Canada-UK Trade Deal

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

The noble Lord is completely right. The focus of our present discussions with Canada has been on continuity of trade and I am very confident that an agreement will be continued. The next priority will be to use that as a launchpad from which we can then deepen and strengthen our very important relationship with Canada in the future.

[Lord Triesman (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is helpful that Prime Minister Trudeau is enthusiastic about starting and sharing a trade deal with us. However, it is deeply worrying that he doubts our capacity and expertise. It is hard to see why Liz Truss feels such grounds for optimism. Given the capacity issues, will the Minister set out the Government’s strategy in respect of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, concluded last weekend between China and 14 of its neighbours? This agreement covers 30% of global economic output. It makes no mention of the United Kingdom, despite the Government’s assertion that this region affords the greatest global opportunities for free trade deals and future growth.

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

I encourage the noble Lord to distinguish between comments of substance and those that are made purely as a negotiating tactic. We have closely observed the recent agreement in Asia. Our priority is negotiating to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership next year, which is a much deeper and richer agreement.

Science Research Funding in Universities (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Triesman (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure for me to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley. I have been a follower of hers since we were under- graduates together and she said some very interesting things again today. I declare my interest as a former general secretary of the AUT and a Minister for some time for higher education, attending to issues of quality, and I have various fellowships from UK universities.

I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on his lucid and accurate introduction to an excellent committee report. Two issues flow from it that I will address briefly. The first, along with the noble Baronesses, Lady Bottomley and Lady Young, is the issue of co-operation. The EU joint research funding programme, Horizon Europe, has been an incredibly important feature of higher education in this country—as its likely successor will be next year. The Government have said frequently that they want to ensure that conditions are right. But I too ask the Minister, what possible reasons could there be not to do it—not to give the universities the confidence that we are not going to be ducking and diving in some kind of ideological thing about this?

It is about the money, of course, but even more it is about collaboration. It is about the culture of friendly co-operation and what I sometimes call the “mood music” of higher education. We are seeing it very strongly at the moment in the work that is being done on Covid-19. The best work is being done when people are working together and not relying on exceptionalism in their own countries. Sir Jeremy Farrar, the head of the Wellcome Trust, made this very point in articles during the week.

The second issue is of course the issue of funding—alongside the issue of retaining the independence of universities—some of which we committed ourselves to in 1997 in a UNESCO treaty that this country signed. I share with others the view that the Augar terms of reference were too narrow to provide a credible proposition for higher education. Whatever insights there might be into further education, it is a seriously inadequate report. Of course it would be desirable to see a decrease in the grip of student tuition fees on an early working life, and indeed on much of the working life, of people who are in debt. But there are no alternatives being expressed to meet the shortfall. The Science Committee is 100% right about this, and cross-subsidies are a poor model—but the question is bound to arise and I hope that the Minister will answer it. How will we make good these gaps?

The key to the Dearing report was essentially that those who benefit from higher education should contribute. Students benefit and they make a contribution. It is important that they make a similar contribution and that we do not penalise the more expensive subjects such as science, medicine and others. We do not want to disincentivise anybody. The public benefit. We have doctors, nurses and medical specialists—any number of people whom Mariana Mazzucato, in her excellent research work at University College, London, has described as the “significant public investment” in the sorts of specialties that we need.

Business also benefits. I argued with the then Sir Ron Dearing that a hypothecated bond might be a way of looking at another stream of funding for higher education. I understand that the Treasury does not like hypothecated bonds, and Sir Ron made the point that, if it was to be done, we should try to make sure that it was not the Government who did it but the private financial institutions. Be that as it may, the purpose was to create an entirely different stream that had to be applied to higher education.

I conclude by saying that we cannot leave this, I am sad to say, to the vice-chancellors. Their discussions have been very narrow and they have been focused on the competitive interests of their own universities, and that trumps everything else. There has also been a lack of imagination. But we are now in a position where we can look at alternatives, and indeed we must do so.

EU Coronavirus Vaccine Programme

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

I understand the noble Baroness’s reservations and she makes some good points, but the important point about this scheme is that we would not have been able to take part in the governance of it or as part of the negotiation team. We would have had no say in which vaccines to procure and at what price, in what quantity and for what delivery schedule. We could therefore not have been confident that the scheme would deliver for UK needs. Crucially, we would not have been able to negotiate with a company that the EU is negotiating with in parallel. For all these reasons, we took the decision not to participate. We do not rule out participating in future procurement programmes, and the noble Baroness makes a good point about the nationalisation, as it were, of some countries. We will continue to pursue international collaboration, and we have a number of schemes in which we will continue to take part.

[Lord Triesman (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have read what the Government have written to the European Commission saying that involvement with the EU Covid-19 vaccine programme means we would be unable to pursue parallel negotiations with other potential vaccine suppliers. That has come as an astonishing surprise to most of the biopharma industry and it is plainly away from the truth. It is very much like the mistakes that have been made on testing and tracing, and it places the United Kingdom way behind the science curve. Would the Minister agree that, the more vaccines that are created and tested from reliable research, including the EU programme, the more likely it is that a successful research outcome will take place, the more trustworthy the research protocols will be and the more exhaustive the vaccine programme will be in getting a vaccine to people as fast as possible? Would he also agree that ideology must never, in any circumstances, trump the science?

[Lord Callanan]

I am afraid the noble Lord is wrong on his first point, but on his supplementary points I can agree with him. I can confirm that we are supporting a number of different research platforms and vaccine technologies, both through our discussions with companies and through our global efforts, alongside helping to fund research on a vaccine at Oxford University with the help of AstraZeneca. We have committed £250 million of UK aid to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, an organisation that is working on a global scale to develop a Covid-19 vaccine.