Science and Innovation Strategy

Lord Fox Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, it is difficult to be innovative in this debate, having heard 10 such erudite and thorough speeches, and possibly because I have already left the creativity window that the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, has just ably described, but I will do my best. We should first congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Patel, as everybody has, on securing this debate and on the quality of his intervention. We should be optimistic that this debate is being had, and grateful that all sides of the House are doing so on relatively similar terms, because we will and do need a plan, leaving aside the implicit issues around Brexit—which will enable me not to be chippy or curmudgeonly at all when I talk about some of the other issues that face public life.

The world is changing fast. There is the rise of international competitors, particularly from the East, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, pointed out. There is the emergence of global technology giants, which stand across borders and territories. The looming shadow of automation, machine learning, robotics and all that are also changing the game and we have to step up. But we should be optimistic that our science and technology background may set us up to do that.

We have an industrial strategy on the cards, yet I often get the impression that when we talk about that emerging strategy, we all say what we want it to be. That wish probably differs across the House, so I thought I might give your Lordships some perspective on how we will judge the industrial strategy when it emerges from its current form, in a White Paper. We need to understand whether it will develop the skills we need; I will come back to that. But will it create sustainable and green growth across the country? Will it deliver 21st-century infrastructure, physical and digital? Will it encourage and improve investment in research and development? Will it nurture excellence while supporting and understanding entrepreneurs and innovators? Does it deliver regional and diverse growth across the country and establish the best financial and regulatory framework? That is the kind of framing we need to bear in mind when we look at that industrial strategy.

Underpinning this are skills. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, ably set out the case for them. We need a society that can thrive, and we need that thriving to happen right across society. We are not in that position. As noble Lords will have seen, according to the OECD nearly one-third of 16 to 24 year-olds in the UK have weak basic skills. Mark Walport, when he was still leading the Government Office for Science, gave a similar, damning assessment. High-level skills are not equally distributed across the country. There are big gaps. The UK does not do well in ensuring that people are work ready. Even when they get to work, there has been a decline in lifelong learning, so we have a big skills challenge.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, pointed out, that challenge has faced many Governments over many years, and we do not appear to be overcoming it easily. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, set out the need for an overarching skills and learning strategy. The Liberal Democrats support that strategy and have been campaigning on those grounds. Apprenticeships and T-levels have been offered as a solution, but they are not a unique solution. Without a gear change in delivering the basic skills that people need as a starting point to drive them through to higher levels, we will not meet the challenge.

Turning briefly to research and innovation, we welcome the recognition in the last financial statement that research and innovation need investment to thrive. That was a good step, and we hope it is just one step in a more ambitious investment journey.

The creation of the new unified UKRI has been referred to by a number of noble Lords. I was grateful to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, sees positive effects from it, and the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, should be congratulated on his role in helping to bring that forward. There is an opportunity and a challenge in bringing the seven research councils and UKRI together. The opportunity is, in a sense, that UKRI infects the research councils with innovation. I think that was what my noble friend Lord Willis was referring to. The danger is that it is the other way around and we move somewhere down the TRLs, into 1 or 2, and UKRI is dragged into research rather than innovation and development. I would like the Minister’s view on how we keep the right side, if you like, of that continuum because we do not want to lose the innovation we have.

The industrial strategy challenge fund seems to be a good idea, and it would be useful to understand the timetable. I understand that the Faraday challenge will be heading out soon. I urge that we get an early assessment of how that process is working because we do not want to keep making the same mistakes. It looks as if this is a way of tackling big problems, but we would like the Government to keep us posted about how that moves forward. The Government have likened this to DARPA, just as they have likened catapults to Fraunhofers. There is an element of delusion in this. The challenge process is not DARPA. It is not big enough or wide enough and it does not have the support of huge industries. We have to be careful how we describe what catapults do. Catapults have been a welcome introduction into the innovation landscape, and we could benefit if the Government were to put more money in and perhaps declare a few more catapults, but we should be careful in the language we use.

Are we fit for purpose? Do we have an industrial strategy that embraces the challenge and delivers the skills and the landscape that we need because we are going to need it? Industry 4.0 will change everything we do. We will need the skills and we will need to maintain, and further, investment in research and innovation, substituting lost funding from the European Union and adding more. We need to step forward with an overarching sense that this is a mission. Here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, and with what he said in the nuclear debate a few days ago. The nation needs to find its momentum, its push and go, around science. We, as people in public life, should be part of that process of developing that energy.