Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Baroness Verma Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register. I thank my noble friend the Minister for the way he introduced this Second Reading. He laid out very clearly that this Government will be forward-thinking after coming out of Europe and that we will make sure that, instead of excluding professionals from countries we are currently limited to, we will welcome them. We will work closely with them through our regulators to ensure that we do not dumb down but collectively make our own country stronger through professional services and work closely with regulators, mutually, across those countries with which we will have trade agreements. That is right and proper, and it is important that, rather than constantly looking backwards, we look forward as a country with confidence.

I had a different set of notes; I changed them after listening to noble Lords because I was getting rather down in the mouth thinking that, rather than us all being optimistic about how we can make our country really strong and great, working with developing nations that are racing ahead, we should look at immigration, migration and all the challenges that we have collectively faced with the pandemic. We should see the opportunities to share best practice and make regulators—not in other countries but our own regulators—stronger and much more independent. They need to be able to look both at where there are jobs currently and at the jobs that do not actually exist. We should look at how we are going to future-proof ourselves.

I am glad that the Bill is here. When I first took the papers home, I thought it was a very small document. I agree with noble Lords that there will be a lot of scrutiny. That is what this House is really good at: scrutinising and making sure that we get the best outcomes, not just for our country but for the partners that we will deal with. I hope that, by being critical friends but also constructive contributors, across this House we will be able to use the collective expertise and experience that this House affords us to come out with something that is not only a game-changer for the professional bodies but a gold standard for those regulators with which we will no doubt be making these bespoke arrangements.

Sometimes I get rather depressed when I look at competency in English and the ability to communicate. Of course those are important issues, but we have failed ourselves by failing to address competency in language in our country for decades. It is only right and proper that we address that issue now and make sure that, as people come to this country, the competencies of speaking, reading and writing in English are there. This also applies when we engage with our partners across the waters. I do not know who mentioned India but, if I may say so, Indian workers tend to have absolutely accurate, precise English. They are taught it grammatically and they come to this country with a very high level of competency. Unfortunately, we have also allowed lower-skilled workers to arrive on our shores and huddle in communities where they do not bother to engage in learning English. That is something that we as a country should address instead of blaming migrants who come to this country.

I also hope that my noble friend the Minister will see to it that, as we come out and look at the work that the Secretary of State for International Trade is doing—I must congratulate her on her progress—we look at ourselves as a country that embraces the new world, where developing, emerging economies will play a large part in the generation of global wealth, and not look at ourselves as rule-makers without being rule-takers. I hope that these short comments have set out my position: I hope that I will be constructive to the Minister, but I will also take time to scrutinise every single line that the Bill presents.