Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Dawn Butler Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

As I have said, I will in a moment, but I want to make some progress.

Should a union notify an employer of a strike in accordance with the existing normal rules, the Bill will allow the employer to issue a work notice to the union specifying the workers needed to work during a strike to secure the minimum level of safety and service. Employers will be required to consult the union on the number of workers to be identified in the work notice and the work to be undertaken, and have regard to the union’s views before issuing that work notice.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

Members on the Government Benches seem to think that none of those who are striking lives in their constituencies, which I find quite strange. Will the Minister confirm that, once his words have been scrutinised in this Chamber, if any are found to be misleading or incorrect, he will return to the Chamber and correct the record as soon as possible—preferably by the end of the week?

[Grant Shapps]

I am sure that the normal parliamentary rules apply, so I would never stand here and seek to do such a thing. In the interests of transparency, I will mention the £11,100 that the hon. Member has received from the CLP union in this House—[Interruption.] Sorry, that the CLP received from Unite the union, I should say to satisfy Opposition Members.

Officially, the work notice—[Interruption.] If Opposition Members would let me just explain how this operates—

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[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

A lot of time is spent in courts in some countries arguing about minimum service level agreements. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am a proud trade unionist: I worked for the GMB for more than a decade representing Members of Parliament, I am a member of Unite the union, and, after this debate, I might join a few more trade unions.

The Secretary of State took great joy in reading out how much hon. Members receive from trade unions, which is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) said, the cleanest money in politics. I wonder if, when he returns to his place, he will let the House know how much Michael Green, Corinne Stockheath and Sebastian Fox have received in payments.

In the short time that I have, I will talk about the Bill. It is dishonest; it is an insult to trade unions, which are the aspirational vehicle of the working class; and it is an insult to Parliament and parliamentary procedures. Most of the detail of the Bill is missing and the Government have said that they will add it later—that is not how we are supposed to do politics or make legislation. It contains wide, prospective Henry VIII powers, and as we saw during the pandemic, if we give the Government such powers, they abuse them—but they are putting them in legislation. It allows the Government to amend and revoke any future legislation passed in this Session, so what is the point of Parliament? No matter what we say or pass, the Government can turn around and say, “We want to change it,” or, “We want to revoke it.” That is against what every single Member of Parliament has been elected to do.

Ministers are trying to have power over Parliament—that is all the Bill is about—and to encourage employers to have power over workers. When I was a trade union official, it said on our office wall, “To make rich people work harder, they pay them more. To make poor people work harder, they try to pay them less.” Safety does not appear anywhere in the Bill. The House of Lords debated a report, “Democracy Denied?”, which said that we must rebalance power between Parliament and the Executive. The Government are asking Parliament to vote on a Bill that does not really exist, because there is no detail.

If the Government are serious about having minimum service levels, and if they are serious about negotiating, which nobody in the Government seems able to do, they should agree to compulsory arbitration or mediation to resolve disputes, but they are not interested in that. They are interested in trying to paint trade unions, which are the aspirational vehicle of the working class, in one light and themselves in another.

I say to the Government, however, that the public are not stupid and they see what the Government are doing by trying to take away their rights at every single level, including the right to protest and the right to vote. We see what the Government are doing and we will stand up and stop them at every opportunity.

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[David Linden]

I beg to move, That the House sit in private.

Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 163).

The House proceeded to a Division.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Minister has said that it will cost the Government £28 billion to settle the dispute with our public service workers. The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts that it will actually cost the public a significantly lower figure, £14 billion, to meet the public sector demands. Is there a way in which we can get the Minister to correct the record on the Floor of the House?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order. The Chair is not responsible for the content of any speeches, be they ministerial or Back-Bench contributions, but it is well evidenced that if any Member finds out that they have unwittingly misled the House, they must correct the record at the earliest possible opportunity.

Future of Postal Services

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tahir Ali]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Where a chief executive does not have the interest of the workforce at heart, they need to consider their position.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, based on his 30 years’ experience working as a postie. As he said, if half the money given to shareholders was given to the actual workers, there would be no need for this dispute or strike. Does he agree that CWU members deserve a pay rise and that the company can afford it?

[Tahir Ali]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention; that is a very pertinent point. I stressed that £576 million, which she also referred to. This is not about affordability; this is about picking a fight with the workforce, who have put themselves at risk to make sure that we were safe and secure, and received our deliveries throughout the pandemic.

Employment and Trade Union Rights (Dismissal and Re-engagement) Bill

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Friday 22nd October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), a fellow Bedfordshire elected representative, but it will not come as any surprise that we do not agree on all the points he has raised.

People have had their lives changed since 2020, with people going months without hugging loved ones, jobs lost and food bank use rocketing. So many people in Luton North have been worried about where their next pay slip is coming from—people who never thought of their job as insecure are now experiencing that their job and their wage is only as secure and reliable as their employer allows them to be. That is not inevitable, even during a pandemic.

We have seen big businesses—British Airways and British Gas, to name just two—trading under this country’s name but not in our country’s interest. They have used the pandemic as an excuse to get rid of thousands of workers and replace their old contracts with worse pay, worse terms and conditions and fewer rights at work for very similar roles. We have heard today that few of us disagree that the practice of fire and rehire is wrong, so why not vote to stop it?

I am so proud to stand with working people and our trade union movement, including GMB and Unite—I declare an interest as members of both, as well as of the Communication Workers Union—the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, Unison, the Transport Salaried Staffs Association and many others. They are backing the private Member’s Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), whose campaigning fervour has got it to this point in just a few short weeks. We know from the TUC that one in 10 workers has been told to reapply for their job since the start of the pandemic. We know that black and minority ethnic workers, women workers, young workers and working-class people have been hit even harder by the pandemic. And we know that when restrictions were lifted in July this year, millions of people in constituencies across the country were less secure in their workplace than they were in March 2020.

