Specialised Research Units: Closures

Lord Patel Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes a very important point. In the transition to this new model, all the existing units will be able to apply to the new model and there will be transition arrangements for those staff who do not become part of the new model and return to funding from the host institution or through grant funding. He is right that there will be specific centres with some role in global resilience, or another bespoke reason to keep them going, that will be looked at as special cases as part of this process.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as professor emeritus of the University of Dundee and its previous chancellor. The MRC unit in Dundee on protein phosphorylation and ubiquitylation has spawned many other sub-sections in cell signalling. I know the Minister is aware of the number of drug molecules developed using reversible phosphorylation. One of the aspects of the new system will be that it will limit the number of postgraduate trainees. I was always amazed how many postgraduates were graduating with a doctorate—20 to 30 at any one time. The new system will limit the ability to recruit that number of PhD students. That will be damaging to the reputation of the unit and our global recognition. Does he agree?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The noble Lord knows that I know that unit extremely well. It is a very important unit globally and it was given an award of £30 million recently. The new model will allow for a longer period of funding—seven years plus seven years’ funding, so a total of 14 years—with a different process of evaluation, which is a lighter-touch, less bureaucratic process. There is no reason why there cannot be a similar number of trainees going through the new system.

Horizon Europe

Lord Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Now that we are back in Horizon Europe and FP10, we will be looking to engage in that fully and shape it. In answer to an earlier question, I hope that that will include areas from which we are currently excluded. That will all depend on the backdrop of our relationship with Europe; you will see that it is warmer now and therefore we have had encouraging noises. I am due to meet Manuel Heitor, who is chair of the expert group on Horizon and FP10, to discuss how we can fully engage.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, it is good to hear the Minister, whom I welcome, say that the Government will engage in the Horizon 10 programme and its future form. Important also is that, when we were not members of Horizon, we collaborated with the Swiss research foundations. Will the Government assist in a negotiation to engage with Switzerland and the EU Horizon programme to readmit and collaborate with Switzerland?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Obviously, it is up to the Swiss to determine their association, but I will travel shortly to Switzerland to meet Science Ministers there. I will discuss our memorandum of understanding and how we can further engage in collaborations with Swiss scientists, which we see as incredibly important for the UK science base.

Horizon Europe

Lord Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

As I have said in this House before, there is no doubt that our period of non-association with the Horizon programme did lasting damage. We have to focus now on repairing that damage. It is very difficult to put a number in currency on the value of that and I am not sure I would know where to begin. I absolutely acknowledge that the damage was real and is going to take a very conscious effort to fix.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, it is good that from 1 January 2024 we are now associate members of Horizon, with the benefits it will bring, including the citation levels, but the Treasury withdrew £1.6 billion of funding that was earmarked for research during the time when we were negotiating joining Horizon Europe, and I understand from a further report published recently that a further £1 billion was removed. Can the Minister confirm that that is not the case?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

As is absolutely normal practice, money ring-fenced for a purpose to which it does not go is, in order to keep budgets taut and realistic, returned to the Treasury, but that in no way indicates an intention to diminish our spend on science and R&D. The Government remain committed to spending £20 billion a year on R&D by the 2024-25 spending review.

Cancer Research: Funding Gap

Lord Patel Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

The Government and academic institutions countrywide are very focused on making sure that the country remains an attractive place to conduct research. We have four of the world’s top 10 universities in this country—a significant research base. We believe and hope that we are an outstanding place to come to live and work as a researcher. There is no doubt that we will need a significant influx of researchers if we are to meet our scientific ambitions as a nation. We continue to monitor our generous points-based immigration scheme to make sure that we can continue to attract the brightest and best.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, much of the research, including cancer research, is carried out by universities. For that, the university has to spend money to build up infrastructure. That money mainly comes from the quality-related research or QR funding and the CRSF funding, the charity research support fund, both of which have declined, particularly as charity research funding increases and the government support does not. Is it the Government’s intention to increase QR funding in line with inflation and the CRSF?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

It is certainly the Government’s intention to maximise the results of conducting cancer research in universities and elsewhere. I think particularly that we do not give enough emphasis to our collaborations with business; in that respect I point to our work with BioNTech, which aims to provide 10,000 patients with immunotherapies by 2030, or the NHS-Galleri trial. As to the specific instance of the QR increase, I will happily write to the noble Lord.

