Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 14th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, in last week’s Committee, we emphasised the need for the Bill, and not just the Government’s fine words, to recognise the autonomy of the regulated professions. If the Government really do intend to respect the independence of the regulated professions, it is quite difficult to see why Clause 3 is required.

If the Government sign a trade treaty that includes the recognition of qualifications, and if they do respect the autonomy of the professions, it is difficult to see why we need Clause 3 in addition to Clause 4. Many regulators already have powers to enter into recognition agreements for overseas regulated professions, and if they do not have them, Clause 4 is there to empower them to do so. As such, they either have the powers already or can acquire them by using an order under Clause 4, which seems to me to make Clause 3 redundant if—and only if—the Government do actually mean what they have been trying to tell us: that they respect the autonomy of the professions.

Put another way, there is no evidence before the House that Clause 3 is needed. When faced with an unnecessary clause, the right thing to do is remove it. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which other noble Lords have referred to, was highly critical of the Government’s taking of Henry VIII powers in the Bill, particularly in relation to Clause 3. There is very good reason for the Committee to agree with the DPRRC that Clause 3 should not stand part of the Bill.

I looked very carefully at my noble friend Lord Lansley’s Amendment 56 in this group, but I am not convinced that the existing distinction between what is in primary and what is in secondary legislation is sound. It means accepting that the EU’s use of regulations versus directives, and the use of statutory instruments to implement the EU law coming into our law as we left the EU, is a good basis going forward for determining the degree of parliamentary scrutiny that is required for any changes. Because of this, I cannot support my noble friend’s amendment.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

As we are starting the second day of Committee, I declare my interest again as a member of the GMC board, although clearly, I am not speaking on its behalf.

I put my name to the noble Lord’s clause stand part Motion, and I was happy to do so, although I acknowledge that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has given a different and interesting perspective. Equally, I remind noble Lords that I have a sunset clause that we will debate next week. All of us are trying to get to grips with the same problem. The Minister brought some very welcome amendments last week and made some very welcome remarks about the Government’s wish to protect the autonomy of regulators. The issue is that, on any reading of the Bill, Clause 3 would seem to be able to override those protections. This is where we get to the heart of the Bill.

My noble friend Lord Davies was absolutely right: we have seen how the farmers are being dealt with over trade agreements, and it is pretty clear that the Government are willing to ditch a great deal in order to get a trade agreement. That is why it is no good having legislation that does not protect the professional autonomy of regulators. Does the Minister accept that, notwithstanding the warm words he has used, in the event of a trade agreement it will be perfectly possible to use this clause to override any of the protections in Clause 1?

If, as I think the Minister has to say, it will be possible, the question posed by noble Lords and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, then comes back: why do we have to have this clause at all? If we do have to have it, why is there not some protection within it that says that, notwithstanding the trade agreement, it cannot override the protection given in Clause 1? One way or another, before the Bill leaves your Lordships’ House, we have to tackle this head on.

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I come to this with a slightly different perspective. Many Members of this House have contributed to the Committee stage of the debate from a ministerial, government or legislative perspective, but I would like to look at it from what my noble friend Lady Noakes might say is the consumer or regulator perspective.

In the debates on the Bill, many noble Lords have acknowledged that we are dealing with a particularly complex landscape. We have had contributions from specialist clinicians, accountants and others, but we have not heard from airline pilots, driving instructors, slaughterers or pig farmers, who are included in this legislation. The list of professions is a given. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, acknowledged, Clause 3 deals with hypotheticals—with future agreements about which we do not yet know, and on the terms of which we can only hypothesise. My noble friend Lord Lansley pointed out how important the mobility of professionals is and will increasingly become in this complex landscape. Many of the regulators of these numerous and diverse professions are governed by pre-existing legislative frameworks. I cannot see how it would be possible to deliver in the Bill the necessary future changes which all these individual professions might desire.

