Draft Architects Act 1997 (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 7th December 2022 General Committees

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Robertson. I want to make a couple of points. First, I am perhaps the only Member of Parliament who worked as a manual worker for quite a number of years in the building industry. I therefore came to know architects and the architectural profession well. I will try to keep private my prejudices given those experiences, rather than sharing them with the Committee, but I have strong views about the nature of the building industry, construction, the role of architects and so on.

We have discussed the impact of the Brexit vote on a number of matters, and today it is on the architectural profession. I do not entirely share the views of the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran, who said that the good old days were before the Brexit vote, but the way in which the Government embarked on Brexit has proven a disaster.

I do not want to say that the regulations are shoddy, because that would be disrespectful to a Minister who probably was not in post when they were drafted, but they are not a brilliant piece of work. The preliminary note on the regulations says that the Secretary of State consulted the Architects Registration Board, which is the regulator for the architectural profession, and the explanatory memorandum says that the Government have not carried out an impact assessment because there is no impact from the regulations. Those two things are mistaken.

After all, we meet in the shadow of not only Brexit, but Grenfell, and many Members will probably have in their constituencies architect-designed estates that are not fit for purpose, although people have to live on them. That has been a disaster. System build construction from the ’70s, ’60s and before was all designed by architects, so any decisions on how the architectural profession is regulated and monitored and how people are admitted to the profession of architect have a public impact.

The regulations provide a new framework to allow people to access the profession. Some architects are local, but many are international and operate internationally, so let me reflect on the consequences of Brexit for architects who either trained abroad but work in our country, or trained in the UK but provide services in America or elsewhere. There is a significant implication, so it is right that the Government introduce legislation, and the regulations are based on the Professional Qualifications Act 2022.

The preamble to the note we have says that the Government consulted only the ARB, which is the regulator, but I have done some research and sought advice from the Library. There was a consultation by the Government, dated 8 June 2021, and the consultation says that the Government consulted a wide range of bodies, including UK-based architects, internationally qualified architects, schools and students. I will not read out the whole list. Why do the regulations say that the Government have spoken only to the regulator, when the consultation was much wider? I do not understand why the regulations would make such a statement.

What is not referred to is the Royal Institute of British Architects, which my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North mentioned in passing. RIBA is established by royal charter, and it plays a role, alongside the ARB, in accrediting architectural schools in the UK. It therefore helps people to gain admission to the architects register. Why has RIBA not been consulted, as apparently it has not, according to the note?

RIBA is a distinguished body that was set up by the Crown. A consultation was held by the ARB, and I note that RIBA said that it was concerned that what was being discussed by the ARB would result in

“a highly prescriptive, inflexible and expensive system, parallel to the RIBA’s internationally recognised validation programme.”

How do the Government intend to tackle the problem of there being two separate institutional frameworks that decide how people become architects and gain admission to the profession of architect? That seems to me quite an important matter.

Let me reflect on RIBA and the ARB. They are overwhelmingly white. I think I found only one person on the board who is a person of colour. There are nine members of the board of the ARB, and six of them are either architects or connected directly to the construction industry. That is the body that the regulations will empower to make decisions with respect to other jurisdictions.

A lot of theoretical work is being done on regulatory captures. Regulators tend to be captured by the institutions that they are meant to regulate. In this case, it is clear that ARB is dominated by architects. I have looked at the work it has done over the last couple of days, and ARB is focused on developing the profession, rather than regulating it. That will inevitably be the case if members of the board are architects or people who work closely with architects. Is ARB, in its present form, an appropriate body to regulate the profession, given the mistakes that the architectural profession has made over the years? Has the Minister considered that, given that the regulations effectively empower ARB to control admission to the profession? Regulatory capture is a major problem, as almost all our regulators have been captured by the professions that they are meant to regulate.

As I say, the consultation of 8 June led to the order. In that consultation, the Government proposed two options, neither of which has been adopted in the statutory instrument before us. Was there a further round of consultation? If so, it does not seem to have been conducted publicly. If there was, will the Minister draw our attention to it and say why nobody else was consulted, other than ARB, which seems to be a flawed institution?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lee Rowley]

I will come to that question. To conclude my point on global recruitment and retention, we obviously want successful sectors, with good pipelines of people coming in and which allow people to build their careers and lives. At the same time, there has to room for individual agency and individual sector decisions, and some of the hon. Lady’s questions should probably be dealt with outside formal legislation, regulation and intervention from Government.

I turn to the question that the hon. Lady reminded me about. Ultimately, the decision in question is one for the Architects Registration Board. The board was set up in statute in 1997 for a purpose, and it will make decisions about who it wants to enter into discussions with, and how long it wants to continue those discussions for, and then it will seek to conclude them and to obtain mutual recognition as a consequence.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran, who tempts me to relitigate Brexit, which I will refrain from doing, asked similar questions about the need to sign up to reciprocal arrangements with the European Union, and about ensuring that things move quickly, and I hope my answer to the hon. Member for Luton North has explained my view. I too would like a reciprocal agreement with the European Union signed, so I hope that the EU moves quickly; that would be in its interests.

The hon. Member for Hemsworth asked a series of technical questions about the consultation that was undertaken and its impacts. He asked why the preamble to the regulations states:

“In accordance with section 15 of the 2022 Act, the Secretary of State has consulted the Architects Registration Board”,

but does not reference the broader consultation. That is because section 15 of the 2022 Act requires us to consult with the relevant regulator. The preamble confirms that we have done that, so we are responding to the requirement in the 2022 Act, rather than making a broader point about consultation. As he rightly indicates, we have consulted on this matter. The consultation ran from late 2020 until early 2021. I believe that he referred to the consultation response that the Government provided on 8 June 2021. For the record, there were over 400 responses to the consultation, including from RIBA—he had concerns that it may not have been involved in the discussion. The consultation helped us to come to a set of conclusions about how we would bring forward the change and take things forward.

[Jon Trickett]

Does the Minister not accept that there is a wider public interest beyond the profession in how it is regulated, given his references to Grenfell and my points about architect-led system building, which was a disaster? Why has he failed to consult the wider public, and why did he consult only the architect profession?

[Lee Rowley]

I am not sure that I accept the premise of the question. The Government ran a consultation between 4 November 2020 and 22 July 2021. Anybody who wanted to respond to it was able to. That consultation was obviously written in a way that made it more likely that architects would respond to it, simply because architects were more likely to be interested in it, but anybody, including his constituents, could have got involved if they wished. If he had wished to do so, he would have been more than welcome.

The hon. Gentleman made a series of points about the ethnic make-up of certain boards in the ARB, which I am not going to debate here. Ultimately, the question in front of us is whether we want to open up the possibility of other countries supporting the bringing of architects to the United Kingdom, and I find some of the points made slightly random. The reason why the ARB had primacy in this discussion is not because we are supporting one group over another; it is simply because the ARB had statutory functions and was seeking to discharge them, so that we could bring forward regulations that adhere to the law and could create legislation and regulation that works in the long term. We welcome the involvement of all architects, trade bodies, membership bodies and individuals who want get involved in those consultations. That is one of the reasons why we got 400 responses back and could bring forward the proposals today. We hope that they have broad agreement; they demonstrate that the United Kingdom will make progress in this area in the coming months and years. hope the Committee will approve the regulations.

Question put and agreed to.