Mr.
Paice: I shall not dispute the hon. Lady’s
assertions about war and cavalry in those particular countries, but she
is missing the point. If there are expert farriers in Hungary or
Poland—the two countries to which she has just
referred—that is fine and they should be able to come here and
operate. We are concerned about the fact that there is no mechanism in
the regulations whereby people can check whether individuals are
experts or simply professing to
be.
Glenda
Jackson: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but I had
not missed the point—he intervened just as I was coming to it. I
take on board the points about most horse owners valuing and caring for
their animals—not
simply as a piece of capital property, but as a living, breathing, and
sentient being—and that they have a genuine concern for their
animals and their welfare. It should be entirely possible for such an
individual to inquire about the qualifications of an incoming farrier.
The requirements set out in the regulations, which the hon. Gentleman
disclaims, could make that possible.
Apart from
the potential damage to horses and the health and safety issues that
have been mentioned, the real concern is economic. The hon. Gentleman
is clearly concerned about competition from eastern Europe and the
wider EU. He does not believe that the requirements for people to prove
their qualifications before pursuing their profession are sufficiently
strong.
I consider
what would happen if, like the hon. Member for North Wiltshire
(Mr. Gray), I had horses and somebody came wandering up my
drive and said, “I hear you have six horses. I do not know who
you are contracted with, but I can give you a contract that I think is
highly competitive”. The responsibility would clearly be on
me—caveat emptor, as the hon. Gentleman said, to his
credit—to ask, “Well, yes, it’s a very nice deal,
but what are your
qualifications?”
Mr.
Gray: The hon. Lady is quite right, but there is another
slight wrinkle in the matter. Under the regulations, people coming from
overseas will be registered by the Farriers Registration Council, so
this strange person with a foreign accent—let us not say
Polish—may be coming up my drive and saying, “I’ve
got a piece of paper here from the”— [Interruption.]
I am not sure why hon. Members find that funny. The fact that they
will have a foreign accent is important, because it will be a foreign
person who comes up the drive and says, “I have here a piece of
paper from the Farriers Registration Council, which demonstrates that I
am registered with it. Please could I do your horses?” I
certainly would not accept that, and I would not refer them to do any
work. Some people might, particularly if they looking for the cheapest
possible shoeing of their horses. That is a
complication.
Glenda
Jackson: With all due respect to the hon. Gentleman, if
people are looking for someone who will give them the cheapest deal for
shoeing their horses, his previous argument that people are mainly
concerned with the health and well-being of their horses, which I
endorsed, falls away. On foreign accents, the reason why Labour Members
giggled, I think entirely justifiably, is that I have heard people who
have come from eastern Europe and spoken far better English than I do,
without a trace of a foreign accent. I can think of people from regions
of the United Kingdom whose regional accents would be defined by some
as foreign accents. However, I do not want to go down that
byway.
Barry
Gardiner: Does my hon. Friend not agree that there is an
anomaly in the Opposition’s argument about the 400 farriers in
this country who exercise grandfather rights without qualification? If
one accepts that someone can be a high-quality farrier without a piece
of paper, one must also accept that someone can be a high-quality
farrier even if they come from eastern Europe without a piece of
paper.
Mr.
Paice: Not after two years.
Barry
Gardiner: We should not erect a barrier to those farriers
being able to practice in this country, as the Opposition’s
suggestions
would.
Glenda
Jackson: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for managing to
sum up neatly the final matter that I wished to touch on, which was
grandfather rights. Expertise comes from experience, and I take the
point that the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire made when he
said, from a sedentary position, “Not after two years.”
However, that will presumably be the required period before an
individual can set themselves up for potential employers or
customers. I
wish to place on record that, wonderful though horsemanship and
farriering in this country are, we are not the only country in the
world that is capable of exercising those skills and whose people are
committed to caring for our animal
kingdom. 9.44
am
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs (Jonathan Shaw): It is a pleasure to serve under
your chairmanship, Mr. Illsley. I shall begin by setting out
for the record some of the formal detail of the regulations, which will
no doubt captivate all members of the Committee. I am sure that you
will be paying particular attention to it, Mr.
