Horizon Europe: UK Participation

Lord Winston Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

We remain very proud of our scientific efforts and researchers continue to come from all over the world to study in the UK and to continue their research here. We want that to continue but I will certainly pass on the noble Baroness’s comments to the Home Office.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, something that is not mentioned enough in this argument is the collaboration between people individually within a large laboratory. In my group there were speakers of 15 European languages. We made long-term relationships with people that we could carry on while we were still in the EU. That has now been lost. How can the Government replace that?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

If it proves not possible to associate with Horizon, as I said—although we continue our efforts to try to persuade the EU otherwise and to fulfil the agreement that it entered into—we will have to put in place alternative arrangements involving scientists from EU countries as well as from across the world. I agree with the noble Lord, and I know he has tremendous experience in this, that research collaboration across countries and across continents is always useful.

Fuel Poverty

Lord Winston Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a very good point, and that is one of the aspects we are looking at—indirect suppliers through the consultations that we are holding on the various support schemes. I also point out that park home owners are already benefiting from a number of our energy-efficiency improvements, and there have some excellent examples of retrofitting park homes that have been carried out under schemes such as the local authority delivery energy efficiency scheme.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister think it rather peculiar that old people like myself get 200 quid a year for fuel, which is really not needed? Should there be a way of means testing the amount of money that is given to people like me?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

It is very generous of the noble Lord to offer to give it up, but of course the point he makes is valid. It is a combination of the expense and bureaucracy of means-testing schemes as against the universality principle, but the vast majority of support schemes, of course, are means tested and focused on those in receipt of benefits and on the lowest incomes, and that also applies to all our energy efficiency schemes.

Recognition of Professional Qualifications (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Lord Winston Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My noble friend has it. We are saying to the large number of French ski instructors who want to come here that they can. It will be up to the French skiing authority. I mention ski instructors because this is just one area where what the noble Lord seemed to think was working perfectly quite obviously was not. I use that, possibly flippantly, just to make that point. French ski instructors will be able to come to Aviemore and qualify. That is what these regulations are about.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I remind the Minister that in 1938 that is exactly what we did in Britain. I had a number of colleagues who became great scientists and medics and who were refused their qualifications when they came to this country as refugees. For example, my boss worked as a housemaid for three years before she was able to start looking down a microscope. This is a real issue, not just for ski instructors but for people who are highly qualified as well.

[Lord Henley]

The noble Lord hits the point absolutely on the head. That is what the regulations are doing. That is why we are saying we will recognise their qualifications. Obviously I cannot say that France will recognise the qualifications of a UK ski instructor, or something more important. That has to be a matter for the French authorities, and we hope they will follow what we are doing.

Can I move on to deal with just one or two of the other points? I see that the House is filling up and, I think, wants to move on to other business.

Space Policy

Lord Winston Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

I shall look into what it is possible for me to release to the noble Lord in response to his question on publishing the business case. I certainly feel that we would want to be as open as possible about why we chose the site in the north of Scotland and what we consider its advantages to be. I will write to him in due course.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

In the Statement, Britain’s universities were praised for being at the top of the tree, but there is a significant problem here. I focused at Question Time on the paucity of qualified science teachers in primary schools. This runs right through our system; if we are to be competitive in the space industry, we need better physics, better mathematics in particular and, of course, as much engineering as possible. There are quite insignificant numbers of A-level physics teachers; far more are needed. As the Institute of Physics and the Royal Academy of Engineers point out, far more of these posts remain empty. What can the Government do to ensure we have more teaching, particularly of physics and mathematics, at A-level?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention; I am sure the Government as a whole are grateful for the intervention he made earlier at Question Time. I was in the Chamber to hear it; if I remember correctly, I now know, as I did not at the time—and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is with me on this—that nitrogen is the commonest gas. But the noble Lord, Lord Winston, makes a more important point. We have a very strong university sector. We have enormous strengths in science in the university sector and we want to make sure we maintain them. It would not be right for me, in responding to this Statement, to go through all the Government wish to do to improve the teaching of science in our schools. However, I shall certainly make the comments of the noble Lord available to my colleagues in the Department for Education.

