Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Debate between Lord Clement-Jones and Baroness Chapman of Darlington

Report stage
Tuesday 14th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I am largely going to speak to and support Amendment 1. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for raising these important issues on the question of ARIA’s ability to impose investment conditions. Unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, I do not see those as bureaucratic constraints.

One key issue in delivering technology into the market in this country is the commercialisation and translation of that technology. We have seen report after report telling us about that. The UK is a top nation for the global impact of its R&D but not so effective at innovation, where it ranks 11th in the world for knowledge diffusion and 27th for knowledge absorption, according to an October 2021 report by our own BEIS department. The greater risk averseness of the VC and private equity market for technology start-ups in the UK compared to that of the US is common ground in the investment community itself; we need to hang on to our unicorns. As a result, outside fintech, we have seen too many high-technology companies sold to overseas companies at too early a stage. We have heard examples from the noble Lords, Lord Broers and Lord Morse—and, in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Browne, took the risk of quoting the Daily Telegraph.

The National Security and Investment Act will impact on that to some extent, but in a limited number of sectors involving national security. Without this kind of scale-up support we cannot become—to coin the phrase so often used by this Government—a science and tech superpower by 2030. This excellent amendment will, I hope, ensure that those making decisions about future financing at least have some friction in the system to ensure that they have to think twice about where and how to raise capital for the future; at the same time, it gives ARIA skin in the game to help it do so. The Minister has said in correspondence that he shares the objectives of this amendment, so I hope that he will agree at the last stage to accept it.

As regards the other amendments by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in this group, I agree in principle with many of the issues that he has raised and the support for intellectual property rights that should be retained by ARIA in certain circumstances. He had powerful support from the noble Lord, Lord Broers, whose expertise we are certainly going to miss when he retires from the House.

As the noble Lord, Lord Browne, says, we have only this Bill today. We cannot solve all the problems relating to the taking of stakes by companies or our research institutions, but we can put this into ARIA’s terms; I very much hope that we will do so today.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, I find myself listening to some excellent speeches and frantically scratching sections from my own contribution as I do not see the point in repeating the points that have already been made. I put on record my thanks to my noble friend Lord Browne, in particular, for his generosity with his expertise and time in working so collaboratively on this issue, which has support on all sides. The principle is very simple: the state is taking a big risk by granting funds to speculative research projects. In cases where that risk pays off—we hope that is not an infrequent event, but we understand that this is about high-risk ventures—ARIA should have the ability to protect the potentially significant benefits that will arise from initial taxpayer support. It seems equally appropriate that ARIA has a say in potential takeovers or transfers of intellectual property. We know that there is a big market for speculative purchases of new technology. While ARIA may decide that there is no public interest in preventing certain events from taking place, there might be other investments that should be safeguarded.

It is clear from the debates that we have had in Committee and this evening that there is a shared desire on all sides—including, to be fair, from the Minister—to deal with this issue. He has correctly observed previously that the problem we are trying to fix is not limited to ARIA; that is understood and agreed with. However, while the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, does not fix everything, that does not mean we should not try to fix the thing that is in front of us now. It moves us in the right direction and is appropriate given the specific activity of ARIA; the Opposition are solidly in support of Amendment 1.

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[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and my noble friend have made a compelling case for supporting this amendment, based on the climate and ecological emergency that we face. Tackling those challenges will require massive innovation and ingenuity and the development of practical applications from that. If ARIA has the bold, independent, innovative culture that the Minister emphasised throughout Committee, then it must be the ideal vehicle for this research, and we should spell it out. We should make ARIA an essential component of the net-zero strategy.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, for bringing back his amendment on these important issues. It has been a real pleasure working with him and hearing from him throughout the debates on this Bill. In Grand Committee, Labour proposed making addressing climate change a core purpose for the first two years of ARIA’s existence. It is, after all, one of the greatest challenges, if not the greatest, that we face, and it is science and technology that we look to for new tools and solutions. We were disappointed by the Minister’s response to that suggestion and to the proposals put forward by other noble Lords. We feel this is of critical importance, so we would be prepared to support Amendment 4—depending, of course, on what the Minister has to say.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, has tabled Amendment 5, which seeks to promote three of the UN sustainable development goals, which Labour supports. My noble friend Lord Collins of Highbury looks for any opportunity to press the Government to secure progress on them, domestically and overseas. Without wanting to soften the Minister’s cough—as I think we say where we are both from—I am sure he will say that the Bill is not the correct vehicle. However, whether or not there is a vote, the Government should understand that amendments such as this, which embed climate as a golden thread in legislation, will be put forward by noble Lords and Members in the other place at every opportunity.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Debate between Lord Clement-Jones and Baroness Chapman of Darlington

