Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Trees Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, and my remarks will chime closely with his. I speak as a veterinary surgeon and my remarks will apply to the regulation of and qualifications for veterinary medicine and practice, which is regulated by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. I declare my interest as a fellow and former president of that college. I emphasise that I am speaking in a personal context. I would sum up the response of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons to this Bill as “concerned curiosity”. As one official at the college said to me, the Bill appears to be “a solution in search of a problem”.

The RCVS currently has full powers to enter into mutual recognition agreements, which it has done with Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. For countries with acceptable and comparable accreditation systems, it can accept graduates from vet schools which have satisfied those accreditation processes, such as certain vet schools in the USA and some EU countries. Finally, it has a process for all other graduates from any school in any country in the world, who must take and pass the royal college’s own exams.

Collectively, this ensures a level of competence in the individuals allowed to register as MRCVS and hence practise in the UK. Above all, it gives the public an assurance of professional competence and it ensures that our animals can be treated only by those who have satisfied the RCVS standards, which apply, of course, to those who graduate from the accredited UK vet schools. All of this means that this Bill adds nothing to the powers and capabilities that already exist for the veterinary profession. I realise that all regulators do not have the same powers, but, if not, why not just give all regulators such powers and leave it at that?

An underlying concern is the ability conferred on government by this Bill in Clause 3 to

“implement international agreements … that the UK strikes … so far as they relate to the recognition of professional qualifications.”

I confess I am not quite sure what that really means. But it is not unreasonable to fear that government pressure, as a result of commitments they make in a desire to achieve FTAs, will pressure regulators to relax standards.

In agreeing FTAs, the Minister is aware of concerns about relaxing standards regarding, for example, animal welfare on the importation of products of animal origin, or about relaxing environmental standards relating to the production of all manner of products. It is not unreasonable to ask if this is the thin end of the wedge to relax the standards of competence that we currently expect from professional personnel. This pressure will undoubtedly be exacerbated in professions where we have skill shortages, as are specifically included in this Bill. The vet profession is one such profession.

If we need more vets or more of any other profession, we should ask why we cannot produce more to our standards rather than trying to make up the numbers by imports—the standards of which it is, practically and realistically, impossible to assess without a great cost. How can a body like the RCVS, which charges a very modest retention fee to current members of £364 per year, possibly accredit or ensure appropriate in-country accreditation of, for instance, the 24 vets schools in Brazil, the 52 in India or the 20 in Mexico?

The reason we have a shortage of vets is not a lack of student applications but is, to a large extent, due to a shortfall in the recovery of the full cost of veterinary education. The income to vet schools comprises the maximum allowable student fee plus the government grant to universities for band A clinical subjects, which include medicine, dentistry and veterinary science, and is £10,990 per year for 2021-22. For clinical veterinary education, virtually all the clinical training—the hospitals, clinics and associated equipment and many of the clinical teaching staff—has to be provided from this total income. This is in marked contrast to clinical medical training, where there is a very substantial subsidy through the NHS budget.

The reality is that the real cost of the education of vet students, which has been estimated at around £27,000 per year per student, substantially exceeds the band A allocation plus the maximum student fee. The difference is about £7,000 per student per year. With a relatively modest uplift in band A grants for vet students, for what is in a national context a moderate number of students—currently about 1,000 graduates per year, this problem could be addressed. The schools could expand the intake of UK entrants to vet schools who would contribute as graduates to the UK market.

In conclusion, to return to my major concern in this Bill—namely that, as a result of trade negotiations involving international recognition agreements, regulators will be pressurised into relaxing professional standards—why is Clause 3 necessary? Will the Bill in effect debar a regulator, such as the RCBS, from requiring certain applicants where no regulator recognition agreement has been agreed, to sit that UK regulator’s own examination or assessment procedures?

Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Trees Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 14th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of a professional organisation. We have before us the international agreements clause, as we could call it. In their response to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, the Government said:

“Clause 3 is necessary to ensure that the provisions of international agreements can be implemented domestically and be given effect to by particular regulators.”


I am not sure about the use of “necessary” but that is how they have chosen to phrase it and, taken at face value, it is all well and good. It is established practice for trade agreements to cover a range of issues, including the recognition of professional qualifications—or rather, it would be acceptable if we could trust the Government. The problem, of course, is that we cannot trust this Government, particularly when they seek to assume such wide-ranging powers.

There are two levels of concern. First, and crucially, the driving principle should be the maintenance of the quality of professional standards and the service provided, not any wider considerations of economic benefit. For example, as stated by the General Medical Council:

“Patient safety is, and must remain, the principle consideration when considering whether to facilitate access to the medical register as part of an economic trade agreement.”


In other words, there must be no room for any trade-off of potential broader economic advantages at the price of weakening professional standards. One way of ensuring that the correct professional standards are maintained is the fullest, earliest possible involvement of the relevant UK regulators in the discussions that take place on the trade agreement; that is, before and during the trade discussions. The Minister has protested that it is no part of the Government’s trade policy to compromise our professional standards. It is possible that I have—again, in the Minister’s words—“a suspicious mind”, but the Government’s record suggests otherwise. This is a general issue where some reassurance would be appropriate, whoever is in government.