EU Membership: UK Science

Lord Winston Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I first thank the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, for his extraordinarily good chairmanship of the Select Committee; I remember very well from when I was a member of that Select Committee some time ago his wisdom in leading our inquiries and debates. In response to the excellent report that the Select Committee has produced, the Government state that,

“a global Britain must … be a country that looks to the future. That means being one of the best places in the world for science and innovation”.

It also goes on to assert:

“The Government made a series of announcements on EU research and innovation … to provide assurance and certainty to stakeholders”.


But the Government’s response to the recommendations to distinguish immigration statistics and student entries is, I am afraid, totally inadequate. Moreover, it gives no reassurance at all to the backbone of British science, the post-doctoral fellow—the first stage in a scientist’s career when he or she is working independently, supervising students, publishing key scientific advances and making innovations. Often these post-docs are underpaid and naturally insecure, because they are really only good for as long as their grant income lasts, and they have a constant problem with that. The added insecurity under which they are now placed is a very serious threat to them indeed. I repeat: they are undoubtedly the backbone of British science.

In a powerful speech yesterday, Alice Gast, president of one of the country’s leading scientific universities, Imperial College, pointed out the need for the Government to resolve the uncertainties that they have created and to demonstrate practically our continued welcome to this important science research force and not to use this research force as a tool for negotiation. I agree with that completely. She also pointed out in her speech the richness of the collaboration that universities in this country have with the EU—I can testify to that in my statement.

I understand some of the evidence that the Select Committee received, but not all of it. It suggests that there had not been a downturn yet in EU doctoral students and postgraduates applying to work in the UK, but I do not find this evidence convincing. In many respects it is far too flawed. It is, in any case, far too soon after the referendum to make a judgment on the longer-term prospects. From our practical experience in our labs—for example at Imperial College, in my research building, which houses up to, I suppose, 100 scientists—we are hearing of many students who are increasingly reluctant to come to Britain to train and work here because of this longer-term insecurity. As we have been saying to the Home Office for years—particularly as the Science and Technology Select Committee has been saying—we need to have much better records from the Home Office of those entering the UK for study, exactly what they are studying and how they are contributing to our universities. But, yet again, I am afraid that the Government’s response to what is a basic and important request has been totally inadequate.

I have worked in reproductive medicine; it may seem a trivial area, but it is not just about in vitro fertilisation and infertile couples, this research is important to human growth and development, the ageing process, regenerative medicine and stem cell biology, and genetic disease—there are some 6,500 gene defects that cause serious diseases, many of which are a result of thousands of different mutations. This research also involves cancer treatments, because how the early cell reacts, how you see apoptosis—cell death—and how you regulate cell growth is of vital importance in cancer research. Most importantly of course, reproductive medicine is important in public health, because of the epigenetic and environmental influences that affect all medicine. In my view—though as a reproductive biologist I would say this, wouldn’t I?—reproductive biology is the very foundation of biological science.

At the height of my laboratory’s international impact, we had scientists and doctors from France, Spain, Germany, Holland, Portugal, Belgium, Poland, Italy, Scandinavia and the Republic of Ireland, as well as from some eastern bloc countries. It is not an idle boast to say that we trained most of the Greek scientists here in Britain, at Hammersmith hospital at Imperial College. They are still in practice and their research is now starting to lead our research, as is happening generally across Europe.

Regrettably, the work that is going on in Belgium, and sometimes in France, has in my view a higher impact than the work we are doing in Britain. In a typical academic year, we might have once had some 15 global languages spoken in the laboratory, mostly European, of course, and usually 10 to 20 EU nationals working on research and clinical translation of research. Now things are beginning to look very different and the number of EU nationals in our laboratories has undoubtedly decreased. For example, we now need a new chair in reproductive medicine at Imperial College. We have been looking for a long time for this chair but we cannot find a single British candidate who is up to the standard that we need. The best chance we have of finding such a person is to look to Europe, but I do not think we will find a professor in Europe who will be prepared to come here, given the uncertainty I have mentioned. We cannot find sufficiently well-qualified candidates from Britain. The situation does not look at all hopeful. We need more people from the EU to apply. In excluding post-doctoral fellows who have received the best training and then refusing their access to continued research in the UK we are, I am afraid, further bruising UK science. They go elsewhere and become eventually not our collaborators but our competitors. We need to consider the effect that immigration policy is having, and will increasingly have, on British science.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to those of other noble Lords to my noble friend Lord Selborne on this extremely good report. I hope that his committee can build on that report and that it will form a very big part of our industrial strategy.

