Draft Recognition of Professional Qualifications (Amendment Etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Richard Harrington)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Recognition of Professional Qualifications (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018.

Before your elevation, Sir Gary, I used to say that it was an honour to serve under your chairmanship; now, I can say that it is an extreme honour.

The purpose of the regulations is to ensure that, in the event of the UK exiting the European Union without a withdrawal agreement, the system for the recognition of European economic area and Swiss professional qualifications in the UK, for the purpose of access to regulated professions, continues to function effectively, and that existing recognition decisions for EEA and Swiss professionals remain valid.

The effect is to create a system that retains the best aspects of the current system while providing regulators with more freedom to rigorously check the standard of qualifications prior to granting access to a profession. The regulations will provide certainty to individuals with recognised EU professional qualifications already working in the UK, and the businesses and public sector organisations employing them. For example, that includes approximately 32,000 secondary school teachers who have had their qualification recognised in the UK in the 10 years from 2008 to the end of 2017. Furthermore, this statutory instrument will ensure that the future supply of professionals into the UK in certain key sectors can be maintained. It makes changes to existing regulations using the powers conferred by section 8 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.

Before I turn to the detail, I shall provide hon. Members with some relevant background on the 2005 EU directive, which sets out a reciprocal framework of rules for the recognition of professional qualifications across borders. It applies to EU member states, EEA and European Free Trade Association states, and Switzerland by virtue of being annexed to the EEA agreement and Swiss free movement of persons agreement.

The directive provides several routes for recognition of qualifications, including automatic and general systems for the purposes of establishment, and a mechanism for those who want to work on a temporary or occasional basis. The directive covers a large number and wide range of regulated professions, including teachers, lawyers, engineers, underwriters, analytical chemists and a plethora of others. It does not include, I believe, Members of Parliament, as that is not a recognised professional status—perfectly understandably, I might add.

The directive is implemented into UK law by a number of pieces of legislation including the European Union (Recognition of Professional Qualifications) Regulations 2015, the earlier European Communities (Recognition of Professional Qualifications) Regulations 2007 in respect of Switzerland, and a number of pieces of sector-specific legislation for certain professions.

Following our withdrawal from the EU, the directive will no longer apply to the UK and the domestic legislation implementing it would not operate effectively because it would place obligations on UK regulators that they would be unable to fulfil outside the EU, for example, the obligation on regulators under the directive to use the internal market information system—IMI—to process applications and exchange information. As the IMI is a European Commission service, the UK will no longer have access to it after leaving the EU and will not be able to process applications, even unilaterally, using the service. The regulations are therefore necessary to ensure that the domestic legislation underpinning the recognition system operates properly.

Let me set out the effect of the draft regulations in more detail. First, they will protect recognition decisions made before EU exit and will allow applications for recognition made before exit to be concluded after exit under the pre-exit rules, as far as possible. Secondly, they will enable professionals who have started offering services on a temporary or occasional basis before EU exit to complete this service provision. Thirdly, they will enable qualifications to be recognised in the future. The changes that we are making will allow us to retain a version of the general system for recognition, under which UK regulators will be required to recognise EEA and Swiss qualifications of an equivalent standard to UK qualifications in scope, content and level. They will provide certainty to professionals who are already working and living here and will ensure continuity and stability for UK businesses and public services.

Some things will change under the draft regulations, however. First, we are amending the scope of the existing regulations so that the basis of recognition will be determined not by the nationality of the applicant but by where the qualification was obtained, since it will no longer be appropriate to give preferential treatment to EEA and Swiss nationals once the UK is no longer part of the European Union. Secondly, our regulators will not be obliged to offer compensation measures and partial access to professions in circumstances in which EEA and Swiss qualifications are not deemed equivalent to UK qualifications. Thirdly, we are removing the obligation for UK regulators to offer EEA and Swiss professionals a mechanism for providing services on a temporary or occasional basis.

Finally, farriers and certain healthcare professionals, such as physiotherapists, will no longer be in the scope of the amended 2015 regulations; they will be covered instead by related sector-specific legislation. The draft regulations and the amended 2015 regulations do not apply to nurses, midwives, doctors, dentists, pharmacists, architects and veterinary surgeons, who are entitled to automatic recognition on the basis that their qualification meets the EU’s minimum training conditions. The system for the recognition of qualifications in those professions is currently governed by legislation for which other Departments are responsible, and the relevant Ministers are laying their own no-deal statutory instruments to amend legislation accordingly. The European Qualifications (Health and Social Care Professions) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018 were considered in a Delegated Legislation Committee last week, for example.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I should declare that I am a qualified chartered accountant and my wife is a pharmacist, so we may both be within the regulated professions.

How reciprocal a process does the Minister envisage? He mentioned that in some professions the UK regulator will have to accept that an overseas qualification is equivalent to a UK qualification. Is it possible that a perverse situation could arise in which we think a Cypriot qualification is okay for practising in the UK, but Cyprus does not agree that a UK qualification is sufficient for practising in Cyprus? Will he therefore encourage regulators to look at whether it works both ways? If we do not get reciprocal access to other markets, perhaps we should not be quite so generous in recognising their qualifications.

[The Chair]

If the Minister would prefer to reserve his answers to hon. Members’ questions until after the Opposition spokesperson’s speech, he is free to do so, but it is entirely up to him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I have a few questions for the Minister on some of the practicalities. I welcome the statutory instrument and think it eminently sensible, but even those of us who have more concerns about free movement than the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire accept that we need skilled people to come here, and if they can meet whatever immigration rules we put in place we should enable that and not try to make it harder. We want it to be reciprocal, so that people who have trained here and have good qualifications have the chance to work abroad if that is their desire.

My first question is: if we end up with a clean Brexit at the end of March—I know the Minister is not totally keen on that as an idea—what happens to some of those qualifications and their recognition at that point? Do we expect regulators to have gone through their assessment and published which EEA qualifications meet the requirements in the UK by 29 March, or will there be a period during which we can assume that whatever has been happening until that point will continue, so that if someone wants to come here on 30 March but has not already made an application their qualification will still be recognised, at least for a run-on period? In previous Delegated Legislation Committees we have been told that we will effectively honour the two-year transition period. Is that the case here as well?

My second questions is: what happens when we have different bodies doing the regulatory function in different parts of the UK? I mentioned that I am a chartered accountant. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales does England and Wales and there is a Scottish institute that does Scotland. Might we get a perverse position in which we would recognise a Maltese accounting qualification in Scotland and not in England and Wales? Could someone go and work in Edinburgh but not come to work in London? That does not seem to be a sensible situation. Will there be a requirement for the regulators to work together and have a joint approach?

My third question is, are there separate provisions for Irish qualifications? Irish nationals will still have much more generous rights to come and work in the UK, without a visa or permission, so will we have a more blanket recognition of Irish qualifications, which are generally quite similar to ours, or will they be treated in the same way as any other EEA qualification?

Finally, are we still allowed to impose language requirements for certain sensitive professions? I know we are not dealing with medical ones here. Regulation 41 seems to suggest that, so can the Minister confirm that if someone is adequately qualified but does not have adequate English we perhaps do not have to let them come here and start working straightaway?