Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Lords Chamber

As I say, this is the only time that I am going to speak, and I am grateful to the Whips for allowing me to wander over the topic a bit. I support the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the work that she has done on these amendments and on the others, which I fully support.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has drawn attention to the fact that I have not put my name to these amendments, although I have done so to Amendment 10. It was an accident; it was just that at the last moment we were trying to gather together who was to sign up to what. I fully support these amendments, just as I do Amendment 10. In some respects, the case for consultation is stronger in the case of these amendments because they are talking about regulations, not just advice, which is what Amendment 10 is talking about. It is particularly important when one is drafting regulations that complete information is obtained before regulations are finalised.

To pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Bennachie, I want to mention that Craighead lies north-east of Cumnock and is a convenient way to get to Bennachie, so we are all part of the same bit of geography.

The noble Lord made the point about Scots law being different from English law, which of course it is. There are two important aspects of Scots law that are very different from English law, apart from land law, and are much more frequently encountered: family law, which is entirely different, and criminal law, the procedures and much of the substance of which are very different too. That is just a reinforcement of the point that the noble Lord was making about appreciating and understanding the differences before the regulations are finalised.

I support entirely the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, in introducing this group. She mentioned a point that I want to pursue, which is the question of whether the Welsh and Scottish Administrations were willing to support a consent Motion. I am a member of the Constitution Committee, and one of the advantages that I have had of doing that—I am waiting for the Minister to listen to this because it is rather important—is that we took the opportunity to go to Wales to meet members of the equivalent committee in the Senedd and to Scotland to meet members of the committee in the Scottish Parliament. One point that came across in both meetings was grave disquiet about the way that the legislative consent process is being handled.

The worst example that was quoted frequently is what happened in the case of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act. I would be grateful if the Minister would say a bit more about the process with which he was involved in consulting with the Welsh and the Scots with a view to obtaining consent to this measure. Among the points made was that they were consulted too late, they were not given enough information to be able to form a view and, when changes were made to the Bill, they were not fully informed about what those changes were in time for them to rethink and reconsider.

I know I am pressing the Minister to a point that he may not be fully prepared for and, if so, perhaps he would be kind enough to write to me to explain what went on. I am speaking on behalf of the Constitution Committee when I say that we would be very interested to know from the perspective of the UK Government about how the process was handled. Did they give the Government enough reasons for not wanting to give consent? Was there enough of a dialogue to enable the disagreement to be flushed out and see whether it could be resolved? These are very important issues that extend well beyond this Bill, and any help that the Minister can give about how the process was handled would be extremely helpful.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I hope noble Lords will forgive me, but I want to intervene briefly in the debate. I am Lord Lansley, of Orwell, which is nowhere on the route that has been mentioned; it is not even between the locations in Scotland and Boscobel. You could not even go via Orwell to get to Boscobel, which is where I hope we are going to end up.

I shall say just a couple of things. First, I was interested in what the noble and learned Lord was saying about the Constitution Committee and the legislative consent Motion process, but I have to say, in relation to this Bill, that we completed Committee stage at the end of June and I tabled my amendments in the early part of July. We are now in November. There has been no lack of opportunity for the devolved Administrations to see precisely what the Bill is intended to do, what the remaining issues of controversy might be and what the intended outcome looks like. Frankly, they have had every opportunity to consider a legislative consent Motion and to have passed one, so if they do not then I do not know why not.

Secondly, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady McIntosh. She was looking at why we are consulting with regulators over the powers to make regulations in Clauses 1, 3 and 4—that is in Amendment 13, which I support—but not other clauses. As it happens, I agree with my noble friend, or at least I hope I do, that Clauses 5 and 6, in so far as they are about tidying up the statute book, are not really appropriate for consultation processes; they are essentially just working out the legal statute-book consequences of the Bill.

