Thank you very much. We are very pleased to have this opportunity to share our position with you.
You will be aware that the stakeholder consultation ran from 2 June to 10 July. We have considered very thoroughly the responses that we received. Some work arising from that is still on-going.
This process has inevitably resulted in a great deal of uncertainty for staff, particularly those at the affected sites. No decisions have yet been concluded with regard to our next steps, so no announcements have been made. Procedurally speaking, once we have reached a decision on our next steps, our staff and the unions will be the first to be made aware. A formal staff consultation would then be initiated. I respectfully request that committee members bear that in mind, given the public nature of this meeting.
I will outline SRUC’s role in the decision-making process on animal disease surveillance. SRUC, through its commercial division, SAC Consulting, delivers veterinary surveillance and public-good advisory services under a memorandum of understanding with the Scottish Government.
Following a recommendation from the Kinnaird report, the Scottish Government established an independent strategic management board to advise on the future of veterinary disease surveillance in Scotland. The three independent members of the SMB were appointed by the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Food and Environment and it is chaired by the chief veterinary officer for Scotland.
SAC Consulting has considerable technical expertise in animal disease surveillance. As the main operational protagonist, it works with and through the strategic management board on matters affecting the strategic direction of disease surveillance in Scotland. We have been doing that for the past three and a half years.
Under our memorandum of understanding with the Scottish Government, there are areas in which SAC Consulting is required to obtain specific permissions in order to proceed.
I will say a few words about disease surveillance itself. There are basically two broad areas of disease surveillance. The majority of our activities at our eight disease surveillance centres across Scotland involve vets, farmers, crofters and others submitting carcases and other specimens to our laboratory facilities as part of what is termed passive surveillance. That relies on the initiative being taken by the individual vet or farmer to submit material to us.
Active surveillance, on the other hand, is where the initiative is taken—perhaps by us or perhaps by others—to investigate actively what is believed to be a disease trend. That might be on the basis of information that has become apparent, and on the basis of data that is available. I highlight the difference between passive and active surveillance and emphasise that we have ambitions to use both forms of surveillance more closely as we go forward. We would be happy to talk about that.
Disease surveillance around the world has been receiving attention in terms of how it is carried out. Specifically on Scotland, I should make you aware that the disease surveillance infrastructure dates back to the 60s and 70s in many cases, since when, of course, the structure of farming has changed very significantly, livestock numbers have, by and large, decreased significantly and Government approaches to public funding—not just in Scotland, but in other parts of the world—have changed significantly, too.
There is now a need to modernise our approach to disease surveillance in order to deliver a high-quality output and the best value for money for the taxpayer. Indeed, that was recognised in the Kinnaird report, which was published in 2011. We need to make better use of passive and active surveillance and ensure that the widest and best use is made of the knowledge and skills of the broader veterinary and farmer communities. We believe that we should make better use of modern technology in order to join up that information and better co-ordinate it.
It was against that backdrop and, more recently, the acute pressure of budgetary cuts that, on 2 June this year, SRUC was prompted to move to a stakeholder consultation. That was one day after I started this job with SAC Consulting.
I have one final introductory point to make, which I hope provides clarity. SRUC bases various operations at Drummond Hill in Inverness. The first of those is a disease surveillance centre, which provides a post-mortem facility to local vets and farmers. The second is a laboratory facility, which tests the specimens that arise from those post-mortems and other samples that have been submitted by vets and farmers. A marine animal stranding team is also based there. Fourthly, there is an epidemiology team and, fifthly, there is a farm business consultancy office. Those are five separate groups. A total of 49 members of staff work at the site, 15 of whom are involved in the disease surveillance centre and the marine animal stranding team. The other 34 work in the epidemiology team and the farm business consultancy.
SRUC concluded that it would support the University of the Highlands and Islands science park in Inverness by transferring the epidemiology and farm business consultancy teams to the new campus, when it opens in the first quarter of next year. However, the disease surveillance centre was not included in that move, because at that point we were still in discussions with the SMB about the future of disease surveillance across Scotland.
I hope that that helps to set the scene.