Retirement and Participation Committee Report

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, I support some of the committee’s suggestions but not others. I have never knowingly supported discrimination based on gender, race, religion, disability or age and will not support a mandatory retirement age of 80 for Members of this House. There are excellent Members of that age and above who have brought unparalleled wisdom and experience to this House.

It is worth noting that the UK does not have a general retirement age. Though we have a state pension age, the two are not the same. There is no mandatory retirement age for an MP, Prime Minister, Head of State, councillor, company director or mayor. People can continue in office for as long as they can discharge their duties. Therefore, the introduction of one retirement age for Members of this House is inappropriate. Yes, there is a maximum retirement age for judges and magistrates, but the crucial difference is that in most cases they make decisions as individuals, whereas Members in this House make decisions collectively.

Some have argued that forced retirement at 80 will help to renew this House while bringing in younger Peers. There is no barrier to that and it is good to see younger Peers in this House. Some complain that we have too many Peers, but that has not prevented parties appointing new ones. I have no problem with a 20% attendance requirement as a condition for continued membership of this House. However, I wonder who will be sending reminders to Members of how close they are to the 20% threshold and what the scenes will be in the last chance saloon.

I can understand the committee’s difficulties in grappling with a possible requirement to ask for participation instead of attendance. Participation depends on potluck in the ballots and whether the Bills fall within noble Lords’ area of expertise. During Oral Questions, Members can bob up and down but may not catch the Government Whip’s eye. Some may wish to be a member of a committee but may not be favoured by the party Whip and be silenced.

Ultimately, we need to distinguish working Peers from the rest, and as an emeritus professor, I like the concept of an emeritus Peer—there is a kind of symmetry to it. The reform that I really wish to see is unfortunately beyond the remit of the committee—the replacement of this House by an elected Chamber. In the 21st century, we should not have an unelected Chamber of political appointees, with reserved seats for clergy from just one religious denomination. Other countries have two elected chambers of Parliament, and we should learn from their experiences.

This possible reform raises complex constitutional issues and needs broad and prolonged public conversations. The last thing we need is a clone of the House of Commons, where ruling parties over the years have curtailed debates and leaders have silenced critical voices by banishing dissenters altogether. It is also unacceptable to have both Houses under the control of one party, and its Members must not be on the payroll of private interests either. Therefore, I urge the Government to begin the process of a meaningful reform of the House of Lords and bring proposals forward so that we can make the desired constitutional change as soon as possible.

Direction of Government

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I was disappointed when the party opposite set its face against the Employment Rights Act in the way that it did. It is important, and most employers which are good employers find the benefits from it in both their balance sheets and their productivity. I have not heard the Prime Minister talk about repealing anything in the Employment Rights Act, but we want to work with employers on how we implement it and ensure that they can get the best from their workforce. One of the things that we are doing is providing the grants and support we were talking about to take on young people and people with disabilities. Unless we look at the whole nation for employment, employers are losing out, and the country is losing out as well.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Prime Minister’s Statement, and he faces a daunting task in reversing the Conservative legacy. This includes 25.3 million people living below the minimum living standard, declining life expectancy, potholed roads in every street, 7.6 million on NHS waiting lists in England alone, social care in disarray, universities in crisis, the poorest 20% paying a higher proportion of their income in direct and indirect taxes than the richest 20%, and the UK languishing at or near the bottom of the G7 and the OECD league of investment in productive assets. I am not sure there is enough paper in this place, but will the Leader consider producing a list of Conservative failures?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I will do my best in the time available, but I might not be able to repeat them all. One thing that is important to note is that decisions, and consequences of actions taken, do not happen in a vacuum. I come back to the example I gave earlier: the failure of some of the privatisations, water being an example, where we then failed to invest in the water companies. We are paying for the consequences, from dirty rivers and water supplies being cut off. At the end of the day, we have to look back and see what went wrong, and why some of those things had such a disastrous effect on the lives of people in this country. As a Government, we can do better. It is important to be optimistic and to offer hope, but also to offer concrete change that really makes a difference; not just providing economic growth, but a better quality of life for every citizen of this country, and—to coin a phrase—growth in every postcode.