I do not think there is any doubt that research is one of the jewels in the UK’s crown, but we should never take it for granted. The report is called A Time For Boldness and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, that while it may be an unusual title for something from the House of Lords, we do need boldness. I have heard, in talking to many other people about the industrial strategy, that the UK is incorrigibly incrementalist. When the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, asks, “Where is the magic?” or “Where has the magic not been?”, it is because we have been incorrigibly incrementalist. So it is a time for boldness. If Brexit does only one thing, if it acts as a catalyst for change and boldness, then it will have achieved considerably more than the eight industrial strategies that the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, referred to. We should take Brexit as a catalyst for change.

As noble Lords have mentioned, of course there are risks, but I say to noble Lords who are naturally enthusiasts and naturally positive people that, if they become too pessimistic about the future, they will help create this perception that post-docs and younger academics to whom they referred have—the feeling that somehow things are not good. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Winston, for whom I have huge respect, that although I cannot comment on the state of current reproductive medicine at Imperial, if he walks down the corridor he will see one of his colleagues, the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, and what is being done on robotic surgery, for example. Imperial is at the absolute forefront of many technologies and the noble Lord, Lord Winston, should not forget that.

The noble Lord, Lord Mair, referred to issues at Cambridge. Again, if we take an area such as artificial intelligence, Cambridge is clearly among the world leaders. Look at robotics and go down to Bristol and see what Bristol University is doing in robotics. We have some world-class technology still in the UK. If we want evidence of recent investments, we can look at the £60 million Novo Nordisk investment around diabetes at Oxford University, or the new investments that GSK and Apple are making in this country. Google has made huge investments, through DeepMind, in artificial intelligence in this country. So let us not be too depressed about the future when a lot of very good things are happening.

It is not unreasonable that we have focused today on what I will call the consequences of Brexit rather than looking slightly more fundamentally at the causes of Brexit. Actually, the causes of Brexit, together with the consequences of Brexit, are what we should be looking at, because, if we are honest, many of our difficulties predate Brexit. They predate even our accession to the European Union back in 1972. I think we set these out pretty clearly in the industrial strategy. We have gone through various stages of industrial strategy. We have gone through big government, nationalisation after the war and the sort of tri-partite power-sharing of the 1960s and 1970s, with the CBI, the TUC and the Government sitting around trying to sort things out. We then went to the privatisation and markets of the 1980s and then, more recently, with the coalition Government, we had more of a focus on sectors, but the one common constant throughout that time is that we have had low productivity in this country. Today, after all the iterations we have gone through, we are still 20% or maybe 30% behind the leading countries of Europe and the USA. The Green Paper is explicit about that, as indeed was Andy Haldane, the chief economist of the Bank of England, in his speech, if anyone saw it earlier this week. We have a productivity problem in this country.

It is not just a productivity problem. Since the 1980s—with the third Industrial Revolution, the information technology revolution and, as we move increasingly into what is called the fourth Industrial Revolution, with machine learning and artificial intelligence, as ever more cognitive skills get replaced by machines, rather than just manual skills—we have seen to some extent a hollowing-out of the labour market, as Andy Haldane put it, which is resulting in more inequality. In our country, we have not just societal inequality but geographic inequality. We have a hugely successful and productive area in London, particularly, and the south-east more generally, but that level of productivity is not shared in the rest of the country. That is why what we face today is a productivity question but also an inequality question. Those are the questions we really have to address and that is the context in which we should see the research and innovation strategy.

The emerging themes of the industrial strategy—some of the magic that I hope we will be able to identify—are, of course, around the vocational skills that the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, mentioned earlier. It is clearly critical that we address that. Looking back, perhaps one of the great policy mistakes that successive Governments made was to encourage too many people to go to university at the expense of vocational training, apprenticeship training and the like. The work that David Sainsbury—the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury—has done in that area is hugely important and I hope that it will be a critical part of our industrial strategy.

Then there is place: we have to address the fact that many parts of the UK have not done as well as they could. Look back at the history of towns such as Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham: if we can rebuild those civic institutions, there is a chance that we can rebuild those clusters of technology and manufacturing that we used to have.

