Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 9th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, there are three amendments in this group, characterised by the fact that they appear more or less in the same place in the Marshalled List. My Amendment 11, which leads the group, relates to the very specific point, to which we have referred on a number of occasions: whether secondary legislation, and regulations under the Act, should be able themselves to modify primary legislation. The amendment’s intention is of course to restrict that possibility and limit it to subordinate legislation and retained EU legislation. Of course, there is a separate power in relation to the very specific EU retained legislation relating to the recognition of overseas professional qualifications.

I will not make a long argument about this, because the time is late. Ministers will say that there is a lot of private legislation out there relating to these professions, but as it happens, we are amending the primary legislation relating to architects in the Bill. I am not sure to what extent, given all we know and have discovered about the processes of seeking to recognise professional qualifications from overseas, just how often they will need to amend primary legislation and whether it really is impossible to achieve it through a route that exposes the changes to primary legislation to the proper scrutiny of this House.

Because it is linked to this, I reiterate a point I made in Committee. Ministers will acquire a power under the Bill to implement international regulatory recognition agreements and these aspects of international trade agreements by secondary legislation. I hope that the Minister—I know it is his stated intention—would expect new significant trade agreements, wherever they impacted on our legislation, to be the subject of legislation brought forward for this purpose. I do not want us to find that the legislation we see in future relating to trade agreements leaves out the recognition of professional qualifications because it can be achieved through subordinate legislation and we are therefore not able to examine it in the same way as we can other issues relating to a trade agreement, through primary legislation.

I will not talk about the protection of regulator autonomy; that is very much for the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, who raised these issues in detail in Committee, as did my noble friend Lady Noakes. I am rather grateful to my noble friend Lord Grimstone—as we are in many other respects—for bringing forward government Amendment 12, which would put a pretty cast-iron clause into the Bill to give the regulators the confidence about their future autonomy that they seek.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, I welcome Amendment 12, which the Minister will speak to shortly. As has been said, right from the start we worried about the independence of regulators and indeed, as I suggested earlier today, the Law Society still retains a slight frisson of concern there, although I note the Minister’s words. Regulators have been worried about their independent ability to decide who was fit to practise in this country and that that might be undermined by a government diktat to co-operate with another country to accept their professionals or to drop standards in order to meet a government trade objective. As the Minister mentioned earlier, given that I am now looking at trade deals, I think he realises that I will be able to keep a beady eye on that as we go forward, along with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who will be looking at that as well.

As I mentioned before, it was also of concern to the users of regulated services in case their trust in professionals, which stems from a regulator keeping to standards and high quality of enforcement, might be in any way in jeopardy. However, the Government have recognised these concerns and have come forward with the very welcome Amendment 12; it must be good because there is even a Lib Dem name attached to it, so we know that this government amendment is well received. Needless to say, of course I still prefer the wording of Amendment 15, which was short and to the point, but I am content not to press it in favour of the Government’s own amendment.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

On the subject of Amendment 11, I have full sympathy with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. If my noble friend Lord Purvis were to speak, he would remind the Committee that at the outset we were promised primary legislation for trade deals, and I am gratified that at least two noble Lords will be keeping an eye on the overall process.

In Committee, back in July, the very first amendment that we discussed, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Purvis, was very similar to Amendment 15. Its purpose from the outset was to protect the autonomy of the regulators. In that respect we are both delighted that the Minister has listened and, through the process of discussion, has come up with Amendment 12. It does a lot of the heavy lifting in dealing with what I referred to earlier as the Trojan horse of suspicion.

In protecting regulatory authorities from Clauses 1, 3 and 4, the amendment very much creates a situation where they are allowed to go about their business in the way that we want. It is for that reason that I took the unusual step—at least, unusual for me—of countersigning the Government’s amendment, which clearly indicates our support from these Benches for what we see as a welcome and important addition to the Bill.

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Moved by

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

17: Clause 16, page 13, line 16, leave out subsection (3) and insert—
“(3) For the purposes of this Act, a regulator is a regulator of a regulated profession if it is listed in Schedule (Regulators of regulated professions).(3A) The appropriate national authority or the Secretary of State may by regulations amend Schedule (Regulators of regulated professions) so as to insert additional regulators.”

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I will move Amendment 17 and speak to its associated Amendment 20, which would place the list of regulators covered by the Bill into a schedule.

I know that the Minister is familiar with this because we argued it in Committee, but, interestingly, in asking a rather simple question—“Which regulators are covered by the Bill?”—we discovered that not only did the Minister not know but nor did the officials and indeed some of the very regulators covered. At the time, as we rather playfully looked through the list, we discovered that one of the regulators on the Minister’s list was the body regulating bouncers—which were hardly the professionals we quite had in mind on a trade deal, nor where we thought there was likely to be an unmet need. But there we are. We also found that others on the list already had the powers to authorise incoming professionals, so it did not actually require an ability for Ministers to make that possible if their own statute did not.

At the time, we noticed that the Minister was slightly uncomfortable with the absence of a comprehensive list and he very graciously said:

“I accept, without reservation, that it is not good enough that these lists have been incomplete and that noble Lords must have felt they were playing a game of blind man’s buff in trying to see who the Bill applies to.”—[Official Report, 22/6/21; col. 161.]


I confess that I was never very good at sticking the tail to the right end of the wretched donkey and I understand that it has taken BEIS a little time to get it right. I think we have had two updates of the list, with some regulators added and some gone. I see that the pig farmers have gone from the latest list and the aircraft engineers have also disappeared, as have analytical chemists. However, we have in their place chicken farmers, schoolteachers and waste managers—so it seems that the Government can turn flying pigs into chickens.

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So, while I of course recognise the good intention of noble Lords to bring greater clarity, the Government have already responded to that. The combination of scrutiny by regulators, the fact that this list will be easily accessible on GOV.UK and the fact that it will be a requirement for the assistance centre also to publish this list and keep it up to date will provide the confidence that the House is looking for—whereas these amendments, by contrast, risk greater ambiguity. For these reasons, I ask for the amendment to be withdrawn.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I start with an apology to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes: of course it was her. In fact, I have just seen in my files the letter where it was shared with her and then, afterwards, with us. I apologise for that oversight.

Something that the Minister said has caused me great concern. I was suggesting that, as a way of having someone overlooking the list on GOV.UK, it be linked to in the agendas or whatever for the forum. The Minister then seemed to suggest that it would be an enormous collection, but his own policy statement says that there are about 50 regulators, and around 45 went to the first meeting that he held, so there is not a great number. We are talking not about hundreds of regulators but about what has sometimes been 61. The most it has ever been was 80, and we are down to 70 at the moment, I think—I am sorry, but I do not have the absolutely up-to-date figure in front of me. My concern is that those are not all invited to the forum, which the Minister has given me to understand that he will, on the whole, chair—he may not always be able to, but that would give it a certain kudos. I am not saying that every regulator would want to turn up, but I would find it a bit surprising if he is setting up a regulator forum but not inviting all the regulators covered by the Bill to it.

I am not expecting him to pop up now and give me that assurance, but it may be that an exchange of letters afterwards could do so—because the regulators’ forum was seen by a number of us as something that is very important. But I hope that it will not just be a hand-picked selection of the 50 or 60 regulators that are covered. Having said that, as I said at the beginning, I will not test the opinion of the House on this. I still think that I am right and he is wrong, but there you are—it happens. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 17 withdrawn.