G7 Summit

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I have to say to the noble Lord that I think he has a short memory. When we look at what happened on defence under the Government whom he supported, the record is very poor. When the last Labour Government left office, we were spending 2.5% of our GDP on defence; that was then cut during the time the Conservatives were in office. We have now got it back up to 2.5%; we said that we would do that by the end of this Parliament, but we have done it sooner. Under the noble Lord’s Government, the Army was cut from 100,000 troops to just 72,000. His Government missed their Army recruitment targets every year for 14 years. We lost a quarter of our frigates and destroyers, we cut the minehunters and we failed to decommission decades-old kit and equipment; nor did his Government do anything to address the conditions that our military families were living in. We have made huge progress on a lot of those issues, particularly on accommodation and on procurement—which, I have to say, was a real mess. So it is a bit rich for the noble Lord to give lectures.

However, that does not mean that we do not have to do more. There are two things, as I said. One is how we provide the money, but the other is how we work with other countries to ensure that we can work together on our procurement and have interoperability between the systems that we use. We need to take this extremely seriously. When the noble Lord says, “You have failed”, he is not recognising the work that we have done to clear up the mess that was left, which we are proud to do. That is not to say that we do not want to do more. The world is a dangerous place, and there are a range of issues. I might suggest that the noble Lord writes a book about this—I feel a novel coming on. In the absence of that, I assure him that this is probably the most serious issue that is at the top of the current Prime Minister’s in-tray, and it will be at the top of the next one’s.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, my concern is about the relevance of the G7. It was held together by the economic might of various countries, but now India and China are challenging, and they are not part of the G7. It was held together by the advancement of the rules-based international order, which has been undermined by President Trump. G7 countries have been unable to find solutions to things such as poverty eradication, climate change, and even the taxation of corporations. Given that issues of common interest can be discussed at the UN and with the G20, the BRICS countries and the EU, and in many other bilateral and multilateral settings, what proposal do the Government have for making the G7 relevant?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, when I look at the communiqués and outcomes, and particularly at the engagement of the US on Ukraine at this G7, the message I have received from people who were there is that this was one of the most constructive G7s for many years. I say to the noble Lord that any opportunity for countries to come together, discuss issues and engage is beneficial. Sometimes they will make progress, sometimes they will not, but the fact that they are there together and willing to have these discussions is beneficial. I suggest that the noble Lord reads the communiqués and sees how productive this particular G7 was.

Ministerial Salaries (Amendment) Bill

Lord Sikka Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 14th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the Bill. However, I have a number of questions that I hope the Minister will be able to answer, as we have an opportunity to debate issues about payments to unpaid Ministers. Let me say at the beginning that it is understandable that, due to the complexities of the social world and related workload, the number of Ministers needs to be increased, but that does not necessarily mean that we will have better or more accountable government.

I like the idea of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work and fully support ending the practice of unpaid Ministers. I am sure that the Minister would now like to extend that principle to the entire population. We have nearly 6 million, predominantly female, unpaid carers who provide vital support for the old, sick, disabled and unfortunate. Their labour reduces pressure on public services. When will they be paid a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work? Some 1.4 million carers receive carer’s allowance of £86.45 a week, which adds up to £12.35 a day. Can the Minister explain when the principle of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work will apply to carers? It is vital that it applies to everybody, not just to Ministers.

We also need transparency about the income and wealth of all Ministers. Disclosures in the Register of Members’ Interests are very limited. Over the years, there have been numerous scandals about the tax affairs of Government and shadow Ministers. One way of instilling public confidence in the institutions of government is to require Ministers to publish their tax returns. In recent years, the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Deputy Prime Minister have published their tax returns, but that needs to be on a statutory rather than voluntary basis. It should apply to all Government and shadow Ministers and be extended to Members of this House and the other place.

