Specialised Research Units: Closures

Lord Kakkar Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

As the noble Lord may be aware, I have been very clear about the need for supporting basic curiosity-driven, investigator-led research, and I will remain resolute in that determination. Some of these new centres have specified areas, such as mental health and multi-morbidity, but there is a whole round which is unspecified, allowing for people to put forward ideas of their own for units of the future, which I believe will be important for the very reason the noble Lord says.

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my registered interests. The funding base to support science in some of our leading universities, including those that may host these centres in the future, has become dependent on cross-subsidy from overseas student income. Is the Minister content that, with the obligation for universities to play a greater role in supporting those centres that receive MRC status, the funding base for scientific research in our universities is sufficiently secure to make that possible?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Universities have been under pressure, as the noble Lord knows, for a number of reasons, including student fees, overseas student numbers and questions about the full economic costs of research in addition to inflation. These are all important areas that will need to be looked at. It is worth remembering that, over the years, roughly one MRC unit per year has closed and a new one has started. This process is part of that continuing change, which I believe is important to make sure that we stay at the cutting edge. As part of that, the staff on the new wards will be fully paid. The principal investigator salary is the one that will have to be picked up in part by a host institution or by other grants coming in to provide support.

Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence

Lord Kakkar Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that important question. The convention does not apply to military matters, but the responsible AI in the military domain—the REAIM Forum, which the UK co-hosted in September this year—covers exactly those issues, which are incredibly important.

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my registered interests. The Minister will be aware that the regulatory approaches to approving innovative medicines and to approving novel medical devices are quite different. With the introduction of AI to drive many of those devices, their impact on human health may be just as profound as administering a novel therapeutic. How do His Majesty’s Government propose to go about aligning the regulation of devices in the future when they are AI labelled?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

We are taking a sector-specific approach to AI regulation. On medicines, we announced last week the formation of the regulatory innovation office, which will look specifically at the question of AI in healthcare to try to bring together the different regulators and make sure that we have a clear system.

Horizon Europe

Lord Kakkar Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my registered interests. The Minister indicated that we have got off to a good start in 2024, but that is particularly in terms of applications for European Research Council funding. The start has been less promising for Horizon pillar 2 funding, which requires collaboration between businesses and academia. What action do His Majesty’s Government propose to take to ensure that those kinds of relationships can once again be established and that we have a more successful approach to achieving that funding?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The noble Lord is quite right that the numbers are looking more promising for 2024, particularly in the European Research Council mono-beneficiary schemes. In the collaborative and industry schemes, things still look fairly flat, although there are some examples of very good progress. In the European rail project, 61% in the most recent round had a UK participant and five out of the seven successful bids had UK participants, so there is some progress. We are doing a number of things: there is an increased communications campaign, the last one having led to a substantial increase of 64,000 hits on the UK Horizon website; there are roadshows, most recently in Birmingham and Glasgow and soon in Northern Ireland and Wales; there are pump priming grants, which have led to an ability to get money to work out how to make applications to Horizon programmes—I am pleased to say that of those people who received those grants and put in applications, 100% were eligible. Finally, European network programmes are being set up to link UK academic teams and industry to European teams in the most successful countries.

King’s Speech (4th Day)

Lord Kakkar Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Vallance of Balham, on his excellent maiden speech and the very thoughtful way in which he has introduced today’s debate. In so doing, I remind noble Lords of my own interest—in particular, that I am chairman of King’s Health Partners, UK Biobank and the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research, as well as serving as chancellor of the University of Lincoln.

In opening this debate, the noble Lord identified the importance of science and innovation to so many elements of His Majesty’s Government’s current agenda. The mission agenda ensures that the impact of economic growth benefits citizens as quickly as possible. Among the different domains and disciplines of science, life sciences play a particularly important role in providing the opportunity not only for substantial wealth creation in the economy but for substantial health gain, as the product of life sciences innovation is applied to practice in the NHS and, most importantly, to preventing ill health.

The Minister identified a number of potential hurdles that need to be overcome to ensure that the life sciences industry in our country and the broader ecosystem can progress at a rate that can make a meaningful impact. He mentioned the need for the development of new infrastructure and to secure growth funding to allow spin-outs and small-stage companies to develop at the pace that will provide maximal opportunity.

There are four other important areas that require very careful and immediate attention from His Majesty’s Government if the true potential of life sciences in our country is to be realised. I would be grateful if the Minister who will close the debate—my noble friend Lord Livermore—might be able to reflect on what approach His Majesty’s Government are going to take.

First, there is the question of free movement of scientists into our country and, in particular, the visa regime that is currently employed and the ease with which it can be used to encourage brilliant scientists to come and settle here and contribute not only to work in our universities but in the broader life sciences sector.

Secondly, there is the question of securing the research science base in our universities. Regrettably, that has been eroded over time. QR funding and full economic cost recovery have not been achieved appropriately for many years, and now charities and other funders of research find it very difficult to ensure that brilliant research programmes can be applied. We all recognise that overseas student income is a fundamental part of the university business model, to underwrite the opportunity for the science base in our universities. There is uncertainty about the future of large numbers of overseas students coming to our country, and His Majesty’s Government will need to address urgently the approach to securing the research base in our universities, which is critical not only to creating the talent that will service the life sciences sector but to securing the intellectual base of many of our research-led universities.

