Undersea Cables
Lord Fox Excerpts(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
There are two vessels. The “Sovereign” is the repair vessel I referred to, which the cable companies pay for and is on standby 24/7 to repair the cables. “Proteus” has a different purpose; it is an MoD vessel that can take account of all underwater structures. It is not a DSIT vessel but an MoD vessel with broad responsibilities.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, one way to mitigate risk is to have redundancy in the capacity of the cables, but redundancy costs money for the commercial organisations that own those cables. What is DSIT doing to ensure that there is sufficient redundancy to give us the protection that we need?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for a very important question. As I said, there are some 64 cable systems and 116 cables. We have a lot of redundancy in the system. Despite getting 10 to 20 breaks every year, they do not lead to an interruption because of that redundancy. Three things are important for the redundancy: the number of cables, the geographical diversity or spread of the cables—which provides protection—and the 24/7 emergency repair capability, with a planning consent that allows the vessel to get in very quickly.
Specialised Research Units: Closures
Lord Fox Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
The noble Lord will be unsurprised that I am a strong supporter of R&D funding and know the importance of its links to economic growth. It is crucial that we look at the spread of R&D funding. It is the case that it will be necessary, from time to time, to shut some things and open new things—that has always been the case—otherwise things become ossified and you never end up with new programmes. I fully expect there to be a continued pattern of renewed support for some areas and a closing down of others. What is important in the context of this particular scheme is that the same proportion of MRC funding will be spent on these new centres as was spent on the old units and centres.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that there has been both veiled and explicit criticism of the way in which UKRI conducts its work, particularly work of a bureaucratic nature. Will the Minister tell your Lordships’ House what conversations are being had between UKRI and his department, and indeed himself, to clear up those issues?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I will speak about these particular schemes first. These are seven years plus seven, with one review at the beginning and one review at six years. The whole idea is to reduce bureaucracy and make this simpler. UKRI is undergoing a full review of all its activities, with the aim to reduce bureaucracy, following the Grant review. I have discussed this with the CEO of UKRI and will keep a very close eye on it. I believe it is important that scientists get as much time as they can to do science.
Horizon Europe
Lord Fox Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
Any underspend on Horizon in the last year has been fully kept within the department.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, following the answer on visas, I think we all know that it is harder now for scientists to come in, and to bring their families, to work in the United Kingdom. We also know that Horizon projects have to be multinational, or have the most success by being multinational. Anecdotally, we hear that progress being made on Horizon is difficult and slow. How much of that slow progress does the Minister attribute to visa issues? In his conversations with the Home Office, what is the ask of that department to speed those visas up?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
There are, of course, a number of visa programmes—it is a points-based system—including the global talent visa and the skilled worker visa. We know that the number of applications for the global talent visa increased by about 16% between 2023 and 2024, so that we had 8,000 or so in 2024. It is important that the costs of those, including the immigration health surcharge, can be put on to the grants. The noble Lord is absolutely right that it is also important that it is as easy as possible to get these things done. We rely, and always have relied, in this country on immigration of talented scientists and exchange of people, and I hope that that will continue and be as easy as possible.
King’s Speech (4th Day)
Lord Fox Excerpts(5 months ago)
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Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I welcome the Ministers to their new positions and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, on his excellent maiden speech. I have to say that I am having to readjust; I spent so long looking opposite and finding the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, arguing. However, it is good to see that, in crossing the Chamber, he has lost none of his customary charm.
After years of an out-of-touch Conservative Government who took people for granted and left so many things needing to be done, this King’s Speech is very much being portrayed by the Government as a start to putting things right. The people who voted either Labour or Liberal Democrat crave these changes, so we welcome the intentions articulated in this King’s Speech and agree that the commitment to uniting the country is vital.
Given the paradoxically marginal nature of the Government’s overwhelming majority, unification should come, wherever possible, by reaching across the aisles. We have to reach agreement and work for the stability that we all crave. These Benches will work with the Government where we can to help deliver the changes that our voters so eloquently articulated, in that election.
I will focus briefly on stability, investment, infrastructure and skills, and leave it to others to talk about the important need to better facilitate trade with the European Union, and some technology issues.
The Government have quite rightly made growth their primary objective, and recognise that stability is needed to create the ground on which this can flourish. With the Budget Responsibility Bill, the Government are seeking to anchor economic responsibility into law. This is the anti-Liz Truss Bill and we look forward to the debate when it comes.
However, stability is more than just a law. Stability is projected by how the Government behave, how they make decisions and how they co-operate in the public and private spheres. That is where stability will come, so we very much welcome the news of a statutory industrial strategy council to oversee industrial policy.
At the same time, this King’s Speech tacks very much towards bigger government, with state intervention on energy, transport and planning. As I am sure Ministers opposite recognise, success will depend on getting the balance of government involvement right because, in the end, it is private investment that will deliver the growth that we need. For all the potential money in the national wealth fund, meaningful growth will come only if private investment flows. Unlocking that flow of investment is absolutely crucial.
Given we already have a UK Infrastructure Bank and the British Business Bank, and the Government say that they will start by operating through one of these anyway, I would be grateful if the Minister can explain why a third institution is needed to focus what is going on. Can the Minister say what, typically, will the national wealth fund be used for? How will its investments be decided? Will decisions be purely commercial or will strategic issues be included? Will the fund take stakes in businesses? How will those stakes be used—passively or actively?
As we have heard, infrastructure is crucial to delivering growth. To date, much of the commentary around the planning and infrastructure Bill has focused on housing. Of course housing is vital, but when it comes to national productivity it is going to be transport, energy and digital infrastructure that will drive that productivity.
Past Governments have made similar, perhaps less ambitious, plans to tackle the infrastructure challenges we face, but inevitably there is a big time lag before things start to happen. For all the talk of shovel-ready projects, these are few and far between. Ironically, the one shovel-ready project with a proven positive effect on national productivity is the northern leg of HS2, which the Government seem to have decided not to revive. Perhaps the Minister can explain why.
On a wider point, the Government’s planning proposals will be challenging to put in place, and we believe that planning must properly involve in some way the communities it affects. The delivery of big infrastructure projects is also an issue, as I am sure all of us in your Lordships’ House note. It was surprising that the Government decided not to give the National Infrastructure Commission a statutory role in overseeing national projects. Can the Minister explain how the commission, the UK Infrastructure Bank and the national wealth fund will work together, first in the creation of the long-term plan that was discussed during Questions today and then to improve project delivery once these projects are undertaken?
Finally, I turn to skills. The central question I have on the whole government agenda is: for all the Government’s targets, who will lay the bricks, insulate the houses and bring the electricity grid into the modern era? The Skills England Bill seems to lack urgency. Can the Minister explain the timetable for the development of both a plan for skills in this country and its implementation? When will we see any effect from it on the actual workforce?
In coming from the cafeteria today I caught sight of the Prime Minister talking about a migration strategy around skills. It seems clear that, at least in the short term, a sector-based migration strategy will be needed. It would be helpful if the Minister could explain what the Prime Minister was talking about.
I have one other quick win for the Government: they could turn the apprenticeship levy into a wider, more flexible skills levy straight away. We do not need consultation. Everybody who comments on this knows that this is what needs to happen, so why not do it now, and start the process of retraining a broader group of people? There is money left over from the apprenticeship levy that is not being used for skills.
It remains for me only to repeat that uniting the country requires a broad approach to deliver both benefits and stability across our country. We on these Benches will engage positively in all the discussions from this King’s Speech and beyond to assist in delivering the stability that this country needs.