There was a glimmer of hope in Labour’s Fair Tax Programme in 2019, which promised:

“Public filing of tax returns of wealthy individuals”,


but that pledge seems to have been ditched. In Norway, everyone’s tax return has been publicly available since 1814, which is a major reason why it has fewer tax and political scandals. The extension of tax transparency can help to avoid scandals and enhance confidence in the political system. I hope that the Minister will commit to introducing a Bill in Parliament that will facilitate tax transparency of ministerial incomes and wealth.

All too often, Government and shadow Ministers argue that worker salaries and salary increases should be related to increases in productivity. Of course, the allocation of productivity to each individual worker is highly problematic and very difficult to calculate, but that has not stopped Ministers pushing the idea. Can the Minister explain how the productivity of the newly paid or already paid Ministers is actually measured? Is there a mechanism? Can she share it with this House and the public at large? Can she publish the results so that people can then comment when they are asked to increase their productivity?

Cuba: Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I hear the noble Lord. The United Kingdom, under all Governments, has opposed the US embargo against Cuba, which negatively affects living standards, as I said, and impedes economic and political development. Since 1996, the United Kingdom has consistently voted in support of the annual United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for an end to the embargo. Most recently, we did so on 29 October 2024.

The noble Lord is right. Titles III and IV of the US Helms-Burton Act prevent and restrict British companies, among others, from conducting legitimate and lawful business in Cuba. We have made representations in that regard, and we are absolutely concerned about the ongoing impact on the economic development of British companies and companies within Cuba.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, Cuba, a comparatively poor country, has 9.31 doctors per 1,000 people and exports medical professionals. The UK has 3.2 doctors per 1,000 people, well below the EU average, and struggles to produce doctors; it has imported 32% of its doctors. On the assumption that we can all learn from other countries, will the Government study Cuba’s health system and seek its help in addressing doctor shortages in the UK?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I reassure my noble friend that we are absolutely committed to learning from best practice. One thing I have learned as Minister for Africa is how we can learn from many African countries—because they have focused on primary healthcare and prevention. I think it is really important that we look at best practice everywhere and see how we can adopt it.

Ministerial Gifts and Hospitality

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, any gifts, earnings, et cetera to Members of Parliament have to be declared in full. Of course, not all those whom the noble Lord mentioned are still Members of Parliament. I think all organisations would want to make a judgment on whether or not they were getting value for money.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, the Front Benches may well cross cocktail sticks, but people looking at undue hospitality and gifts see the whole thing as sleaze and corruption. That damages trust in institutions of government. In my view, the most effective antidote is to make the giving and receiving of gifts and hospitality above a certain amount a criminal offence. Does the Minister agree? If not, why not?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

No, my Lords, I do not agree that it should be a criminal offence, but there has to be complete transparency about this. Presumably, many Members of this House have wanted to attend cultural events or seminars and conferences, sometimes to inform the work they do in this House. That should be declared, but so should cultural events that are received as gifts. Some of the media outlets that have complained rather bitterly about others taking hospitality have themselves offered hospitality for Ministers to discuss the very issues they are interested in.

Business of the House

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I thought that question had strayed from the House of Commons, so I was not planning to give it an answer.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not sure whether this is the appropriate place to ask some questions about the way we do business in this House, but I will try. The brief background to my point is this: ever since BHS’s demise in 2016, the Government have promised legislation that has not materialised. Then, on 19 July 2023, the Government published a draft statutory instrument, the Companies (Strategic Report and Directors’ Report) (Amendment) Regulations 2023. It was scheduled to be debated in this House on 17 October, as per the business papers. However, the afternoon before, the Government issued a press release stating that the proposed legislation had been withdrawn. The next day’s business papers in this House, on 17 October, said that the Department of Business and Trade had withdrawn the regulations that were due to be debated on that day. No other statement was made to this House. Can the Minister explain why no statement was made to the House when the announced legislation was withdrawn? I am sure he would agree that press releases are no substitute for Statements and Questions in Parliament. Will he now ensure that the relevant Minister comes to this House to make a Statement about this withdrawn legislation and take the appropriate questions?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, many thousands of statutory instruments are tabled in draft every year under every Government. It is not usual to make a Statement in Parliament on rescheduling statutory instruments. In relation to these draft regulations— I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving me notice on the subject about which he was concerned—the department had carried out a call for evidence to inform a review of existing non-financial reporting. This high- lighted strong support from both UK business and investors for existing company reporting to be simplified and streamlined. The Government therefore decided that it would be better to consider the reporting measures contained in the draft regulations alongside wider reforms to deliver a more targeted and effective corporate reporting framework. I know that the noble Lord is a great enthusiast for laying regulations on business, which does, in fact, destroy jobs in the end, but there is a wider review going on. I hope that the noble Lord will accept that explanation.

