Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Storey Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 30th January 2017 Lords Chamber

Collectively, my amendments not only would help to clarify the UK-wide responsibility of UKRI but, importantly, recognise the need to make all processes work in the best interests of the UK, while at the same time recognising the roles of higher education in the devolved Administrations and devolved research organisations. I hope the Minister will properly consider this issue, accept the principle in these amendments and suggest a way forward on Report. I beg to move.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, we have Amendment 477 in this group. As we have heard in great detail from the noble Lord, Lord Patel, the Bill currently provides that in appointing members of UKRI, the Secretary of State must,

“have regard to the desirability of the members including at least one person with relevant experience in relation to at least one of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland”.

We do not believe that this is good enough for UKRI to be properly representative of the whole of the UK. There should be a proper representative for each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and Amendment 477 would ensure that there will be at least one person with experience of Scotland, one person with experience of Wales and one person with experience of Northern Ireland. Although the issue of gender balance is not in the amendment, I am sure the Minister would want to reflect on that—that seems to be the word of the day—and assure us that consideration will also be given to ensuring that there is a proper gender balance.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendments raise important issues. I would like to bring to them my own perspective as pro chancellor of Lancaster University, not speaking for the institution but talking about how it strikes me that these issues concern us, thinking about the strength of the university sector in the north of England.

The fundamental problem with UKRI—on the whole I support the idea of UKRI, I hasten to add—is that the research and innovation strategy concerns the whole of the UK but the HEFCE functions on research are purely for England and are to be exercised by Research England. My fear about a board that, like that of the BBC, had a governor for each of the nations would be that the interests of England in such a body might not be as strong as they should be, and, in particular, that Research England and its funding might over time be marginalised as a result of the emphasis on the UK.

The funding for Research England is absolutely crucial to institutions such as my own. We are a top research university but not part of the golden triangle. We are in the north of England and we are quite small. So, because of scale, the ability to land big grants from the research councils is limited. A lot of our research success comes from the ability to do well in the research assessment exercise and get QR funding. If there were any reduction in the total of QR funding, that would hurt universities such as my own quite considerably.

I am concerned about the tension—it is in the nature of the beast, really, and we have to find a way of resolving it—between Research England, its Englishness and the need for that to be protected on the one hand and, on the other, the need, which I fully support, for a coherent UK research and innovation strategy. I am not sure that the best way of achieving it is by having, as it were, a governor for each of the nations of the UK. Indeed, if that were the Government’s response to this question, I would come back and say, “Well, can we please have a north of England member of UKRI?”.

I know that this sounds sectional, but the truth is that one of the strategic objectives that the Government have just put forward, in the very good industrial strategy paper that Greg Clark has presented, is to try to prevent the ever-greater concentration of research funding within the golden triangle. If we are going to have an effective regional resurgence, which I think there is cross-party consensus that we need in this country, universities will be at the heart of it. We have to find a way of making sure that other parts of England, as well as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, have the opportunity to benefit from this welcome increase in research and innovation funding. To be frank, the risk with UKRI is that it will be dominated by the great and good of the science world, who will continue to channel most of the money into the golden triangle. I hope that the Government will take action to make sure that this is prevented.