I thank the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for their contributions to this SI debate. We can deal with the points about the devolved Governments right now. Of course, the UK has a strong tradition of different professions and different countries doing different things. It is only since 1707 that we have all been working with one Parliament, and we had lawyers long before then. But on balance, we want to try to work as one country, and the whole point of doing these FTAs is that we form up to the rest of the world as one United Kingdom.
But there is a lot of flexibility within the devolved Governments. We have consulted with the Governments, and the devolved Administrations have confirmed that they can work with this SI—and they will then implement it in their own territories. It is perfectly within the rights of the Welsh to make a Welsh language requirement, in the same way as it might be in the Western Isles in Scotland to do it in Gaelic. That would be for those Governments to decide.
On the specific question raised by the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, on immigration, these three countries, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, are pretty—well, we should not use the phrase “small countries”, but they are contained in terms of their interaction with the UK. Where is Liechtenstein? We would not expect there to be any eventual impact on immigration with reference to those three countries.
On the FTAs, as I said once before, we want to form up to the rest of the world as one UK. In fact, in my own portfolio, dealing with the utilisation of a lot of the FTAs, such as the one we have just done with Australia, we are finding that the key thing in their implementation is to make sure that we benefit the whole United Kingdom.
There has been extensive discussion with the regulators. As required by Section 15 of the PQ Act, we consulted affected regulators. When using the regulations using Section 3, we formally consulted the regulators, in January 2023. We are not required to publish a report online on that consultation. I hear what the noble Lord says about the SLSC, but there is very much a commitment from this Government to broaden and deepen trade policy. Probably the main benefit that we get from Brexit is going to be international trade, so we have an obligation to broaden and deepen trade policy.
With that, we can say that we now have these arrangements in place to proceed. As a reminder, this instrument places a legal duty on the UK regulators to recognise comparable qualifications in Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, and it gives regulators the power to recognise those qualifications, when they do not currently have the power in the relevant sector legislation.
This instrument has UK-wide application, and it will ensure that the UK is fully compliant with our obligations in the agreement. It will provide consistency across the statute book and provide clarity for Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, as well as for our own professionals.