NHS: General Medical Practitioners

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the Cross Benches.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

The noble and gallant Lord raises a very important point. The delivery plan for recovering access is backed by a major investment in primary care services, up to £645 million over two years, to expand services such as community pharmacies. Getting more people to use community pharmacies and other such facilities enables GPs to focus on exactly what the noble and gallant Lord is talking about: those people who need to have diagnoses and very quick scans in hospitals.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, England has 7.8 GPs per 10,000 of population, compared with the OECD average of 10.8. That is a gap of 16,700 GPs. Can the Minister explain how England has fallen so far behind other OECD countries and what the human consequences of this are?

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

The Government are working hard to make sure that we recruit more GPs. Last year we saw the highest ever number of doctors accepting a place on GP training—more than 4,000 trainees, up from 2,600 in 2014. The number of places available will grow to 6,000 by 2031-32.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 7th December 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Sikka]

23: After Clause 4, insert the following new Clause—
“Research grant funding and academic integrity
After section A7 of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (inserted by section 4) insert—“A8 Research grant funding and academic integrity(1) The provision of grant funding for research shall not be used as a means of interfering with the freedom for academics—(a) to publish and disseminate their research; or(b) to decide on the final form and academic integrity of such research.(2) Unless the conditions in subsection (3) apply, no contractual or other provision in a funding agreement that gives editing or publishing control to the funder shall be enforceable by law.(3) The conditions referred to in subsection (2) are— (a) that a court finds the full publication of the research would threaten national security, public safety, or health; or(b) the contracting parties to a research funding arrangement agree confidentiality of results in advance.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment reduces the ability of public, private or philanthropic funders of academic research to infringe upon academic integrity and the freedom to publish results. Contractual attempts at interference with academic expression will be unenforceable, unless confidentiality of research was agreed in advance or where a court finds a national security, public safety or health justification for preventing publication.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for their support for this amendment. I raised the subject of academic integrity and freedom to disseminate research findings at Second Reading and in Committee. Several important issues were raised, and this amendment has been extensively rewritten in light of that. I believe that it now complies with Article 10 of the ECHR.

The revised amendment prevents the gagging of academics by research funders who do not like the findings. However, the right to publish research is also constrained by my amendment’s proposed new subsection (3), which basically states that, if the research findings would

“threaten national security, public safety, or health”,

they need not be published. They also would not if

“the contracting parties to a research funding arrangement agree confidentiality of results in advance.”

Major issues were raised during the last debate, and I will address them.

In Committee, I provided examples of how the Government themselves suppressed Covid-related research findings, for which we are yet to receive a full explanation. The research was funded by public money and did not threaten national security or public safety, but it was still suppressed. The publication of that research could have provided insights into the cost of Covid tests and of controlling the pandemic, and possibly have helped to frame more effective public policies.

I also cited examples of the tobacco and food industries censoring or preventing the dissemination of research. The unhindered publication of academic research would have created greater awareness of the dangers of smoking and the ill effects of processed food, and, again, this may well have enabled the development of more informed public policies.

Research showing that generic drugs are just as effective as branded drugs would have reduced the cost of medical treatments, as well as the cost to the NHS. In Committee, it was suggested that my amendment was somehow not appropriate for the Bill, and that transparency was a key issue. I will tackle that head on because I am happy to respond to these points. The amendment is about academic freedoms, and the clue is in the title of the Bill, which includes the words “Freedom of Speech”. Advancing and protecting the academic freedom to publish uncensored research is directly relevant to it; there is no other Bill where these kinds of issues can go at the moment. The point about transparency is important, but the unhindered publication and dissemination of research is the best form of transparency.

