Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Debate between Lord Ravensdale and Lord Lansley

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th November 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 26 in my name. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Browne, for their support for these amendments. I declare my interest as a director of Peers for the Planet and as an engineer and project director for Atkins.

There was much discussion at Second Reading of DARPA, the agency that has inspired ARIA. DARPA succeeded in changing the world because it took enormous gambles, failing often but with a few projects that succeeded, more than justifying the payouts and creating trillions of dollars in value. This freedom to take risks and to fail is its most important characteristic. That is exemplified by the second project that DARPA funded, Project Orion: a proposal for a manned spacecraft propelled by nuclear explosions. The head of DARPA at the time astutely stated that one of the main challenges was doing that in such a way that the occupants were not killed. While that particular high-risk project did not succeed, for obvious reasons, many others did: the internet, stealth technology and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine, to name but a few.

ARIA certainly takes that lesson from DARPA to heart, as described in the Bill: getting bureaucracy out of the way and giving a high-calibre team based on programme managers the freedom to deliver high-risk, high-reward research. But there is another vital lesson to take from DARPA which I referred to on Second Reading: a clear purpose for the organisation. Everything that DARPA does is defined by its aim of ensuring the technological supremacy of the United States armed forces. In 1958, the USA fortuitously hit upon a combination of factors for a research organisation—a clear purpose, freedom to fail, programme-manager-led—that literally changed the world. The US has taken this purpose-oriented approach in all its DARPA derivatives since, including ARPA-E and HSARPA.

To have the longevity and political staying power that DARPA has demonstrated, ARIA needs to have a purpose, and that purpose needs to be closely coupled to the strategic goals of the nation. Foremost among those strategic goals are the UK’s net-zero and environmental goals. Giving ARIA a broad sustainable purpose will allow a flexible approach to research, while at the same time being aligned with the innovation strategy that highlights the need to direct innovation towards

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

It will also ensure that projects and proposals that would be contrary to those strategic goals do not progress.

Attempting to reverse engineer DARPA is not a guaranteed route to success, but we need to take the benefit of real-world experience in learning the lessons of why DARPA succeeded and giving ARIA the best chance of success, which is what we all want.

We know how vital R&D is to achieving our net-zero and environmental targets. For example, the International Energy Agency has stated that almost half the emissions reductions required by 2050 are expected to rely on technologies that have not yet reached the market. In this area, what must be done—the key enabler to make net zero politically possible across the world—is to create green energy at a price point that is cheaper than fossil fuels. So, we need nothing less than revolution in net zero and environmental R&D to make our goals possible.

That brings me to the specifics of my Amendments 1 and 26. Amendment 1 is very simple. It states:

“ARIA’s purpose is to fund projects with high transformational potential in pursuit of a sustainable and resilient society, planet and economy.”


This amendment would give ARIA a broad sustainability purpose in line with the points I have made, and in that sense, I believe, would fulfil the need to orient ARIA towards alignment with the most important strategic goal of the nation, and indeed the world.

In crafting the amendment, I have listened carefully to feedback from the Minister during the progress of the Bill in the other place, in that the Government do not wish to unduly constrain ARIA. That is why the amendment is written around a broad sustainability purpose, not a specific net-zero objective or mission. My amendment is not about saying that other streams of research not specifically related to net zero or the environment cannot progress; just that any such streams must not be contrary to, and preferably support, the core strategic challenges. Having a broad purpose and key priorities in setting the direction of the organisation is what the amendment seeks to achieve, while still retaining the flexibility the Government want for ARIA.

My Amendment 26 would ensure that consideration for our climate and environmental goals is embedded within ARIA’s functions. It is modelled on similar government provisions in other legislation, including most recently in the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. As noble Lords will be aware, the Committee on Climate Change, given the advice that there is a need for a coherent approach to achieving net zero, has made it a priority recommendation for 2021 to ensure that all government policy decisions are compatible with the Government’s climate commitments.

In this sense, the amendment would align this Bill with other amendments the Government have put forward across a range of recent legislation, such as the skills Bill, the Financial Services Act and the Pension Schemes Act. To meet our goals, we need carefully to consider the systems aspects of net zero and ensure that consideration of these goals is embedded into all government policy and legislation where it is practical to do so.

Given how critical R&D is to achieving our goals, I hope the Government will agree that such considerations really need to be present in this Bill in order to align it with their broader strategy. It is not about stopping projects that are not directly related net zero; rather, it is about ensuring that the impacts in the context of compatibility with our climate commitments have been properly considered and factored into decision-making. It is a question of consistency with other legislation.

