Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak after the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, who makes important points about delegated legislation. No doubt we will return to them.

I declare my interest as an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. I assure noble Lords that this does not qualify me in any way to practise architecture—quite the reverse—but I mention it because Clause 11 of the Bill is devoted to the architectural profession. Although RIBA is not a professional regulator—noble Lords will note from the text of the Bill that this role is reserved by statute to the Architects Registration Board—none the less the clause may affect its members. In that respect, it is a matter of regret that the consultation that the Government have been undertaking on changes to the Architects Act has not been published in time for consideration in this debate. I understand that it is expected imminently. It is a pity that it is not available today, but I hope my noble friend the Minister can give some assurance that this response will be available before Committee. It is necessary, and would at least be extremely helpful in addressing Clause 11 if we could understand the context of policy in which the Government see this whole question, going forward.

I broadly welcome the Bill. In many ways I share the enthusiasm of my noble friend Lady Noakes for the scrapping of EU legislation but, like many other noble Lords, I am somewhat confused by the Bill. In some ways, this is not helped by the order in which its clauses are written. There is a degree of randomness about them. The start of the Bill is really Clause 4; that is the heart of the whole thing, and it is a permissive clause which allows the professional bodies in the scope of the Bill to enter into agreements with corresponding organisations in other countries. There cannot really be an objection to that. The only question, as hinted at by certain noble Lords, is why in a free society such permission from the Government is necessary. None the less, it cannot be objected to.

However, having addressed Clause 4, we must turn back to Clause 1, which makes a very important point. In effect, it says that there may be cases where the public interest requires the Government to intervene to ensure that those professional regulators are undertaking, or at least creating, a route by which those mutual recognitions can be put in place. The assumption is that there is a recalcitrance or a failure on the part of the professional organisations to carry out what they are permitted to do by Clause 4, and I do not object to that as such. Of course, in many cases, there may be reasons of public interest why the Government might want to act to make something happen, but it is not a very strong clause. Out of respect for the professional bodies or professional regulators, all that the clause does is require them to put in place a route whereby such applications can be processed. There is nothing in the clause mandating them to approve anybody or to ensure that something is coming through the envisaged pipeline. Therefore, it is rather weak as a measure for addressing what would have been an identified public interest.

A public interest is a very broad thing. One can imagine a public interest that covers a whole range of matters in which the Government could quite properly want to take an interest to ensure that action by the professional bodies would occur. But then we turn to Clause 2, which does something else. It says that there is only one public interest that the Government will contemplate that will allow and authorise them to take steps under Clause 1, which is a lack of supply, if noble Lords see what I mean, to meet something called demand in the domestic workforce. We are now going to say that, having taken this reasonable power—not a very strong power, but a reasonable one—to act in the public interest, the Government will limit themselves to using it only where there is a demonstrated demand.

This is the part of the Bill that causes me the most concern. Here I am repeating to some extent things that other noble Lords have said or hinted at. The first is that it seems to limit the sense of public interest unnecessarily tightly. I have made that point. The second is, as some noble Lords have indicated, that it will lead to endless debate about footling questions that are in many cases bound to end up the subject of judicial review: what is the right number of tax accountants for Wales? What is the appropriate number of lawyers or advocates in Scotland? There is no right answer to these questions, but this is the substance of a debate that the Government are inviting upon themselves every time they seek to exercise the powers. I say the Government—here, of course, I mean the national authorities, because it will not necessarily be this Government who exercise the power. Every time the national authority seeks to exercise this power, it will walk straight into this quagmire. I simply do not see any reason for it.

The third thing is that it links the Bill to immigration. A great deal of the debate we have had this afternoon has been not really about the recognition of professional qualifications but about the right to work in the United Kingdom. The Bill, although it stretches into the world of immigration, has no immigration effects. Simply having this qualification, even if there is a demand for it, does not necessarily give you the right to work here; no work permit flows from this. One is treading into the world of immigration policy without actually having an effect on it. That complicates the Bill very unnecessarily.

As background to my remarks—this will not necessarily be welcome to the many professionally qualified people who have spoken in the debate; I hasten to add, in case there was any doubt, that I have no professional qualifications at all, so I am not among them in any sense—although I do not share the caustic view of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, of the professional bodies in his own sphere of activity, I come with a certain sort of scepticism and suspicion that professions often seek to limit entry into their profession with a view to generating a scarcity premium. Criticise me if you like, but I have to say that many regulators end up being captured by the professions they seek to regulate.

My worry about connecting this to immigration is that it puts the debate in the wrong place and gives to the regulators the notion that they are there as an arm of the immigration system, whereas we want them to carry out as objectively as possible the accreditation of foreign qualifications to the standard that the Bill requires—although that standard might change in the course of further stages. That process ought to have no consequence or connection to immigration at all. All that made me think that the Bill might be better without Clause 2 at all.

All that can be tested later and I hope I have laid out what I see to be the main issues. I must end by saying how grateful I am to my noble friend the Minister for the time he gave me to discuss these issues and explain them to me. While I feel that I understand the Bill better as a consequence, it may be that he has yet more to teach me, that I may not understand it well, and that he may win me over to his point of view entirely. We have opportunities to pursue that over the coming weeks and I look forward to them.

Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 14th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 32A, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Garden, would require the appropriate national authority to consult with higher education institutions and other training providers before making regulations under this clause. I declare an interest as chancellor of Cardiff University.

I asked a Written Question, answered by the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, in which I asked Her Majesty’s Government

“why higher education institutions and other providers of training for professional qualifications are not listed as stakeholders affected in the impact assessment for the Professional Qualifications Bill; whether higher education institutions or others …were consulted on the proposals in that Bill, and … what plans they have to consult such providers in the future.”