At every opportunity, my noble friend the Minister has rightly stressed the autonomy and independence of the regulators. Indeed, he has described this as running,

“like a golden thread throughout the whole Bill.”—[Official Report, 9/6/21; col. 1453.]

I do not believe that Clause 3 alters this in any way. Many regulators already have robust processes for overseas applicants who wish to join the UK register. They are able to judge the equivalence of qualifications and have already built up considerable experience and relationships with overseas regulators. These regulators would be in an excellent position to advise the Government if and when they felt it necessary to bring forward further secondary legislation. I have spoken to the Health and Care Professions Council, which feels that it is one that could help the Government to shape and hone this secondary legislation to ensure that it met its intended purpose and did not conflict with existing standards, but enhanced, protected and maintained patient safety priorities. It would be reassuring if the Minister could set out how he envisages that a formal process of consultation and engagement would work.

Last week, when he was talking about powers under Clause 3, the Minister referenced European trade forums and ad hoc consultations with interested parties. BEIS also organises regulator forums which provide updates on the negotiations and terms of trade deals. Some regulators—the Health and Care Professions Council is one, and there may be others; I am afraid that I do not know—are not members of either the ETAG or the BEIS regulator forum. There may be others of which I am not aware. Can the Minister give regulators such as these some confidence as to how these powers could be used in future by successive Governments?

Specifically, I understand that the power in Clause 3 is limited to the professional qualification elements of international agreements. In his response to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s third report, the Minister gave the example of the UK’s original offer to the EU as the furthest the Government would or could go to require regulators

“to put in place processes to consider applications … from professionals in the EU.”

This is key. Clause 3 ensures that processes are put in place. There should be a clearly outlined route to registration. I cannot find any obligation for a regulator to recognise overseas professionals if they are not satisfied that all their own independently set and required standards have been met. However, as I have already said, experts and regulators are keen to help and work with the Government to provide the necessary expertise and to advise on all aspects of professional regulation equivalence of overseas qualifications which may be required in preparation for and during trade negotiations.

Some have therefore expressed concerns—which have been shared by other Members of this House—that Clause 3 could lead to a situation in which this expertise would be bypassed. Can the Minister enable us to understand further the impact which the provisions in Clause 3 are likely to have? Can he offer any further reassurances as to the context in which these Clause 3 provisions would be used and how the Government intend to work with regulators to inform these trade negotiations on recognition of qualifications?

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[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for those two comments and the spirit in which they are offered. I realise that my point about trust is not a personal matter in relation to me but the more general point my noble friend makes. On letters—I will not dwell on this too long—I think the short gap between the two stages of this Committee, and this Committee being on a Monday, was a particularly difficult practical point. The officials have literally been working day and night on this; that is why not all the letters were available until the end of Sunday. We copied all of them to Front-Bench spokesmen, but I take my noble friend’s point that in future, as well as putting them in the Library, it would be convenient for noble Lords if letters were copied to them—albeit sometimes, when there is such a restricted period between the two days of Committee, they may arrive later than any of us would wish.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response. He said he would consider this between now and Report, which I am very grateful for. He then referred to Clause 4, making the point that it will be useful in encouraging regulators to make mutual recognition agreements, but that there will be no obligation and it will be up to the regulators to agree. However, we are debating Clause 3, and our problem is its open-ended nature, which on my reading means that Ministers can simply, through regulations, tell regulators what to do. I will not go into the issue of trust again, but does the Minister recognise that there is a problem with Clause 3? Is he prepared to look at its wording to make it clear that it cannot be used to override the protections he has already put into the Bill through Clause 1?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that point. Of course, anyone who listened to this debate could not but hear what noble Lords have said on this. As I said, I will reflect on this matter.