In summary, consideration of sustainability goals and functions in the Bill has wide support across the academic community, including from Professor Richard Jones, the science policy expert who has been involved in much of the thinking around the formation of ARIA. The amendment provides an excellent opportunity for the Government to maximise the benefit from the £800 million of funding, to demonstrate to international partners at this critical point post COP a new model for climate and net-zero aligned R&D, and to develop the new technologies that we will need to help the UK and the rest of the world achieve our targets. Finally, it would ensure longevity and long-term political support for the organisation, irrespective of the Government of the day, something the whole of Parliament can get behind. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. Two of the amendments in this first group are in my name, Amendments 25 and 27, and I want to speak to Amendment 27 first. It is grouped with Amendment 1 because we start by debating, quite properly, the purposes of ARIA as an agency. What is it here to achieve?

As the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, said, we are not seeking to replicate DARPA but to learn from it. DARPA said that its sense of mission was part of the reason for its success. However, that mission in this context was originally

“to prevent and create technological surprise”.

That is an interesting concept—to prevent technological surprise happening to the American Government and, at the same time, to create technological surprise on its own part. One might say that you could substitute “create technological advantage” in the latter case. Interestingly, in more recent years, when DARPA staff were asked what they regarded as their mission, they said it was to be part of “shaping the future”. Indeed, I think that is where our starting point should be. We want ARIA as an agency to be part of shaping the future.

My problem with Amendment 1—actually, I do not have a problem with Amendment 1, because you could stretch the language of sustainability anywhere; that is its advantage but also its problem. I am not sure I understand what the board of ARIA, or its leading members, would interpret as being outside the scope of the sustainability criterion. Does it actually help them? I am not sure that it does. If anything, they might feel that it constrains them towards certain missions. The DARPA example we ought to learn from is that, in practice, it set out to define for itself a range of missions within the organisation.

I note that sitting next to the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, is the noble Lord, Lord Broers. I take from his Second Reading speech the thought that the programme managers are at the heart of this system, and the programme managers are chosen in relation to the programmes that DARPA is pursuing. I suspect the same will have to be true for ARIA—that it has to decide, “What are our programmes?” The programmes, in my view, might be mission-led—for example, related to adaptation to climate change—but at the same time they might be technology-led. For example, they might be to pursue AI and the data economy or to look at cell or gene therapy. There is a range of those possibilities. We need to give ARIA, as an organisation, the flexibility to decide the missions that it thinks fulfils its purposes. The missions will develop over time, but the legislation cannot change repeatedly over time, so the legislation should be sufficient to enable ARIA to select the missions it wants for the future.

My Amendment 27 is in this group. A report of July 2016 produced for DARPA about innovation in DARPA isolated four “sources of success”, as it put it, the first of which was the “limited tenure” of the leading executive members

“and the urgency it promotes”—

nobody was appointed for a period exceeding five years. The second was a “sense of mission”, which I was just talking about. The third was “Trust and autonomy”—both giving DARPA autonomy but also within the organisation trusting and giving autonomy to the programme managers in particular. The fourth was:

“Risk-taking and tolerance of failure”,


which of course we are setting out to incorporate into this legislation for ARIA. I add that DARPA interpreted this as meaning “Move fast and take risks”—do not spend a great deal of time trying to assess all the risks, because you could lose the opportunities in the process.

Amendment 27 seeks to replace the language of Clause 3, not because I have any objection to the purposes set out in Clause 3; my objection is to the drafting. It says:

“ARIA may give particular weight”—


I am afraid I do not understand what is meant by “particular weight” or how people who read it subsequently will know what that means in this context—

“to the potential for significant benefits”.

We are all agreed about “significant benefits” and we know what they are because they are in Clause 2(6) above. It then refers to

“research … that carries a high risk of failure.”

It is awfully close to being a piece of legislation that says that ARIA should look for projects that are quite likely to fail because those are likely to give the most significant benefits.

This is not the approach that legislation should take. Legislation should be more deliberate. I thought: what are Ministers actually looking to do in this clause? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, in his Amendment 1. Ministers—and we—are looking for ARIA to seek to have transformational effects. I think we are agreed about that. That is why Amendment 27 refers to “transformational effects”. I have also included a reference to the possibility of technological advance through

“the development and exploitation of … research”.

I do not think that is mentioned elsewhere but I think it is helpful because, actually, many of the advances that have occurred, including in DARPA’s programmes, were not themselves the object of the mission but were the result of the process of discovery and curiosity and the exploitation of research.