The Answer stated:

“The proposals in the Bill do not affect the UK qualifications or experience required to practise a profession. The Government ran a Call for Evidence on the recognition of professional qualifications … between August 2020 and October 2020, which was open to anyone with an interest in professional qualifications”,


and that there were, among others,

“26 responses from educators who provide training and higher education institutions.”

The Answer continued:

“Officials have met representatives from Universities UK to discuss proposals in the Professional Qualifications Bill and will continue to pursue an active programme of stakeholder engagement.”


So, having told me in the Answer that this Bill has no impact on HEIs and other trainers, the Government went on to say that the HEIs and trainers identified themselves in the public consultation as being concerned by, or interested in, this Bill. Following that, the Government have been in discussion with Universities UK at least. Will the Minister clarify whether the Government have also spoken to other training providers, not just the representatives of universities?

I have had correspondence from Universities UK, which says that, although its contact with the Government has been fairly constructive so far, it would be helpful to require the Government to consult with higher education providers as they strike regulator recognition agreements, given the importance of these agreements to certain sections of higher education. The potential impact on onshore recruitment of EU students on relevant courses should be monitored. Clearly, that is of importance because if you are doing away with the EU-established system, there will be an impact on the number of EU students coming to this country, potentially some of them afresh as they will want to get their qualifications here, but also on the top-up courses that our HEIs provide. It also says that it would be helpful to have frequent consultation and analysis-sharing between the Government and higher education providers to help ensure that the Bill benefits the range of bilateral agreements that could increase recruitment to higher education, rather than have a detrimental effect.

It is not the case that this Bill does not affect HEIs. It affects the number of foreign students applying to the UK on top-up courses, and, crucially, what the HEIs and other training providers teach. Depending on what they teach, it affects who they employ and how many of them they employ, so this has a deep impact on them. I urge the Minister to consider this very reasonable amendment. The Government have recognised the legitimate role of higher education—I hope they have consulted other trainers as well—so what reason could they have for rejecting such a sensible and modest amendment?

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 55A is in my name. There are many excellent provisions in the Bill requiring regulators to share information. They are required to share information with regulators at home and abroad, and with people who wish to be qualified to practise in this country. However, there is nothing in the Bill which requires the sharing of information with people who are already practising the profession in this country. Indeed, there is nothing in the amendment spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, which touches on my point, although it would expand the requirement for information sharing.

It might be thought otiose to have such a requirement where a regulator is also a membership body, as it could be assumed that naturally it would communicate with its members, but a regulator is not always a membership body. I remind noble Lords that I said at Second Reading that I was an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and I am grateful to RIBA for discussions about this topic. RIBA is a membership organisation representing its profession, but it does not regulate the architectural profession. As noble Lords will know from other parts of the Bill, that is a function reserved by statute to the Architects Registration Board. Experience is that stand-alone statutory regulators do what is required of them by statute, and very little else. That is why a nudge is needed, and this amendment would achieve that.

This clause would allow professional practitioners to know what agreements regulators were pursuing, what mutual recognition agreements were in the pipeline, what progress had been made and the timeline for the agreement. It would also provide a clear path for professional practitioners to have their views on how agreements should be prioritised made known to the regulator. Remarkably, without this amendment, there is no statutory obligation on a regulator to have any communication with regulated professionals at all.

Why does it matter? To take the example of architects, British architects are known to lead the world. They work on major projects throughout the world, and they often work with our world-beating civil engineers on transport, infrastructure and other major projects. They earn a great deal of export earnings for us as a country, too. When they are doing this, they need to be able to send architects to work in other parts of the world. On occasion, they also need to be able to employ in this country architects who are from countries where a pipeline of work might be developing and have specialist knowledge of regulations—be they on planning or whatever—that apply in the country where the project is being delivered. They are very commercial architects—they have to be, because they operate in a harsh commercial world—so they look ahead. They see a pipeline of activity in a particular country that might be coming forward with new projects—airports, infrastructure, or whatever it might be. They want to be able to have some influence on their regulator about how mutual recognition agreements might be prioritised to facilitate capturing that work.

I have used architects as an example, but there are other professions that might find themselves in a similar situation, which would want to have that two-way flow with their regulator and which, not being a membership organisation, would need, in my view, the help of statute to ensure that that communication took place. This is so modest and commonsensical a suggestion that I hope my noble friend will be able to rise and simply say that he accepts it.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I speak particularly to Amendments 31 and 32, and I commend Amendment 32, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, to the House. I remind the Committee that the British Dental Association said:

“We would strongly advise that any body issuing qualifications which might be recognised in the UK must be a recognised body for the purpose of issuing professional qualifications by the regulator in a given country. This is crucial to avoid situations in which a UK regulator might be asked to enter into recognition agreements with another regulator in a country where not all educational institutions might be fully accredited by that regulator.”


Unfortunately, I was too late to add my name to Amendment 32. I strongly support it and hope that the Government will take it on board. I have wondered whether it would benefit from “relevant” being inserted before “overseas”, but that would come later on. We certainly need something of that nature in the Bill.

I also speak briefly to Amendment 32A because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, outlined, it is essential that there is a degree of stability in the higher education system and with training providers. In some subject areas, there is a need for simulation suites and quite complex teaching that requires long-term investment, and, as the noble Baroness said, staff may need to be taken on. You cannot just shed staff; you cannot ask staff to start teaching something they are unfamiliar with without due warning. I am concerned that there is a danger that the Bill could inadvertently destabilise some of our own systems.