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Debate on whether Clause 4 should stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am saying that Clause 4 should not stand part of the Bill. We have now discussed Clause 4 extensively in the last three debates. I do not intend to go over the ground because that would be unnecessary. Coming to the crunch, the Minister has said that Clause 4 would be used by national authorities to encourage regulators to make mutual recognition agreements, but that they will be under no obligation to do so. Today, the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said that he was not quite sure what “encourage” means. In a sense, one Government’s encouragement may become another’s diktat, particularly when Clause 3 is part of their armoury.

Something else the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, on the first day in Committee, was about the interrelationship between the Bill and what is happening with health regulators. At the moment, there is an extensive consultation on the use of Section 60 orders in relation to a whole host of health regulators. What is interesting is that in that consultation no reference is made by the Government to them upholding the independence of those regulators—something the GMC noted, I think, in its response. Put that alongside the Government’s intention to bring an NHS Bill to Parliament very shortly—it was mentioned in the Queen’s Speech, but has not yet been published, I suspect because extra clauses are being added day after day. Part of that intention is to add clauses on regulations that will give the Government the power to abolish a regulator through an order-making power and set up new regulators through an order-making power. Regrettably, that came out of a Law Commission recommendation quite some years ago. When you put this together, you have to worry about the future independence of the health regulators. It is pretty clear that, with the legislative changes, they would potentially come under more direct control from the Department of Health. One has to say, many of those regulators enjoy considerable oversight by the department already—hence, a little scepticism about the Minister saying that it is entirely up to the regulators what they do.

My principal reason for raising Clause 4 was to refer to the Delegated Powers Committee, which refers to this being a Henry VIII clause. It refers to the memorandum and accepts that it says that it is a narrow power and cannot be used to change regulators’ abilities to recognise overseas qualifications, but, as the committee says, the memorandum fails to explain this or say what effect regulations under Clause 4 should have. I wanted to raise this because the report of the Delegated Powers Committee is critical throughout of the Minister’s department, the Explanatory Memorandum it has produced and its failure to provide sufficient explanation. I put it to the Minister that when I was a Minister, we worried about the Delegated Powers Committee and, frankly, always accepted its recommendations. We seem to be developing a new convention, where Minister think this is just any old committee and can be ignored. It cannot be; it has to be taken seriously. I urge the Minister to recognise that when the Delegated Powers Committee says that there is not enough explanation, something needs to be done about it. When it says that Clause 3 will not do, it is not something you can simply ignore; you have to come back with some proposals to deal with it. That is how legislation works in your Lordships’ House. I do not really expect the Minister now to go through what Clause 4 says, because he has done it; I just wanted to draw attention to the Delegated Powers Committee’s report.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I have two brief points. I would like to speak in support of Clause 4 standing part of the Bill, but I welcome my noble friend explaining, in response to earlier amendments, that this will be regulator-led and is permissive, not prescriptive.

First, I am slightly concerned by subsection (1), as explained in paragraph 39 of the Explanatory Notes, which then go on to say that it seems quite prescriptive. I do not know if that takes away from the permissive nature of the rest of the clause.

Secondly—and, to be honest with my noble friend and the Committee, I could not think of where else to raise this—I accept that they are not regulated bodies, but I understand that the professional drivers and attendants of pig farmers, chicken producers and livestock transporters are covered by the remit of the Bill. It is interesting to see, but I cannot understand why beef and lamb producers are not covered, because it strikes me that they might like the opportunity to make common ground with countries with which we are seeking to do deals. It may be that they are allowed to do so, but if they are, I wonder why they are excluded from the remit of the Bill.

Finally, I assume that the costs will be minor. I would like to place on record the fact that most of the bodies that have contacted me welcome the powers set out in Clause 4. I do not know whether paragraph 66 on page 18 of the impact assessment is relevant here. That refers to frameworks but I presume that also covers regulator recognition agreements. It comes up with a figure, giving a mean of £350,000 as a best estimate. On what basis has that figure been reached?