Committee stage
Monday 22nd November 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, since nobody else is speaking and I had prepared a response to the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, I might as well briefly respond. I was going to say—indeed, I am saying—that this is a slightly random collection of amendments to say the least. As the noble Lord is not here, I can perhaps adopt a slightly more doubtful tone. As my noble friend Lord Oates made plain in the very good debate on Amendment 1:

“If the purpose of DARPA was to protect the national security of the United States by retaining its scientific edge against the threat of the Soviet Union, today, the threat from climate change, although very different, is some orders of magnitude greater.”—[Official Report, 17/11/21; col. GC 86.]


He went on to say that he agreed that it should be part of ARIA’s objectives. I very much agree with him.

On Amendment 26A, many of us asked this question at Second Reading; indeed, that is why we have tabled, and will be discussing, Amendment 47 regarding the framework for ARIA. It is extraordinary that we do not yet know what the arrangements will be with UKRI, research bodies and so forth, particularly in view of what the Minister said last week in Committee:

“UKRI has a broad portfolio of projects that it funds to tackle climate change across 12 different areas”.—[Official Report, 17/11/21; col. GC 96.]


He set out what all those areas are, but the risk of overlap seems considerable. Therefore, it seems important that we get to know what the relationships are between ARIA and other research bodies.

I am rather lukewarm about the renaming of ARIA. The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, quoted the Science and Technology Committee saying that ARIA was a

“brand in search of a product”.

The problem is not the brand; we want to look under the bonnet and see what it is actually going to do. The name is not what many of us are concerned about.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lord Stansgate, I should say a couple of words about his amendments. We tackled the issue of climate in some depth when we met last week; I thought that it was a useful discussion. On the name, I think that he was trying to get at why the change had been proposed. Perhaps the Minister, when he responds, can talk us through the Government’s thinking. I do not think that it amounts to a hill of beans, but it was something that my noble friend wanted to explore, to find out what was behind the change of thinking.

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[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Fox. It seems entirely appropriate that this committee should involve itself in asking for information from ARIA. I am fairly confident, given the Minister’s responses so far, that he would not share that view. This is the same theme that we have been on throughout all our deliberations. Whether it is this specific proposal, or one of the others that we have been trying to tempt the Government with, I am sure that we will be back at this in a couple of weeks’ time.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

This has been such a short debate that it is barely worth winding up. I will just reinforce the point that this is a cultural issue, in the sense that we are trying to get over here. It was interesting that the Minister made the rather runic comment that ARIA will interact with Select Committees of this House and the other place in the normal way. I think what we are trying to do is underline the fact that we need rather more than that; we need disclosure as well—otherwise, we are worried that we will not get that. Good heavens, the committee might even look at the framework document when it eventually sees the light of day. How about that? That would be quite novel.

One has seen the benefit of committee reports. The Science and Technology Committee has made extremely constructive comments around ARIA and UKRI. It has demonstrated the benefit of parliamentary scrutiny. Why do the Government think that parliamentary oversight is such a bad thing?

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[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, there is a splendid irony in what the Minister has just said as he trotted through the contortions of these amendments. I think he had a former life as a contortionist: it was quite extraordinary, really.

I do not think that these amendments are consequential; I think they are “Oops, we forgot something, actually”, as far as the Bill is concerned. Because of the way they treated the FoIA, suddenly everybody woke up to the fact that, for the purposes of that, ARIA was not a public body, because the Government had been so keen not to define it as a public body and therefore it had to be defined as a public body for the purposes of other legislation in a rather different way. So I do not think that this is consequential—except that it is something that probably should have been thought about when the original FoIA omission decision was made. No doubt everything will be clear after Report: the Minister will have his definition of a public body, everything will be logical and clear, and we will not have to have contortions such as this.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his explanation, which I find rather more digestible than the Minister’s. It would be very inconsistent of me not to make this one point: we would not need to be going through all of this had the Government done what they ought and subjected ARIA to FoI. It shows what a strange decision it was that the Government have had to do all this. I just wanted to make that point, really. I do not think there is much more to say about all of this except that, should the Government change their mind, or have their mind changed, on Report, we might have to have this kind of carry-on again as a consequence. Let us hope that we do.