Republic of Cameroon: Economic Partnership Agreement

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to participate briefly in this debate, and to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. Indeed, all the contributions show a great deal of expertise, to which I do not aspire to in relation to Cameroon or Ghana, but which has been fascinating to listen to, not least that of my noble friend, Lord Bellingham, from his ministerial experience there and otherwise.

In my first point, I echo that we do want to operationalise the Ghana agreement; we want to develop our trade with Ghana. Indeed, part of the SDG approach is to use our overseas development assistance to Ghana to help it increase the diversity of its economy, not least in terms of the value chain, so it is not wholly dependent on tourism and commodity exports.

I am grateful to noble Lords for enabling these debates to take place. The International Agreements Committee, of which I am a member, did not report these agreements for the special attention of the House, but for information, so it is by virtue of these Motions that we can debate them.

Where Cameroon is concerned, the agreement highlights that we are in a developing situation with our trade policy. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, is right: we do need to understand, set out clearly and make more predictable, our human rights approach in relation to trade policy. I would, however, advise caution. I do not think that because the American Government withdrew unilateral preferences from Cameroon that means that we should not have entered into an economic partnership agreement with Cameroon. It is in our interest to build the overall scope of trade with Cameroon. Unilateral preferences are a different thing. I am looking forward to being able to look at the Government’s consultation on a review of the generalised scheme of preferences because there we can take a somewhat more direct approach to those who are the beneficiaries of unilateral preferences and withdraw those preferences where there are systematic abuses of human rights and labour rights and in a number of other circumstances.

We then also need to understand how we are using our influence in economic partnership agreements to improve human rights. The Minister’s letter, to which the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred, said that the Minister for Africa was in Cameroon and talked to the President on 2 March. The agreement was signed on 9 March, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, just said. Perhaps the Minister can tell us a bit more about the nature of that discussion and negotiation.

Free Trade Agreement Negotiations: Australia

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, I can certainly confirm that the House will be given sufficient time to scrutinise these agreements, not just because that is right in its own instance but because our International Agreements Committee will want to scrutinise them. Importantly, the new, independent Trade and Agriculture Commission will need time to scrutinise this agreement properly. The sequence of events will be that the agreement will be laid in this House after signing, these other matters of scrutiny will then proceed, and only when that is completed will the agreement be brought back to the House formally to take its chance under the CRaG procedures.

[Lord Lansley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, this agreement could offer an opportunity for many smaller UK businesses to get into the Australian market. The economic impact and benefit for the United Kingdom could be much more if we can gear up our businesses to take those opportunities. The time to do that is now, even if the final FTA takes some time. Can my noble friend say what initiatives the Government are taking to work with businesses to achieve this?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right. A point I have made previously from this Dispatch Box is that it is not the signing of these agreements that is important but the operationalising of them afterwards, to the benefit of British businesses and consumers. Interestingly, we already have 13,400 UK SMEs—that includes micro-enterprises and sole traders—exporting goods to Australia. I completely agree with my noble friend that we have to mobilise our efforts to explain the advantage of this agreement to them. Chambers of commerce and intermediaries will have a valuable role to play. With our friends in Australia, we certainly intend to make the information on how to trade clear and easily accessible. There will be a dedicated website and a search database, but most importantly we will be out and about informing British businesses and customers of the advantages of the agreement.

Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

I have received one further request to speak after the Minister, from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome what my noble friend had to say about returning to this issue on Report. When we do, given that, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said, it is our anticipation that future free trade agreements will be implemented in primary legislation, would my noble friend at that time also give us a guarantee that, where there is a choice between using primary legislation to make the necessary legislative changes to implement an international recognition agreement and using a power under this Bill, the Government will use the former to allow this House to scrutinise it in more detail?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that comment. As we know, these questions are difficult to answer in the abstract. What I can say is that, where primary legislation is needed, it will be used. I do not think that it is reasonable to ask me to define which aspects will be covered by primary legislation at this stage for agreements that have not yet been finalised.

Covid-19: Vaccine Production

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am not sure that the noble Lord’s figures are correct. I will certainly write to him if that is not the case, but my understanding is that the vaccines are being distributed at cost. AstraZeneca already has supply agreements—with the Serum Institute of India, for example, to produce 1 billion doses. We will donate 100 million surplus coronavirus vaccine doses within the next year. We are committed to helping the third world to access the vaccines it needs.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, as the Minister said, the process of manufacturing vaccines is complex and difficult, as we saw with Johnson & Johnson in America, for example. The fastest and best way to set up large-scale vaccine manufacturing in developing countries is for the rights holders to invest. Will our Government work with IP holders such as AstraZeneca to set up across the world? We do not need to deprive them of their rights. The Oxford/AstraZeneca group intends its vaccine to be for the world; will our Government help it to deliver that?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend is correct and speaks with great authority on this subject, but the best way forward is voluntary licensing and technology transfer partnerships. They are making a real and positive impact on vaccine delivery, and the UK Government will of course do all we can to facilitate this process.

Conformity Assessment (Mutual Recognition Agreements) and Weights and Measures (Intoxicating Liquor) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to follow my noble friend the Minister, who set out the purposes of these regulations fully and clearly. First, I draw attention to the register of interests in that I am the UK co-chairman of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group. As that may imply, I wish to speak only to Part 3 of these regulations, which relates to Shōchū.

I raised an issue relating to this towards the conclusion of the passage of the then Trade Bill—now the Trade Act 2021—because of the implications of timing. Before I get to that, my noble friend explained Shōchū, which is a distilled liquor that is stronger than sake but not as strong as whisky. As he said, it is an artisanal product in Japan. The bottles in which it is prepared and sold there are an integral part of its overall presentation, so I completely understand why this was something that our Japanese friends particularly wanted to see made available in this country in the same way as it would be sold and marketed in Japan.

For those who are of a certain turn of mind, I realise that I have 10 minutes but I promise not to take up all the time available. One of the perversities of our Hybrid Sittings is that the less you have to say, the more time you have to say it. Last week, I had to talk about the carbon budget in seven minutes, but by contrast I now have 10 minutes to talk about Shōchū. Such is life.

Those with an interest in the media may recall the 1956 American film “The Teahouse of the August Moon”, with Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford, which looked in a whimsical way at the American occupation of Japan after the war. Of course, the teahouse in fact purveyed not tea but sweet potato Shōchū—and a successful film it was, too.