I am going to say something that I am probably only ever going to say once. I do not disagree with the Prime Minister—just once. I agree that we must build back better, but after 11 years of austerity and weakening of workers’ rights, better is anything but more of the same.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the powerful points that she is making. Is it not fair to say that if Members believe that fire and rehire is an unfair practice, they could vote for the Bill and then, in Committee, make any amendments that are needed to make it stronger?

[Sarah Owen]

I absolutely agree. We have heard today a collective understanding that the practice of fire and rehire, and its misuse, is an abomination for workers and is against our country’s values, so why not vote the Bill through today instead of talking it out?

After 11 long years of austerity and weakening of trade union and workers’ rights, we need to build back people’s working lives with better rights at work, stronger foundations and more security in jobs. No one can disagree with that.

Supporting Small Business

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I know my hon. Friend is a keen supporter of businesses, including the Kirkdale Bookshop on Sydenham’s high street and Billings butchers. She is a fine steward for the people of Lewisham West and Penge. I cannot offer expertise on the shopping behaviours of all hon. and right hon. Members—[Laughter.]—but some of our shopping behaviours changing does not mean that our high streets should not have a positive future. There is scope for fresh ideas and a renewed relationship with our high streets, but without easing the pressure of business rates for next year, many shops, including many carrying debts from the pandemic, just will not make it. That is why action is needed now.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

Four hundred businesses in Brent are at risk. Our high streets have the most independent shops compared with any other high streets in the UK. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is so important that the Government reach out and help to support businesses?

[Rachel Reeves]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She speaks about businesses in Brent, but that could go for so many other constituencies, high streets and town streets across our country. We want businesses to thrive and power our recovery and for every village, town and city across the UK to feel the benefits of a stronger and more resilient economy. Diluting ambition or postponing new thinking comes at a high price for businesses and jobs.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I do agree with that. Indeed, at the risk of scratching a sore for the Government, I would add that the modern industrial strategy made the point that, in terms of Government support for different areas of research and development, we must be willing to see some fail, because we cannot possibly know from the beginning everything that will be a success. That is important, but of course, I hope that ARIA will not be an organisation for which everything fails. It has to be prepared to have some failures, but obviously what we want to see is some really positive work coming out of this that can be of real benefit.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

I absolutely agree with the right hon. Lady about wanting to see ARIA be successful. She talked about scientists sitting around, having a chat and producing some papers but having no real impact. Does she agree that, given the way in which ARIA is currently set up, without any freedom of information requests being allowable, that could be the reality?

[Mrs May]

No, I do not agree that there is a natural causal relationship between the two. We will see whether ARIA is successful by what actually comes out, because at some point these ideas will come out. I recognise that there are issues for scientists who are really treading new ground, to ensure that they are able to do so with freedom—without that ability being taken away by others. That will be important for this organisation.

It is exciting that this agency is being set up. With the right people, it can do really good things, but it should not be restricted to a particular area of mission. When it does that blue skies thinking, we should ensure that the aim—the reason that the Government are setting it up—is to improve people’s lives in this country. That is what we all want to do and it is what the organisation should be about.

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[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, which gives me the opportunity to clarify again that the difference between a flu virus and a coronavirus virus may be significant in medical terms, but it is not what we are talking about. We are talking about climate change—the existential challenge. We are not saying that it should be one part of climate change. To say that it is like preparing for one virus as against another virus is not an equivalent comparison. This is a much vaster challenge. Indeed, I think that she answered her own question. If something more important than climate change comes along in the next 10 years, with climate change being the existential challenge of our times, we would have significant issues to face as a Parliament. If she can think of something more important than climate change coming along in the next 10 years, would she like to intervene on me and suggest what that might be?

[Dawn Butler]

The UK Government have set the most ambitious climate change target, which is to reduce emissions by 78% by 2035. Would it not be ridiculous if ARIA were to pursue something that undid that good work?

[Chi Onwurah]

Absolutely. As my hon. Friend says, the UK has set the most ambitious climate change target, but the Committee on Climate Change has said that the Government are currently on course to miss their manifesto commitment of achieving net zero by 2050. Amendment 12 aims to support the Government in that mission.

I now wish to make some significant progress in my comments, so I will not take any more interventions for a while. The lack of mission is a concern shared by many. The renowned economist Mariana Mazzucato suggested during the evidence sessions that achieving net zero should be ARIA’s mission. The Secretary of State said that ARIA needs a “laser-like focus”, but failed to provide it. The Institute of Physics said that a clear mission is “essential”, and the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) raised concerns about ARIA’s lack of focus and purpose. The president of the Royal Society said that

“£800 million is not a large sum of money, so if we have a plethora of missions, then I think we will go wrong. ARIA has to have focus of mission and a commitment to the model over the long-term”.––[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Agency Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 63, Q62.]

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Fifth sitting)

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah]

I beg to move amendment 21, in schedule 3, page 13, line 37, leave out paragraph 11.

This amendment would remove ARIA’s exemption from the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.

