Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Bilimoria and Baroness Morgan of Drefelin

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 30th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (CB)]

When the Minister replies, perhaps he could say something about the role of UKRI in the thinking about regulatory harmonisation. Would he like to say something to create a bit of certainty regarding medical research, clinical trials and so on?

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, today I hosted a group of education leaders from India and in our discussion, they asked: “What are your worries about Brexit when it comes to the UK education sector?”. In listing my worries, a list which is too long to talk about now, I stated that one of my biggest concerned research. It is all very well for the Government to say, “We’ll keep giving you the funding for research that we get from the European Union, even if we leave”, but it is much more important than that. That is why I support Amendment 488 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay.

The key to research is collaboration. Already, we are seeing EU-funded research universities in Europe not partnering with UK universities because they are worried that we will be leaving the European Union. If I may illustrate the power of collaborative research, while I was in India in November, at the same time as the Prime Minister and the Universities Minister, Jo Johnson, the University of Birmingham held a workshop with the Panjab University. There we showed the power of collaborative research: when the University of Birmingham conducts research, our field-weighted citation impact is 1.87. The Panjab University figure is 1.37. Yet when we carry out collaborative research, the impact is 5.64, or three times the Birmingham figure. When we do research with Harvard University—I am an alumnus of the Harvard Business School—while Birmingham’s impact is 1.87 and Harvard’s is 2.4, our combined impact is 5.69. This is serious. We must encourage collaborative research with the European Union and this amendment should be in the Bill.