Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in sport, as set out in the register. I thank my noble friend the Minister and his officials for their respective briefings. The Bill, in particular Clause 7(1)(b)(i), is important to the sporting community and the future contribution that British ski instructors and mountaineers will make internationally, not least in the alpine ski resorts of France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland, to name just some of the key historic markets in which the UK has played a prominent role in the development of the ski industry and the present high-level qualifications of the ski instructor community.

At the heart of this is the importance of ensuring that our qualifications are aligned worldwide, and that acceptance of our professional qualification recognition can be applied in all markets. It is an essential step towards labour mobility and permit-free seasonal work. In the United Kingdom, the British Association of Snowsport Instructors—BASI—continues to take the lead through its recent work. In its alignment with the International Ski Instructors Association—ISIA—the world body for the protection and promotion of the interests of professional ski instructors, BASI’s qualifications are globally recognised. BASI, with ISIA, has been an active contributor to the agreement and development of international quality standards across national associations, rather than working rights—although some countries such as Japan choose to link ISIA-aligned qualifications with protecting working rights.

The current position is bleak for our ski instructors. Qualification recognition is complex. In some countries, the profession of snowsports instruction is regulated by law—but not in others. In the EU, there are regions within countries where this also varies, bringing yet greater complexity. Austria, France and Italy, for example, are currently not members of ISIA. Because ISIA has no legal powers to enforce its quality standards and because the trade and co-operation agreement between the UK and the EU allows member states to pursue their discretion as to whether they recognise third countries’ qualifications, it is essential and urgent that the Government ensure that there is ongoing recognition of BASI qualifications which, prior to the lost Covid season, historically led British ski instructors to play an important supportive role in, for example, the French Ecole du Ski.

The British ski industry has funded the growth and success of many ski resorts across the Alps, yet there are those who would ignore this contribution and fail to link it to allow qualified British ski instructors the opportunity to join their French counterparts who seek employment in the sector. Ski tourism from the UK involves 1.76 million holidaymakers, producing a total spend of £2.9 billion in ski holidays alone over the course of a full season. However, instead of embracing this spend, the reality is different. There are more closed shops in the mountain resorts of France, where numerous parochial mayors are only too ready to take the British spend and then exercise their authority and ban or do their utmost to discourage the French ski school under their influence and power from hiring outstanding British ski instructors, many of whom have provided significant added value to the profession and are there to satisfy the choice of British ski holidaymakers—especially those families with young children in the mountains who are more comfortable with their children being taught by a fluent English speaker. At the same time, the British Mountain Guides association is butting up against those delivering services in EU countries to be established as workers in those nations.

Remedying that market distortion will require strong commitment from the Government to stand full square behind our ski instructors and assist BASI with bilateral and multilateral negotiations to deliver continued opportunities. It is perhaps unrealistic to think that professional bodies such as BASI, the BMC or BMG are sufficiently resourced to manage negotiating with their counterparts in all 27 EU states, let alone to address any protectionist working-rights policies that might exist at either a federal or regional level. Whether skiing from Zermatt in Switzerland to Cervinia in Italy, or from Ischgl in Austria across to Samnaun in Switzerland, or traversing the 400-mile Portes du Soleil ski domain, which spans 13 resorts in France and Switzerland, British ski instructors now face a plethora of employment hurdles and obstructionist tactics to deter them.

Today, in the Swiss canton of Valais, which includes the resorts of Crans-Montana, Saas Fee, Verbier and Zermatt, a letter has been sent to the directors of ski schools setting out ways in which hurdles must now be put in the way of hiring British ski instructors by linking the recent decision with the UK’s departure from the EU and placing a raft of bureaucratic protectionist hurdles in the way of highly qualified British ski instructors who seek ongoing employment. There is now, for example, a requirement that federal government acts as an appellate body and local ski schools sign off the ski instructors they employ as qualified “teachers” without defining the Swiss qualifications required for such teachers as opposed to “ski instructors”. Much urgently remains to be done on that. Negotiations are essential to address the mutual recognition of professional qualifications, which in this case are regulated by law in the alpine countries and, of course, add to the work permit issues and growing barriers of entry in the world of ski protectionism, which equally need to be addressed.

