Life Sciences Industrial Strategy (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn (Con)]

My Lords, it was a privilege to serve on your Lordships’ Science and Technology Select Committee under the expert chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Patel. At once I should say that, unlike many of the members of the committee, I have no special skill in the life sciences, while others, including the chair, are indeed experts in the field. I add my thanks to the officials of the House who helped the committee in its work and to the specialist advisers.

This is, of course, an area where the United Kingdom has long had an internationally established and highly distinguished role. For example, Francis Crick and James Watson were working in Cambridge when in 1953 they established and first published the double-helical structure of DNA, for which they, along with Maurice Wilkins, received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. They drew on the work of others, including the brilliant X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin. That work clearly transformed the field in which we are speaking today and brought the United Kingdom to the front rank.

The report, with the subtitle Who’s Driving the Bus?, draws substantially on the report by Sir John Bell, Life Sciences: Industrial Strategy, which was published in August 2017—with whose conclusions our committee in the main agreed. But the Bell report did not go on to deal in much detail with the implementation of its recommendations. This is where our report makes a number of more detailed recommendations, and it is here that the Government in their response in their White Paper of November 2017, their life sciences sector deal of December 2017 and their response to our report could usefully have been much more precise and explicit.

In this country we have the huge benefit of the National Health Service, which is open in principle without charge to all UK citizens. The potential value of the data which the National Health Service accumulates has been well discussed in our report and by members of the committee speaking this evening. It is clear that standardisation of the data, and the manner and terms for access to it, require clarification. That should expedite the process of innovation whereby new scientific and medical discoveries are implemented rapidly and widely. It is no easy task to expedite such innovation without being overcentralised, and much of our committee’s report is concerned with that process.

It is here that there are grounds for criticism of the Government’s reaction. For one thing, as other members of our committee emphasised, they could usefully and formally adopt the Bell report as government policy, which they have not yet explicitly done. That is one of the committee’s key recommendations.

A related point is the need for the Government to be more precise about their industrial strategy and to ensure that the strategy is effectively advocated at Cabinet level. We emphasised that it is important that the Government at Cabinet level should have these issues clearly in mind.

There is one word of caution which I will add. Our report, like Sir John Bell’s report which preceded it, is concerned primarily with health and the medical sciences. It is certainly a large enough field, but our committee's report does not deal with other life sciences: botany, animal zoology, agriculture or biochemistry outside the medical sciences. They are vast fields. Our report makes that point explicitly, but there is a risk that those who read it hastily may feel that it covers the whole field of the life sciences, which it certainly does not. There is certainly scope here for further consideration of these vital fields.

Overall, there is a feeling that the Government certainly appreciate the vast importance of this field and the need for adequate funding. However, unless they sharpen their focus and consider more closely the precise nature of their policy and the manner of its implementation, the position will not be optimal. This is one of the fields of science and technology in which Britain has led the way and continues to do so, yet both the health of the nation and a major section of the economy depend on increasing our effectiveness in this area. That is the challenge which lies before us.