Over the years, I have been on many academic journal editorial boards, so I am well aware of the politics of publishing and commissioning research and so on. All reputable peer-reviewed journals require authors to disclose sources of research funding and to make the relevant data, wherever possible, available to other scholars. However, that point can be reached only when a scholar submits a paper for publication. If research funders supress the findings, a submission to a journal does not take place, and the data cannot be provided easily to other scholars—you need not necessarily disclose who the funders are, because that point is not reached. If research findings are diluted by the funder, the researcher has the option whether to accept the diluted paper and proceed to publication or not. If the researcher chooses not to proceed to publication, there will be no transparency about funding at all. If the researcher succumbs to pressure from the funder and accepts the dilution of research outcomes, he or she is unlikely to be permitted to say that the funder rewrote or took out large chunks of the paper. So there is no transparency about the pressures which prevent the publication of the paper, which is what I am really concerned about.

Of course, there are numerous research registers which list the grants obtained by scholars, but a mere listing of the source does not amount to transparency because it does not tell us anything about the gagging of those researchers or prevention of their publication. Just naming the funders does not tell us about the contents of the research, research methods, research methodology, analysis, discussion or possible public implications.

Full transparency, which is what I am concerned with, covers all those things, and that can be provided only by publication of the research, not permitting funders to say that you cannot publish it because, somehow, they now feel that it would damage their reputation or reduce the revenues arising from the sale of tobacco-related products or processed food. Gagging comes in many guises; it is not simply somebody saying that they will not let you publish—they behave in all kinds of interesting or strange ways.

I shall give a personal example. For a long time, I have taken an interest in auditor regulation. Under the Companies Acts, a resigning auditor is required to issue a statement addressed to shareholders and creditors stating whether there are circumstances in connection with that resignation that shareholders and creditors need to be aware of, then to list them, or to say that there are no circumstances and leave it at that. What do the auditors actually do? I conducted the only piece of research on that over the past 100 years, and I looked into it. I learned that Companies House does not publish the data, but on inquiry it said that it could write a piece of software for me, interrogate its database and tell me which company auditors had resigned. This was in relation to public limited companies. In those days you had to buy microfiches, so I would have had to buy the microfiches and track down whether there was a letter of resignation from the auditor.

I got the data and approached the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and asked whether it would help to fund the cost of writing the software and buying microfiches. I got the grant, and I looked at all 800 auditor resignations relating to public limited companies. What did I find? Only 2.5% of the resigning auditors complied with the law. The other 97.5% were silent; they did not say anything. But roll forward a few months and I started looking—and what do I find? In many instances, the auditors got out quietly but there was a scandal, with major frauds and other kinds of corporate collapses, which suggested that the auditors had basically abdicated their duty. They did not want to say anything or get a bad name for being troublesome, which is not very helpful for getting new audits or consultancy work.

I submitted my report to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, which said that it would get back to me. That is what is required—you submit a report. Would it say that I could go ahead to publish or say that I could not? It said neither yes nor no, and meanwhile the research was getting stale, and I had to make a decision. Was it important enough for people to know what auditors were up to, or should I just be quiet? I decided that I would publish the research, and it was published as a research monograph. Needless to say, I never got a research grant from the ICAEW again. The public suffers.

That is just one example of how people are gagged. Not everybody wants to follow their conscience and just publish. What I am trying to do through this amendment is to empower academics so they can publish research that is vitally important. There is nothing in the Bill that prevents gagging of scholars through subtle or not so subtle forms of silencing. We all see the world by standing on the shoulders of intellectuals. The barriers to publication of research prevent us seeing things, and this amendment would lower those barriers. I beg to move.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 23 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka. I said at Second Reading that there was a lacuna in this Bill, in that it did not deal with finance and money. Finance, of course, is what makes the world go round, and the scope for using money to limit freedom of expression and academic freedom is obvious. It hardly needs to be explained. So why would a Bill that addressed academic freedom not deal with this question of money and its potential abuse?

