Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]: Briefing for Lords Stages

The Professional Qualifications Bill was announced in the Queen’s Speech on 11 May 2021. The bill would make provisions relating to professional qualifications and their recognition in the UK. It follows a government consultation on professional qualifications that ran between August and October 2020.

The bill would create a number of regulation-making powers designed to implement a new framework for the recognition of overseas professional qualifications in the UK. This would replace existing EU-derived law in this area, including an interim system on recognition that has been in place since the end of the transition period. Alongside these powers, the bill would: 

• make provision for the implementation of international agreements on the recognition of professional qualifications;
• create powers to authorise regulators in the UK to enter into regulator recognition agreements with regulators overseas;
• make provision related to the sharing of information between regulators; and
• amend the Architects Act 1997.

Many of the bill’s changes to the law would be achieved through regulation-making powers. The Government has argued this is necessary because the changes need to be integrated into an existing legislative scheme for a given profession and a single approach for all professions would not be practicable. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has set out the Government’s assessment of the delegated powers in its delegated powers memorandum to the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. At the time of publication, the committee had not yet reported on the bill.