Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, who expertly outlined the complexity contained within this apparently simple Bill.

It is also a pleasure to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, who is not currently in her place, to her new role. I share the concerns that she expressed about the situation of EEA and Swiss citizens who are already here and practising their professions: they are established and their skills and experience are proven, and we need to ensure that they are able to continue without stress, worry or fear. Some of the experiences that we are already seeing with the settled status scheme, at borders in particular, is a great cause for concern.

I share the concern expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, and many others about the risk of professional bodies coming under pressure to tie trade deals together with recognition. I particularly note the dangers, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, of that whole approach to, and model of, reciprocity.

While sharing many of the concerns that noble Lords have expressed about the Bill, I welcome the fact that it gives us a chance to really think about professional skills and how this whole area of issues relates to immigration, education and our skills agenda. We can learn and think about three things in this debate. First, this is a chance to assess where we are with Brexit. Secondly, this is a chance to debate that intersection between immigration policy, professional recognition and overseas development assistance, which I will come back to. Thirdly, we need to think about the nature of professions in a fast-changing world. There was a reference to one of our professional bodies dating back to the 1850s, and we have organisations that have been set up over many decades. Are our current structures and arrangements fit for the 21st century?

On the first point about the state of Brexit, the Bill is further reminder that it is not done; it has barely even started, in terms of dealing with the fallout. It is interesting that, as we debate, there is the woe of the laborious swapping of the EU-based CE markings for the post-Brexit British-based UKCA markings, involving the retesting of thousands of construction products, many of which the professionals that we are talking about will have to use. We have recently seen the Government acknowledge that they need to extend the period for that because of the complexity, which illustrates our current situation. That complexity has been well highlighted in this debate.

The Government outline how the Bill is intended to replace the EU approach with one that is focused on enabling professional bodies to make bilateral agreements with bodies from other countries. I was going to expand on this point, but the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, very successfully outlined the sheer complexity and volume of what we are talking about, so I will not go over that ground again.

We need to know what the Government mean when they talk about opening up global Britain to new trade opportunities in services. That is very much related to how we treat people wanting to come here, which is where immigration rights become particularly relevant. If we create barriers to people coming and providing services here—I am looking at immigration rather than qualifications—then those same barriers will be put up to our service providers when they go to other places. The concept of reciprocity can be very much employed against us if we are draconian in our approach.

We have rightly had a lot of discussion in your Lordships’ House, which I very much support, about the problems that musicians are experiencing in relation to operating within the EU. We should not forget that lots of these problems have been masked by the pandemic, and, as the pandemic becomes less of an issue, we hope, and travel opens up, a lot of these issues will become very much more evident.

I will pick up a few specific points and then come to a general discussion. I think I heard the Minister correctly when he talked about Clause 8 as a potential way of opening up professions and promoting skills development. This caused me to go back and have another look at Clause 8, because I had not really thought of it in those terms. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me on this point: putting a formal, technical publication on a website will not address our issues around the need for access to professional development, particularly for young people but for all people in the UK.

This is the first chance that I have had to mention an issue that ties with some that the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie, raised about professionals needing to work in the UK to confirm their qualifications, reach a certain level, and demonstrate that level. Visa changes in 2010 trapped students coming across for 415 STEM courses and 222 vocational, education and training courses. This meant that for immigration purposes, they were no longer classified as students but instead as workers. The case study that I know most about in this case concerns becoming a RIBA-qualified architect in the UK; students have to work in an approved practice for two years after they have completed their studies and then do a final exam. I have worked with students who were hit extraordinarily hard by that and who simply could not secure the immigration status and therefore a qualification they had paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for, in some cases. I will be asking the Minister whether the Government have really looked at that and how it will relate to the nature of the Bill. It is a complex area.

Another specific point is the relationship with the devolved Administrations. A government document states:

“We will not normally make regulations under these powers in devolved areas without the agreement of the relevant devolved authority.”


Some noble Lords will remember the wrestle that we had with the internal market Bill over the need to protect the independent regulation of teachers on these islands, in relation to the attempt to enforce automatic recognition. In Committee, the Government resisted any claim that there was an issue with that—and then, on Report, they acknowledged that there was a problem and brought in an amendment.

Given what happened with the internal market Bill, I have a direct question that I hope the Minister will be able to answer now: under what abnormal conditions would the Government be likely to impose on the devolved Administrations rules that they opposed?