Illsley. In
complying with the United Kingdom’s obligations to transpose EU
directives into domestic legislation, the regulations amend the
Farriers (Registration) Act 1975 to implement in part directive
2005/36/EC, on the recognition of professional qualifications. They
also cross-refer to the European Communities (Recognition of
Professional Qualifications) Regulations 2007, which came into force in
October 2007 and implement the main provisions of the directive. The
amendments made to the 1975 Act provide for continued entitlement to
registration in the relevant part of the register to be kept by the
Farriers Registration Council. That entitlement is, first, for persons
who, pursuant to chapter 1 or 2 of the European Communities
(Recognition of Professional Qualifications) Regulations 2007, apply
for recognition as a farrier and who satisfy any procedural
requirements of those regulations for the purposes of such recognition.
That is not new, but a carry-over from directive 99/42, which has been
in force since 2002 and applies to EU farriers wanting to pursue
farriery in the UK on a permanent basis. The entitlement is, secondly,
for persons who have the benefit of regulation 8 of the European
Communities (Recognition of Professional Qualifications) Regulations
2007, in connection with the provision by the persons of the services
as a farrier on a temporary and occasional basis. That is new for
farriers and for some other professions in the United
Kingdom. I
understand the concerns of hon. Members, that farriers coming from
other European countries to provide temporary services may not be as
highly qualified as farriers who have undergone a high standard of
training in the UK. However, there are around 390 UK nationals on the
farriers register—albeit in a separate part—who qualify
for registration on the basis of professional experience alone. The
minimum level of entry when the 1975 Act was introduced was two
years’ regular engagement in the shoeing of horses. We are not
aware of any concerns at that time or since that those registrants
present a risk to horse
welfare.
Mr.
Gray: The Minister talks about no one being concerned. In
1975, the profession was entirely unregulated, unstructured and
unlisted. Any listing or regulation was better than what had gone
before. It is true that two years was seen as fine. I have seen the
Minister’s brief; the mean age of the people he talks about
regarding grandfather rights is 60 or 61. They were all there in 1975,
and have done 30 or 40 years’ farriery in this country. I would
rely on them to shoe my
horses.
Jonathan
Shaw: I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman kept his horses
in Ireland, he would allow people from the Republic of Ireland to shoe
them. He will be aware that there is no registration scheme there, nor
in many countries across the EU. However, I will deal with some of the
details that hon. Members have
raised. Although
the provision was rightly intended to provide grandfather rights to UK
farriers when the 1975 Act was introduced, the relevant parts of the
register were open until 2000, and were reopened from March 2007 until
March 2008 when the Act was extended to the highlands and islands of
Scotland. So, the principle of recognising professional experience as a
substitute for formal qualifications was established well before the
introduction of the current
directive. It
is important to understand what the DEFRA regulations do. They provide
an important safeguard, which is the requirement for temporary farriers
to register with the Farriers Registration Council, the regulator of
farriers in the UK. The regulations also provide that the registration
be in a separate part of the register. That will then enable horse
owners and employers to distinguish between those who have gone through
as many checks as the farriers registered in other parts of the
register and those who have not.
Hon. Members
will ask where employers and horse owners will be able to find that
information, which was a reasonable point made during the exchange
between the hon. Member for North Wiltshire and my hon. Friend the
Member for Hampstead and Highgate. Copies of the register are available
from the Farriers Registration Council and include particulars about
the person’s qualifications for registration.
Registration
for temporary farriers also means that the council can remove someone
from the register and effectively stop them practising. A farrier can
be removed from the register on the following grounds: misconduct;
offences involving cruelty to animals; circumventing the rules on
establishment; providing false information that might have led the
council to believe that the person was entitled to register; and in
cases where service provision is deemed no longer to be temporary and
occasional but has in the council’s view become permanent. That
is reviewed annually on a case-by-case basis. There is no obligation on
horse owners or employers to engage a farrier from another member
state. Given that the UK is obliged to implement EU directives, we have
tried to provide as many safeguards as possible within the constraints
created by the directive.