The third area is ensuring that the NHS, under substantial pressure to ensure clinical delivery, does not miss the opportunity to play its vital role in life sciences research and development. We must have a strategy to develop clinical academics, so that this part of the overall workforce continues to be nurtured and we have sufficient clinical academics able to serve and provide the opportunity for clinical translation and the rapid application of innovation to improve human health and outcomes in our National Health Service. This is particularly important since ill health is now such a drag on the economy and therefore, in addition to many other measures, innovation delivered through academic medicine will be vital to overcome that problem.

The final area that needs to be urgently addressed, as the Minister—my noble friend Lord Vallance—identified himself in his maiden speech, is the question of data. It is one thing to talk about or focus on the technological advances that will provide federated platforms for the use of the substantial datasets that we have available in our country, quite unique in the world; it is quite another to secure the social licence that will ensure that there is broad public support for the use of those data to drive forward the life sciences research agenda. Will the Minister comment on the approach that His Majesty’s Government propose to take to establish that social licence?

Advanced Artificial Intelligence

Lord Kakkar Excerpts

Monday 24th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, it is a distinct pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, and to join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Ravensdale on the very thoughtful way in which he introduced this important debate. I declare my interests as chairman of King’s Health Partners, chairman of the King’s Fund and chairman of the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research.

There are few areas in national life, the conduct of government and the delivery of public services that will become as dependent on artificial intelligence as that of healthcare. It is that particular area to which I will confine my remarks. We all recognise that there are increasing demands on the delivery of healthcare services through a changing population demographic, a subsequent increased demand on clinical services and a substantial workforce shortage. Of course, with all that increasing demand, there will be the need either for the economy to grow at a substantial rate to be able to provide funding for those services or for us to adopt innovation to deliver those services. One of the important innovations is of course the application of artificial intelligence. We have seen that already in healthcare in the areas of diagnostics, imaging and pathology. It is helping us to deliver high-throughput analysis of scans of pathological samples, and, through the application of algorithms, it is helping us to determine better the risk of poor outcomes in patients, to improve diagnosis and therefore to improve the efficiency of our service.

However, there are also substantial challenges. The development of artificial intelligence modalities requires access to high-quality data, and in healthcare we know that data are fragmented across the system through the use of different methods for the collection and creation of them. As a result, unless we have a single approach to the collection of data, we run a substantial risk that the data used to develop and to train AI systems will be inaccurate, and, as a consequence, inaccuracy will be translated into the provision of clinical services. That will potentially drive discrimination in those services, whereby the data on underrepresented populations are not sufficiently incorporated into the development of such technologies and tools.

Successive Governments have had great difficulty in establishing the social licence that will allow for the broad collection and use of those data to drive research, technology and innovation opportunities in healthcare. The whole data area will be one of the most important regulatory challenges in the safe and effective development of AI technologies in healthcare. Does the Minister believe that His Majesty’s Government are at a place now where they can secure access to those data to drive these important opportunities? If not, how will they drive the data revolution in such a way that the public, more generally, are confident that those data will be used broadly for this purpose and other research and development purposes?

The MHRA in 2020 defined the regulatory pathway for the adoption of AI technologies as one very much mirroring those for medical devices. Clearly, some years have passed since that important approach to the regulation of AI was first established. The rigour with which the development of devices, or the regulatory supervision of the development of devices, is applied is slightly different to that for other therapeutic innovations. Is the Minister content that, in pursuing a pathway of regulatory development that is based on the device pathway—which is predominantly risk-based; that is reasonable—and looks at the safety and performance of these applications, there will be sufficient regulatory rigour to provide public confidence?

Regulatory elements of that pathway must not only include an understanding of the source of the data used to develop these technologies but provide a requirement for transparency in terms of an appropriate understanding of what forms the basis of the AI application. That is so that there can be a proper clinical understanding of the appropriateness of that application and of how it can be applied in the broader context of what must be understood about patients and their broader circumstances to reach an appropriate clinical decision.

Beyond that, there are also substantial concerns about ethical considerations in terms of both data privacy and the questions asked to train a clinical application being properly grounded in the modern ethics of healthcare delivery. Is the Minister content that the current regulatory pathway is sufficient and what steps are proposed by His Majesty’s Government to continue to develop these regulatory pathways so that they keep pace with the important advances and therefore benefits that will be derived from AI in healthcare?

Medical Research Charities

Lord Kakkar Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

The funding for the Pioneer programme would end up being the same as the funding that would be made available were we to join the Horizon programme, as is our preference. As to individual elements within the Pioneer programme, I cannot comment on their size right now because the programme continues to be based on huge input, which we greatly welcome, from all aspects of the sector.

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to my registered interests. Is the Minister able to explain how the funding that had originally been allocated to the Horizon programme and has not been spent on that programme to date has been applied, and can he confirm that the residual funds that have not been applied will be applied to drive the science agenda in our country?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

As is normal practice in order to keep budgets taut and realistic, funding that was not spent on the Horizon programme due to our non-association was returned to the Treasury. However, should we—as is the Government’s preference—be able to associate with Horizon, those funds would contribute to Horizon.