We conceded the widespread advantages of EU membership during the exit negotiations. If one is a British citizen, regardless of what association one is a member of, one is not permitted to enter the common training test, formerly known as Eurotest. A BASI member with an EU passport is also not permitted to enter the CTT.

Sadly, the news for snowboarding is even worse. In 2006, BASI negotiated a bilateral agreement with France—the Satolas protocol—over the recognition of snowboard instructor qualifications. As a French snowboarder, if one wants to teach snowboarding, one must complete the Diplôme d’Etat de Ski moniteur national de skialpin qualification with ENSA, meaning that one needs to be both a top-level alpine skier as well as a top-level snowboarder in order to be able to teach snowboarding. The UK has been told by the French that they will no longer recognise the BASI snowboard level 4 ISTD qualification.

My noble friend the Minister might be tempted to take this opportunity to intervene, if that were permitted in this House at the moment, and say that this Bill is only framework legislation and that ski instructors are not regulated by law, unlike many of their international counterparts, and that this is a narrow Bill confined to the 160 professions that are regulated by law in this country. However, as my noble friend will know, Clause 7 does not restrict support to regulated professions but covers the work of the UK Centre for Professional Qualifications, the existing assistance centre, which is open to all British professionals, including ski instructors. It is here in Clause 7 where the Government could provide a public-facing service for advice and assistance to professionals on the application of their professional qualifications overseas.

After all, the BEIS-regulated professions team leads on the international-facing elements of the recognition of professional qualifications policy, which includes our ongoing work on the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, working with the DIT on the RPQ elements of FTA negotiations and the Government’s work to support regulators—and, I assume, UK unregulated but internationally regulated professional bodies such as BASI—to agree recognition arrangements with their overseas counterparts. That supports UK-qualified professionals seeking to practise overseas and UK professionals intending to work in other countries. The contracted-out UK CPQ can provide guidance, officials have informed me, on how professionals can gain recognition of their qualifications by overseas regulators and professional bodies. That is an excellent initiative and the envy of many countries, and I welcome it being included in the Bill as a legally binding requirement.

I therefore ask my noble friend to confirm that the Government will first assist with bilateral negotiations for international recognition of BASI standards through the UK CPQ, while simultaneously working on a master agreement. The UK CPQ can help CTT-qualified British ski instructors work abroad and navigate the systems with other countries through mapping qualifications and providing support on the ground. Within the department, the assistance centre and the recognition arrangement team will, I hope, help BASI with its overseas counterparts on both bilateral and multilateral deals to protect British ski instructors. That should see bilateral progress made at the same time as preparing for an application for an EU 27-wide mutual recognition agreement, deliverable with Foreign Office backing, to cover British mountain guides and snowsport instructors. I hope that it can be negotiated and one day annexed to the free trade agreement.

I hope the scope for taking forward these negotiations can be agreed with BASI and with government support. We may need to seek to strengthen the Bill to ensure that the future of British instructors is not to be a bleak one and that a legally binding commitment on the Government to report back to Parliament on work under Clause 7 is considered in Committee, covering negotiations of mutual agreements and replacement of the scheme under which the highest-level British qualifications—BASI level 4 for snowsports instructors—is recognised throughout the EU and beyond. Such mutual recognition should include access to the CTT, enabling ski instructors and mountaineers to apply for jobs in alpine countries, with pre-agreed high-standard professional qualifications as well as advice and help to navigate restrictions on the freedom to work, the need for work permits and movement within Europe. I fully agree with the strong representations of my noble friend Lady Fraser. This falls within Clause 7 and is not excluded as a consequence of ski instructors and mountain guides not being regulated by law in this country. In general, save for the extensive Henry VIII powers in the Bill, I fully support the measure.