Amendment 21, which stands in my name and those of my hon. Friends, is a key amendment that will ensure that ARIA merits and deserves the confidence of the public at this time of great debate about sleaze and cronyism. The amendment would remove ARIA’s exemption from the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. As drafted, paragraph 11 of schedule 3 excludes ARIA from the definition of a “contracting authority” under the 2015 regulations; as a consequence, ARIA is exempted from the usual public procurement rules. The Opposition do not understand why ARIA’s exemption from those rules is justified. Indeed, we are truly concerned that exempting it in this way opens a side door to sleaze in science.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct in her presentation: we fail to understand why ARIA is exempt from the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. The Government are embroiled in the PPE and VIP lane scandals. It has been exposed that companies were put into the VIP lane by mistake—for example, PestFix was awarded £32 million. For ARIA to be exempted from any regulation risks this exploding to a larger extent with £800 million of public funds.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and she is absolutely right. It would be a cause for concern at any time to exempt an agency of this importance and public funding from procurement rules, but it is particularly worrying when the Government are already embroiled in a cronyism and procurement scandal.

In support of the point that my hon. Friend made, Transparency International—a well-known and reputable organisation—found that, of 1,000 procurement contracts signed during the pandemic and totalling £18 billion of public money, one in five had one or more of the red flags commonly associated with corruption. Is that not a figure of which we should be absolutely ashamed? That has happened within the existing rules, and the Minister proposes to exempt ARIA from those rules.

In her letter to the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee on 2 March 2021, the Minister explained that the Bill will

“provide ARIA with an exemption from Public Contracts Regulations so that it can procure services, equipment and works relating to its research goals at speed, in a similar way to a private sector organisation.”

We have several concerns about that explanation. What assessment has the Minister made of the ways in which private sector organisations procure services? Has she compared this with the success or otherwise of Government procurement processes for PPE during the covid crisis? Is she saying that private sector procurement is more effective, more honest and fairer; or is it simply quicker?

What the exemption is for is also a concern. The Minister implies that it is for services, equipment and works relating to ARIA’s research goals. Is it for equipment, services and works, or is it actually for research? Will ARIA be considered to be procuring research? We had been led to understand that it would a funder of research and development, not a body conducting its own research in a lab, so what actual procurement needs will it have, beyond office space and office equipment? There are months and months before ARIA is operational, so what will it need to procure at speed, or is the intention to enable ARIA to procure research without oversight? What is the justification for not having appropriate oversight for its procurement of research?

We absolutely understand, and support, providing ARIA with additional flexibility in terms of its funding activity, but the benefit of exempting ARIA’s procurement of goods and services is not clear. We suggest that ARIA’s procurement needs are not different from those of other Government funding bodies. We hope that the Minister will explain why that is the case. In terms of safeguards, the Government are proposing that in a future framework agreement BEIS will require ARIA to appoint an independent internal auditor to report its procurement activities. It is therefore going to have an internal bureaucracy, as the Minister puts it, rather than be subject to the procurement rules that have been developed, debated and put in place over time.

Will that framework agreement set out procurement rules for ARIA? Otherwise, what is the auditing requiring compliance with? How can we audit if there are no rules to benchmark against? Without safeguards, we have significant concerns about the risk of sleaze. What is to prevent ARIA from buying its office equipment from a mate of the Secretary of State or of the chief executive? Can the Minister say which of the regulations she objects to? The Public Contracts Regulations 2015, for example, state that a person awarded a public contract must

“be linked to the subject-matter of the contract.”

Does she object to that? What will prevent ARIA from operating effectively?

In the evidence sessions, we heard a number of times, including from Professor Glover, that there is a need for openness and transparency. David Cleevely said:

“The more open you are about what you are doing, the less easy it is to hide the fact that you have let particular contracts and so on, so there ought to be a mechanism within the governance structure of the agency to do that.”—[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 75, Q78.]

The Minister is removing such mechanisms as there already are. We heard that having rules and regulations in place was part of the culture of DARPA, on which this agency is supposedly based, with one of its directors, Dr Highnam, saying:

“Honour in public service is top of the list.”—[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 39, Q32.]

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Third sitting)

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Amanda Solloway]

The establishment of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency as a statutory corporation means that the body has its own legal personality that is distinct from the that of the Crown or its individual members, as set out in paragraph 1 of schedule 1. That allows ARIA to enter into legal relations such as contracts, and to hold property in its own right.

A statutory corporation also allows the specific terms of the relationship between Government and ARIA to be set out in law—the composition of the board and the appointments process, for example. In setting that out, we have sought to balance the freedom required for ARIA to deliver transformational scientific and technological advances, but with appropriate ministerial oversight. I hope that hon. Members agree that that is the right vehicle for the creation of the agency.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 1

The Advanced Research and Invention Agency

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 5, in schedule 1, page 6, line 10 at end insert—

“Memorandum of understanding

2 (1) ARIA and UK Research and Innovation must prepare a memorandum of understanding.

(2) The memorandum must set out how ARIA and UK Research and Innovation intend to co-operate with each other and avoid overlap between the exercise by ARIA of its functions and the exercise by UK Research and Invention of its functions.

(3) The memorandum shall be reviewed on an annual basis and revised as necessary by agreement between ARIA and UK Research & Innovation.”

This amendment would require ARIA and UKRI to prepare a memorandum of understanding setting out how they will collaborate and avoid overlap.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 6, in schedule 1, page 6, line 2, at end insert—

‘(c) the Chief Executive Officer of UK Research and Innovation; and’.

This amendment would make the CEO of UKRI a non-executive member of ARIA in order to achieve greater collaboration and communication between the two bodies.

[Dawn Butler]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I do not think anyone will vote against the amendment, because all it seeks to do is ensure that there is a memorandum of understanding between ARIA and UK Research and Innovation about how they will work together. The two organisations will be working on the same themes, though doing things slightly differently, and they need to communicate. I am happy to give way to anyone who thinks it is not a good idea that UKRI and ARIA communicate. The amendment is practical and sensible and seeks only to clarify how they would work together.

