EU Referendum and EU Reform (EUC Report)

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Selborne (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Boswell. It is most appropriate that the report of the Science and Technology Committee on EU membership and UK science should be debated with these two reports from the European Committee. I thank our specialist adviser, Professor Graeme Reid, our clerk, Chris Clarke, and our policy analyst, Dr Cat Ball, for their contributions to this report. As I am introducing the third Motion of this debate, I understand that I might be allowed a little longer than the advisory time of six minutes.

Once the date of the referendum on the United Kingdom’s continued membership of the European Union had been announced, the committee decided that it would be important to conduct an inquiry to help understand the wide-ranging influences, for better or worse, that the EU has on UK science and research. Science is, after all, a major component of the UK’s membership of the European Union, with nearly one-fifth of EU funding to the UK spent on research and development. Our inquiry aimed to understand and characterise the principal linkages between EU membership and UK science, and this proved rather more complicated than expected. In order to inform our investigations, we sought a diagrammatic representation of the main ways that the EU supports science and research. We could not find such a diagram so we have attempted, in figure 2 on page 28 of our report, to draw up such a representation ourselves.

The EU supports science and research through five main mechanisms: namely, the Horizon 2020 programme, formerly the series of framework programmes 1 to 7; the European structural and investment funds; sectoral research and development programmes; other connected programmes; and, lastly, partnerships. I will refer just to the Horizon 2020 programme and the structural and investment funds for reasons of time.

Horizon 2020 is the EU’s flagship programme for science and innovation. It replaces the seven successive framework programmes and will run from 2014 to 2020, with a budget of €74.8 billion. Funding is mostly allocated competitively through calls for proposals to which researchers and organisations can apply. However, criteria for allocating funds vary and also include scientific excellence, alignment with a number of strategic objectives, geographical and disciplinary diversity and potential for commercialisation.

The exception to this is the European Research Council funding, as its funds are awarded solely on the basis of scientific excellence. Its grants have neither thematic priorities nor geographical quotas. The United Kingdom is the top performer across member states in terms of securing European Research Council funding. This reflects the quality of UK science. We heard from universities that this funding is equivalent to having another research council. Framework programme 7, which ran from 2007 to 2013, provided 3% of the total UK expenditure on research and development. The evidence we received from national academies, professional bodies, universities and research institutes was overwhelmingly enthusiastic for EU membership.

The university sector was our largest recipient of the framework programme 7 funds. However, it is not the university sector which undertakes the majority of research and development in this country. Sixty-four per cent of UK research and development is conducted by business, yet businesses attracted just 18% of the total funds awarded to the United Kingdom through framework programme 7. Participation of UK businesses in framework programme 7 was below that of Germany and France. Indeed, it was below the EU average. However, this low participation was not uniform across the spectrum of United Kingdom businesses. Small and medium-sized enterprises attracted more funding than French SMEs and a similar amount to German SMEs. It appears that it is large businesses that are particularly underrepresented in the United Kingdom’s EU-funded research and innovation portfolio.

We formed the conclusion that while it was clearly for businesses to decide for themselves whether they wish to engage in EU funding schemes, there is a need for the United Kingdom Government to assess whether their support for businesses which seek to engage in EU funding schemes is as effective as that of other member states. In this respect, the support formerly provided by regional development agencies might have deteriorated with the absence of local enterprise partnerships.

The purposes of the competitive framework programme funds and structural funds for research and innovation are different. By designating a portion of structural funds for research and innovation, the European Commission aims to boost scientific capacity across member states and increase the success rate from regions with weaker economies. It is not surprising, therefore, that the UK does not benefit greatly from structural funds for research. However, we were concerned by the apparent lack of evidence as to whether this spending has actually raised the scientific competitiveness of recipients, and we suggest that the evidence should be assembled by the European Commission.

It was repeatedly put to us that one of the most significant aspects of the UK’s EU membership is provision of opportunities to collaborate. A number of EU schemes enable researcher and student mobility across Europe, including the Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions and the Erasmus+ schemes. Many would maintain that the provision of collaborative opportunities is perhaps the most significant benefit that EU membership affords science and research in the United Kingdom. These collaborative opportunities are not just between member states but can extend to non-EU and non-European countries.

Although witnesses highlighted several grievances with the EU regulatory environment, the majority of evidence suggested that the regulatory harmonisation brought about by the EU was of benefit to the UK. Such harmonisation can provide a strong platform for collaboration and commercialisation in science and research. The increasingly global nature of science and business means that international harmonisation is becoming ever more relevant. However, those EU regulations highlighted to us as inappropriate or defective included: the protection of animals used for scientific purposes directive, the protection of personal data directive, the deliberate release of genetically modified organisms directive, and the clinical trials directive. On the latter directive, a new clinical trials directive has now been developed and is expected to come into effect in 2017. The Academy of Medical Sciences stated that the United Kingdom health and research community has played an important role in influencing the improvement of this regulation.

We found that the UK plays a leading and valued role in the development of EU policies and decision-making processes that relate to science and research. UK scientists in various European Union committees and organisations act to ensure that the UK’s voice is clearly heard and that the EU remains aligned with the advancement of UK science. The long-term prosperity of this country will be highly dependent on attracting inward investment into the new technologies that will provide jobs in the next decades. All scientific collaboration, whether with our European neighbours or elsewhere around the world, must be fostered, and the European Union should be credited for having advanced this cause.