Quite independently of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, in Committee I tabled three amendments trying to cover such aspects as the use of donations, the use of research grants and a couple of other matters which I thought were worthy of debate. Independently, the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, tabled an amendment much along the lines of the one he has just spoken to. As we proceed to Report, I have dropped mine, but the noble Lord has refined the drafting of his amendment considerably, and it is now a very good amendment and one that I think deserves a response. Sadly, in Committee, I do not feel it had quite the response or the engagement from either Front Bench that this important topic deserves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 23 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, seeks to ensure that the provision of grant funding for research does not interfere with the academic’s freedom to edit and publish their research. The only exceptions would be if there was a confidentiality agreement between those giving and receiving the grant made in advance or if a court finds that full publication would threaten national security, public safety or health.

The noble Lord is of course right to be concerned about the provision of grant funding for academic research and, as he acknowledged, we discussed this issue in Grand Committee, although perhaps not conclusively. The approach in the Bill is to place duties on registered higher education providers, their constituent colleges and student unions. I have to say that it goes too far to place duties on others, such as those who give grant funding, and I am also not at all comfortable with the idea of interfering in the private contractual arrangements between parties, which would be the effect of this amendment.

If an academic wishes to seek grant funding, it is for them to agree with the other party what contractual arrangements should apply. That is in fact reflected in proposed new subsection (3)(b) of the noble Lord’s amendment and reflects the Haldane principle: that decisions on individual research proposals are best taken by researchers themselves through peer review—a principle enshrined in the Higher Education and Research Act 2017.

However, in my view it would go too far to require legal proceedings to determine whether full publication of research would threaten national security, public safety or health. First, those are extremely limited reasons, which I appreciate is the noble Lord’s aim, but there may well be other legitimate reasons why the grantor would not want full publication. Secondly, this would potentially open the door to costly and time-consuming litigation. I fear that this may have a chilling effect on grant funding if it deters grantors, which is obviously not desirable; it may also affect the academic, as a potential party to the litigation, who is likely not to have the means to fund their part in it. It does not seem to me that the involvement of the courts in such a matter is appropriate.

Noble Lords have suggested that there is a lacuna as regards transparency in the domestic funding of higher education. I hope that I can allay that concern very simply. The Higher Education Statistics Agency collects data about research grants and contracts, which is publicly available. The OfS collects data that it needs to support its functions, including ensuring that providers are financially sustainable, and publishes this through annual reporting.

Given those points, I hope that noble Lords will agree that this amendment is not necessary.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister and all the other participants in this debate for the vital points that they have made. This amendment is not about sources of funding. It is about the ability to disseminate research findings when the funder decides that the outcomes are not what they were looking for but are of vital interest to other stakeholders. It is when those findings are suppressed that I am really concerned about. I gave an example from my personal experience but, if you met academics on the conference circuit, many of them would tell you similar kinds of stories. That issue remains, and I do not see anything in the Bill to address it.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for his comments but I do not think that this is an issue of codes of practice. Codes of practice cannot bridge asymmetric power relationships. The more powerful are going to define the codes of ethics; they do not give anybody any enforcement rights. You cannot go to a court and say, “I want to enforce a code of conduct”, because no law of any kind has been breached. There are issues around adjudication and enforcement. Before long, we will come back to the need for a legal framework.

I am also not convinced by the argument that it is up to the institutions. What can universities do? They are hungry for external money, and will persuade and pressurise academics to get it. Beyond that, they are not really interested in how the academic negotiates publication. They cannot deal with that. Then the academic is left on his or her own versus what the funder desires. Academics may well have spent a long time on their research but they will have nothing whatever to show in terms of any publications, dissemination or conference presentations. They are left on their own versus a very powerful provider of research. The Bill does not do much on this issue either.

