Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 9th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Lansley—who, following the revelations from the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, I suppose I should now call my noble friend Lord Lansley—I did not participate in the Second Reading debate, as I was not able to be here, unfortunately. I agree with many people who said on that occasion that, although this is not a contentious Bill, it is a very important one. When you think of the number of professional bodies and areas of employment that are being regulated—more than 160—it is really a very important issue. I will come back to that.

However, I have sat through now two and three-quarter hours of what purports to be a Committee stage of the Bill. I must say that it is really a very disappointing and inadequate way of dealing with a Bill. It is not proper consideration when we cannot intervene properly and ask questions when the Minister is speaking and cannot intervene on each other. I would have liked to have intervened on the noble Lord, Lord Purvis. We could have had a dialogue about the Privy Council, of which I am a member. I know nothing about any of these matters because it is all delegated to various committees of the Privy Council. We could have maybe explored that.

There are other issues. The noble Lord’s predecessor in the Chair, the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, was very good and allowed the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, to come in without having to go through the process of emailing the Clerk. I think the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, managed to whisper in the Clerk’s ear. It is excellent that there is some flexibility, but it ought to be more flexible. We ought to have a proper Committee stage. The interesting thing is that most of the people participating have been here in person. There are relatively few today in this Committee stage on the screens. That is why I think that the Procedure Committee and the usual channels need to carefully consider changing the arrangements for Committee and Report stages, which are so important in dealing with aspects of Bills.

It was a fascinating exchange earlier between the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and the Minister. Under normal circumstances, there would have been a different kind of dynamic arising from that exchange. It could have been much more helpful in dealing with this Bill. At the moment, because everyone has to be dealt with equally—whether they are at home, as I was on a number of occasions, or here—we cannot have a proper Committee stage. One of my colleagues, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has suggested that we do away with that equality and the Procedure Committee should say that, for Committee and Report stages, certainly, those who are present should be able to operate normally as we used to do and that people at home should accept that and understand that. If they want to participate, they should be able to come here in one way or another. I really think that, in terms of considering our legislation properly, we need to look at that. That is nothing to do with the amendment, by the way, but it is very important.

Can I also say another thing that I would have said in Committee? As my noble friend Lady Hayter said earlier, there has been a lack of investment in training of doctors and nurses—over the last 10 years, in particular —so that we do not have home-trained doctors and nurses. I worry that some of the motivation of some people in the Government behind this—not everyone—is to bring in doctors and nurses from overseas as quickly as possible to make up for the fact that they have not been training enough doctors and nurses. As someone who has been involved in overseas development for years now—I used to be Minister in that department and now we are suffering that huge cut in our overseas development assistance—I think it would be wrong for us to drag in too many people and to see this as a way of bringing in too many doctors and nurses from overseas from countries that need them equally as much as, if not more than, we do, and which need their health infrastructure strengthened. That is nothing to do with amendment either, but it gets it off my chest.

The amendment would require the Secretary of State to seek the consent of the devolved Administrations —but with qualifications, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering—prior to making arrangements for the assistance centre. We welcome the provisions regarding the assistance centre; I speak on my own behalf, but I know, as does the noble Baroness, that the Law Society of Scotland welcomes it. Like her, I am grateful to Michael Clancy and his colleagues from the Law Society of Scotland for their help on these amendments.

The centre will provide advice and assistance regarding entry requirements—we will come to other aspects of it later—to those seeking to practise a profession in the United Kingdom or to those with UK qualifications seeking to practise overseas. We note the obligation on regulators, contained in Clause 7(2), to provide the designated assistance centre with any information it may need to carry out its functions. That seems entirely appropriate in the circumstances.

The obligation to make arrangements for the assistance centre lies on the Secretary of State. However, the centre will provide advice and assistance covering the whole of the United Kingdom, not just England. Accordingly, we consider that it would be important, and reflect the acknowledgement of the role of the devolved Administrations in earlier clauses of the Bill, for the devolved Administrations to be rather more than consulted on the arrangements for the creation of the assistance centre.

