Mr Speaker, Sir, first of all, I want to thank the Members who have spoken in support of this Bill. As I pointed out in my speech, this Bill is related to the other two Bills, the Professional Engineers Bill as well as the Land Surveyors Bill. I am not surprised that many of the comments made in fact straddle all these Bills. Dr Tan Cheng Bock raised the question of the advantages of corporate practice and the disadvantages of the present sole proprietorship or partnership requirement. Sir, section 17 of the present Architects Act prohibits a person who is not an architect from offering architectural services. If a team of architects and engineers forms a partnership and carries on business as a firm, that firm will contravene section 17 because the engineers in such a firm will be purporting to offer architectural services when they are in fact not registered as architects. Similarly, architects in an engineering partnership cannot offer engineering services. So when a partnership, whether it is a partnership of architects or engineers, offers to do something, all the members in the partnership are in fact offering to do the same. So obviously, engineers cannot offer to do what the architects offer and vice-versa. A company incorporated under the Companies Act is a separate legal entity from its shareholders. But section 8 of the Architects Act only allows natural persons who possess the prescribed qualifications to be registered to offer the services of architecture. So even if all the shareholders are architects, the company, as a distinct separate legal entity, cannot offer, because the company cannot be registered as an architect. The company is therefore prohibited from offering architectural services under the present Architects Act, and the same comments apply to the Professional Engineers Act. So these sections in the present Acts, in fact, restrict both architects and engineers from practising together because every partnership must be made up of people of the same profession. But once they form themselves into a company, as will be allowed under the provisions of the Bill, the company is a separate legal entity and distinct from its shareholders. The company continues whoever leaves or joins, and it is not affected by the death, bankruptcy or retirement of any of the shareholders or directors or employees of the company. As I mentioned in my Second Reading speech, at present, when you want to bring in a new partner, all the partners have to agree, and legally the partnership has to cease and a new partnership has to be formed. And all the people for whom the partnership is doing work will have to be informed that the old partnership has ceased and a new one will take over the responsibilities and liabilities and so on. Many clients are very upset because they do not know whether the responsibilities and liabilities that they have entered into with the old partnership will be carried over into the new partnership. But a company can carry on regardless of who owns it, or who are the directors, or who are its employees. It is a separate and distinct entity. Of course, a company has to comply with the formalities and the requirements laid down in the Companies Act and this relates to all aspects of the company's formation and operation. But this is not an onerous requirement, because there are many compensating advantages. For one thing, it is easier to raise finance for a company than for a partnership as the security can be more readily created by the assets of the company. The tax position also is very much simpler for a company and overall taxation is likely to be lower since the company tax is lower than the highest personal income tax. All salaries, including directors' fees, are deductible before the calculation of profit for corpo- rate tax purposes. Moreover, an interest in a company may be given more readily than in a partnership. In other words, you can bring in new shareholders much more easily than you can bring in a partner into a partnership, and you can bring in new people either by making them directors, employing them, or making them shareholders, and you can bring in non-architects. Another important advantage is that it is far more easy to remove an unsatisfactory director than it is to remove a partner. So for these reasons, architects have for some time been very keen that they should be allowed to form themselves into limited liability companies. But, of course, not all architects may choose to follow this route. Architects can choose the most suitable form of practice for their particular circumstances, according to their size, their aspirations and the type of clients they have. And there will be many architects who may still prefer to continue to work as partnerships. So they can, under the Act. It gives them various options. Dr Tan also raised the question of professional responsibility. The architect's professional responsibility, or in the case of the engineer, his professional responsibility is not diminished in any way by practising in a corporate framework. An architect, for example, practises his profession in two distinct ways: one, which is professional; the other, commercial. The incorporated company allows wider scope for the practice to expand, as I have already explained. But the registered person who signs the plans, whether as an architect or engineer, is governed by a set of professional code of conduct provided under the Act in his personal capacity, and he is personally liable for disciplinary action should he breach any of these provisions in the Act. There is therefore no reduction in the professional responsibility of an architect or engineer if he chooses to have his practice incorporated as a company. Now I come to the questions raised by Mr Chng. I think basically he made the point that the quality of buildings has to be ensured. Of course there are many things that go into this, not just architects and engineers, but also the provisions in the Building Control Act, and so on. I think Members will remember that as a result of the Hotel New World disaster, the whole Building Control Act was amended and there is far more teeth in the Act now to ensure that buildings are properly constructed. Mr Chng also raised the question of penalty - why under the Professional Engineers Bill it is $20,000, and under the Architects Bill it is $10,000. I think it is a bit invidious to make comparisons. Some may say that the architect dresses up a building, but the engineer in fact provides the structure. So while the building may look ugly, you can live in it. If the building is weak and it collapses, the responsibility is that much more. But I take the point and I think we should consider this matter at the Select Committee stage. Mr Leong Chee Whye, Nominated MP, touched on clause 3(1) of the Architects Bill and also clause 3 of the Professional Engineers Bill. This is a standard clause. And as he pointed out, it is in the present Act and it is also found in many other Acts. It does not mean that a Government officer is free from liabilities. This Bill that we are now considering covers the registration of Architects and the practice of the profession in the architectural field. This registration as architects does not apply to the Government. Government of course employs architects who are qualified and they may be graduates, or with other qualifications. But the Government buildings under the Building Control Act are not required to comply with the provisions of the Building Control Act. We went through this quite extensively when we considered amendments to the Building Control Act. And the point we made was that in fact the Government buildings are subject to far more stringent requirements than the private sector buildings. It is not intended that by putting in this clause public officers will be free from any liability. If a public officer, acting on the direction of the Government, does something and, say, a building collapses, people are hurt or killed, the Government can be sued. In fact, the officer concerned can also be sued although he will be indemnified by the employer, in this case, the Government. He can also be sued. But what this means is that - this is a strictly legal point, and in fact I wish I had the Minister for Law here to expand on this - the engineers and architects who work for the Government need not go through the process of registration. All the other points that the Member has made that the professionals in public sector should work closely with the professionals in the private sector - I take them completely, and I think they are very valid and we are doing everything possible to have more cooperation and exchange of ideas. There are many things that we do in Government which we do not publicise or do not make known to the professionals in the private sector. For some time now, I have made it a practice to tell the Public Works Department that every time they do something new, they should bring around private architects and private engineers to show them what has been done so that they can in turn learn and apply it in the private sector. When HDB introduced a system of quality checking of buildings and how to rate the quality of a building which finally resulted in the "CONQUAS" system, architects were brought to HDB projects and they were given a briefing during the visit on how this is done. Similarly, one of the new growth fields in Singapore is retrofitting. My Ministry's building has just gone through a major retrofitting exercise and it will be holding a seminar to explain to the private sector architects and engineers the problems involved in retrofitting and so on. So there is this kind of cooperation. There is an on-going process and programme to disseminate the experience in the public sector to the private sector. But if Mr Leong Chee Whye wants to pursue this matter further, he can always make a submission to the Select Committee.