Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 14th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, for his productive engagement on the amendments in his name, as well as others for contributing to this important debate. Clearly, this issue matters to us all. I will start by exploring the intention behind the amendment. If it is to signal the importance of climate action, of course there is no disagreement between us on that. It is clearly an issue of the utmost strategic importance to this country, and that is reflected in the Climate Change Act, which marks the UK as the first major economy to pass laws to end our contribution to global warming by 2050. Our statutory obligations and ambition on this issue could not be clearer, and they do not need to be marked elsewhere. I do not believe that we should add to this legislation to signal our general intent. It is not appropriate for any provision to be added to a Bill unless it has an actual effect.

The alternative is a statutory duty that seeks to influence—and therefore constrain—ARIA’s activity in some way and, as drafted, the amendment would do so in a very sharp sense. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, for his willingness to engage with the concerns that I put to him and explore alternative ways to achieve his objectives. I have raised these points with him directly, so for the benefit of others I will outline my position—with apologies to the noble Lord, who has heard all this before.

There are well-rehearsed arguments that I have put forward against a defined climate mission. I remind noble Lords that UKRI, through which the overwhelming majority of our public R&D funding is delivered, funds a full portfolio of projects focused on tackling climate change. Where there are specific research and innovation needs to support the Government’s strategic priorities in this area, UKRI delivers across: adaptation and resilience; clean energy; and sustainable industry, agriculture and transport. I think we are all aligned behind the idea that ARIA should complement, not duplicate, our existing capabilities. That is why this amendment is rightly presented now as a more general obligation. The excitement and support that ARIA has generated within the research community has been based on its different model of funding, with agility and risk appetite absolutely central to all the recommendations of how and why ARIA should be created.

ARIA should not be focusing on the scale-up and exploitation of known technologies, for climate change or indeed any other government priorities; noble Lords with expertise in this area will know well that the extent of its funding, at £800 million over five years, makes it completely unsuitable to play such a role. ARIA will contribute by focusing its programmes on the most ambitious objectives, and funding high-risk research and innovation to achieve them. When ARIA finds solutions to these hard problems or gathers learnings along the way, they will be adapted and applied to other fields in different contexts: that is where the benefits to our climate ambitions are likely to be felt.

Breakthroughs in materials science led to huge progress in what is possible in terms of battery storage or fusion. Those technologies are now critical to the energy transition, but much of the original research was not done with that goal in mind. Being prescriptive limits the scope to take completely novel approaches, as we hope and expect ARIA will do. Placing this obligation on ARIA requires us to answer the question: who will assess whether the radical breakthrough targeted by an ARIA programme might—in future, in some way—contribute to our climate goals?

The National Audit Office will assess the regularity of ARIA’s spending each year, which would include this addition to its funding. Is it well placed to make this assessment? That is not intended as any slight at all on the NAO—I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Morse, will be glad to hear that. However, I submit that even the researchers and innovators steeped in a technology cannot predict how it might evolve or be applied in the years to come. That is the nature of innovation and high-risk research. Essentially, it is unknowable. Adding this provision to the Bill asks us to make that essential assessment not only knowable but justiciable. Whoever performed the assessment of whether ARIA’s activities fell within the scope of this obligation would have their judgment subject to judicial review.

I strongly suggest that the actual effect of this amendment would be to push ARIA towards objectives where the assessment would be clear cut. It would disincentivise risk-taking, new approaches or exploring the application of technologies in unusual or unprecedented contexts. I submit that it would work against the grain of everything we are seeking to achieve with this organisation—

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Non-Afl)]

Is it not a fact that, although the Minister believes that we cannot make concrete commitments on method, we now have some very concrete commitments on outcomes? Glasgow is the best example of medium-term commitments. Unless we monitor those against the metric—the Minister will know that he used that word some months ago—how do we get around the following dilemma? We have concrete commitments on outcomes in a lot of areas but are now putting quite serious dilemmas—I am not saying it is nit-picking—before ourselves as to how we can make sure that we are on track to go where we are trying to get to.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his contribution. I am not 100% sure of the point that he is making. I agree with him that we have concrete commitments, but we have a well-defined track of a number of strategies heading towards those commitments. In the Bill we are talking about funnelling one small part of our R&D funding into a separate agency, while seeking to take novel, innovative approaches to research and development.

I have cautioned against placing this obligation in the Bill but that does not mean that it is unimportant for ARIA to have an awareness of these issues, as the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, articulated so forcefully. I am pleased that many noble Lords attended the briefing we held where my colleague George Freeman, the Minister for Science, Research and Innovation, discussed this. It is not plausible that any appropriate CEO candidate for ARIA would be ignorant of the opportunities connected to net zero within research and innovation. There is a similar situation with regard to Amendment 5 and the sustainable development goals, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

As a result of the ongoing discussions that we have had on this issue during the passage of the Bill, I am able to commit now that, as an alternative, ARIA will evaluate itself against the pillar of the 2021-25 greening government commitments most relevant to this amendment on mitigating climate change by working towards achieving our net-zero environmental goal. This would be included within the framework document; ARIA would therefore be required to consider this objective from its very first cycle of reporting and evaluation.

I also agree that it is through its projects, and its funding, that ARIA’s greatest contribution to our net-zero objectives will be made. I can therefore also commit that ARIA would have regard to its projects contributing to our climate change targets and environmental goals. This is distinct from the sustainability reporting framework and should sit alongside it as a broader obligation, rather than being part of that evaluation process. That consideration would again be included in ARIA’s framework document. In my view, that is the appropriate place for such requirements, which relate to the effective governance of the organisation and its alignment to wider public sector objectives, as it can be more readily updated to reflect changing circumstances or priorities.