Professional Qualifications Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-06-14
Topic: Health
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am saying that Clause 4 should not stand part of the Bill. We have now discussed Clause 4 extensively in the last three debates. I do not intend to go over the ground because that would be unnecessary. Coming to the crunch, the Minister has said that Clause 4 would be used by national authorities to encourage regulators to make mutual recognition agreements, but that they will be under no obligation to do so. Today, the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said that he was not quite sure what "encourage" means. In a sense, one Government’s encouragement may become another’s diktat, particularly when Clause 3 is part of their armoury Something else the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, on the first day in Committee, was about the interrelationship between the Bill and what is happening with health regulators. At the moment, there is an extensive consultation on the use of Section 60 orders in relation to a whole host of health regulators. What is interesting is that in that consultation no reference is made by the Government to them upholding the independence of those regulators—something the GMC noted, I think, in its response. Put that alongside the Government’s intention to bring an NHS Bill to Parliament very shortly—it was mentioned in the Queen’s Speech, but has not yet been published, I suspect because extra clauses are being added day after day. Part of that intention is to add clauses on regulations that will give the Government the power to abolish a regulator through an order-making power and set up new regulators through an order-making power. Regrettably, that came out of a Law Commission recommendation quite some years ago. When you put this together, you have to worry about the future independence of the health regulators. It is pretty clear that, with the legislative changes, they would potentially come under more direct control from the Department of Health. One has to say, many of those regulators enjoy considerable oversight by the department already—hence, a little scepticism about the Minister saying that it is entirely up to the regulators what they do My principal reason for raising Clause 4 was to refer to the Delegated Powers Committee, which refers to this being a Henry VIII clause. It refers to the memorandum and accepts that it says that it is a narrow power and cannot be used to change regulators’ abilities to recognise overseas qualifications, but, as the committee says, the memorandum fails to explain this or say what effect regulations under Clause 4 should have. I wanted to raise this because the report of the Delegated Powers Committee is critical throughout of the Minister’s department, the Explanatory Memorandum it has produced and its failure to provide sufficient explanation. I put it to the Minister that when I was a Minister, we worried about the Delegated Powers Committee and, frankly, always accepted its recommendations. We seem to be developing a new convention, where Minister think this is just any old committee and can be ignored. It cannot be; it has to be taken seriously. I urge the Minister to recognise that when the Delegated Powers Committee says that there is not enough explanation, something needs to be done about it. When it says that Clause 3 will not do, it is not something you can simply ignore; you have to come back with some proposals to deal with it. That is how legislation works in your Lordships’ House. I do not really expect the Minister now to go through what Clause 4 says, because he has done it; I just wanted to draw attention to the Delegated Powers Committee’s report.