The question that came up in the Trade Bill debates was that, in the UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, the relevant Annexe 2-D—for the benefit of those who want to go and look for it, it is on page 693 of the agreement—makes it clear that the United Kingdom is obligated to make the traditional bottle of five gō available in the United Kingdom; one gō is 180 millilitres, so five gō is the 900-millilitre bottles. The relevant footnote to that obligation says:

“The United Kingdom shall expeditiously take necessary steps to ensure the fulfilment of this obligation and shall notify Japan no later than 90 days after the date of entry into force of this Agreement of the completion of its domestic procedures necessary for the fulfilment of this obligation.”


The point at issue then was that the Trade Bill was going beyond 90 days. In the event, the 90 days were up on 30 March this year, the Trade Bill did not receive Royal Assent until 29 April, these regulations was laid on 12 May and we are approving them on 15 June. I think no harm is done, and our Japanese friends have been entirely understanding at each stage that we have trespassed beyond the 90 days and of why we have done so. For the benefit of those writing trade agreements in future, it would probably be best if they put timetables in and related them to the completion of the parliamentary procedures rather than the entry into force because the entry into force was done under a provisional application prior to parliamentary scrutiny.

The only other point I want to make is that, as my noble friend said, there is a different territorial aspect to this. By virtue of the Northern Ireland protocol, we cannot in this agreement, which is a continuity-plus agreement, vary the rules as they apply in the European Union single market, so the traditional five-gō bottle will be available in Great Britain but will not be available in Northern Ireland. As it happens, this is not strictly consistent with the text of the UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, which states:

“Single distilled shochu … produced by pot still and bottled in Japan, shall be allowed to be placed on the market of the United Kingdom in traditional bottles of four go … five go … or one sho.”


One shō is 1,800 millilitres. There is a discontinuity between the text of the agreement, the treaty as such and what we are able to fulfil in our domestic procedures. That is a pity. Given that this is the first time we have had a continuity-plus agreement implemented into legislation, it has in a very modest way illustrated the complexity of the problems that we will have to encounter if the Northern Ireland protocol continues to impose these kinds of distinctions between the Great Britain market and the Northern Ireland market.

Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 14th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to oppose Clause 3 standing part of the Bill. Judging from the range of people who have co-signed this amendment and those who would have signed it had there been space, this issue is not confined to one set of Benches. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Trees and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, for signing it. I also acknowledge the craft of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in drafting Amendment 56; I will obviously allow him to speak for himself, but it may well be another way of thinking about the clause. We have already heard about some of the issues in Clause 3, as your Lordships have sought to make amendments. Of course, we are in Henry VIII territory again, but there are particular concerns about this clause, which I will highlight.

The Minister told us at Second Reading:

“Clause 3 will enable UK Ministers and devolved Administrations to implement the recognition of professional qualifications elements of international agreements.”


He said:

“To be frank, we acknowledge that these powers are broad”.—[Official Report, 25/5/21; col. 910.]


Broad is a good word. In one of his many letters—for which I thank the Minister, as they arrived at five o’clock yesterday evening—he again confirms the importance of the autonomy of regulators, which he has returned to on many occasions.

However, this clause essentially gives the Government of the day the ability to make whatever provision is required to implement any international recognition agreement to which the UK becomes a party. It includes the power to amend primary legislation and retained EU legislation. If regulators were indeed autonomous, what exactly would this clause be implementing? To date, I am aware of no indications from the Minister or his department as to the nature of what changes might be necessary to implement such international agreements. Perhaps he can give us some examples but, in the meantime, we have to assume that nothing is off the table and that the autonomy of the regulators would not be protected in any way if this Bill were passed with this clause in it.

When I first read the Bill, I was already more than somewhat disquieted by this clause but when I read the Delegated Powers Committee report my fears were amplified. I cannot match its authority, but its damning condemnation of the scale of the powers in this clause are really quite important and should be taken into consideration. As the committee said:

“Implementation of such agreements in UK domestic law could raise matters of considerable public interest (for example, were such agreements to give preference to professional qualifications issued in particular countries—perhaps linked to trade deals).”


In the letter to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, the Minister confirms that the clause will ensure that the Government can meet their international commitments. Would I be right in assuming that this would include mobility frameworks in free trade agreements?

The DPRRC report goes on to highlight the lack of clarity in changes that secondary legislation would make in domestic law, or the scale of change this law might exert on the 160 or so professions in question by international regulation agreements that the committee implicitly linked to trade deals. It then explains that the justification for this delegation is the fact that the nature of future international agreements cannot be known, which we will come back to. Additionally, the DPRRC notes that the Government fail to try to explain why these

“‘necessary changes’ should …be made by Ministerial regulations rather than by Act of Parliament.”

I expect the Minister to respond to this debate by saying that this clause is vital to Her Majesty’s Government’s plans to implement international trade agreements. But this is true only if the Government refuse to bring these agreements to Parliament for approval. How does he justify the taking of power for the Minister and not leaving it to a future Act of Parliament? How does he respond to the DPRRC’s telling conclusion that

“clause 3 represents an inappropriate delegation of power and should be removed from the Bill”?

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Fox. Like him, I was moved to draft Amendment 56 not least by the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which at the end of its consideration of Clause 3 said that it

“represents an inappropriate delegation of power and should be removed from the Bill.”

The noble Lord was not proceeding entirely on his own initiative, and I entirely recognise where he is coming from.

I am coming from this as a Member of the International Agreements Committee. We are looking at many of the negotiations taking place between ourselves—now as an independent trading state—and other countries in creating international agreements. I do not personally see the world as divided into trade agreements and other agreements. We are increasingly entering into economic partnership agreements where, to be frank, the issue of services and the mobility of professionals should rightly play an increasing part in the economic partnerships that we forge with other countries. I want to see us enter into frameworks with other countries whereby our professionals can work there, and their professionals can work here. That will be, as trade often is, to the benefit of all parties.

On that basis, I considered whether this may be like the Trade Bill, in which we effectively gave Ministers the regulatory power to amend legislation and bring it in line with the continuity agreements we enter into. The conclusion I reached is that it is not like that; these are new agreements, not continuations of old ones. From our point of view, as a committee charged under CRaG with the scrutiny of new agreements, we are only too aware that this House has no capacity to block such a treaty, and no capacity to amend it.

