At last week’s RCVS council meeting, council members considered a document with the unassuming title ‘Report of the RCVS Legislation Working Party (LWP)’. Despite its title, the document was no plan for piecemeal change but a radical blueprint for wholesale restructuring of veterinary legislation. It contained a masterplan for an interrelated raft of measures which, if enacted, would dramatically modernise the regulatory regime within which vets operate (see pp 580-581). A new Act of Parliament would replace the existing Veterinary Surgeons Act. In one of the plan’s most striking features, it is envisaged that new powers would be handed to the RCVS, including ‘powers of entry’, meaning the right to enter vet practices without consent. That move is being driven by a desire to increase the accountability of non-vets who own practices. The RCVS would, under the LWP’s vision, acquire a new role akin …