Henry Beeby encourages industry collaboration after BHA revelations

Goffs group chief executive Henry Beeby has welcomed the prospect of a revamped code of practice following a British Horseracing Authority review into sales operations.

Details of the report were revealed by the Racing Post last week and it contained some weighty concerns, largely over the conduct of a minority of vendors and bloodstock agents.

The report, submitted by former policeman Justin Felice, had been discussed by bloodstock representatives as well as the BHA chief executive Nick Rust, and Beeby said he had spent "a cumulative total of about 12 hours" involved in the process.

Speaking on Racing TV’s Luck On Sunday, he said: "I think we’ve all accepted that, like anything, things need to be constantly reviewed, updated, modified.

"We’ve looked at the code of practice that has been in place for ten years now, it was first produced in 2004, then updated in 2009, and I think perhaps we’ve all slightly let it go on too long without a proper review so I think one of the key results from this will hopefully be a revised, probably more expanded, code of practice that is a little bit more specific and that has teeth."

Beeby spoke of "frustration" to read details of the conclusions in the press, as well as those of Philippa Cooper, of which he had not previously been aware, but believed it was also important to consider the bigger picture.

Owner-breeder Philippa Cooper is one of those to have spoken out in public about the sales industry

"One of the frustrations for those of us directly involved in the thoroughbred industry and the buying and selling of thoroughbred racehorses in Britain and Ireland is the fact that by nature this has been too general, everyone has rather felt they are tainted with the same brush," he said.

"The review concludes that 95 per cent of the industry is working to very, very high standards of ethics and that there’s enormous integrity, so it’s a very small minority we’re focussing on and that’s been a frustration.

"So a new code of practice is certainly something that all the representatives of the industry that turned up last week would welcome. We’ve said to the BHA we will help in any way we can to draw up the revised code, and to make sure that it is fit for purpose given that there is a view that the current code is now, if maybe not not fit for purpose, but it’s probably out of date."

He went on: "It behoves us all to be able to work together collectively in Britain and Ireland to make sure that people have confidence, and if there’s an undermining of confidence, then we would be certainly naive and probably negligent to our employers and shareholders if we didn’t confront the issues that have been presented to us, and indeed that’s what we’re doing."

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