Our evidence session was informative. Dame Ottoline Leyser from UKRI said:

“The people employed at ARIA will absolutely need to understand deeply what UKRI is doing and what the opportunities are across that research base in order to deliver their vision. I would expect a very close working relationship with ARIA to allow that to happen.”––[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Agency Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 6, Q3.]

When she said that, I thought that the relationship must have been written in the legislation and I had missed something, because she said it as though it was going to happen. I went back to the Bill to have a look, but nothing in it says that UKRI and ARIA have to work together or at least know what each other is doing. I thought that quite strange. When I asked her how she expected that to happen, she said “naturally”. We in Parliament make laws and legislation; we do not leave things to happen naturally if we can we put them on the statute book. The amendment seeks only to have a memorandum of understanding between the already established UKRI and the newly established ARIA.

If the Committee votes against the amendment, people outside will not understand. They will ask, “Why don’t you want a memorandum of understanding?” Everything cannot be done just on trust. We have trust and transparency, but right now ARIA has neither, and it will not be subject to freedom of information rules. It is the wrong approach to say to people outside, “We are going to give £800 million to an organisation that will have no oversight, no FOI and no link to UKRI.” How would that be sensible, especially when—I say this gently—the Government are caught up in sleaze at the moment? That would not help at all. People will say, “You want £800 million to go to whom and to do what?”

Ultimately, we know that men of a certain age get these opportunities, and these men tend to fail upwards. Without the amendment, we are saying that we will allow people to fail upwards and we will not know what they are doing because failure will be part of what ARIA is. We accept that failure can be a part of ARIA, but there needs to be some oversight and connection to the already established UKRI.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for her service on the Science and Technology Committee with me, where we have been discussing this issue and the covid crisis over the last year. She made a point about men of a certain age. Last year, it was two women of a certain age—Dido Harding and Kate Bingham—who helped to respond to coronavirus. At the time, the Opposition made various allegations of cronyism, particularly about Kate Bingham, which ought to be withdrawn now that we have seen the success of what can happen when we take away some of the administrative burdens, focus clear-mindedly on a key goal and get it delivered. Making these allegations of sexism when we have had two women leading our response to coronavirus is not appropriate.

[Dawn Butler]

I thank the hon. Member for his service on the Science and Technology Committee, where we often agree and very often disagree. Of course we praise what goes well, but let us not forget that £14 million was spent on a test and trace system that was scrapped, or that Northern Ireland spent £1 million on a test and trace system that works perfectly well. Let us not forget those facts. Now, we are talking about £800 million.

Professor Pierre Azoulay said,

“It is important not to put those two agencies in competition; they both have a role to play.”—[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Second sitting), 14 April 2021; c. 46]

Both agencies have a role to play; let them work together. Let us work on the premise that it will be a success.

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[Amanda Solloway]

The framework document will be drawn up by the leadership of ARIA, and it is really important that that is how it will be devised. It will not be a Government-led document; it will be drawn up by the leadership and with ARIA.

[Dawn Butler]

I think the Minister has just described an MOU. A framework document that is agreed by UKRI and ARIA, not by the Government, is an MOU, I believe.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

In earlier comments, the hon. Lady referred to the evidence obtained offline. When she asked, “How would this occur?” Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser replied, “Naturally.” The Lady’s response is to ask, “Why would we rely on that, if we can put something on the statute?” I suggest that it should be the other way around. In this country, we legislate only where we have to, not where we can.

[Dawn Butler]

The Government are creating a new agency and spending £800 million. They are saying that this new agency should not be subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000. They are saying that it will fail, a lot, and we need to accept that failure happens in science. That is fine—I used to be a computer programmer, and I know that sometimes you try things and they do not work—but this is very new. We should not put it in a silo by itself, with no proper link to UKRI. I do not believe the hon. Member believes that there will be no link, because the Minister has just described this document as a memorandum of understanding by another name. I do not think there are actually any disagreements about having the memorandum of understanding.

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[Daniel Zeichner]

I have learned something this morning. I too was a computer programmer. I hope my hon. Friend was a better programmer than I was—I worry about the code that I left for others.

On whether it is better to have it in the legislation, which is the point raised by the hon. Member for Broadland, does it strike my hon. Friend as odd, particularly at a time when the Government are under such scrutiny for relaxed arrangements involving texts, WhatsApp and all the rest of it? Is that not exactly the reason it should be put in legislation—so that it is clear for everybody?

[Dawn Butler]

My hon. Friend makes a very valid and powerful point. There are ongoing investigations—Greensill, PestFix and VIP lanes. Let us avoid such accusations by agreeing a memorandum of understanding between ARIA and UKRI. Let people not question the role of ARIA: we are expecting the public to accept failure as an essential part of ARIA, and they are going to accept failure. Let the public understand that there will be some link to UKRI, which is an established agency.

[Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)]

I wish to refer to some of the things that were said during the evidence sessions. In the very helpful session with Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, she talked about the “edge of the edge”, to which we have already referred, but she also said directly after that that leaving them the freedom of decision making may attract the special people we need in that role. She was talking about the chief exec and the role of the people who will be looking after ARIA. That is very important. What we do not need to do is create restrictions around this. This is £800 million that is separate from UKRI. Professor Leyser was very happy about that; in fact, she wanted it to be quite separate, so that it was free and allowed to develop ideas and inventions.