Where secondary legislation is concerned, the House may have the power to stop statutory instruments, but in this territory, frankly, we would enter very difficult terrain. We would end up with our Government having signed an agreement with another country, intending to be bound by it under international law—indeed, it may have come into force—and, at that point, this House would have to consider its implementation in legislation. It seems to me, therefore, that the remedy of deleting Clause 3—and so requiring that every time Ministers want to implement an international recognition agreement in legislation, they have to do it in new primary legislation—is asking too much. As time goes on, there will clearly be framework international recognition agreements under which Ministers will regularly, or maybe frequently, need to change the secondary legislation affecting a range of professions and regulators.

My thinking was that we should—as we often do—allow Ministers the power to change the statutory instruments and secondary legislation relating to new international recognition agreements, but not the power to change primary legislation. That is why, instead of changing Clause 3 itself, Amendment 56 amends the regulation clause at the end, Clause 13, and would provide that the power in Clause 3 to implement international recognition agreements is a power to modify subordinate legislation but not primary legislation; that would be the effect of Amendment 56. Noble Lords may support the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and others in opposing Clause 3, but—if they share my belief that we will often be in this this territory, with Ministers having to change secondary legislation and much less frequently primary legislation, and that, when they do, they should secure the consent of the House, with our ability, as ever, to insert amendments, conditions and caveats, as well as sunshine clauses and so on—then they should in due course consider an amendment on the lines of Amendment 56 to strike a better balance, giving Ministers power but not a Henry VIII power.

[Lord Patel (CB) [V]]

My Lords, to start, I do not agree with the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. I clearly understand the point that he is trying to make; in fact, I have my name down with others to strike Clause 13 from the Bill, but we will come to that.

I will say in a minute why I do not agree with the noble Lord’s proposition but I do agree with that of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and, absolutely, with his argument. It was clear from the comments of the Delegated Powers Committee that it considered this clause unnecessary. I personally think this is the key clause of the whole Bill; all the other clauses revolve around it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that comment. My belief is that this Bill applies only to our famous 50 regulators and the 160 professions, and that it is those regulators that are governed by law, but I will write to the noble Lord and send a copy to all Members of the Committee to confirm this.

On the point about sunset clauses, the trade agreements covered in the Trade Act were all rollover agreements, many of which will be replaced in due course by other agreements. The noble Lord will know that some of that process has started already and that what we are talking about here is mutual recognition agreements rather than rollover agreements in their entirety.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his response to my Amendment 56. If I understand it correctly, he attributes to the professions legislation considerable complexity; for example, the supplementary delegated powers memorandum that the department submitted referenced the Dentists Act—a mix of primary legislation and secondary legislation. If this House accepted that there are practical reasons for providing a power of this kind to enable the amendment of both primary and secondary legislation, will my noble friend say that the Government will not use it as a precedent in relation to future legislation or future arrangements for the approval of trade agreements and other international agreements? There is a principle here: in future, as these trade agreements come through, where they impact on primary legislation, they should be implemented through primary legislation. Does my noble friend accept that this will not be cited as a precedent?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

That is certainly a helpful suggestion put forward by my noble friend. I will reflect on it.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

34A: After Clause 4, insert the following new Clause—
“Indemnity and insurance
In exercising functions under section 1 or 4, or under any regulations made under section 3, a regulator of a regulated profession must ensure that an individual is properly indemnified or insured against liabilities that may be incurred in the course of practising the profession.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, this group has three amendments in it, two of which are in my name. The other amendment, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, strictly speaking, is not really related. Her amendment makes a perfectly good point, it seems to me; I will not dwell on it, as I am sure she will introduce it very effectively. It simply asks for language requirements to be something that the assistance centre provides information and assistance on, so it sounds perfectly reasonable.

Amendment 34A in my name is somewhat prompted by the Government’s amendments to Clause 1 that we debated last Wednesday. If noble Lords will recall, those looked at the risk that the Government acknowledged in their supplementary memorandum to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. In paragraph 6, they said their amendments were

“to avoid the risk that clause 1 could allow an overseas-qualified individual to circumvent additional requirements that other legislation imposes, or allows a regulator to impose, on overseas-qualified individuals.”

That is, indeed, exactly the risk that was referred to, quite properly, at Second Reading and to which the Government responded.

What was added into Clause 1 was “and any other specified condition”. In its response to the supplementary memorandum, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform said that, while it welcomed the amendment since it was intended to mitigate that risk, the appropriate conditions that were going to be added in were not specified. In part, Amendment 34A is part of a process of trying to tease out from my noble friend what is going to be in those conditions under Clause 1 that are in addition to the requirement for an overseas qualification or overseas experience to be substantially the same as UK qualifications and experience.

One of the things that I felt it was helpful to illustrate that is the question of indemnity insurance. That is what Amendment 34A relates to. For a number of regulators—especially of course, those that I am aware of, in the medical professions—there is a requirement on practitioners as part of their professional standards to have professional indemnity. Would this, for example, be one of the conditions that my noble friend would anticipate would be specified under Clause 1? That is by way of probing that situation.

Amendment 60A, however, is both to probe this issue rather more but also perhaps to make a suggestion to my noble friend when they are considering what might give further reassurance. Given the debates we have had last week and today, time and again noble Lords are saying that they remain concerned, notwithstanding the Government’s intentions and statements, that regulators will find that a consequence of the regulations under Clause 1 or as a consequence of Clause 3, which we have just been talking about, will be that they cannot impose or exercise the same control on overseas applicants to practise in the United Kingdom as would be the case for a UK applicant.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have participated in this short debate. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, for their support for the purposes of Amendment 60A. If we all agree that, when the time comes, the Government will specify all the necessary conditions under Clause 1 to ensure that, under all circumstances, regulators can make whatever judgments, impose whatever requirements, and seek whatever evidence they require for a fitness to practise decision, then Amendment 60A is not required. The difficulty is that, as the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee said, we do not know the appropriate conditions that will be specified in Clause 1. Clause 3 powers could technically override them. We just know it is not the Government’s intention to do so, and they have provided assurances.

After Second Reading, my noble friend acted swiftly to amend Clause 1. That has provided substantial reassurance, but not quite enough. One route we might look at on Report is to see whether “any other specified condition” referred to in Clause 1(1) as amended might be further defined to make it absolutely clear that everything that contributes to professional standards and fitness to practise determinations and judgments by professional regulators should be encompassed within those conditions. The question is how to draft it without having to reproduce everything. This is the territory we are in, otherwise that is not the assurance that is in the Bill. We are simply living with a statement that has no definition within it.

