Speeches by Tufnell.

“How long have you been working with Severn Trent on best practice? How long have you been learning from it?”

“This was in terms of your response systems.”

“Part of understanding what maintenance needs to be done is that you have to monitor what is happening in the first place. The DWI also set out that there was not enough monitoring going on at the Pembury works, particularly around optimising that coagulation process. There was no continuous temperature monitoring, and …”

“Hold on a second, because you say that, but in the report you talk about gaps in operation. This is not just a gap, is it? You are not doing over half of what you are meant to be doing.”

“You have touched on risk, and in your reports there was no structured mechanism for how to capture or escalate risks from the operators during site interviews, so that presumably was incredibly concerning to you?”

“You have been taking best practice from Severn Trent for three or four years?”

“The reason why I am pushing this point is that the report talks about groupthink. As the chair and non-executive directors, it is your responsibility to guard against that; it is concerning that you do not seem to be doing your job properly.”

“Is there a power in this country that you feel you have to adhere to? You dispute the judges; you do not take seriously what the Prime Minister says; you do not take seriously what the Secretary of State says. You seem to hold Parliament— What power in this country do you feel that you, as a company, can adhere to?”

“You talk about risk, and the regulator is there to manage that risk and hold you to account. The DWI found that you did not carry out any jar testing in October, despite there being a requirement under regulatory notice to do so, and that the original coagulant should have worked had the optimisation process been follo…”

“In terms of the culture of the organisation that you oversee, and the scrutiny and accountability, are you not concerned that you have been in post for over two years and you have never thought that maybe safety should be part of the organisational thinking?”

“It is quite concerning because, Mr Train, I think you have set out in correspondence that this is in line with industry standards in terms of staffing—”

“You did not do a jar testing until 28 November.”

“Yes.”

“The numbers are quite startling. In 2013, independent practices were 89% of the UK veterinary industry, but by 2021, this was at 45%. If we talk about pet care, it is worth £2 billion—you basically have a load of private equity or listed companies suddenly dominating this market. I appreciate that you identified all th…”

“What about the levy? Is there a proposal about you having a levy so that you can—”

“Could you give us a couple of words about the role that you would be expected to play? I caveat that question with the fact that we are not expecting to see this, I think, until May. Then there will obviously be a period of adaptation.”

“Does anyone want to add anything before I go on? Okay. That is really helpful. Thank you, Tim; I appreciate that. I just wanted to start off with a broad question about how you feel about what the CMA has been doing, essentially. We could start with Rob.”

“Do you think it will have a disproportionate impact on those smaller practices because of the amount of stuff that the CMA will be demanding?”

“Therefore, do you think that what the CMA has proposed will have any impact on the pricing point?”

“It seems that there is a shortfall between the funding you are getting from Government and the funding that it costs you to put an individual through vet school. For much of the time, you have been using international students to plug that shortfall. In the context of what the Home Office has been doing—we have touched…”