I acknowledge
the need for officials to work with the Farriers Registration Council
and others in the horse industry to get the key messages across to
horse owners and employers of farriers about the different routes of
entry to the register and what registration in different parts of the
register means in relation to a registrant’s qualifications so
that they can make informed decisions about who they engage to shoe
their horses.
Mr.
Gray: That seems to move off from the question about how
these things come about. Does the Minster accept that had officials
registered farriery as having implications for human health and safety
and/or animal welfare, it would have been possible to achieve a
derogation from the
directive?
Jonathan
Shaw: I will answer some of the points raised by the hon.
Gentleman shortly. The new directive is still in its early days and the
new arrangements that it introduces in relation to the temporary
provision of services need time to bed down. Hon. Members opposite have
indicated a concern that might or might not occur, so we are putting in
place different categories within the register. It is important that we
communicate that to the many horse owners and employers up and down the
country, which we will do. I want to assure hon. Members that the
Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills has made a
commitment to carry out a review of the implementation of the directive
in October 2009, and obviously we will keep a close eye on how it is
implemented in relation to
farriers.
Mr.
Williams: At the time the directive was being signed off,
DEFRA was considering introducing new legislation for veterinary
surgeons, and there was a suggestion that farriers might have been
included in that. What was the thinking in DEFRA behind signing off
this directive when it was also considering, had its finances been in a
better situation, new legislation on veterinary
surgeons?
Jonathan
Shaw: I will come to that point during the proceedings but
will first answer some of the points that hon. Members have
raised.
The hon.
Member for South-East Cambridgeshire referred to the removal of
farriers from the list of professions that have implications for public
health and safety with regard to the regulations. He put the charge
that it was DEFRA’s fault, and that was echoed by his hon.
Friend the Member for North Wiltshire. The draft DIUS regulations
listed professions with implications for public health and safety and
animal welfare. That Department had responsibility, but it was the
Commission that stated the inclusion of professions relating to animal
welfare, and that reference was contrary to the directive. Therefore,
the reference to animal welfare and farriery was removed from the list,
so we did have that discussion. It was not the case that DEFRA took a
pen and struck farriers off the
list.
Mr.
Paice: It is a procedural point, but it is obviously quite
important. Let me say to the hon. Gentleman that my statements, echoed
by my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire, contain information
from the Farriers Registration Council. I will not read out its entire
briefing, but in both a report sent to the Committee and a letter from
the council secretary to my noble Friend Baroness Byford, made it clear
that it is the British Government who made the change. In one case, it
said that it
“was taken out
on Defra’s instruction when the final document was
produced.” In
both cases, it says that the FRC made representations, and that the
Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills agreed to insert
farriery into the list. There is
a slight conflict—one says DEFRA in the instruction and the other
says DIUS. However, it was the Government who removed it from the
list. Jonathan
Shaw: The hon. Gentleman heard what I had to say about how
the issue of animal welfare in relation to farriers was removed, and
that is on the record. I am happy to answer any correspondence that he
wants to send to me asking for more detail on that
process. The
hon. Gentleman also said that veterinary nurses should be included in
the list of professions that have implications for public health and
safety. Like veterinary surgeons, veterinary nurses also deal with
animals with diseases that can be transmitted to humans, such as
ringworm, skin infections and so on. Incidents of MRSA are also on the
increase in veterinary services. Therefore, there is quite a
distinction between the two professions.
The hon.
Gentleman also said that farriers have to have a high degree of
veterinary skills. We understand that farriers have high levels of
skill in animal welfare, but he will recognise that only the Veterinary
Surgeons Act 1966 can ensure that there is diagnosis and treatment for
animals that are injured. He also referred to my noble Friend Lord
Rooker’s remarks about someone who has been in business as a
farmer and is a competent authority on such matters. The legal
establishment is the test plus lawful pursuit of farriering. The
directive requires all member states to designate a competent
authority—a Government or regulatory body—to ensure that
the regulations are adhered to. Each member state must nominate a
competent authority under the directive.
The hon.
Gentleman also said that the regulations were made in October 2007. The
DIUS regulations came into force in October 2007 and contained the
majority of contested provisions. The DEFRA farriers regulations came
into force in March 2008.
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