Professional Qualifications Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-06-09
Topic: Education
Natalie Bennett (Green Party, Left): My Lords, I shall speak chiefly to Amendments 20 and 21 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, to which I have attached my name. These amendments are also supported by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, which gives them both cross-party and non-party backing. I have mentioned that all noble Lords received a letter yesterday from the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, and the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, with her Department for Education hat on, about the Bill and the skills strategy. Its second paragraph says: "Let me reassure you the Bill is not a short cut to addressing skills development for the UK." We can see that the Government have really understood some of the deep concerns that have been expressed by your Lordships’ House about this Bill The letter makes reference to the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. I am not going to start its Second Reading now, although we have to look at whether ladening people with more debt is the answer to our skills shortage Another sentence in the second last substantive paragraph of this letter says: "To meet demand across certain regulated professions, we need appropriately qualified professionals from both domestic and overseas sources." In relation to Amendments 20 and 21 and my earlier Amendment 25, do the Government accept that, particularly for certain key—basic, you might say—professions central to our health and well-being, such as nurses and doctors as a general category, we should be training at least enough medical professionals to meet our needs? That sentence would suggest that that is not something that the Government accept I come briefly to a couple of details about these amendments, particularly Amendment 21, which is quite valuable and perhaps adds more than my Amendment 51. They highlight important issues, one of which is in subsection (d), which asks for a report on the number of the professionals in the group being considered who are female and male. It is important that we highlight gender disparities. There has been a lot of discussion about medical professions, but I have interest in both the farming and the building and engineering areas, where we have huge skills shortages and there are very serious gender disparities in recruitment As I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, talking about the complexities of modern medical approaches, I was thinking of some of the engineers I have been speaking to recently about the complexity of building ventilation, something that Covid-19 has very much brought into focus and which we clearly need to be thinking a great deal more about. There is a high level of complexity and a high level of skill is required; you have to understand each individual room and each individual climatic environment. It is a very complex area and requires very high levels of skills and training. I think also that when we are thinking about agriculture—we will be talking about this in the Environment Bill and in the agriculture Bill—we are talking about agri-ecological approaches and agriforestry approaches, not just one field of monoculture that you whack the plough over and you whack the sprayer over, but very complex management of ecosystems that requires a very high degree of skills that we simply do not have now. It requires training and may require people being brought in I also want to highlight, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, did, retention rates. Of course, nursing is the obvious area, but there is also a big issue in medicine that needs to much more attention. This is a really important amendment. The support for it demonstrates that, as does the Government reaction, but I think we need a much clearer picture of what the Government’s overall approach is. Are they determined to meet the challenge of training enough people for our needs?