Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Willis of Knaresborough and Lord Cameron of Dillington

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

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, while I strongly support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn—the points he made were absolutely right and I hope the Minister will be able to address some of them—I would like to concentrate my remarks on Amendments 493, 494 and 495, which are in the names of my noble friend Lord Sharkey and I and the noble Lords, Lord Cameron of Dillington and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara.

In outlining the desirable functions of the research councils, Clause 89 is far too narrowly defined, particularly subsection (4)(a). Amendment 493 recognises the importance of resilience as a fundamental requirement for the UKRI landscape. While a significant amount of the research funded by research councils should rightly contribute to growth—and most certainly does—a significant amount of research council investment directly benefits the economy by avoiding cost, rather than increasing income. Both these funding objectives are important and contribute to the UK’s resilience. Equally, by retaining a broad scientific capability across the research councils, the UK retains the ability to be resilient when under threat or pressure.

In his earlier remarks on his amendments the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, stressed the importance of the arts and social science in this respect but the impact of other areas of science is equally important. Successive Governments have cut back on our national capability to generate scientific advice, and thereby resilience, by privatising government laboratories such as the government chemist, which is within LGC, the National Physical Laboratory and the Forensic Science Service, which was the last to go into 2012. I am not making a negative comment about privatisation, but once the Government could no longer rely on them for advice, an element of national resilience went at the same time.

Particularly since the mid-1990s, right across government, departmental resource for in-house science research has dropped dramatically. Since 2010 it has virtually disappeared from some departments, so it is a rather academic exercise to say whether it should be included within UKRI or elsewhere, because most of it has gone. The only way the Government can get a great deal of that hard scientific advice is, yes, through their own advisory services, but from the research councils. The need for the research councils to maintain capacity to train a body of scientists to carry out research on all manner of possible events—from avian flu to erupting volcanoes, from BSE to the El Niño effect—and to support the efforts of organisations such as the Met Office, the Antarctic service, Rothamsted and the Diamond accelerator has never been greater. It is the research councils which generally develop the skills at PhD and postgraduate level to supply those cadres.

Amendment 494 follows in a similar vein. Clause 89(4)(b) clearly recognises that research councils should have regard to the desirability of “improving quality of life”. It would be odd if they did not want that, which is clearly an essential element of government. This amendment would go much further by adding that research councils should support research activity that seeks to improve quality of life by seeking to enhance,

“social inclusion and community cohesion”.

When I wrote these amendments, I did not know how appropriate they would become as the threats to social inclusion and community cohesion, both here and abroad, become even greater. Using scientific research to make our lives simply better, rather than wealthier, seems an objective well worth pursuing.

However, Amendment 495 is in many ways the most significant in this small group. I hope that when he responds, the Minister will either accept this in its entirety or, if not, find a suitable set of words to convey the same meaning. A huge, although I believe unintended, consequence of the Bill, along with the emergence of UKRI as a new accounting body for UK science, is that the future success of UK science will be judged by its economic rather than its societal impact. Each should have parity of esteem. The principal role of fundamental or discovery science is to improve the nation’s science and knowledge base. Everything else flows from that, which should be an objective in its own right. While research councils must guard against their presumed inability to draw to an end certain funding lines of inquiry, we should never be so risk-averse that we do not try to fund risky ventures but always try to fund winners. Some of the greatest fundamental science had absolutely no outcome at the time it was developed, yet has proved incredibly powerful across the world.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 493, 494 and 495, to which I have added my name. I must declare interests as chair of the advisory board of CEH, a trustee at Rothamsted and chair of the strategic advisory board of the Government’s Global Food Security programme. As has been explained, these amendments are designed to broaden the vision of the purposes of the research to take place under the councils within UKRI. It is wrong for the primary focus of Clause 89(4)(a) to be pinpointed solely on economic growth. To my mind, that is a throwback to the bad old days of the 1980s, when competing in the marketplace at all costs was considered the primary purpose of life. We soon realised that that was not sustainable. I say that as a past member of the Round Table on Sustainable Development, so I use “sustainable” in that context advisedly.