The Opposition referred to a muddle when they talked about clarification, but I think what they mean is they want to meddle. They want to put restrictions in place—any kind of restriction that would show that we are in charge. Well, we are not. We are not great inventors. The people who will be in ARIA will be great inventors, and they will create good things.

The hon. Lady mentioned that she was happy to accept failure, but she also beat us around the face and neck about the £14 million that was spent on test and trace, which failed. Come on—we have to allow them to fail.

[Dawn Butler]

I was almost with the hon. Lady up until the £14 million. At the end of the day, Northern Ireland spent £1 million on a test and trace system that worked. I could have programmed a test and trace system—it might have taken me a few years, but I could have done it—for a lot less. It is unacceptable to spend £14 million on a test and trace system that failed and had to be scrapped. It is shocking for the hon. Lady to stand up and even consider that to be a defence.

A memorandum of understanding does not restrict anybody. A memorandum of understanding is exactly that: a memorandum of understanding. The hon. Lady talked about the CEO of UKRI. Amendment 6 talks about making

“the CEO of UKRI a non-executive member of ARIA in order to achieve greater collaboration and communication between the two bodies.”

What is wrong with having greater collaboration between UKRI and ARIA? I do not understand. Nobody has yet stood up to tell me why there is a problem with having collaboration between UKRI and ARIA. None of the Members that have spoken has given a reason why there should not be collaboration between the two. ARIA can still go off and do its thing, and fail away, but it needs to know what UKRI is doing. What is the problem?

Question put, That the amendment be made.

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[Kirsty Blackman]

I thank the hon. Member for his input. I was not trying to criticise the actions of the UK Government in this area—in lots of other areas, but not in this one. Positive steps have been made. In Scotland, we have a duty of gender diversity on boards and it has worked. We have proved that it has worked across public sector boards. It has made a positive difference. People can say that we might not need to legislate for it, but it is a safeguard. It ensures that we have that percentage of women on the board and that we have diversity in all appointments in relation to ARIA.

[Dawn Butler]

I thank the hon. Member for her informative contribution, which I have found fascinating. It is great that UKRI has that diversity on its board without it being mandated—I would suggest that that is another reason why ARIA and UKRI need to have a memorandum of understanding. Is it not important that there is some communication if that diversity is going to be taken into consideration? As the hon. Member says, if it is not mandated, we are just relying on good faith.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I absolutely agree. This measure should be included in the Bill as a safeguard or a fallback—a failsafe. I appreciate the public sector equality duty exists, but that is not strong enough to give me comfort.

When women do engineering degrees, they get better degrees than men. They get a better class of degree—the statistics prove it. If we want the highest possible quality of people, from diverse backgrounds, pushing innovation forward and trying to, for example, make the renewable energy technologies of the future, we need to ensure diversity on the board and more widely in the staff of ARIA.

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[Aaron Bell]

One of the reasons why things look that way from the outside is the accusations made by the Opposition. I have an example. The hon. Lady was not here earlier—I completely accept that she had a reason for that—when I referred to Kate Bingham’s appointment, and the £670,000 spent last year on a crucial campaign to get hard-to-reach groups not only to take part in vaccine trials but to take the vaccine. At the time, the Leader of the Opposition said:

“You cannot justify that sort of money being spent”,

and the deputy leader of the Labour party said, “This cronyism stinks.” After what we saw last year, I think it a little rich of the Opposition to go round suggesting that this is the problem, when, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock said, the Science and Technology Committee, and all the science community, are very engaged. The idea that there would be scientific sleaze is frankly risible.

[Dawn Butler]

rose—

[Chi Onwurah]

Before I give way to my hon. Friend or address the latest intervention, I will finish addressing one of the points made by the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock. He said that he could not imagine that any chair or CEO of ARIA would not agree to give evidence to the Science and Technology Committee. I remind him that Dominic Cummings, who was not the chair of ARIA but was certainly its chief architect, refused to give evidence to this Committee on the basis that he had already given evidence to another Committee, and once was enough in terms of accountability.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dawn Butler]

The Government are going to extraordinary lengths to avoid scrutiny. We have seen that time and again, from the closing down of Parliament to awarding themselves Henry VIII powers. The Science and Technology Committee, on which I and the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme sit, is a good Committee that comes up with good results. We are, in the main, collegiate and work together in the name of science and its progress. It is not unusual for appointments to flow through the Science and Technology Committee—that is how Parliament works—so the amendment is not asking for something extraordinary. It is saying, “Let’s continue what we do in Parliament on scrutiny and oversight.” I fail to understand why the Government are so opposed to any form of scrutiny on ARIA.

The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme says that people outside may be thinking about sleaze because of what the Opposition are doing. I disagree. They are understanding sleaze because of what the Government are doing, what the Good Law Project is doing in taking the Government to court and what Byline Times and other investigative journalists are doing in highlighting the cronyism and corruption. If the Bill is to go through, we need to ensure that those allegations are not levelled at it, because we do not want sleaze in science. That is the last thing we need.

[Jane Hunt]

I have two points. First, UKRI is not broken. It is a great service that offers, through a process of application, grants and so on, a means to research and development. What ARIA does is create an opportunity for exceptional brains to make exceptional decisions and, with some money behind them, to try to develop things. It is not underhand or any of the things being said; it is just an opening and an opportunity. Someone said the other day that the coders in their bedrooms, who do not have the resources to make bids or applications, nor the language behind them to be successful, can get into that system. UKRI is not broken; ARIA is something separate.

