Interesting Composition

The Guardian newspaper in London reports on the new make-up of British Racing's new Disciplinary Panel and Licensing Committee which we thought you might find interesting when compared to the New Zealand model:

Jenny Pitman, who saddled two Grand National winners during an outstanding training career, and the former leading Flat jockey Philip Robinson are among the 23 members of the British Horseracing Authority's new Disciplinary Panel and Licensing Committee, which will be responsible for hearing disciplinary cases and imposing penalties where necessary from early next month.

Pitman and Robinson both responded to a call by the BHA for former trainers and jockeys to put themselves forward for the new panel, the formation of which was recommended by Christopher Quinlan QC in a review of the regulator's disciplinary and licensing procedures last year.

“I've worked in racing all my life and hopefully we can bring something to the table,” Pitman said on Monday. “If people are unfortunate enough to find themselves in an inquiry, I'm hopeful they will be satisfied with their treatment and the decisions that are made.

“I've worked with owners, stable staff, jockeys, vets, feed merchants, I was on the Lambourn Trainers' Association committee and I've done a lot of stuff since I retired from training. The panel members who have done it from the grassroots, we've done it and didn't read it in a book, so hopefully we'll all be an asset to the panel in general. I haven't got a legal brain but I've got common sense.”

Quinlan's review was commissioned before the protracted disciplinary case involving the trainer Jim Best, which finally concluded in December last year when Best was banned for six months for ordering a jockey to stop two horses in races in December 2015. He had initially been banned for four years in April 2016 after an earlier hearing of the case, but that result was quashed when it emerged that Matthew Lohn, the chairman of the disciplinary panel, had accepted paid work for the BHA on non-disciplinary matters.

Several QCs, both current and retired, are also included on the new panel, including Patrick Milmo QC, an owner for many years, who also represented Jack and Linda Ramsden and their jockey Kieren Fallon in a successful libel action against the Sporting Life newspaper in 1998. Jodie Mogford, a former jump jockey and now an assistant trainer at Graeme McPherson's yard, is also on the panel, but will not sit on any cases which involve a licensed trainer or in which McPherson, a QC who regularly acts for racing clients, is involved on either side.

John de Moraville, a former racing correspondent for the Daily Express who has been a handicapper for the BHA for nearly 20 years, will join the panel in November 2018, while Simon Rowlands, a form expert and the current chairman of the Horseracing Bettors Forum, also survived a selection process which involved 138 applications and 53 interviews.