My Lords, the Minister assured the House earlier this afternoon that the autonomy of the regulators would be respected. I am sure we all take the Minister’s assurance at face value and fully understand what he is getting at, but one of the many problems that lurks within the Bill and the wide regulation-making power it creates is the risk of causing collateral damage by careless or inadvertent wording or insufficient research before the power is exercised. As I said at Second Reading, the centralised systems that the Bill seeks to create will work only if the diversity that exists across the United Kingdom is fully respected. That is especially true where the devolved Administrations are concerned.
My own experience is confined to the systems for regulation of the legal profession in Scotland, but it is a guide to how the regulatory systems among the professions may differ from each other. In my cases, they involve not just one but two regulators working together, and there are different systems for the two branches of the legal profession in Scotland. For the Law Society of Scotland, which regulates solicitors, it is the society itself, working together with the Lord President of the Court of Session. For the Faculty of Advocates, it is the Court of Session itself, whose functions are then delegated to the Lord President of the faculty. The message that these two examples conveys is that it cannot be assumed that the regulatory systems that currently exist are alike in all cases, or even in most, so great care is needed to ensure that what is being done fits the requirements and practices of the profession that is being regulated.
This brings me to Amendments 13, 24, 35 and 40, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, to which I have added my name. The point that each of these amendments is making is that prior consultation with the devolved Administrations and the regulators is essential before the regulation-making powers in Clauses 1(4), 3(3) and 5(2) are exercised. I shall say a little more about each of these subsections.
Clause 1(4), which is about providing for individuals with overseas experience and qualifications to be treated as having UK qualifications, really has to be read with Clause 1(5), which sets out a list of the many provisions that may be made in the exercise of the Clause 1 power. They are very wide-ranging. Paragraphs (f) and (g) in the list are of particular concern, as they are so wide in their scope. The words “guidance” in (f) and “other duties” in (g), which are not otherwise qualified, leave a huge amount to the discretion of the national authority.
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Clause 3(3) is designed to ensure that the national authority does not require anything which would contravene data protection legislation to be done when implementing any international recognition agreement. That really must be read with Clause 3(1), which is the principal regulation-making power in this clause. Perhaps it is to that provision, not Clause 3(3), that this amendment should be directed, but the regulation-making power is very wide here too. The only controls that appear are that which Clause 3(3) itself sets out and the content of the international recognition agreement, which is unlikely to be tailor-made to the systems for regulating the professions to which the exercise of this power is directed. Clause 5(2), which gives power to modify legislation in consequence of the revocation of the EU system, is also very widely expressed.
I support the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, about these amendments. Whether the Lord President of the Court of Session, who is mentioned in each of them, really needs to be consulted in every case is perhaps open to question. This could be confined to cases where the appropriate national authority is the Scottish Parliament and those where the regulations proposed relate to the legal profession in Scotland—although that is a point of detail which should not detract from the key points that the noble Baroness has made.
I add my support to Amendment 40, which relates to making arrangements for the publication by the assistance centre, under Clause 7, of advice and information relating to the entry requirements for regulated professions and overseas professions. Clause 7 gives rise to concern for various reasons that noble Lords have already mentioned, but I am concerned particularly with “must” in the first line of the clause. This is a duty to be placed on the Secretary of State to be exercised right across the board in every case, not just to fill in gaps that the professions themselves may have created in the information they provide. As it happens, the two professions for whose regulations I was responsible went to great lengths to provide that information in their own way and adapted to their own ways of working when they were working with the EU system that is now being revoked. I am sure that they will be as anxious to do the same as speedily as they can under the new system. It is hard to see how what they will produce could be improved upon by what this clause provides for, which begs the question of whether Clause 7 is really necessary. The giving of such advice and information by the assistance centre under a duty that is imposed by the word “must” could cause confusion too, unless all that the assistance centre does is simply to direct the interested party to the regulating system for the particular profession, where that advice and information is to be found. Here, too, consultation is the key to avoiding consultation. I hope the Minister will recognise the importance of that point.
I did not add my name to the other amendments in this very interesting group, but I will say a word in support of Amendment 41 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and Amendment 49 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. The insistence
on “consent” by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, in his Amendment 41 is very well taken. I have tried on many occasions in this House, on a variety of Bills, to insist that the word “consent” is a necessary step where the devolved Administrations are concerned. I see no harm whatever in pointing out that requirement again in the context of this Bill, for the reasons the noble Lord mentioned.
As for Amendment 49 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, it is very interesting that five members of the Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee are participating in this debate: the noble Lords, Lord Foulkes and Lord Bruce of Bennachie—who made a very important contribution to our discussion—the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and myself. The common frameworks system is not yet all that well understood in government, but the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, described it very well when he referred to it as a mechanism for co-operation and consent. It is now becoming a well-established system for involving all four parts of the United Kingdom to achieve a system—without going through the statutory routes which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, so rightly criticised—through discussion and co-operation, and ultimately with consent, which will be respected. Whether the system will be used widely across the professions with which the Bill is concerned is a matter for speculation, but it is very important that, should that system be recognised, the common frameworks should be respected and protected, as is provided for in the internal market Act as a result of amendments made in this House. There is great force in those additional amendments, and I offer my support for them and for the amendments which the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, has tabled.