Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Lord Ravensdale Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the Bill, and it comes at an extraordinary time for scientific progress in the UK and around the world. I first declare my interests as an engineer and project director working for Atkins, and as a director of Peers for the Planet.

As we look to accelerate R&D spend in the UK, it is right that the Government look at the means of delivering that spend, learning from the most successful similar institutions around the world, notably DARPA, from which ARIA takes its inspiration, as many noble Lords have said. ARIA certainly takes one lesson of DARPA to heart: getting bureaucracy out of the way and letting a high-calibre team deliver high-risk, high-reward research. But there are two other lessons of DARPA that are important: first, a clear purpose for the organisation—in DARPA’s case, national security; and, secondly, a client to take on and translate the innovations produced by that organisation—in DARPA’s case, the DoD. This perhaps becomes more important for ARIA. The £800 million is a generous amount of funding, but relatively small in the overall R&D landscape. To maximise the impact of this funding, the Government must carefully consider what the organisation is driving at, as the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Bethell, and others, have said.

The question then becomes: what should the purpose of ARIA be? It should be aligned with the strategic priorities of the nation, and foremost among these are the UK’s net-zero targets and environmental goals, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said at the end of his speech. Giving ARIA a sustainable purpose will still allow a flexible approach to research, while at the same time aligning with the innovation strategy, which highlights the need to direct innovation towards

“our top priority societal missions … like the climate and biodiversity crises”.

The recently published UK Net Zero Research and Innovation Framework does not mention ARIA, but stresses the importance of a whole-system approach to address the challenge of net zero. I would be grateful if the Minister would confirm how, without mention of our net-zero or environmental goals, ARIA will align with the Government’s broader objectives of net zero and, in addition, the mission suggested by the new Council for Science and Technology.

I have recently spoken with Professor Richard Jones, who has been involved in much of the thinking on the formation of ARIA, and a number of other academics who agreed with alignments with net zero and environmental goals being a suitable focus for the organisation. This represents an excellent opportunity for the Government to maximise the benefit from the £800 million funding; to demonstrate to international partners post-COP a new model for climate and net-zero R&D; and to develop the new technologies which we will need to help the UK and the rest of the world achieve our targets.

A final point is about how this organisation fits into the levelling-up agenda. The Government must carefully consider the location of the headquarters of ARIA. Another lesson learned from DARPA was that its headquarters location was fortuitously away from some of the main research centres of the United States, thus avoiding inevitable capture of research funding from institutions in a particular area and encouraging take-up of ideas from all parts of the country. I would be grateful if the Minister can add something in his summing up on how the Government intend to select a location for ARIA HQ.

As we all know, DARPA was formed in response to the panic following the launch of Sputnik in 1957. I believe that the response to the climate and nature crises should mirror the response so long ago to a very different threat in rethinking our innovation systems, and I hope that ARIA has a key part to play in that response. I look forward to putting forward amendments in these areas as we move forward to Committee.