The second level of concern is that this is not a normal Government. The evidence we have so far is that this Government are desperate and will do almost anything to justify their decision to change our international trade arrangements to get Brexit done. More store is being placed on obtaining trading agreements for their own sake, however bad or vague they might be. The Government are desperate to present the public with so-called achievements of favourable trade agreements.

For example, we are led to believe that a trade deal with Australia will shortly be announced. It will be the first big post-Brexit trade deal that is not simply a rollover of arrangements that the UK enjoyed as an EU member. In practice, Australia is a relatively small export destination for UK goods and services, but that does not matter because it is all about the politics. There is also an ambitious Secretary of State.

How can our professional services depend on their interests being defended in any future trade deal under the terms of this legislation, any more than, for example, the hill farmers of Wales will be defended under the putative agreement with Australia? It is obvious that, whatever the terms, getting the deal is the only thing that matters to the Government.

In addressing this issue, the Government have to be honest that trade agreements are almost invariably about more than trade. It is innocent to believe otherwise. For example, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership is much more about achieving the UK’s Indo-Pacific tilt for foreign policy than an economic project. However, the UK has to accept all the CPTPP rules to become a member if it wants to achieve that strategy.

There are real concerns, which I hope the Minister will address, that professional standards risk being the sacrificial lamb, slaughtered on the altar of political ambition.

[Lord Trees (CB) [V]]

My Lords, since this is my first contribution to this Committee stage, I thank the Minister for his personal letter to me after Second Reading addressing my concerns about the Bill. He is always courteous and meticulous in responding and I sincerely appreciate that.

However, I still have certain concerns. At Second Reading, I asked two main questions. One was whether the Bill would debar relevant regulators from requiring certain applicants—where no regulator recognition agreement has been set—to sit the UK regulators’ own examination or assessment procedures. I commend the Government and thank the Minister that the Government’s own amendments, brought in with regard to Clause 1, have made it clear that this is not the case.

However, the other question and my concern relating to Clause 3 remain. Why is there a need for a clause in the Bill connecting professional recognition to trade agreements? It leads to a genuine concern that Clause 3 will pressurise regulators into relaxing standards. That concern remains, so I will consider it in some detail

A major purpose of the Bill is to give regulators powers to reach mutual recognition agreements or other methods to enable overseas professionals to register and practise in the UK. The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons—and I declare my interest as a fellow and former president—and the healthcare professions, particularly the General Medical Council, as my noble friend Lord Patel has mentioned, already have these powers, and one wonders how many of the 50 or so other regulators in the UK do not have them. A question I raised at Second Reading still stands: why not give such regulators the powers they currently lack and leave it at that? Why link regulatory recognition to international agreements?

If we look at the precise wording of Clause 3—and I have not added any words, just subtracted some—Clause 3(1) states:

“The appropriate national authority may by regulations make … provision … for … implementing any international recognition agreement to which the United Kingdom is a party.”


Clause 3(4) continues:

“An ‘international recognition agreement’ means so much of any international agreement … for … the recognition of overseas qualifications or overseas experience for … determining whether individuals are entitled to practise in the United Kingdom”.


I am not a lawyer, but this translates to me as meaning that the Government can implement an agreement to recognise whether individuals can practise in the UK. There is no mention in Clause 3 of involvement or consultation, let alone agreement, with the relevant regulatory authority in the UK. That is my amateur interpretation but the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes—I hope I am not pre-empting her—put it more bluntly at Second Reading:

“The dodgy bit of the Bill is Clause 3, which allows the Government to override existing approaches and procedures for the recognition of non-UK qualifications if they have been covered in a trade treaty.”—[Official Report, 25/5/21; col. 931.]


However, as we have heard already from the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and others, that is not all. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, in its report on the Bill, had plenty to say about Clause 3. The committee’s concerns are different from mine but are none the less serious and pertinent. Its report notes that Clause 3 gives Ministers broad powers by regulations, including Henry VIII powers to amend primary legislation, without conditions. The report considers and rejects the justifications for this in the Explanatory Memorandum of the Bill and concludes that

“clause 3 represents an inappropriate delegation of power and should be removed from the Bill.”

It seems to me that Clause 3 adds nothing to the reasonable and positive elements of the Bill to enable regulators to have greater ability to recognise, by the means they so determine, overseas applicants for registration to practise in the UK or to ensure that the regulators have such processes and that they communicate them publicly to facilitate overseas applications.

There are serious concerns about the potential that Clause 3 gives the Government to determine or influence the process of professional recognition in the UK and serious concerns from the DPRR Committee about the powers this clause gives the Government to amend primary legislation. I argue that, collectively, these facts support the view that Clause 3 should not stand part of the Bill, which I support.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I want to put myself on the record as one of those who would have signed the noble Lord’s amendment, had there been space. I again draw attention to the way in which our systems, with the limit of four signatures, no longer allow a full representation of the range of views in your Lordships’ House. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, that should we get to a vote at a later stage, he has the support of the Green group in this matter of Clause 3.

This morning, in my continuing efforts to spread news about what happens in your Lordships’ House to the general public, I wrote what I believe is the first non-specialist press article on the Professional Qualifications Bill, in the Yorkshire Bylines. In it, I described the Bill collectively as a “massive power grab” by the Government, and I believe that Clause 3 is the key part of that power grab, as a number of noble Lords have already indicated.