I turn to research, which is the specific issue that we are debating. In terms of the message and narrative, the Government could not have been more explicit that science and innovation are critical to our future. As noble Lords know, that was set out in the White Paper published in February this year, from which I will read a short extract:

“The Government is committed to building on the UK’s world-leading science base—including more Nobel Laureates than any country outside the United States—and making the UK the go-to nation for scientists, innovators and investors in technology”.


I appreciate that fine words butter no parsnips but look at the actions we have taken: the Treasury has underwritten all successful bids for Horizon 2020 funding and we have provided further assurance by confirming that existing EU students and those starting courses in 2016-17 and 2017-18 will continue to be eligible for student loans and home fee status. We have also provided assurance about postgraduate support through research council studentships. These will remain open to EU students starting courses in 2017-18.

We have gone further to support a healthy science and technology ecosystem in this country than ever before. We are spending an extra £4.7 billion on research over the rest of this Parliament, with an extra £2 billion a year by 2020-21. That is the biggest increase in research spending since 1979, so we are putting our money where our mouth is. Our new industrial strategy challenge fund will direct some of that investment to scientific research and in particular to the development of a number of priority technologies, helping to address Britain’s historic weakness on commercialisation and turning our world-leading research into long-term success.

I tend to look to the USA—just look at the work that DARPA has done over the years. The federal funding of research in the US is far higher than it is in our country. That country, which purports to have small government, spends on a per capita basis significantly more on research than we do. Through institutions such as DARPA, the USA has managed to turn that into huge commercial success. Just look at the iPhone, which is probably the most obvious success: nearly all the technology in the iPhone, whether it is the chip, the global positioning, the LCD or whatever it happens to be, came out of federally funded research. That was of course taken up by great entrepreneurs, backed up by deep capital markets to turn it into a huge commercial success. That is something we need to do but in many of these areas, whether in robotics, AI, machine learning or whatever, we still have some fantastic technology in this country.

I turn to the issue that I think concerns noble Lords the most: attracting people. Can we attract the world’s best people into this country? I agree that if we cannot do that, then we have a serious problem. It has been said that perception is hugely important, but let me quote the Prime Minister:

“I want this United Kingdom to emerge from this period of change stronger, fairer, more united and more outward-looking than ever before. I want us to be a secure, prosperous, tolerant country—a magnet for international talent and a home to the pioneers and innovators who will shape the world ahead. I want us to be a truly Global Britain—the best friend and neighbour to our European partners, but a country that reaches beyond the borders of Europe too”.


David Davis also said that pulling out of the European Union does not,

“mean pulling up the drawbridge. That’s also not in our national interest. We will always welcome those with the skills, the drive and the expertise to make our nation better still. If we are to win in the global marketplace, we must win the global battle for talent. Britain has always been one of the most tolerant and welcoming places on the face of the earth. It must and it will remain so”.

We should not confuse our rightful desire to have control of our immigration policy with a policy that is anti people coming into this country. The two are not in conflict with each other. It is perfectly reasonable for any country to want to have some control over levels of immigration. That does not mean that we are in any way against immigration or, in particular, against encouraging people to come in with the skills and talents that we need to grow and maintain our research base.

I turn to what we are doing in that area. In terms of putting our money where our mouth is in that respect, we have announced a £250-million investment from the national productivity investment fund, which will include £90 million to fund 1,000 new PhD places. At least 85% of those will be in STEM disciplines and 40% will directly help to strengthen collaboration between business and academia through industrial partnerships. There will be a further £160 million to support new fellowships for early and mid-career researchers. We also announced over £100 million on global research talent over the next four years to attract the brightest minds to the UK and help maintain the UK’s position as a world leader in R&D. This includes £50 million which will be ring-fenced for fellowship programmes to attract global talent in areas that align with the industrial strategy. For example, that could be in life sciences or battery technology. Over £50 million of existing international funds will support fellowships that attract researchers to the UK from emerging research powerhouses such as India, China, Brazil and Mexico.

Not only do we have a compelling narrative in this Government about wanting to attract the best of the world to this country; I also believe that we are putting a lot more resource and funding into research in this country. Yet there is a perception out there that we are somehow not doing either of those things. To some extent, that perception is built up by people in this House who are incorrigibly pessimistic. We have some great technology and research in this country and we should start to talk it up.

[Lord Winston]

I was going to be very trivial by wondering whether the Minister might care to apply for the vacant post of the reproductive professor at Imperial.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I may have many talents but I think that is one post that I am not qualified to do.