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[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

The noble Lord’s colleague the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, cautioned me on the previous day of Committee never to use “never” at the Dispatch Box, and I am trying to remember his strictures on that. The reason I did not answer the question directly is that I am not going to do so unless I am completely sure of my facts on this. I do not believe that it is possible for Clause 3 to creep its way into Clause 4 but, so that I can give the noble Lord, Lord Fox, a completely definitive answer, I will write to him, and I will copy that letter to all other noble Lords. Indeed, I will hand deliver it to noble Lords who wish to get it particularly expeditiously.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I suspect that we should be wary of what we wish for, and that the Minister is now going to take his revenge in the number of letters that we will receive over what I hope will be a very pleasant weekend. I do not think we can take this any further because he has said that he will respond to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, whose question, alongside that of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, seems to me the core of the argument. The only other question is about pig farmers as opposed to beef farmers; the Minister said that at some point pig farmers were covered by the legislation but beef farmers were not. I suggest to the noble Baroness that we leave as an eternal mystery why that should be.

Clause 4 agreed.

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[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, I rather hope that the Minister will—to use the word of the Bill—assuage my fears that these amendments are not required. If noble Lords will bear with me, I must say I really struggled to understand, when reading these amendments and looking at the Bill, how it could possibly be that we would put any barriers, hurdles or anything in the way of people whose qualifications have been recognised under previous EU regulations. It is really concerning to me.

To turn to my regulator of choice, the Health and Care Professions Council registered 551 new registrants from the EEA and Switzerland last year—the year of Covid—and 951 the year before. That is around 22% and 26%, respectively, of the total number of new registrants each year. It would be a tragedy if there were any barriers to those who have been registered as fit to practice and they were not able to do so.

Let us not kid ourselves that it is a simple path to registration for professionals from the EEA and Switzerland even with the previous EU regulations in place. These professionals have already experienced uncertainty in their status due to the UK’s exit from the EU. Hopefully, most will have applied for settled status, but let us, as I say, not put any more barriers in their way. Even a whiff that their qualifications might no longer be recognised or that they may have to go through other processes could be enough to send these valued people back to their own countries.

I am also not clear whether it is proposed that there will be a transitional period between the existing and the proposed routes to registration for overseas registrants. If so, can further light be shone on this? I plead that any transition from one system to the other is as smooth and painless for professionals and regulators as possible. I look forward to being assuaged.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 60, to which my noble friend will refer in the wind-up, and will also speak in favour of Amendment 37.

Amendment 37, as we have heard, makes it explicit that qualifications recognised before the EU regulations were revoked are not affected. My noble friend Lady Blake’s Amendment 60 seeks to ensure that existing qualifications in the UK are not affected by the Bill. Rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, I assume that that is guaranteed or assuaged somewhere in the Bill, but it would be helpful to have the noble Lord’s reference point on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, made some interesting points about grandparenting, which is obviously a long and sensible tradition when making changes to a regulatory body or regulating a profession for the first time which is already in some form of voluntary accreditation. I think the HCPC will be well used to doing that. Provided that we can be assured that the people being transferred over are, in the words of noble Lords, fit to practice, it should be a fairly straightforward process.

I was struck by the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, that we as Members of this House would be particularly favourable towards grandparenting—I suppose that means that in any reform of the second Chamber, existing Members would transfer over. It is probably about the only way to get this place to agree to reform—but in your dreams, my Lords.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, in moving his Amendment 37 and echo many of the remarks made previously on this.

My starting point is this: we now face a potential shortage in many professions, particularly among veterinary surgeons and many categories of medical staff, including doctors, nurses and other clinicians. It therefore seems odd that we have two amendments in this small group on the need for this to be in the Bill. Can my noble friend explain, as he has said many times during the passage of this Bill, at Second Reading and in earlier debates, that the Bill is deemed to be a tool to address potential shortages in the professions, such as veterinary surgeons and medical staff at every level? If that is the case, is it his view—bearing in mind the two probing amendments in this group—that it should perhaps be explicitly stated in the Bill, for the avoidance of doubt?