However, I suddenly realised that there is a regulation-making power in Clause 10 that the Government are not intending to consult upon. I thought, “Hang on a minute, I thought I agreed with the Government because I tabled an amendment at the beginning of July to press the Government on the question of consultation with regulators”, so I looked back at it. Of course I subsequently withdrew it when the Minister tabled his own amendment, but when I looked at it I realised that what I said originally was, and I quote myself:

“Prior to making regulations under this Act, other than those made under sections 5, 6 and 18”—


that is, Clauses 5 and 6 relating to retained EU law and Clause 18 on commencement—

“the appropriate national authority must consult such regulators of regulated professions as appear to the authority to be likely to be affected by the regulations.”

So my amendment would have included consultation on the regulation-making power in Clause 10, which relates to the duty to make information available to overseas regulators. I freely confess that I had not noticed the difference and that gap. While I very much support what the Minister has tabled in Amendment 13—I very much endorse it because it largely achieves what I was hoping for in the amendment that I tabled way back in July—I ask him to explain the process of thinking by which Clause 10 has been left out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to intervene, as I am sure the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, will, and he may be able to comment on what I am about to say.

The noble Baroness has explained quite clearly what the purpose of the amendment is, and I do not need to repeat that, but we are engaged with the interaction between the Bill and the internal market Act. That is the nub of where the suspicion has arisen. I take account of the fact that the Minister has explained the consultations that have taken place, but they did not take place for the internal market Act, and that has led to a legacy of suspicion which has not gone away. This is where the problem arises. The Minister will clearly want to say that things have moved on, but he needs to reassure the devolved Administrations that that is genuinely the case if we are to secure their consent, unless there are other valid reasons that we have not heard about.

In answer to an intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, the Minister previously said that immigration is one thing and professional qualifications are something else—but they all impinge on each other. We all know that the Government are out in the world looking for all kinds of agreements, post Brexit, which they feel will liberate the UK and create huge opportunities, whether it is exporting skills or importing skills. Yet professional bodies are saying, “Is this going to threaten our standards?”, and the devolved Administrations are saying, “Are our specific circumstances going to be overridden by those priorities?” I contend that that is the nub of the problem.

I have signed this amendment, as have others, because I believe it is trying to put in the Bill a requirement that would categorically state that the concerns of the devolved Administrations and their politicians would not be justified if the consultation was statutorily required and the particular safeguards were in there. That still allows, of course, for the Secretary of State to override the devolved Administrations, but not without going through a clear, spelled-out process of both consultation and explanation, as and when and if an override is likely to be applied.

I am not sure I need to say more, other than that I think the Minister has acknowledged that he is suffering from a legacy that was not of his making. But it is there and, if it is not addressed, it will poison the Bill.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I put my name to this amendment because it is crucial that the arrangements that are made under Clause 7 are designed to give accurate and complete advice and assistance. The people who are seeking that advice and assistance are of course coming with at least a rather imperfect knowledge of the systems and the professions which they are seeking to engage with, and it is crucial that the advice and the assistance is well founded. I am quite sure that that is what the purpose of Clause 7 is, but this amendment is intended to reinforce that.

I hope that what I said in the earlier group, about the way in which the legislative consent process was handled by the Minister, was not thought to imply a criticism of him or the way in which he was handling it. If there was any such implication, I absolutely withdraw it. I am quite certain that he handled the discussions with the care which has characterised his handling of the Bill, at all stages in this House. We have appreciated greatly the depth of knowledge which he has brought to bear and the care and consideration which he has given to every issue that has been raised. I am certain that the discussions will have been conducted with the same courtesy as we have enjoyed in this House. It was not meant to be a criticism of the noble Lord at all.

I was searching for information; it is very unusual for us to be able to refer to the absence of a legislative consent Motion while we are in the course of a debate during the passage of a Bill. That is perhaps one of the shortcomings of our procedures; we do not know what is going on, and the Constitution Committee is in ignorance of what is going on. The purpose of my intervention on this point was to seek information to balance out the rather depressing impression we have been given by the devolved Administrations—including Northern Ireland, I should have said. If there is a balance to be struck, the information that the noble Lord will give me in the letter will be important. I hope he will allow me to share his letter with the Constitution Committee, because it would be extremely interested to know what he has to say.