I hope to engage my noble friend and other noble Lords further in discussion about how we might achieve the purposes that I think we all seek. As my noble friend said, we are in agreement about the intent; the question is whether the Bill provides not only the powers but the assurances necessary for regulators in future and clarity within the Bill. Insurance is a similar argument. Pending further discussions, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 34A withdrawn.

Carbon Budget Order 2021

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow my noble friend and to thank him for his clear and concise explanation of the Carbon Budget Order and, in particular, for what he said about the ambitions that will support it by way of decarbonisation strategies and the promotion of a green industrial revolution. These are tremendously important.

As a Conservative, to go all the way back, I was Margaret Thatcher’s last director of research. I am proud of the fact that the Conservative Party has been for 30 years, with perhaps the slight exception of George Osborne as Chancellor of the Exchequer, consistently promoting a clear understanding of the necessity of tackling climate change and delivering on challenging climate change objectives.

I want to make a point about delivery. As paragraph 115 of the impact assessment states

“the policies required to meet the sixth carbon budget levels are as yet undecided”.

All the things that my noble friend referred to are tremendously important and I thoroughly subscribe to the need for us to deliver on carbon capture and storage. I just know, from personal experience, that we spent 20 years trying to deliver that with a commercially sustainable design. We need to deliver new nuclear generation and the limitations we have on that at present are obvious to all. We need to deliver on much more efficient energy storage and hydrogen capacity, and a strategy that enables us to convert to hydrogen in many of our transport systems. All those things are tremendously important and we cannot operate without them; at the same time, we are going to need dramatic fiscal incentives, and those are the points to which I want to refer.

My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham quite rightly pointed in a previous debate to the anomaly of our subscribing to challenging, ambitious decarbonisation targets while at the same time maintaining a freeze on fuel duty. We cannot carry on like this. In a previous debate in Grand Committee, I talked about the necessity of, for example, giving stamp duty relief on energy-efficiency measures in homes. I hope we will see something done on that, because the green homes grant did not work, which is the point we were making at the time.

On 19 May, we had the first auction under the UK Emissions Trading Scheme. I will focus on the importance of developing that as a basis for our decarbonisation strategies and creating a powerful fiscal incentive for decarbonisation. Clearly, this can work; we have seen in the power generation sector that the carbon price support at £18 per metric tonne has enabled us to drive out coal from power generation, but it is not set at a level that will enable us to reduce and eliminate gas-fired, fossil fuel-fired power generation. We need to increase the carbon price support level.

If we are serious about this, we need to accelerate the process of phasing out free allowances under the emissions trading scheme. We need to ensure that the ETS cap on carbon emissions each year is sustaining downward pressure. At the moment, it is in fact set at a higher level than the carbon emissions levels in 2019 and 2020. We must go further and faster. We should raise the floor price from £22; without much notice being taken, the Chancellor raised it from £15 to £22 back in November. We must continue to raise it.

The likely result of all these measures is that we will have a substantial increase in carbon price under the emissions trading scheme. Our industry cannot sustain that unless we have international alignment and, if necessary, carbon border adjustments. The European Union is presently—next week, I think—issuing further detail on its planned legislation for a carbon border adjustment. In the G7 and our international negotiations, it is more important for us to align carbon pricing and the emissions trading schemes than to align corporation tax rates. That is where we should be putting our effort in Carbis Bay. If we can bring other leading economies—mostly notably the Americans, but the Chinese have not yet committed—to an aligned emissions trading scheme, we can escape the trap of carbon border adjustments, which would lead to an endless succession of non-tariff barrier arguments between countries, interfering with free trade.

We really have to see the UK take a lead in the months ahead. We took a lead in Europe on the emissions trading scheme; we must now take a lead alongside Europe and, more importantly, the United States and other leading economies, in creating a carbon pricing and emissions trading scheme which is applicable and effective globally—ideally without carbon border adjustments, but we must legislate for them if necessary.

Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 9th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have requests to speak after the Minister from the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Purvis of Tweed. I call the noble Lord, Lord Lansley.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, not having participated in this group, I am prompted by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, on the regulation of healthcare professionals, to which I do not think my noble friend responded. I have here the Law Commission report of April 2014—my noble friend will be aware of it—on the issues referred to by the noble Lord, which included the recommendation that Section 60 of the Health Act 1999, and indeed the powers of the Privy Council, should be substantially removed from the regulation of healthcare professions. What is the Government’s intention on the regulation of healthcare professionals? Do they intend to implement the Law Commission report seven years later, or do they now intend to proceed without any reference to it?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, if I may, because it is a point of some detail, I will write to my noble friend and place a copy of my letter in the Library.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise that I was not able to be present at Second Reading, so I will not detain noble Lords with my views about the Bill in general terms. However, I hope that I will be forgiven if I have not been able to say those things previously.

Amendment 11 in my name seeks to amend government Amendment 10. My noble friend the Minister has explained helpfully and clearly how the Government have brought forward amendments even before the Committee stage to points made at Second Reading and by the regulators. That is extremely helpful, and I agree with them. There was always a risk that if there was a generic recognition of overseas qualifications or experience, an individual would be deemed to have met the required standard in the United Kingdom, but not necessarily by that individual’s experience, qualifications or other factors. My noble friend referred to things such as language assessment. When I was Secretary of State for Health, we were closely engaged in our dealings on this with other countries in the European Union. It is simply not the case that because someone undertakes qualifications that are deemed to be the equivalent of those in the United Kingdom, people are able to practise here in a way that is not impaired. We set about trying to remedy that and we need to make sure that we do not introduce legislation which would reintroduce the same kind of problem.

I encourage noble Lords to look at government Amendment 10. I understand what is intended, but I think that there is a drafting problem. The determinations set out in proposed subsections (3A) (b) (i) and (ii) state that the qualifications and experience are substantially the same or may fall short. Those determinations are to be made

“(i) only on the basis of the overseas qualifications or overseas experience concerned, or (ii) on such other basis”.

The inclusion of the word “only” means either qualifications and experience on the one hand or on another basis on the other hand, but it cannot be both. I do not see why that is the case. To me, it is transparent that we may be looking for an individual to have overseas qualifications and experience, but the regulator should have the flexibility to look at other assessments or experience. For example, I can think of someone I met while I was in hospital not so long ago who looked after me. He was a medically qualified practitioner from overseas, but he was working as a technician in the NHS because his qualification was not recognised for our purposes. However, his experience here in the United Kingdom treating patients should have been taken into account in assessing, for example, his linguistic competence and other experience.

