The Professional Qualifications Bill [HL] would make provisions
relating to professional qualifications and their recognition in
the UK. It is scheduled to have its second reading in the House
of Lords on 25 May 2021.
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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.
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