Research, Development and Innovation Organisational Landscape Report

Lord Patel Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Indeed. The noble Lord is right: we have identified that from the base now of roughly 1 million people in this country working in R&D, taking into account retirements, by 2027 we probably need another 380,000 R&D workers. Inevitably, a great many of those are going to need to come via the immigration route. A wide variety of visa programmes can meet that need. The Government take the view that the going-in position is that those benefiting from visas, rather than the taxpayer, should bear the immediate costs of visas and healthcare. However, that is always kept under review and, should evidence emerge that we are not getting either the quantity or the quality of integration applications, then we will take appropriate action.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, there are two streams of funding that universities rely on: quality-related funding and charity research support funding. Both those funding streams are necessary for universities to develop infrastructure but both of them have been eroded over time. As charities have increased their funding for research, the amount of money available to support the universities has declined. Will the Minister commit to addressing those two issues and at least bringing funding up to inflationary levels?

Artificial Intelligence: Regulation

Lord Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Yes, indeed. It is a really important point that the development of AI as a set of technologies is going to oblige us to work across regulators in a variety of new ways to which we are not yet used. That is indeed one of the functions of the newly formed central AI risk function within DSIT.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, can I back up the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on access to data by research workers, particularly health data? Without access to that data, we will not be able to develop generative AI such as retinal scans, for instance, and many other developments in healthcare.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Yes, indeed. In healthcare in this country, we have what perhaps may well be the greatest dataset for healthcare analysis in the world. We want to make use of that for analysis purposes and to improve health outcomes for everybody. We do, of course, have to be extremely careful as we use that, because that is as private as data can possibly get.

King’s Speech

Lord Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I am pleased to take part in this debate on the gracious Speech and look forward to the three maiden speeches. I will speak briefly about the Government’s policy for science, innovation and technology, the regulation of AI and the use of data for research.

I fully acknowledge the clear commitment of this Government to science, technology and innovation, demonstrated by creating a Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, as already mentioned, maintaining UK membership of Horizon Europe, committing to public funding of R&D of £20 billion by 2024-25, passing the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act and creating the AI Safety Institute—all good news.

However, I was disappointed that the gracious Speech did not include the land use framework promised by Defra, the recommendations of the Skidmore review for an evidenced-based net-zero technology road map, nor regulation of genetically modified crops or the reform of narrow A-levels in education.

The science community also needs commitment to long-term funding at least 10 years ahead, as opposed to short-term, stop-start investment in science, as already mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. The UK is not alone in seeking to grow its R&D capabilities, with some countries significantly increasing their R&D funding to 3% to 3.7% of their GDP. For the UK to succeed, we also need to be open to the rest of the world.

The punitive cost of visas and health charges, as already mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, undermines our ability to attract talented individuals and we are losing out to our competitors. The Government need to address the issue of visa fees for young scientists.

To become a genuine science superpower, the Government need to go further than they have. A brilliant paper titled Wired for Success, produced by Onward, identifies four key principles as a guide to reforms to make the UK a science superpower. Setting an ambitious target for R&D spend, creating a future centre for technology and exempting the Department for Science from Treasury controls are some of its key messages. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, who played a key part in the report, may well say more.

Universities are key players in science-based activity, but some are finding it difficult to fund the infrastructure required to do so. As argued by CRUK, quality-related funding, or QR funding, and the charity research support fund, the CRSF, are two critical forms of government support for universities. But QR has eroded in the last decade and CRSF has declined in value as charities’ funding for research has increased. I hope the Minister will indicate what plans the Government have to increase QR and CRSF funding to universities.

As universities are major players in not only discovery science but innovation, is it not appropriate for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to be the home department for universities, instead of the Department for Education?

As for the regulation of AI, in my view, the broad principles on which AI regulations should be framed, apart from safety, should include the broader societal context, as was well articulated by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford in his speech yesterday. We need a bottom-up approach that captures a range of uses. Regulation should identify where responsibility lies and there should be clarity around transparency, accountability and redress. Finally, we need a global angle with regulations that work across nations.

I turn to the use of data for research. The world is on the cusp of a data revolution in biomedical research. Large-scale linkages and analyses of health data will drive innovations in health and care design and delivery. The 1.3 million daily contacts with the NHS generate data on health and well-being, diagnostics, imaging and genomic data at immense scale. The use of this data in a secure and co-ordinated way can optimise health care, manage the health service, augment clinical trials, improve population health management and, importantly, drive research and development. HDR UK—that is, Health Data Research UK—and others are already making progress in vaccine uptake, generative AI for retinal scans and many other areas in health.