With absolutely the greatest respect to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, who was not here at the beginning, for good reasons, a number of Opposition Members have referred to Dominic Cummings. I am sorry, but I am not happy about that; we have before us a highly respected female Minister putting forward the Bill. We should respect her and her position and stop referring to somebody unelected who is not even in the room.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Flynn]

I am glad that the hon. Lady has managed to make her point, but with all due respect, I do not think I, or indeed anyone, has impugned the Minister’s capabilities in any way, shape or form. All we have done is reflect on why the Bill is here in the way it is. It was set up by an individual who only got the role of chief adviser to the Prime Minister on the basis that this would become a thing. She needs to be very mindful of that.

To go back to my initial point about why we have tabled these amendments, it is about the role of this Parliament. It will be of no surprise to anyone in this room that I do not hold this Parliament in much regard. I would be quite happy for the people of Scotland to not have MPs in this Parliament, but while the public in Scotland are contributing money to this Parliament, it should have a role in providing scrutiny.

[Dawn Butler]

As a member of the Science and Technology Committee, I can say with almost absolute certainty that its Chair would be in favour of having a say in who becomes the CEO of ARIA.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Fourth sitting)

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah]

I am not daunted by the 6:9 defeat that we have just experienced. We will continue in the hope of winning over Government Members to the improvements that we wish to see in the Bill. The amendments, which stand in my name and those of my hon. Friends, are just such constructive amendments to improve the Bill and, more specifically, to actually give the Secretary of State greater powers than he, perhaps in his modesty, has set out in the Bill.

Amendment 11 would allow the Secretary of State to refuse consent to the appointment of an executive member of ARIA on the basis of their unfitness or inability to carry out the functions of the office. Amendment 12 would allow the Secretary of State to remove an executive member of ARIA on the basis of their unfitness or inability to carry out the functions of the office. The amendments are necessary because greater oversight and responsibility are needed to avoid even the suggestion of the taint of sleaze being attached to science.

This morning, in response to amendment 10, through which we intended the Science and Technology Committee to review the appointment of the chief executive, I think the Minister said that we needed a different model of trust. The public need the existing models of trust to be upheld by our Parliament, our Ministers, our Executive, and the executives of agencies such as ARIA. It should also be clear that the Government are taking responsibility for who is on ARIA’s board and has control of £800 million of public money and, more important, control of our scientific—and therefore economic—future.

The Bill places huge responsibility and power in the hands of ARIA’s CEO with little ongoing accountability. The Secretary of State is responsible for appointing the chair, other non-executive members of the board, and the first CEO. All subsequent CEOs and all other executive board members will be appointed by the chair after consultation with the other non-executive members, as set out in paragraph 3(2) of schedule 1. Such appointments cannot be made without the consent of the Secretary of State, but as the Bill stands, the Secretary of State can refuse consent only on national security grounds. Why are national security grounds the only grounds on which somebody might not be fit or suitable to serve on the board of ARIA?

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

Should other grounds, such as wanting to pursue eugenics in great depth, not be considered reasons not to appoint somebody to a board?

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. As we heard in earlier discussions, there are concerns about the areas of science, such as eugenics, that might be championed or accepted by potential board members. I would hope that belief in eugenics was sufficient to consider someone unfit for the board, but, as it stands, the Secretary of State would currently have no power to refuse consent for an appointment on that basis. I find it interesting to consider the workings of the Secretary of State’s mind here. National security is clearly a critical issue, and it is the first duty of any Government to protect their citizens, but are there no other reasons why somebody might not be suitable?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah]

I accept that it is indeed the USS Enterprise, and I thank the hon. Member for that correction. On the rest of his contribution, I will say once again that I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Member, but to boldly go where no one has gone before is not a mission. It is not even a direction—it is explicitly not a direction. As I said, the USS Enterprise’s mission was to seek out new civilisations, so it was anthropological rather than another domain of science. ARIA has no mission.

We do think we have to talk about the Haldane principle, given that we have seen the acceptance of mission-oriented research, including the grand challenges that were discussed during the evidence sessions. That makes it clear that we can ascribe a mission to ARIA without breaching the Haldane principle. The Government should not outsource their responsibility to direct the transformative change that ARIA can bring to our greatest challenge, which is one that—the hon. Member is familiar with this—inspires so many young people and that can get public buy-in: climate change and the need to address the impact it will have on our planet.

[Dawn Butler]

Should we not be proud as a Committee to say that ARIA will achieve net zero in whatever project it pursues? That is essentially working on the edge of the edge—looking at forward technology, ensuring that we save the planet and ensuring that we do not add to the erosion of the ozone layer—so is it not progressive and transformative to set a parameter around net zero?

[Chi Onwurah]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend; I think that it is progressive, transformative and very necessary. We heard today that the Prime Minister has decided to set another target for our emissions—I think that it is to slash UK emissions by 78% by 2035—undaunted by the fact that he has not met any of the targets that he has set previously.

This issue is not about setting targets; it is about changing the way in which our economy and our society work, to reduce our emissions. Just think of the role that ARIA could play in that process. My hon. Friend suggested that achieving net zero is not a narrow mission; it is a broad mission, because net zero impacts every aspect of our life. An ARIA CEO would have plenty of discretion in choosing which aspects of the climate and environmental emergency to address.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (First sitting)

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your leadership, Ms McVey. Good morning to both of you, and thank you for your presentations. I truly believe that ARIA will significantly add to the research and innovation landscape, in an area where we perhaps have not done that before. That does beg the question of where those visionary ideas would have gone up until this point.

