Agricultural Transition Plan

Debate between Viscount Stansgate and Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the Labour Benches. There will be time for the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, to speak afterwards.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

In the light of the answer that the Minister gave to my noble friend, can he tell the House whether his own adviser, Professor Henderson, has recommended to him further action or research that should be undertaken? The Minister also referred to a wider group of interested people who will want to know what has happened in this tragedy; sometimes, things occur in nature and we do not understand them. Will the action taken involve a wide range of scientific societies, including, for example, the Royal Society of Biology?

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Debate between Viscount Stansgate and Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist

Committee stage
Monday 22nd November 2021 Grand Committee

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

I found the noble Baroness’s comments in our last session very helpful and I learned a great deal—and now I have learned some more.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

We discussed this with the Table and it was agreed that, because they are the noble Viscount’s amendments, we would allow him to speak. That is acceptable, according to our clerk—but perhaps briefly, if he would not mind.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

I will be very brief. I take it that we are talking about the climate-change provision, on which I will say only this: on Thursday the House debated the impact of COP 26. The whole House knows that the future of planet earth is not unimportant, and I would have thought that, for a body such as ARIA, there is every reason to suggest, possibly in the Bill, that it should bear some serious regard to the Climate Change Act 2008, under which the Government of the time and succeeding Governments have been operating.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support my noble friends Lady Chapman and Lord Browne. Amendment 31A is in my name. The Government saw fit to put Clause 5 in the Bill for a reason and I am sure the Minister, when he comes to reply, will refer to the reason why it is so important. Similarly, some of us on this side of the Committee feel that it is particularly important that, when those powers are exercised by the Secretary of State, Parliament knows about it at the time—not just in an annual report produced later. Also, with others, I think that there may be further scope to consider whether in this legislation or the National Security and Investment Act, which has already been referred to, there could be ways of furthering the arguments of my noble friend Lord Browne, if the Government are prepared to consider constructive ways forward.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for his comments on Amendment 30. I recognise that this is an issue that he cares deeply about, as do other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Broers. As we heard, the amendment relates to ARIA’s ability to attach conditions to grants to prevent the takeover of an asset or entity, but this Bill is not about the general conditions or, indeed, climate for takeovers of UK private business by US entities; rather, in tabling this amendment, the noble Lord has raised important questions about the benefits derived from public investment in R&D. I appreciate his sentiments about the UK retaining the benefits of ARIA’s funding and, as we discussed on Wednesday, Clause 2(6) gears ARIA towards considering the UK benefits of its activities.

The UK is a world-renowned destination for foreign investment and the UK economy has thrived as a result. We are open to foreign investment; the Government would be very concerned that placing further restrictions in the Bill could deter foreign investment in instances where it would be beneficial and, in some cases, might sit at odds with the wider principles held by the scientific community about the free exchange of ideas and the benefits of international collaboration in research and innovation. Although many noble Lords will share the concerns of the noble Lords, Lord Broers and Lord Fox, that we seek to incentivise the City to invest more funds in fledgling British businesses, as there is indeed considerably more private equity available in the US, that is not an issue that this Bill can solve.

However, I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Browne, that, as set out in the R&D road map published last year, and the innovation strategy published this year, one of the Government’s key ambitions is to become world class at securing the economic and social benefits from research and to safeguard intellectual property. We are pursuing a range of activity to achieve this, and the Government are concerned that adding legislative constraints will impact our position as a free trade champion. ARIA will be expected to collaborate closely within the UK R&D landscape—with Innovate UK, the Catapult Network or private equity partners—to find clear onward paths to take the benefits of its programmes to the next level. This is indeed the challenge rightly identified by the noble Lord, Lord Fox.

Furthermore, the patent box tax incentive will support the retention of intellectual property in the UK by allowing businesses to pay a reduced rate of tax on profits arising from exploiting patents and other qualifying products. Its aim is to encourage the commercialisation of inventions by companies in the UK. I hope that the noble Lord will recognise that we are taking action on this issue outside of legislation. It might just come down to the ideological difference between protectionism and free trade.

On occasions where it is necessary, the National Security and Investment Act 2021 will give the UK Government robust powers to scrutinise and intervene in relevant acquisitions, such as takeovers, to protect national security. This Act will sit alongside the Secretary of State’s power in Clause 5 to give directions where it is necessary or expedient in the interests of national security. I hope that this will answer some of my noble friend Lord Lansley’s remarks.

