My Lords, I have been a Member of a Parliament—either the Scottish Parliament or this Parliament—for nearly 18 years now. I cannot remember a government proposal for legislation that is so catch-all and which would have powers to amend primary legislation with whatever it wants, by whoever it wants, whenever it sees fit. For the Government not to know who the Bill will apply to while it goes through Parliament is unacceptable. Therefore, although I support all the amendments in the group, I also support the call for the Government to take their foot off the accelerator and pause, so that not just Parliament but the Government themselves can properly scrutinise who will be impacted by the Bill.
In many respects we have an indicative Bill, not an indicative list of bodies. We should not have indicative Bills presented to us. If the Government want to do this properly, there are well-established measures for presenting draft Bills. A draft Bill would probably have fleshed out all these aspects, and allowed those groups to indicate whether or not they will be part of the framework, whether they want to be part of it, or whether they desperately do not want to be. At least we would have known. When I say “we”, I want to be all-inclusive, and I include the Minister—he would have known as well.
It is not just a question of whether the Government know which regulators and regulated professions will be in the framework. The impact assessment also includes a number of those that will not be in the framework, which is equally important. Do the Government also know this list? Otherwise, there might be some horrible kind of purgatory, where some of these bodies do not know whether they are on the way to legislation, and so are in a holding pattern, or whether they will not be part of it.
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The impact assessment says there are 90 regulators and over 140 professions not likely to be included. Does that mean that when the list in the letter to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, goes up, that list goes down? Or do the Government not actually know how many regulators or regulated professions there are in the first place? If that is the case, I wish them luck in defining demand in those professions that they do not know exist. The impact assessment is therefore no longer valid. The Government need to withdraw version 1 and give us another version. This is not just something to be amused about—were it not for the talk about a new royal yacht, this might be the funniest thing I have heard today. Rather, it is the fact that this could cost up to £42 million, which is a burden on the bodies that will come into this framework.
The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, is absolutely right that bureaucracy costs. At a time when we are asking all our regulatory bodies and professions to work as efficiently and effectively as possible, this is an extra layer of bureaucracy and burden upon them. Many who may be listening to this debate could be part of that. Both noble Baronesses are absolutely right. It was breath-taking to read—I think they were to a degree trying to reassure us—that the Government are continuing to test, with interested parties and the devolved Administrations, which bodies should be included.
I think I have got to the bottom of why the Government are in a bit of a pickle. When I looked at the list, I was slightly surprised to find that pig farmers were exclusively singled out. Having represented a number of pig farmers in my former constituency, I was not sure why the Government felt that they, uniquely among all livestock farmers, should be part of the framework under this legislation on professional qualifications. This was raised previously by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and the letter may confirm her doubts about how robust the Government’s position is. I looked this up and—thinking, “Surely this cannot be the case” —phoned a friend who is a pig farmer. I think I have got to the bottom of it: this is a cut and paste job. The noble Baroness is right; it is a cut and paste job from the European Union, because this is the database that was used by the European Union for professional qualifications.
I wondered why pig farmers, uniquely across all of the United Kingdom, would be regulated by Defra, which, for this purpose, is the English department. So it was a surprise to find that my Scottish pig farmer friend had his non-existent professional qualifications regulated by the English department. I looked into the European database and, lo and behold, the contact for the UK, as a member state, was Defra. The regulations that are linked to it are, of course, Scottish, and there are separate ones for Northern Ireland. So I ask the Minister: will the third iteration be robust before we get to Report? I do not think so, because there are other professions where the UK Government as a ministry, or body, are put down as the regulator, but they are not—that is just the contact for the European Union; the regulations and standards are devolved.
My final point is that this list gives myself and my noble friends even greater concern about the interaction with the UK Internal Market Act. We have sought
assurance that the carve-outs in that Act relating to the legal and teaching professions would be respected. It looks as though under this list they will not be. As we will be discussing later, when you add that to the Government’s position on the Australian trade deal, which includes automatic recognition of, for example, all Australian lawyers to practise anywhere in the United Kingdom, this is a direct override of the UK Internal Market Act. So, while the Government have more work to do, this should not be on the hoof, or while the Bill is going through Parliament. So I agree with the noble Baroness that this now needs to be paused.