The question that I would like to ask is, what role do you believe that ARIA and UKRI have in ensuring that ARIA-funded research becomes a tangible service or product and actually supports the UK economy? If we are investing £800 million, we need to make sure that there is a benefit. I fully accept the high-risk, high-reward model—I think that is an important part of it—but we need to make sure that we support that innovation and that research along the technology-readiness scale to make sure that it turns into something tangible that adds to our overall wealth. How do you see that role playing out?

Professor Leyser: To me, a key question in our R&D system altogether is connectivity. We have a spectacular international reputation for the quality of our R&D base right across the disciplines and in both the public and the private sectors, and we have some fantastic innovative companies creating extraordinary products and services for the UK. However, there is an acknowledged weakness in our system in the middle, so to speak, which is sometimes referred to as the valley of death. There is a lot of analysis as to what is going on there. It is partly to do with getting the right pathway of funding that supports activity across that gap.

I personally think that a bigger problem is our relatively balkanised R&D system. I think that we need to focus very hard on building much higher-quality connectivity and networking, right across the system and across that gap. We tend to think of this as a very linear, translational process, and it does not work that way. It is about joining up all the parts in a way that information, ideas, skills, know-how and, crucially, people—all those things are carried best by people—flow to and fro across that system.

One of the major priorities for UKRI is to consider the dynamic career pathways that people need to follow to connect that system up better and to support researchers in different parts of the system moving to other parts of the system—so from academia into industry and, crucially, from industry back into academia, which our current incentive structures in academia do not adequately support.

I think that that “bridging the valley of death” part is a key role for UKRI. That is exactly what we can do, because we bridge all the sectors and we have some levers on a lot of those incentives that are currently driving balkanisation. If we add ARIA into that properly connected system, then the ideas and innovation that emerge from ARIA will feed into that system in an entirely productive and creative way.

It is not ARIA’s job to think about the system and to build bridges across the valley of death; its job is to push those transformative ideas to try to drive step changes in particular areas and technologies where the experts in ARIA think the best opportunities lie. If those seeds are sown on fertile ground, they will transform into that knowledge economy that I keep talking about. My job is to make sure that the ground is fertile.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

Q Dame Ottoline, you said earlier that you expect a close working relationship with ARIA. What does that actually look like? Legislatively, what should that look like?

Professor Leyser: It is an interesting question as to the extent to which that needs to be written into legislation. In my experience, the kinds of relationship that one wants to have with key players across the system are not things for which you necessarily legislate. They are about maintaining open lines of communication and building high-quality personal relationships with different actors in the system. There are a lot of players in the R&D system. I spend a lot of my time talking to people who run other agencies—for example, in the charity sector and those who run R&D activities in businesses— connecting them up, understanding what people’s needs are, what the opportunities are and building the joined-up system I have talked of about before.

So I think the personal relationships are going to be almost as important as anything that one can write into legislation. None the less, possible tools for connection, such as seats on each other’s boards, are certainly worth considering, as is observer-type status, rather than formal status, given that high-quality boards tend to be small. Our board worked really well where people were not representative but bringing their skills and expertise round the table. One does not want to bog down the governance structures for a light, agile and out-there organisation with representative requirements. As I have said before, active and engaged communication is going to be essential for ARIA, because it needs to understand the breadth of opportunity in the system to work well. It will be in everybody’s interest for those activities to work well. Because of that, they will happen naturally, in the same way that I spend a lot of time talking with other funders of research and innovation already in the public and private sectors.

[Dawn Butler]

I agree with you that there needs to be a close working relationship. I do not think we can count on it happening naturally. I have two quick questions, if I may, Ms McVey?

[The Chair]

Dawn, I am mindful of time. We have seven or eight minutes. I have another three questions and Chi Onwurah to come back. Is it a quick one?

[Dawn Butler]

Q It was a quick one on why UKRI cannot access the innovators of tomorrow—the people coding at home. I did not understand what was stopping UKRI doing that?

Professor Leyser: At the moment, most of our funding opportunities require people to apply for a research grant. People coding at home have a hard time applying for research grants, because it is a system with financial checks and so on. Applying for a research grant is a non-trivial activity, whereas winning a research prize, where there is no application process and you just get on with it, is doable. We are very interested in that wider range of funding mechanisms and in how we can learn from the work of Nesta, and, in the future, the work of ARIA to reach a wider range of people. But at the moment, we work on a largely open-call process; it is really effective because it is completely open, but it none the less creates barriers for people who do not have the infrastructure and administrative support to help them submit those kinds of grant applications.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I thank both witnesses for their time, and Dame Ottoline for her evidence to the Science and Technology Committee, on which Ms Butler and I also serve.

Following on from Dame Ottoline’s answer to Ms Butler, obviously, the purpose is to expand ARIA to cover areas that are not already well covered, but it also seems to be to try to pick up the pace of research and innovation. We have seen that that is possible through crises such as coronavirus. Can you explain how the pace can be picked up by some of the things that you do at Nesta and whether that would carry across to what ARIA is going to do?

Tris Dyson: I think it helps to pick things, to say, “We want to achieve x within the next two or three years” and to give people a degree of certainty about what outcomes you are going to fund and why. It happens naturally, anyway. Coronavirus is a crisis that has created a rush for R&D. It has also shown, on the drug development or vaccine side, what a combination of funding and relatively agile thinking, including from regulators in conjunction, can do in order to improve outcomes and achieve things. A challenge prize creates that in a positive sense; it essentially says, “We are going to solve for x and award funding on that basis.” That helps speed things up.