Very briefly, I share the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and others about the extensive nature of the Henry VIII powers here. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, referred to the avalanche of regulations likely to result from this, and I had a picture flash in my head, as I expect many noble Lords did, of that Grand Committee Room in which so many of us have spent so many hours, either physically or virtually, over the last year or so. However, we must also acknowledge how thinly populated, whether physically or virtually, that Grand Committee very often is. We are looking at issues of great complexity and specialist knowledge. There was reference in Oral Questions to the number of Members of your Lordships’ House, but it seems we still do not have enough to fill the Grand Committee Room.

I come now to a couple of broader issues, which tie back to what we have now—the transitional arrangements, particularly those for teaching and nursing, and preferential treatment for Swiss and EEA citizens. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, referred to the way in which, over decades, relationships were established across the European Union when we were a member, through knowledge of courses and training systems in different countries. People coming from those countries are now a known quantity. I am particularly concerned about the pressure likely to be put on the professional bodies to deal with a global circumstance—to deal with that level of global complexity. I am particularly concerned, again, about the pressure that might be put on some professions. I am thinking here of the veterinary profession, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Trees. I know and hear reports about the difficulty in filling positions relating to meat inspection that require veterinary qualifications. These are very skilled and important jobs, crucial to public health. Are we going to see pressure to let people in with skills that we perhaps cannot quantify and do not know about, just because of the need to fill those?

I come now to the philosophical approach, which is where I perhaps most differ from most other noble Lords who have spoken. A lot of the discussion is about Britain’s competitive advantage—how we are better at this than anyone else and how we can sell this to the world. The thesis I would put to your Lordships’ House is that we have a complex, difficult world, with a climate emergency and huge public health dangers, in which what we need are a great many more professionals—trained people in every country on this planet, able to help the human race deal with the challenges we face. So I really want to challenge this approach of competitiveness—of competing with others. I ask the Government again, though perhaps not now, really to consider how we might use these changes being brought in to help professional bodies in other nations, particularly, perhaps, in the global south, to develop their own skills and be able to operate effectively in their own environments. That is in all our interests.

I come back to Covid—no one is safe until everybody is safe. We need good-quality professionals in every country in the world, and we have a gross shortage at the moment. That is perhaps of relevance to our position as chair of COP 26. In the earlier debate, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, talked about the importance of green finance, a fast-developing professional area in which we are likely to see new qualifications and new demands put on existing qualifications. How will the Bill contribute to and assist with all that?

What we need, really, is not an overarching policy that seeks to encourage a brain drain from other nations. We have to acknowledge that young people, and older people, often want to travel, to experience the world and learn from different countries and systems, so that they become better, more skilled professionals from that experience. I come back to immigration policy and taking approaches that do not just say, “We’ll try to nab the best from around the world and get them here, working for us”, but says, “We can take professionals of all different levels of experience and skill, perhaps giving them some experience here, and our professionals can go to other countries and gain experience”. That is a better way forward.

I come to my final two points. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said that she had seen a list of what is covered. Will the Minister share that list with all the participants in this debate? It would be useful to all of us. My particular interest is the position of chartered environmentalist, which I do not believe will be covered but is a formal qualification organised by the Society for the Environment. We come back here to my issue about needing new skills, new professions and new ways of looking at the world, particularly looking at world systems thinking. I would like to see many more chartered accountants who are also chartered environmentalists. We need to see that kind of cross-fertilisation of ideas, and that requires movement. I was having a discussion about this and we were looking back, not just to our time in the EU but further back. Some of the most magnificent structures in the UK—some of our magnificent old churches and cathedrals—were of course often built by teams of masons who came from around Europe. If we think about environmental issues, the quality of our building, Passivhaus and better standards, those things need exchange of skills and knowledge.

Finally, I am very much looking forward to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, who will be speaking in a few slots’ time. He will raise this with far more detail and expertise than I can offer. We have heard a lot of talk about how good UK regulation is but, particularly in the financial sector, we have some very serious questions to ask when we look at the issue of financial scandal after financial scandal, which has been the reality of life in the City of London. Members of your Lordships’ House who took part in debates on the Financial Services Act will very much reflect on that. Is this Bill an opportunity to really think about how we can deal with professional qualifications, thinking about not just competence but also ethics and fitness to practise?