I did not address the particular issue that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. I would like to meet him on that issue to understand more about it before I reply to him.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Winston Excerpts

Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 15th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

I have a brief question for either the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, or the noble Lord, Lord Smith. One thing that slightly concerns me is that certain institutions, such as the conservatoires, are generally not funded in their research by UKRI at all. Very often these students, who do PhDs at the Royal College of Music, for example, are either self-funded or funded through other charitable grants. Could the noble Lord, in summing up, address why we would need that kind of governance for the research degree? I should just like a bit of clarity on that.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I am also signed up to this amendment. I come from a slightly different position, but I arrive at the same point. Throughout this section of the Bill, the Minister has been at pains to stress how it has been improved by the preceding contributions and debate of noble Lords who have experience of operational activity in the field we are covering. He is, I think, aware of my feeling—I explained it to him earlier this evening—that, had we had the same measure of agreement earlier in the passage of the Bill, we would have made a lot more progress and the Bill would be a lot better. We had to force our way into a position of improvement in the earlier parts of the Bill, but we have been able to do it by dialogue and discussion in this part, which is to be welcomed.

I say all that because this issue of research degree-awarding powers is really important for the higher education institutions in this country. In this section, we are dealing primarily with the UK-wide impact on research funding, but the reality is that this issue relates to the power to award research degrees. English higher education providers, as we need to call them, have attached great strength to this—so great that it was the motivation behind the insistence that we try to change the way the Bill is configured by ensuring that an amendment, which was resisted very strongly by the Government, was added to the very first clause to set out what we meant by a university. Intrinsically wired into what we mean by a university is the question of who has responsibility for awarding degrees. That was decided in the context of the opening clause with a discussion of what universities meant. Then we agreed with the Government to insert a very strong sentence referring to institutional autonomy and academic freedom. With that goes the ability for universities—higher education providers in England, particularly—to award degrees in their own right within a framework established by statute. This issue goes right through the Bill. It is interesting and quite informative that we have come back to it at this point. It has been a long and interesting journey.

Goldilocks, who featured earlier in our discussions, would have taken the view that there was a need here for some sort of equitable approach. It is very surprising that the very presence of the former Lord Chancellor, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, sitting directly behind the Minister and looking sternly at him, although he cannot see it—that got him moving quickly—has not had more success in cutting through on this point than his case warrants. He made it clear early in Committee that this was something he felt very strongly about. He got a lot of support around your Lordships’ House and he is still there today. It is an extraordinary situation, unprecedented in my short experience here, and I cannot wait to see the denouement of this process. We wait to hear what the Minister will say. He has tried a letter, he has tried a phone call and now he is going to do it in person—what a wonderful triage we will have before us on this occasion. I am rambling slightly, but I wanted to make the point—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Smith of Finsbury]

First, briefly to address the point from the noble Lord, Lord Winston, even though UKRI may have no direct funding responsibility in relation to conservatoires, it can none the less play a useful role in making a joint decision, and I do not think that diminishes in any way the research standing of the conservatoires.

[Lord Winston]

I do not want to delay this debate any longer, but I am still puzzled by this. A huge number of research degrees are master’s degrees with a research component. Of course, they are often not funded by research councils; sometimes they are, but sometimes they are not. Where do they stand with relation to this proposal? I would like a bit of clarity about it.

[Lord Smith of Finsbury]

I do not think that our amendment would make any substantive difference from the position under the provisions of the Bill. It simply means that UKRI is part of the process alongside the Office for Students.

In relation to UKRI, the Minister has shown in our discussions much wisdom and willingness to take on board points made from all sides of the House. This is only to be expected from an alumnus of Pembroke College. However, on this particular issue, about research degree-awarding powers, he says that we are dancing on the head of a pin. I do not think that we are. There is a fundamental difference between having a statutory duty to give advice and for that advice to be considered, and taking a joint decision. There is a world of difference between those two. The question is who has the ultimate authority, who has the subsequent accountability and whether we can, by making this a joint decision, give reassurance to many of our leading research universities, which have expressed concern. As I said earlier, the body that knows about students and the body that knows about research should both be involved in the decision about whether to give research degree-awarding powers, and they should make that decision jointly. It would be useful to test the opinion of the House.