Related to the previous question, with a grant model approach, you are funding inputs and costs primarily. People put in a proposal for half a million pounds and say, “We are going to do x and this is what the associated costs are going to be.” Inherently, your risk threshold is going to be different, because you are anticipating whether this an investment that means they are going to be able to spend that money well and achieve x. You are going to look at track records, their financial history and their institutional strengths. You are going to make a judgment on whether to fund A versus B. That lends itself more towards funding the usual suspects than an outcome-based model, where you say, “It is not important to us who solves for x as long as somebody does.” In reality, you tend to blend these models. It is not like there is a pure challenge prize model that does not involve other types of funding mechanisms as well.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Second sitting)

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Just to follow up briefly, thank you for that; it is comprehensive and helpful. It highlights the fact that you are looking for more than just individuals with some inspiring ideas. They have got to have the ability to own the research and inspire the next stage in its progress. I just think we should put that on record—that programme managers have to be multi-skilled in a number of different areas. So thank you for that.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

Q It is great to serve under your chairmanship today, Ms Cummins. Thank you very much to the witnesses today. It is very enlightening. On the back of the last question with regard to managerial content I really like the idea that the transition is an impact or contact sport. You go in, do your best work and get out with your reputation intact. I have two questions about that. First, how do you reach those people who are not known—who may be working on something very creative but are not well known in the industry? Secondly, you have talked a lot about evaluations. Are they peer-to-peer evaluations, and is that evaluation transparent? Perhaps we will go to Dr Highnam first.

Dr Highnam: We do—I am very proud of this—full and open competition to the greatest extent possible. The process is approximately like this. A programme manager has framed a programme, using the Heilmeier questions, and received approval to launch. They put out various announcements in different places. They organise industry days—these are more virtual than in person, but we do both. We put it into the various mailing lists in all manner of technical communities. We push it out through small business and make sure the universities and the vice-presidents for research and development are all aware. We make the maximum push that we can, certainly for unclassified activities.

Then, when proposals come in—we are very clear on what we expect to see in a proposal, which is how we then evaluate proposals; we are very transparent on the requirements for that—we take a look and, surprisingly often, to respond to your point, you will find a technology or a small business had an idea that meets the goal. We do not over-engineer the request for proposals. We say, “Here’s what we want to do. Here are the boundaries, if you like, in terms of technical elements we are interested in. It’s up to you guys. Come back with the best team that you can and the best approach that you can for solving this.” And there is always a surprise. From a PM perspective—Regina and I have both been PMs at DARPA—you always find yourself saying, “Oh, I didn’t think of that. That may be the one that actually wins; we don’t know.”

[Dawn Butler]

I can see Professor Azoulay nodding.

Dr Highnam: On your second point, about transparency, we have, again, very rigorous processes. These are all fully documented, and feedback is provided in order to engender better proposals next time from those who happen to be unsuccessful in a particular programme.

[Dawn Butler]

Great—thank you. Dr Dugan, I saw you nodding as well.

Dr Dugan: If we want to get down to some specifics, I think it is important to recognise that the evaluation process for us is very much about separating the abstracts or the proposals into two baskets: those that are responsive to the call and could potentially help us to meet the goal; and those that are not. But it is not an explicit, peer-reviewed consensus rank ordering of those proposals, and the reason why we do not do it that way is that rank ordering tends to favour the most conservative of the proposals. What we seek instead is to take those that could contribute to the goal and, from them, construct a programme, with the appropriate pieces, the right risk profile and the right disciplines and mix of organisations, to achieve the goal.

In this respect, I want to be clear. There are practices and principles that we use here. We can write down some of the rules that we use and give you some elements of the playbook, but there is here a certain mastery of practice and principle that it is necessary to understand, and in that respect the programme construction is fair and equitable but also designed to take the elements of the proposer’s work that most substantively contribute to the goal, even if they are potentially high-risk. That is how you construct a programme that is optimised for breakthroughs.

[Dawn Butler]

Q My final question is to you all. How important do you think the link should be between ARIA and UKRI in the UK? Perhaps we will start with Professor Azoulay, because you have read the Bill very carefully.

Professor Azoulay: I think that those two modes of funding are complements, not substitutes. It is very important to have an ecosystem of funding. In the US, we are blessed with a very diverse ecosystem. Lots of domains, such as health—there are many, such as agriculture—in some sense are missing the ARPA-like elements, when they have a lot of those other elements.

It is important not to put those two agencies in competition; they both have a role to play. Of course, there is a perfectly legitimate debate about the relative levels of funding, but they would both be doing things that are tremendously important and that would complement each other in the long run.

[Dawn Butler]

Thank you. Dr Dugan?

Dr Dugan: Pierre makes a very good point. These are important elements of a robust and functioning ecosystem. We talked about the advances in mRNA, which have been so important in the corona pandemic. That relied on basic science, curiosity-driven research that happened mostly through NIH, pivotal investments in this breakthrough mode, this Pasteur’s quadrant style of work that DARPA is famous for, and also the private sector, which was instrumental in bringing it to scale, use and impact.

To Pierre’s point, these things have to fit together in order to create the breakthroughs—that is the innovation gap that is often filled by an ARPA-like organisation—but you must have a foundation of science from which to draw and you must have a mechanism of transitioning to scale, if all of it is going to make sense in impact.

It is very important to understand those things and in appropriate measure. Just to give you a sense of it, DARPA has operated with about 0.5% of the DOD budget for its entire 60-plus-year history. Small investments, relatively speaking, in these breakthrough-focused activities can make a big difference.

[Dawn Butler]

Thank you. Dr Highnam?

Dr Highnam: I am afraid that I do not know enough about your structures to be able to give a sensible answer.

[Dawn Butler]

No problem. Thank you very much.

[The Chair]

Next, I have Aaron Bell and then Daniel Zeichner.