What I suggest in the amendment, as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, generously said, goes further and is more radical than the amendment she has proposed. However, it would not give the devolved Administrations a veto; it says that the Secretary of State—should first “seek the consent” of the Scottish and Welsh Ministers and department in Northern Ireland; that is where I go further. If the Government do not get that consent within a month—it gives the devolved Administrations a veto or delaying power of a month—they can still go ahead. But if they do, notwithstanding the fact that they have not got approval from the devolved Administrations, they then have to publish a statement explaining why the Secretary of State decided to make the arrangements without the consent of the authority or authorities concerned. They have to explain why they have not taken account of representations before going ahead.

I say to my friend, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who knows more about the United Kingdom Internal Market Act than anyone around today, that this replicates the compromise that was agreed in that Act when we discussed it as a Bill in relation to, for example, the CMA and other aspects. Does the Minister consider that my amendment would have the same effect as the Government have already agreed in relation to the internal market Act? It is not revolutionary; it is more radical than the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, but it is something that the Government have already agreed to in terms of the internal market Act. I therefore hope that it will be considered sympathetically by the Government.

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

Just for clarification, if a Member wishes to speak after the Minister and is in the Chamber, they can message the clerk; if they are online, they can email the clerk. But all requests must come through the clerk to the Chair. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to speak specifically to Amendments 42, 49 and 57, which I have co-signed. They all address issues related to the interaction of UK Government powers with those of the devolved Administrations and each of the three relates to different aspects of that issue.

Amendment 42 relates to the national assistance centre. The impact assessment makes it clear that this will be a centralised facility under the control of the Secretary of State, but it will also provide information and assistance in relation to devolved regulators and where the professional qualifications are different in the devolved nations. In preparation for this debate, I went online and explored the websites of a range of regulators. They all seem to provide comprehensive advice and information services, so I am puzzled as to what the problem is. Why is it necessary for the Government to overlay the well-established structure of regulators with this additional bureaucracy with—of course—its accompanying additional cost?

Because I am of a suspicious nature, I feel that the real purpose of the assistance centre is to enable to the UK Government to override the differences between the nations of the UK and, when making trade agreements, to take the opportunity to iron out those annoying differences in qualifications in one part of the UK and another. Hence my amendment, which simply requires consultation with the devolved Administrations on the function and operation of the assistance centre before it is established.

It should not be necessary to state this basic constitutional principle in terms of an amendment to a Bill, but the Government’s approach to this Bill has been woeful so far. It has been developed at speed—the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, suggested it was on the back of an envelope—at a time when elections meant that there have been none of the usual opportunities to consult the devolved Administrations. In Wales, officials did not even see a draft of the Bill until the week before its introduction. They did not see the final version until we all saw it, when it was laid.

As drafted, this Bill confers a suite of regulation-making powers on the appropriate national authority. In Wales, the Welsh Ministers are that authority for the devolved areas, but the powers conferred on them are exercisable concurrently with the Secretary of State and the Lord Chancellor—hence the Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor could legislate in devolved areas and would not need to obtain Welsh Ministers’ consent.

As things stand, all the devolved Administrations appear to be opposed to this Bill in its current form. In Amendment 42, I offer just a modest solution to a very small part of the problem that the Government face. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain exactly how he sees the assistance centre working, how large it will be, what it will actually do and the estimated cost.

Amendment 49 relates to the interaction of this Bill with common frameworks, an issue that was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. Several noble Lords can boast that they have the T-shirt in relation to common frameworks and their interaction with government attempts to regain devolved powers. We fought several rounds with the Government on this issue during the passage of the internal market Bill. It is not at all clear how this Professional Qualifications Bill interacts with the well-established common frameworks programme.

There is a recognition of professional qualifications framework in preparation by BEIS, but it seems to have been delayed and there has been no explanation for that delay. Is this Bill designed to replace that common framework? If so, the Government need to tell the devolved Administrations, because they would much rather go ahead on the basis of a framework that involves non-legislative co-operation and a lot of working by consensus. This amendment is designed to ensure that the common framework on professional qualifications is not undermined or overtaken by any provisions in this Bill.