If, for example, a regulator wanted to look at overseas qualifications and experience, as well as UK experience, why should it not be able to do that? The inclusion of the word “only” precludes such a combination on its plain meaning. That may not be the Government’s intention, and obviously I will not press this amendment, but I hope that, at the very least, my noble friend will undertake to look at this and say that leaving out the word “only” might enable this amendment to the Bill to do what he wishes it to do.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the government amendments in this group. I want to speak in particular to Amendments 2 and 3, but having just listened to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, I can see that Amendment 11 has an awful lot to commend it.

At Second Reading, I expressed concern that proficiency in English was not a prerequisite for individuals to be treated as having UK qualifications. I was prepared to put down an amendment to that effect, but I readily acknowledge that this is a matter much better left to the regulators than put in the Bill. The addition of the words “any other specified condition” leaves this in the hands of the regulators. It is hoped that many of them will recognise the importance that anyone working in the UK should speak and understand English. It is important not only for professional but for social reasons. We are still, alas, a hopelessly monolingual country, and any overseas worker who can speak only their language will have a difficult time both with their fellow workers and with sorting out their everyday life, however brilliantly they are qualified and however much experience they have.

Clause 1 concerns qualifications and experience, but leaves it with the regulator to consider whether experience makes up for any lack of appropriate qualifications. These amendments put the onus exactly where it should be—on the regulator. We on these Benches support the amendments.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

I call the noble Lord, Lansley, and then I shall call the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, who has requested to speak after the Minister.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have kindly approved of the argument made in Amendment 11 and to my noble friend for saying that he and colleagues will look at it again. I think that what they suggest is not the case. As it stands, Amendment 10 allows regulators to make a determination based on overseas qualifications and experience alone, but it runs the risk, which is a different risk, of preventing them combining that with other factors and assessments and bringing them together in the determination. That is the point. The removal of the word “only” would not, in my view, prevent a regulator making a determination based solely on overseas qualifications and experience.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. If the Minister is willing not to move Amendment 10 today and to look at it again and bring it back on Report, I think that would be the best way to proceed. I think we all know what we want to achieve, which is to give the regulators flexibility. It is purely a drafting issue, and I am sure we will not need to be detained at length on Report if the draftsman, is, in the event, clear that the effect is as the Minister wishes it to be. He has not moved Amendment 10 yet, and I hope he will not move it when we reach it.

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

I think I have in fact moved Amendment 10. I commended amendments to the House and begged to move.

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[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, who is no longer in his place, explained the concerns which underpinned his Amendment 12, debated earlier this afternoon: namely that regulations could impose unreasonable burdens on a regulated profession to remedy a lack of appropriate qualification or experience in overseas professionals. My amendment has the same core concern. It was drafted after reading similar concerns expressed by the British Dental Association, which highlighted the burdens that could be imposed on regulators if they are required to assess professionals or overseas qualifications, or to develop new recognition agreements, to comply with regulations under Clause 1.

Even if regulators have autonomy over individuals who can practice, the regulations under Clause 1 could well impose burdens and costs in making the regulators set up operating processes to carry out the assessments to make the decisions, including having to assess the suitability of overseas awarding institutions, as well as the nature of practical experience that comes with individuals who wish to practice. In addition, it was noted that the costs which were incurred in any such new activity are likely to end up being borne by existing members. Regulators get the majority of their income from membership fees, and asking existing members to shoulder the costs of funding a problem of having too few professionals—which is what Clause 1 is said to be for—is, at the very least, unfair. That is why my amendment refers to the impact on existing members of the profession.

Amendment 9 would add a new determination that the regulated profession must make: that the additional processes of making good any deficiency in an overseas qualification

“can be met without … unreasonable costs or other burdens on”

the regulated profession or the existing members of that profession. I have expressed this in terms of costs or burdens because a regulated profession might, for example, have a shortage of suitable individuals who could carry out the processes and who therefore could not be obtained at any cost. It would actually be imposing an unreasonable burden for the regulated profession to bear. Importantly, my amendment places the judgment in the hands of the regulated profession.

Clause 2 refers to “unreasonable delays or charges”. These are words that my noble friend Lord Lansley wishes to delete with his Amendment 18, which is also in this group. But from my perspective, it should always be the regulated profession, and not the Secretary of State or other national authority, who should make that judgment. I look forward to hearing what my noble friend has to say about his Amendment 18, but I see the place for assessing burdens and costs, and that that assessment should be made by the regulated profession. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very glad to speak to my Amendment 18 in this group.

In relation to Amendment 9, moved by my noble friend Lady Noakes, I think she has a point. Somewhere, we should be taking account of the costs that are imposed on regulators, and by extension as they are imposed on the professionals who are themselves regulated. In the previous group, the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, referred to the material in the impact assessment on that point. Personally, I do not think Amendment 9 puts it in the right place, with great respect to my noble friend. There is a good point for putting it perhaps slightly later in Clause 1, and we may come back to this on Report. It seems that it certainly should be taken into account in the making of regulations under Clause 1; it just is not, at the moment. For example, there are things as to fees being paid in connection with an application but nothing to do with the regulations taking account of the costs on those regulated, including those who are currently regulated in that profession.

Why have I brought forward Amendment 18? The reason is that it relates to the inclusion of

“without unreasonable delays or charges”

at the end of Clause 2(2). What does that do? It is trying to define the circumstances where demand for a professional service is not being met. My fundamental problem with it is that it illustrates this by reference to unreasonable delays or charges. The implication is that this is the criterion by which one measures whether professional services are in sufficient supply.

For example, in relation to the health service, it is very hard to measure why there are delays for treatment. Sometimes they occur because of lack of workforce and sometimes for completely different reasons. It may be incredibly difficult to ascribe delays to simply having insufficient overseas applicants for a particular profession in the health service. Charges will be even more difficult since we do not charge. It may be possible to do this for dentistry but not for most other healthcare professions, since we do not charge consumers for access to services.

Interestingly, my noble friend Lord Grimstone wrote a letter to the Delegated Powers Committee—I think last Thursday—which is in its latest report, published on Monday. There is a paragraph which comes exactly to this point, in which he says:

“The Committee sought further clarification on the point that this demand needs to be met without unreasonable delays or charges. Those words make it clear that regulations can be made where the demand for the services of the profession is, strictly speaking, being met but the consumers of those services are experiencing unreasonable delays or having to pay high charges.”


Demand for those services under those circumstances is not, “strictly speaking, being met”; it is not being met. We do not need to write “unreasonable delays or charges” into the Bill for it to be evident that, in circumstances where insufficient members of a profession are providing services, there are delays in accessing those services; that is plainly the case.