The Minister said that this amendment could have a chilling effect on research grants. I do not see how. Let us say that two parties want to negotiate on some blue-sky thinking, develop some new technology to manufacture engines or whatever, and want to consult an academic. If it is agreed that this kind of research would be confidential, that is fine. Nobody is interfering with that. The point is about what your research findings show. For example, imagine somebody is looking at the effects of living in poor housing and suddenly discovers that a two year-old child is breathing mould and is therefore likely to be disabled for the rest of his life. What should they do? Should they be quiet? At the moment, they can be silenced by the landlord. I am giving people freedom. I am saying that they should have the freedom to communicate that living in those kinds of housing conditions is damaging and can kill people. However, the response I am getting from both Front Benches is, “We can’t have that”. That is unacceptable. People reading this debate will see that it is unreasonable. How will we eradicate the conditions that I have just described for people living in poor housing? I have not heard anything in this debate to offer me any comfort on this point.

Nevertheless, I am grateful to noble Lords. Since both Front Benches are opposed to my amendment, or at least do not fully support it, I have no choice but to withdraw for the time being. However, as and when an opportunity arises, I shall return on this issue.

Amendment 23 withdrawn.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Grand Committee

It is intended to cover all flows there might be, probably unsuccessfully, as some may escape, but it is at least a chance to hear from my noble friend what the role of money is. Are we going to blink and just ignore this absolutely huge means of influencing free speech and expression of opinion?

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, on this. He mentioned money; I wish I had some, like many other people. Let me declare an interest: I am emeritus professor at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield.

My amendment seeks to loosen the shackles imposed by private sector research funders upon the ability of academics to publish research. Those shackles have got much tighter with the advent of the research excellence framework, which attaches weight to the external research funding that is raised by universities. Within universities, indeed, any academic these days wishing to be promoted has to show that he or she has managed to secure a lot of research funding.

This research funding comes with lots and lots of strings attached, which raises conflicts of interest. Can your Lordships imagine trying to get some research money to look into gambling or the development of weapons? It would come from the gambling industry or from British Aerospace and others. Then if you produce research which is critical, would they really let you publish it? That is really the question.

I have looked at many research contracts—some colleagues have told me about them—that include clauses which give the funders the final say on whether the research can be published. Funders can vet, and have vetted, the research questions, methodologies and methods, data analysis and the conclusions of the studies. In many cases, draft papers need to be submitted to the funders. I have experienced that myself, and their approval is needed before anything can be disseminated, perhaps at a conference—because many academics present papers at conferences before they submit them to any peer-reviewed journal—so they need to be vetted. Funders can block, delay, or demand changes to the papers because they do not like the research findings, or they may just sit on the paper for a prolonged period to make its research very stale and untimely. Again, I have experienced that, as I explained at Second Reading.

One prominent scholar told a peer-reviewed journal:

“In our commissioned research project, the commissioner’s representative interfered with both the entire study and the publication because I did not let him influence the sample. Instead of random sampling, we should have made a ‘comfort sample’.”


There is a classic example of a pharmaceutical company funding a researcher to compare its branded thyroid drug with a generic competitor’s. The researcher found that the generic products were as good as the expensive branded products. The publication of the research could have jeopardised the funder’s sales and profits so the drug company went to enormous lengths to suppress the research, including taking legal action against the researcher and her university to prevent the paper’s publication.

In the past few days, one UK academic told me that the funder vetted his paper and did not like the negative health effects associated with the consumption of processed food. The funder decided that some cases of negative effects were outliers and were to be eliminated from the paper. It is bit like saying, “Somebody has died from this disease but it is an outlier so let us ignore and suppress it”. The academic concerned refused to accommodate the changes and the paper was never presented at a conference nor published. Another academic told me:

“The funder demanded control of all the raw data relating to the negative effects of a drug. Under pressure, I agreed. Subsequently, the funder would not allow me to release the data to a peer-reviewed journal and I could not publish the study, which was less than complimentary about the funder’s products.”


