service compare with private practice? Perhaps predictably, the head of profession says government work is more varied; something which helps to attract vets to civil service careers from outside. “It is ever-changing and evolving, so a lot of the people we get may well have spent some time in private practice and are drawn to us because there’s a new challenge that government can offer.”

On salaries, Gibbens insists, the government has to be competitive; pay for civil service vets “compares well” with those employed in the private sector – though vets who own their own practise are, of course, able to earn more if their business is successful.

Money may be a concern for those joining government, but it’s also a worry for civil service employers; tighter public finances could lead to job losses. Gibbens admits that cuts in the overall number of vets are a “possibility”, but says there are plans in place to mitigate the risk.

“I’m sure in areas it will become a reality,” he says. “But it’s very important to recognise areas where there’s an emergency response need, and what the irreducible number of vets is.” At a broader level, he says, the government is working to manage risks more efficiently on animal-related areas such as infectious disease: “We’re moving from a world where quite a lot of vets in government have been employed in checks, to doing fewer but more effective checks, so we can respond to some of the funding pressures.”