My Lords, I am pleased to follow my noble friend Lord Monks. I support the fundamental aim of Amendment 142 that Parliament should be empowered to determine the mandate for the Government to follow in the talks about the UK’s future relations with the EU.
Amendment 144 seeks to place a requirement on HMG to secure mutual recognition of professional qualifications. The Government have agreed to seek to protect the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK nationals in the EU under the withdrawal agreement. This includes the continued recognition of professional qualifications. However, the withdrawal agreement is a draft agreement and still needs to be agreed with the EU 27 and then negotiated with the UK. The final withdrawal deal will make reference to the framework for our future relationship with the EU, which is why it is important that mutual recognition of professional qualifications, which I will refer to as MRPQ, is included. The amendment is about bringing more certainty to British and EU citizens, to businesses and to services about how they can operate in future.
I should like to outline why MRPQ is important to a range of professions and what the consequences would be for those professions if we did not have an agreement in place. The professional business sector generates a huge amount of wealth and jobs for both the UK and the EU, and the current system of mutual recognition of professional qualifications within the sector allows for a great deal of flexibility and freedom. For example, an architect who studied and qualified in France can work on a project in Rome and then establish his own practice in Birmingham. Lawyers who qualified in the UK can move between the UK and Belgium, providing advice to clients in Brussels on both English corporate and finance law and EU competition law, and there is no need for these individuals to prove that their qualifications meet local standards. UK auditors can take part in audits in other member states, although they cannot sign off an audit report in that state unless they have taken an additional aptitude test.
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As I have highlighted, MRPQ is closely linked to both the ability to provide the services in the first place and the ability of providers to relocate without having to meet onerous immigration requirements. It is also needed for UK businesses to remain competitive and to attract the best staff for their operations. It is also worth noting that mutual recognition applies to UK schools of professional qualifications, which are highly respected internationally and which recruit a significant number of students from the EU.
In healthcare, we know that the NHS relies heavily on EU nationals to help fill the gaps in the workforce, and MRPQ helps to enable this. Figures show that
5.6% of NHS staff in England are nationals of other EU countries—just under 62,000 staff. Seven per cent of nurses, 21,237, and 10% of doctors, nearly 11,000, in England are EU nationals, due to the freedom of movement on qualifications.
What would be the consequences if we did not have any appropriate agreements for MRPQ? If none were in place, we would face having to renegotiate agreements country by country for some professions. With no agreement, recognition could be governed by different local regulations, forcing some professionals in certain jurisdictions to requalify from scratch or to leave the profession altogether. The process of requalification of professionals would become more onerous, expensive and, in some cases, quite unfeasible. Without an agreement, we would risk losing and being unable to attract talented workers from the EU, businesses may become less competitive and risk losing money and our UK schools of professional qualifications would certainly be negatively impacted.
I should like quickly to highlight some consequences for some specific professional groups. First, we know that 25% of architects working in the UK are from the EU. The Royal Institute of British Architects has outlined how that the risk of losing access to talents and skills from the EU, combined with the risk of losing access to the EU single market in a no-deal scenario, could reduce exports by £73 million a year— 15% of our total exports.
Without an MRPQ agreement, UK lawyers may need to retrain from scratch if they want to gain a home state legal qualification in some jurisdictions. This would mean that there would be 31 different routes for EU, EEA and Swiss jurisdictions. Some jurisdictions have significant barriers to requalification. For example, in Greece, a solicitor from England and Wales would have to take a Greek language test and be a Greek national to requalify. Similarly in France and Spain, only EEA nationals may requalify as Spanish or French lawyers respectively. In many jurisdictions, it is unclear whether that those who have trained as lawyers via a graduate diploma in law would be classed as having a law degree. This could affect an individual’s route to requalification. The same problems apply to auditors in many respects, and the same difficulties can apply to accountants.
I come back to healthcare professionals. Without MRPQ, there is a risk of there being additional barriers for EU staff to work in the NHS. We are already encountering some difficulties without such changes in the NHS and we must be concerned about our ability to keep the service working properly if we cannot get the appropriately qualified staff. No move on this front could discourage recruitment, which could put patient safety and services at risk.
Overall, I am sure we all agree that the potential consequences of no agreement on MRPQ are worrying not only for the professional groups I have mentioned but for the UK economy generally. I have outlined the extent to which UK and EU businesses and services currently rely on MRPQ. I have also highlighted some of the potentially serious consequences if we do not have an agreement. I am conscious that the Government are fully aware of the need for this to be agreed—the
Prime Minister made reference to it in her Commons Statement on 5 March, which was good news. Given that, I can see no reason why the Minister should not accept this amendment today. It would not only be welcomed by the professional groups concerned, which strongly support it, but would be good for the country. I beg to move.