The transformative potential of health data research in the UK is far from being realised, with significant gaps in the use of primary care data. A number of challenges remain in order to realise the benefits of health data research at scale. These challenges include demonstrating trustworthiness, creating a data ecosystem, streamlining data access, addressing skills needs, addressing issues on attitudes to risk aversion and protectionism and securing clear specific guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office. Without access to health data for research, the Government’s life sciences strategy could fail.

The law is part of the problem—the Data Protection and Digital Information (No. 2) Bill will not have a significant impact on health data science unless it is amended. I hope the Government recognise the importance of the use of health data for research and intend to do something about it through legislation. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.

In conclusion, the Government have shown commitment to the UK being a science superpower, but to achieve this they will need to do more, with the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology having a central role with clear delivery plans. They need to engage more widely with the science and technology community. It would be good if the Minister could reaffirm the independence of research funding bodies, including UKRI.

Artificial Intelligence: Regulation

Lord Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I certainly do not recognise a situation in which many of my governmental colleagues want to walk away from international regulations; indeed, I have just provided quite a long list of them. It is entirely appropriate that, within the bounds of safety and their remit, different public sector bodies use this crucial new technology. They do so not in an unregulated way but with strict adherence to existing regulations.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister clarify how the Government intend to regulate the use of NHS data, particularly the contract for its collection, which is awarded to an overseas company? Furthermore, the UKRI has requested that the Government invest in the significant amount of computing power which we do not have but require for generating AI in healthcare.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

The Independent Review of the Future of Compute, which we accepted in its entirety, guided us to commit £900 million initially to buying compute. We have confirmed the purchase of an exascale system in Edinburgh as well as the UK’s soon-to-be most powerful supercomputer, in Bristol. There will be further announcements on this as part of the summit next week. The use of NHS data is subject to not only stringent contractual requirements but, already, stringent regulations about data privacy.

Horizon Europe

Lord Patel Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I thank the noble Viscount for his question and pay tribute to his ongoing championship of our reassociation to the programme. I certainly agree on the importance of bringing in overseas talent via the visa system for this. We have roughly 1 million people today in this country working in R&D roles. We feel that, by 2027, due to retirement and bringing new researchers in, that number will have to increase by around 380,000, and overseas talent will be a very big piece of that. I am pleased to say that our very welcoming points-based visa immigration system is seeing quite strong increases in numbers. The skills-based visa system has seen increases of roughly 50% when compared to years before the pandemic.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I am pleased that we now have a settlement with Horizon Europe, and all the science institutions are very pleased with this news. It will allow us now to form collaborations with scientists in Europe and other parts of the world, which is an important part of research. We will also now be part of Copernicus, which drives research into space and satellite programmes, and that is also good news. The downside is that we will not be part of Euratom, because that is what the Government have decided. That is for nuclear research, which means that we will not be joining any nuclear research in Europe, where they are establishing the first trial fusion reactor in France. I hope that the new money that the Government will put forward instead of Euratom will be for nuclear research and will not be used for things such as manufacturing radioisotopes, which we have been short of since we came out of Europe—and we do need more of them. Can the Minister confirm when the Government will publish the forward plans for a replacement of Euratom and that the money will be for research?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his remarks overall concerning the Horizon programme. The reason the Government chose not to join Euratom and did not include it in our overall deal here was that the fusion nuclear sector very strongly advised us not to do so. That frees up approximately £650 million, which will be distributed in ways to be announced. I am afraid I do not have a date for that—these events have been very recent—but it will be announced as soon as practicably possible.

Advanced Research and Innovation Agency

Lord Patel Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Let me start by thanking the noble Viscount for raising the Question about this exciting organisation and for helpfully expressing his enthusiasm for it. He asked a range of questions, which I shall answer with one overarching point—that ARIA has been set up with complete strategic and operational autonomy away from government, so the more that government tries to interfere or find out about its day-to-day ongoings, the less autonomously it can behave, and that would introduce a system that would end up being antithetical to its existence.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I was a strong supporter of ARIA when the legislation went through to establish it and I remain a strong supporter of it. It is too early to know how it is performing because it is a long-term strategy of a high-risk, high-reward enterprise. However, I have absolute faith in Ilan Gur, its chief executive, and the board of directors, who are the guardians of the funds it is given. I have some information, but I too am not in a position to reveal it—but I am confident that ARIA will succeed.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his vote of confidence. It is a new kind of organisation that will invest with a high-risk appetite to shoot for outcomes that are bold, substantive and deeply impactful.