As the end of the same paragraph, the Minister says, rather tellingly, that unreasonable charges and delays

“are illustrative of the considerations that the appropriate national authority would make in relation to this condition.”

“Illustrative” is not what the Bill says. It does not say “for example”, which it might well say. It says

“met without unreasonable delays or charges.”

It specifies those factors, so I think we should take them out. If unreasonable delays or high charges to consumers result from a lack of professional supply and that can be remedied by overseas applications, the appropriate national authority can make such a determination. It does not need the Bill to reference “unreasonable delays or charges” for that to happen.

I hope my noble friend will recognise that, in this respect, I am not trying to argue that delays or extra charges are not important; they are very important and may well be the principle determination one looks for in some professions. In others, one looks for other things. We should simply take those words out when the time comes—I hope we will—and the appropriate national authority will, if necessary, properly consult on what the demand for a professional service may be and the circumstances in which it is not being met.

[Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, the Explanatory Notes state about Clause 9 that

“a regulator in one part of the UK could ask an equivalent regulator in another part of the UK for information relating to an individual’s fitness to practise and, where applicable, any instances of professional sanctions. This provision ensures that regulators in all parts of the UK have access to information that helps them fulfil their obligations.”

Does the Minister agree that, in view of the duty of all regulators to co-operate with each other, it should be mandatory for all four nations to allow any professions to practise in all four nations without any hindrance?

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

Before inviting the Committee to consider the withdrawal of the amendment, I call the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who was attempting to come in after the Minister.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful. I just wanted to make a point after the Minister because I think she made a fundamental error in suggesting that if we were to take out the words

“without unreasonable delays or charges”

from this subsection unreasonable delays or high charges would not be able to be considered as factors in determining whether demand is met. On the contrary, they will be considered with other factors. They would not be excluded.

We will clearly come back to this again on Report because the reply to the debate was not satisfactory, and we will have to write these things out in more detail. Will my noble friend at least just agree that removing those words does not mean that those factors are not taken into account?

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We think about what has been happening in our medical services through necessity throughout the pandemic. A great deal of medical consultations are now being conducted online. There is no requirement for the person doing that; they can be literally anywhere in the world. If we start to think about what has happened to so many professionals in the UK who have seen their employment conditions subjected to casualisation and zero hours contracts—I am thinking here of a lot of university lecturers—we see that how professionals are employed has changed enormously. I suggest to your Lordships that we need to think about how that is going to play out differently in the context of this Bill.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to have the opportunity to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. She was right to say that we will probably need to think a little further about the subsequent scrutiny arrangements for the operation of this legislation. I fear that the amendments we have at the moment probably do not do it.

Perhaps with the exception of Amendment 54, they all suffer from the difficulty of proposing subsequent scrutiny of the impact of this legislation on issues which will themselves be impacted by a wide range of other legislation, administration and circumstances. It is difficult to isolate the impact of this legislation in particular. When we re-examine it we should, if not legislating, certainly be looking to Ministers to say that we should focus on understanding how it is working after a suitable period. One of the conventional processes would be five-year, post-legislative scrutiny. That would probably be the appropriate route down which to go.

I want to say a word about the issue of consultation, which came up under the previous group. There are a number of amendments in this group, but I am pretty sure that the proposers of Amendments 25 and 29 will recognise that they do not provide appropriate consultation opportunities. If there is a mutual recognition agreement in an international agreement with another country, it will have been subject to its own consultation arrangements. To have another consultation on the regulations to implement it would be inappropriate. It is also inappropriate and unnecessary to consult on regulations simply to get rid of the existing EU directives or retained EU legislation.

Turning to Amendments 14 and 19, in both instances there is a good case for consultation. I am not sure whether it needs to be legislated for in statute, but we too often assume that there is a public law duty to consult when there is not. It may be better to have a statutory duty to consult even if it is framed, pretty much as these provisions are, in broad and general terms, just to ensure that Ministers go through the appropriate processes at the right time. I am quite supportive of Amendments 14 and 19 for these purposes, particularly Amendment 19.

We had a previous discussion about demand. You cannot look at demand for professional services without actually asking consumers, so making sure that consumers are consulted in the process would be a good approach. I hope that Ministers will at least look at whether there is a place for a statutory duty to consult on regulations under Clause 1, and on the question of demand for professional services being met.

[Lord Patel (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak mainly to Amendment 53 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fox. I had hoped that he would speak before me, so I could hear his views on the amendment, but I support its intent. I might have some reservations regarding whether a report should be made within 12 months or a longer period, as others have mentioned. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that it is not a question of the impact on innovations of this Bill alone, but the cumulative impact of other Bills, to which this one might add. That is the issue I wish to explore.

The United Kingdom has a big ambition to be a science superpower, as has been said many times by our Prime Minister. In fact, he is the second Prime Minister, including Harold Wilson, to have mentioned science as a driving force for the United Kingdom and the UK’s leading in science. So, we have a great ambition: we are going to invest 2.4% of GDP by 2027 and, depending on the spending settlement to be announced shortly, it looks as though there will be £22 billion for R&D leading up to 2024. A significant amount of resources is being put in. So, what drives innovation? The drivers of innovation are research infrastructure; funding; importantly, career development opportunities for early-career researchers—I emphasise early-career; and collaboration and knowledge exchange through institutions in different countries working together.

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I hope the Minister will think again about this and clarify the provision because it is extremely important in dealing with matters that may lead to criminal penalties to know exactly where one stands. The rule of law requires clarity, and the lack of clarity is the subject of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, which I support.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to have the opportunity to contribute to this short debate on these amendments. I will say a quick word on each, if I may.

First, on Amendment 16, I entirely support my noble friend’s wish for us to enter into mutual recognition of professional qualifications with the European Union but, as they say, it takes two to tango. We wanted to do it and our policy intention was to do it, but it was not the European Union’s intention to agree to it. I do not doubt that it would remain the Government’s intention to enter into such an agreement if it were possible to do so. I regret that putting this into the Bill does not change any of those circumstances. As it happens, I would not put it into the Bill at this place either. It is essentially contingent upon Clause 3 and our ability to negotiate an international recognition agreement with European Union countries in any case. It may be we have to do it with European Union countries individually, but I agree with the objective. It seems to me that Clause 4 allows regulators to enter into recognition agreements, and that is the mechanism. If the Law Society or anybody else wants to do it, they should seek approval from the Government to enter into such an agreement in that way.

