Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister and the Bill team for their briefings. I recognise that this Bill is needed in the light of our leaving the EU and the arrangements made for professional bodies within that, but parts of the Bill are still a bit of a mystery. After listening to previous speakers, I am glad I am not the only one who feels that. Doubtless the scales will fall from our eyes as we progress.

I am chary of the assistance centre and wonder how welcome it will be and how relevant the additional duties, so I look forward to more briefings from the professional bodies affected by the Bill. It was most helpful to have the list of those within the Bill’s remit, and I note that those with royal charters are outside that remit. Royal charters are powerful barriers against interference, including from Governments, but I ask how useful this Bill is if so many prestigious professional bodies are not within its remit. I have a feeling that the august institution of the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, is outside the Bill’s remit, and it may be easier to be enthusiastic about a Bill if you are not directly affected by it.

I remind the House of my interests as a vice-president of City & Guilds, an organisation for which I worked for some 20 years. Nearly all that time was spent running the senior awards department, set up in 1990 to look after the top level of vocational awards. Now renamed the Professional Recognition Awards, they are recognised by Ofqual and attract funding.

Part of my remit was to persuade universities and professional bodies that those who had reached our high work-based standards also had the knowledge and skills for entry to university programmes or professional membership. The Minister’s list named 160 professional bodies. I had a very small team, so this was something of a herculean task, even without the universities, which in those days were loath to consider anything not profoundly academic. Vocational degrees had not really been invented and, although many professional bodies insisted on an academic degree for membership, by and large universities did not reciprocate by recognising professional expertise for their programmes.

I naively thought that if I could convince the Engineering Council, all the engineering institutes would immediately fall into line; I was very rapidly disabused. The civils, mechanicals, electricals and all the many other engineering bodies each fiercely upheld their autonomy. Of course, many of them were royal charter bodies, which would make them outside the powers of this Bill.

My brush with professional bodies, royal charters and limited entry qualifications was as nothing compared with an EU project called LangCred, to which I was rapidly appointed chairman. The aim was to compile a directory of all work-based qualifications across the countries of the EU, so that qualifications obtained in one country could be readily matched to similar-level qualifications in another. Again, the team was pitifully small: two people from most contributing countries and one delegate from smaller ones. Our remit was to cover from level 1 upwards. From memory, I think our highest level was 9. Across all work disciplines, we certainly covered the most senior professional and managerial roles. If I tell noble Lords that even after two generous tranches of EU money, we failed to produce this comprehensive directory, I do not think they will be surprised. This work was later taken up as mainstream EU work, with rather more resources, and was rather more of a success than our minimal team could achieve.

As chairman of LangCred I had the distinction of being the very first person to wind up a European economic interest group, which was not exactly the highlight of my career but an interesting experience none the less. When the Bill talks cheerily about overseas qualifications, I am taken back to those happy European days. I joined LangCred a year into the programme and, at the first meeting I attended, the two German delegates arrived, declared that they would continue to attend as observers but let us all know that Germany would never recognise qualifications not awarded by Germany. European harmony was alive and well even when we were members of the EU, and I can imagine only that it will not have improved since Brexit.

It rapidly became obvious that however professionally proficient someone was, without a comparable language proficiency their expertise would be less than welcome or useful. For an engineer, financier or caterer to work in Portugal or Poland, knowledge of the professional language, let alone the social language, would be essential. As the Minister said, they could not work and provide skills overseas if they could not communicate.

Unless I have missed it, nowhere in any of the literature we have been sent is there a reference to languages, not even to the need for good English to practise in the UK. Putting on my linguist’s hat, it is highly regrettable that the study of modern foreign languages at schools and colleges has been allowed to diminish in the way it has. Now that we have left the EU, the other European countries no longer have to pander to our insistence on English as the universal language, so it is more important than ever that we can converse in the languages of our former colleagues. Perhaps this Bill could be another peg on which to hang the vital importance of modern foreign languages. Can the Minister say what thought has been given to language proficiency in discussing the overseas parts of this Bill, or indeed the importance of good English for those from overseas who wish to work in the UK?

I look forward to the continued scrutiny of the Bill. I can hope only that our professionals will be able to continue their high standards and be joined by those from other countries with equally high standards, just so long as we can all agree on what those standards are and can understand the languages we speak. I can feel some amendments coming on in Committee, but meanwhile I hope this Bill will become increasingly clear as discussions progress.