Universities: Sensitive Research

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Viscount Camrose

Tuesday 30th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to protect sensitive research at universities from national security threats.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Viscount Camrose) (Con)]

The Government are implementing a range of legislative and non-legislative measures, including the Research Collaboration Advice Team, which provides advice to academia on national security risks in international collaboration. The integrated review refresh committed to review the effectiveness of existing protections. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is leading this review, and the Deputy Prime Minister announced last week that the Government will consult on the response in the summer.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend, but are our universities not compromising their independence by becoming overreliant on China? Some 25% of the students, or 10,000, at UCL are Chinese, which risks the infiltration of academic research and, in the words of the Deputy Prime Minister, coercion, exploitation and vulnerability. While I welcome the recent Statement, what steps will the Government take to replace lost Chinese funding for our universities, so that the UK remains at the forefront of technological research?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for the question. The first thing to say is that the independence of universities is absolutely critical to the quality of their research. While the integrated review refresh has of course indicated a great many concerns about working closely with China, and necessitated a reduction of academic collaboration with China, I hope our recent reassociation to the Horizon programme, and a number of other third countries also considering or being very close to associating with Horizon, will go some way towards providing a new pool of collaboration partners in academic research.