I do not understand why we need Amendment 23 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. This is about international recognition agreements. It is not specifically about the European Union and it may not apply to European Union member states. It is not required to be consistent with the future relationship with the European Union. All it means is that when we allow the recognition of overseas applicants to our professions, the professional regulators may charge them fees in the way that they charge fees to UK applicants. I think that is perfectly reasonable, so I would not accept that amendment.

On Amendment 47, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, was probably not here when we discussed the Trade (Disclosure of Information) Act 2020, nor when we dealt with similar provisions in the Trade Act 2021. My noble friend on the Front Bench, the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and I remember those discussions very well.

Supreme Court judgments have determined that where, for example, data protection legislation requires the protection of legislation—and there are specific duties relating to that—if there are other statutory gateways that might create a statutory provision permitting the disclosure of information which could contravene the data protection legislation, the position the court arrived at was that the decision-makers should end up being able to balance the statutory gateway in the additional statute with the originating data protection legislation. That is where it ended up, and that is why “taken into account” is the appropriate language. It would not be “considered a defence”, because that would conclude that it had not been weighed properly in the way that the court expected. It expected these two things to be considered alongside one another. That is where we ended up on the Trade (Disclosure of Information) Act, for reasons I understood then, and as far as I can see, this drafting is absolutely consistent with those pieces of legislation.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I am glad of the opportunity to contribute to this short debate, but I will be brief and forbear commenting on Amendments 23 and 47, as noble Lords have already covered them and I cannot really add anything. I want to speak specifically to Amendment 16 and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, for tabling it.

I think there should be pressure on the appropriate national authorities in the Bill to seek reciprocal agreements. It is something that certainly needs to be discussed and pushed. Other noble Lords have spoken about the situation of established professionals and the professional bodies. I want to take a moment to think about young people recently qualified, and those young people who have been through such difficult times and who will qualify in the next year or two, for whom there should be the opportunity, as a young professional, to go out and to travel—the European Union countries being the obvious place, being relatively close to home, relatively cheap, et cetera. It is crucial to those young people to have opportunities to stretch their wings, to learn new things and to develop professionally.

We have seen a lot of problems arising as a result of Covid. Covid is being blamed for lack of progress in a great many things, but it has also suppressed demand, and we are going to see a real explosion of demand as it becomes more possible to travel and to move. I will not get started on the great loss of free movement for the people of the UK, but given that we have so curtailed the opportunities for our young people, it is crucial that we do everything possible to open up, or reopen, professional opportunities for people to grow, to develop, to travel. Of course, if the Government do not want to consider this from any other angle, it is obviously of considerable importance if those people return to the UK and work here with those skills or, indeed, if they remain overseas but keep their UK contacts, which will be very important for UK business and professionals.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I shall speak chiefly to Amendments 20 and 21 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, to which I have attached my name. These amendments are also supported by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, which gives them both cross-party and non-party backing. I have mentioned that all noble Lords received a letter yesterday from the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, and the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, with her Department for Education hat on, about the Bill and the skills strategy. Its second paragraph says:

“Let me reassure you the Bill is not a short cut to addressing skills development for the UK.”


We can see that the Government have really understood some of the deep concerns that have been expressed by your Lordships’ House about this Bill.

The letter makes reference to the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. I am not going to start its Second Reading now, although we have to look at whether ladening people with more debt is the answer to our skills shortage.

Another sentence in the second last substantive paragraph of this letter says:

“To meet demand across certain regulated professions, we need appropriately qualified professionals from both domestic and overseas sources.”


In relation to Amendments 20 and 21 and my earlier Amendment 25, do the Government accept that, particularly for certain key—basic, you might say—professions central to our health and well-being, such as nurses and doctors as a general category, we should be training at least enough medical professionals to meet our needs? That sentence would suggest that that is not something that the Government accept.

I come briefly to a couple of details about these amendments, particularly Amendment 21, which is quite valuable and perhaps adds more than my Amendment 51. They highlight important issues, one of which is in subsection (d), which asks for a report on the number of the professionals in the group being considered who are female and male. It is important that we highlight gender disparities. There has been a lot of discussion about medical professions, but I have interest in both the farming and the building and engineering areas, where we have huge skills shortages and there are very serious gender disparities in recruitment.

As I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, talking about the complexities of modern medical approaches, I was thinking of some of the engineers I have been speaking to recently about the complexity of building ventilation, something that Covid-19 has very much brought into focus and which we clearly need to be thinking a great deal more about. There is a high level of complexity and a high level of skill is required; you have to understand each individual room and each individual climatic environment. It is a very complex area and requires very high levels of skills and training. I think also that when we are thinking about agriculture—we will be talking about this in the Environment Bill and in the agriculture Bill—we are talking about agri-ecological approaches and agriforestry approaches, not just one field of monoculture that you whack the plough over and you whack the sprayer over, but very complex management of ecosystems that requires a very high degree of skills that we simply do not have now. It requires training and may require people being brought in.

I also want to highlight, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, did, retention rates. Of course, nursing is the obvious area, but there is also a big issue in medicine that needs to much more attention. This is a really important amendment. The support for it demonstrates that, as does the Government reaction, but I think we need a much clearer picture of what the Government’s overall approach is. Are they determined to meet the challenge of training enough people for our needs?

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, again, and to follow up the points she made about skills shortages. We spoke in an earlier debate about the formula in Clause 2 relating to the condition that there is, in effect, unmet demand. I think that at the time I expressed the view that it was unsatisfactory to define that by reference to unreasonable delay and higher charges. This gives us another opportunity to look at that. I think there is merit in the formula in Amendment 21; I just think we may need to develop it a little and make it very clear that in Clause 2—Section 2, as it will be—where a Minister or the appropriate national authority is considering regulations, the condition is that there is unmet demand in that profession. What is meant by that?

The letter that the Minister sent to the Delegated Powers Committee last week said:

“The Government plans to consider various factors in determining ‘unmet demand’, and further detail on our approach is provided in the Government’s policy statement that accompanies the Bill.”


Well, the policy statement, in a very curious paragraph, says:

“Our proposed framework is intended to enable professions to meet the demands placed on them in all parts of the UK without undue cost or delay.”


In that particular context, the cost and delay appear to relate to the cost and delay of the regulators. It is rather strange.