Over the years, several studies have established links between passive smoking and lung cancer. Tobacco companies have a long history of trying to subvert research by framing the research questions, designing the study, collecting and providing data and even writing the final papers for academics. Industry funding and the quest for research grants have persuaded many scholars to ignore important research questions because they simply will not get funding otherwise. Indeed, in my own field, it is incredibly rare to find research that is critical of auditing or the anti-social practices of the finance industry. None is ever funded by anybody from the City or the world of accounting because that is not the kind of thing that they fund. Many academics also do not do that kind of research because it jeopardises their chances of getting research funding from the world of accounting and the City, so such issues are basically ignored.

The Government are also a culprit. Commenting on a June 2016 report by Sir Stephen Sedley, Missing Evidence: An Inquiry into the Delayed Publication of Government-Commissioned Research, Nick Ross concluded that

“expensively commissioned findings sometimes fail to see the light of day and weak rules are used to bury unwelcome evidence for long enough to make it stale.”

In November 2020, the British Medical Journal published an article, “Covid-19: Politicisation, ‘Corruption’ and Suppression of Science”, which reported four instances of the suppression of science during the pandemic. It was all to do with the government-funded research. One instance related to the suppression of the 2016 study codenamed Operation Cygnus, which documented deficiencies in the UK’s pandemic preparedness. The report was eventually released in 2020 after an outcry in the media and interventions by the freedom of information commissioner. The Government did not want to publish it; their suppression denied the public, parliamentarians and medical communities vital information. The funder of the study stifled the debate.

The BMJ reported that a Public Health England report on Covid-19 and inequalities was delayed by the Department of Health; a section on ethnic minorities was initially withheld and then, following public outcry, was published as part of a follow-up report in 2020. Authors from Public Health England were instructed not to talk to the media about it. On 15 October 2020, Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, publicly stated that an author of a research paper, a government scientist, was being blocked by the Government from speaking to the media because of a “difficult political landscape.”

Another example relates to what the Government codenamed Operation Moonshot. The project required an immediate and wide availability of accurate, rapid diagnostic tests for Covid. This research concluded that the Government procured an antibody test, which cost £75 million, that in real-world tests fell well short of the performance claims made by its manufacturer. Researchers from Public Health England and collaborating institutions sought to publish their study findings before the Government committed to buying a million of these tests but were blocked from releasing them by the Department of Health and the Prime Minister’s office. Public Health England then unsuccessfully attempted to block the British Medical Journal’s press release about the research paper. The reason for all this was that the research was damaging to the commercial interests of the corporation involved in these tests.

I have provided only a brief glimpse of some of the ways in which academic research is subverted and suppressed and, consequently, scholars and policymakers are denied the opportunity to see the evidence, data and findings. This is damaging to academic freedoms, scholarly endeavours and society as a whole. Amendment 53 seeks to prevent funders exercising undue influence on the design, conduct and dissemination of research. After all, what kind of expertise do they have in these matters? If they had any, maybe they would be doing the research themselves. This amendment makes scholars, their communities and journal reviewers the final arbiters of the quality of research. I urge the Minister and the House to support it.

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, I can probably do this quite briefly. These are very helpful amendments, which illustrate an extremely important point. To work out why or how the Bill will be useful or effective, it is important to understand what academics do—what life on the ground is actually like and what having a career entails. I want to follow my noble friend Lord Smith of Finsbury’s earlier comments, but I think that is for a later debate. If academics want to pursue a career, there are facts on the ground that cannot be overlooked, and these amendments address them.

There is a longish history to this; I must confess to having my fingerprints on parts of the REF at different times in the past, so I want to acknowledge that I have probably contributed to a problem. Today, if you want to make progress, it is entirely commonplace in universities to expect that, in the last period of assessment of research, you will have produced at least three articles in reputable referee journals. If you have not done so, you will not be promoted and if you do not have tenure, you will probably not survive at all. It is imperative. It is a gating process about which this Grand Committee will do nothing, because it is not in our power, but that is how it happens.

--- Later in debate ---

Amendment 34 withdrawn.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, if I may respond to some of the points—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

For the convenience of the Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has already withdrawn his amendment and no one has objected to that.