The policy statement goes on to say that where they make these determinations, “Considerations for” what they refer to as “priority professions”—in other words, where there is demand for skills from overseas—

“will include: whether the profession is on the shortage occupation list; vacancy levels; workforce modelling and skills forecasting; and whether there are other ways that professions might address shortages … We will allow for these determinations to evolve”.

Well, some of those factors are indeed those that the noble Baroness has included in Amendment 21—not completely, but I think we are getting there. So I suggest that the route down which we should go on Report is to amend Clause 2 to say “These are the various factors that appropriate national authorities should consider”. It would not be an exhaustive list but of course, in doing so, they should also consult the regulators and the professions in relation to this.

National Security and Investment Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 28th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has indicated his desire to speak.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell. I agree entirely with what he had to say and with the noble Lords, Lord Campbell and Lord West of Spithead, too. It comes down to a very simple proposition: throughout, we have been very clear that if the Government would simply amend the memorandum of understanding with the Intelligence and Security Committee to include reference to the Investment Security Unit, there would be no need for any amendment to the Bill. That remains the case now. The question why the Government are not doing this.

The Minister in the other place said on Monday night:

“The work of the security services on investment security in support of the ISU clearly falls within the remit of the ISC.”—[Official Report, Commons, 26/4/21; col. 154]


If that is the case, what is the impediment to adding the ISU into the memorandum? I think it is that the Government do not interpret the ISC as having a remit that extends beyond what the intelligence services themselves have offered by way of information to the Investment Security Unit in BEIS, to the point where —as the noble Lord, Lord West, quite accurately summarised—the scrutiny of how national security is being maintained in the decisions that become part of the interim or final orders made under this Bill.

The Government’s problem may be that they think that if they were to include the ISU in the memorandum of understanding, they would effectively create some duplication between the scrutiny of the order-making power by the BEIS Select Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee’s scrutiny. That need not be the case. It is perfectly clear already, within the memorandum of understanding that was quoted by Dr Lewis in the debate on Monday night, that the ISC’s work in looking at the intelligence services

“‘will not affect the wider scrutiny of departments…by other parliamentary committees. The ISC will aim to avoid any unnecessary duplication with the work of those Committees.’”—[Official Report, Commons, 26/4/21; col. 160]

It seems to me that the resolution is very simple—the Government should simply add the Investment Security Unit into the memorandum of understanding. It is clear from what the ISC’s chair and members have said that they would not expect to duplicate the work of BEIS —the primary scrutiny of BEIS’s work—in implementing this legislation, but there are specific questions that relate to the use of intelligence and highly sensitive intelligence materials.

I was not comforted by reading that the chair of that committee in the other place has been told by the Secretary of State that he will brief him on privy counsellor terms. That tells us that the chair of the committee may know something, but the BEIS Select Committee in the other place will not generally know it. Its members will not be able to discuss that information and they will not be able to report on that basis. There is clearly a deficiency, as Dr Lewis quite rightly said—a scrutiny gap—in relation to the use of top-secret material on a routine basis in informing decisions made under this legislation. The inclusion of the ISU in the remit of the Intelligence and Security Committee will close that scrutiny gap.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister used the word heavyweight; I would use the word authoritative about the speeches we have heard from the noble Lords, Lords West, Lord Butler, Lord Lansley, and my noble friend Lord Campbell. I do not have the same authority, but I have an eye for process and an eye for a discontinuity. At the heart of this is a central contradiction. This Bill is called the National Security and Investment Bill, and its central premise is that the world of security has changed. It is not about armies and air forces; it is about technology—the spread of technology and access to that technology. The Bill is built on the idea that we need an approach to the commercial use, sale and protection of this technology for the security of this country.

The speeches that the Minister has heard were characterised in his preceding speech as somehow decrying the abilities of the BEIS Select Committee. The BEIS Select Committee was not put in place to assess the security issues that these companies are facing. That is not its job; its job is to do what BEIS was there to do. This Bill, by its nature, by its very name, is a hybrid of two very important issues: investment and security. The BEIS Select Committee is there and is an expert on the first of those. The ISC is there to protect the country and to offer scrutiny on security issues. There is no problem in asking both of those committees to do what they are good at in order to fulfil the very important task that Bill seeks to undertake.

We can only conclude that, because the Government decided not to do this and because, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, put it, they have a large majority in the other place, they will continue down this road. There is another opportunity for the Government to think again and do the most sensible thing, which is to amend the MoU. It does not require primary legislation, in my understanding, and would be done very quickly with the consent of this House. For that reason, if the noble Lord, Lord West, decides to put this to a vote, these Benches would like to ask that question of the people across the way, at least one more time.

Turkey: Free Trade Agreement

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, for securing this debate and for the way in which he introduced it. I also thank our chair, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, for his introduction to the report, albeit necessarily brief.

I want to complement it by talking about just one issue, that of subsidies, which I hope will illustrate what we are keen to see happen in the year or two ahead. Obviously, the rollover agreement does not carry forward the EU state aid regime, since we are departing from that, but it puts nothing in its place. That is not entirely surprising, not least because the EU-Turkey report from October 2020 says at page 58:

“Legislation to implement the State Aid Law, originally scheduled to be passed by September 2011, has still not been adopted”,


adding that there is no state aid inventory in Turkey. It notes that the administrative mechanism for the state aid legislation has been abolished, and that government support for certain priority investments, including a national automobile factory, is going ahead under the 11th development plan, including 400 product groups in strategic sectors where, as the European Commission’s report says,

“The amount of state aid granted for this investment is not disclosed, contrary to the commitments under the EU-Turkey Customs Union.”


So putting in place a state aid or subsidies agreement with Turkey at present does not work for the EU and it would not work for us.

However, that does not mean that we should not clearly put it in our negotiating objectives. It would not suffice for us to leave it in a WTO subsidy format because, as we know, the WTO format leads only to complaints by countries and is essentially retrospective, and damage must first have been established before the point at which any subsidy can be challenged. By contrast, the UK-Japan agreement, in articles 12.5 and 12.6, has specific provisions about sharing of notifications and the ability for each party to seek further information and to engage in consultation. That, of course, can mean, if necessary—I hope it will not be necessary too often —a complaint at the WTO that a subsidy is contrary to its provisions or some mitigating measures being taken by agreement.

At the moment, I think that we as a committee and the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Trade and Export Promotion—its chair is to speak next; I am a vice-chair—are very interested in moving from continuity agreements to full free trade agreements and seeing what those objectives will look like for a free trade agreement in the future. In this particular instance, I am keen to see something like the Japan agreement reflected into our negotiating objectives with Turkey.