Regarding Amendment 31 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, the Government’s position is that ARIA must be able to operate with strategic autonomy. This includes making its own decisions on funding research, without influence from government. Clause 5 was designed to ensure that ARIA’s activities could be limited only if they posed a threat to the UK’s national security; for example, ceasing a particular contract or activities with parties from a particular jurisdiction, or ceasing activities on a specific technology. These powers are necessary to ensure that the Government can intervene to protect national security.

I assure the noble Baroness that it is not our intention to use these powers to require ARIA to spend any grants in the interests of national security concerns. Given the autonomy that ARIA will have from Ministers, it would be more appropriate to expect the Government to use other structures if any such need arose. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness will understand the intention behind this clause and that there is no need for this amendment.

Finally, regarding Amendment 31A specifically, given the nature and sensitivity of national security directions, the Secretary of State may be required to respond urgently and privately and it would not be appropriate to publish all directions made under this section. ARIA’s annual report, which this amendment seeks to add to, will align with HMT’s financial reporting manual and the normal standards of reporting. I believe this will ensure the right level of information is provided to allow appropriate parliamentary and public scrutiny of ARIA’s activities, and I am therefore unable to accept this amendment.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Debate between Viscount Stansgate and Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist

2nd reading
Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a totally unexpected pleasure to follow the Minister as I am the first in the list. It is a great honour to take part in this debate, the first Second Reading in which I have taken part, when I consider the range of other speakers who we are going to hear from this evening, all of whom are so very distinguished. I am also mindful of the fact that the president of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee is contributing to the debate. As his vice-president, I cannot remember a time when both officeholders were speaking together.

The relationship between the Government and science is subtle, complex and of critical importance to the future of the country. It goes without saying that we have a tremendous record on science in this country, to which I pay tribute, along with everybody else. Our record on Covid vaccine development and distribution is but the latest example. The UK is world class, but it is a competitive world out there and this Bill matters to our future if we are to be the science superpower we all want us to be.

The problem for successive Governments of all kinds is that they have to try to find a balance between giving researchers the freedom to follow their own instincts and curiosity, while at the same time guiding large sums of public money towards wider societal benefits, such as national prosperity and real improvements in the quality of life for their citizens. This balance is not easy to strike. ARIA represents an attempt to strike a new balance by introducing a new organisation with a relatively small staff and a relatively small amount of money with extreme freedom to decide what to do without the existing constraints that apply elsewhere. There is also a difficult and delicate balance to strike between parliamentary oversight and the intellectual freedom which will be necessary to enable ARIA to generate the creativity required to do things differently.

The Minister made it clear in his opening speech that what is being proposed is something very new because we are dealing with high risk and potentially high reward, as he acknowledged. Therefore, the heart of what the Bill is about is not so much an agency as an idea. We are discussing an experiment never before undertaken in the UK, and we are being invited to approve and establish a new participant in what is called the scientific landscape. If we were having a vote today, I would vote for the Bill because this is broadly a good idea and I support additional funding for science, but it raises lots of questions which is going to make the Committee stage very important, and I will return to that in a bit.

First, I hope the House will allow me a brief moment to consider the wider historical context of the proposals that the Government are inviting us to consider today. More than 100 years ago, I think in 1918, Lord Haldane chaired the committee that led to the establishment of the first research council. The Haldane principle that emerged was, in essence, that research should be decided by researchers and not the Government. This has stood the test of time not least because it is convenient for Ministers. It shields them from bearing the direct responsibility for making individual decisions on individual funding.

ARIA takes this a stage further. It will need to offer real scientific independence at programme level. With regard to peer review, standard processes may not always be appropriate for ARIA, as it aims to empower exceptional scientists to start and stop projects quickly. I do not particularly care for military analogies, but when I think about ARIA it makes me wonder whether in times past Barnes Wallis or Alan Turing might have been funded by ARIA. They were both individually brilliant.

Over the decades the structural organisation of science in government has been through endless changes. For about a quarter of a century science was put in with the Department for Education, to create the DES, and, frankly, that is where science languished. I regard the start of the modem era as being when the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, launched Realising our Potential in 1993, rearranged the research councils and set up the Office of Science and Technology. Even the current department, BEIS, has over the past 20 or more years been through many changes in emphasis and names from the DTI to the ungainly DIUS, if anybody remembers that, and there may be more name changes on the way. Then there are things such as the Technology Strategy Board, which became Innovate UK until its absorption into UKRI, and even UKRI itself, which was described at the time as the kind of reform that comes along only once in a generation, was formed only in 2018.

Some argue that there is no point in creating ARIA if it is going to be just another entity in the science landscape doing the same things as UKRI but with less money. There is no guaranteed method, and never has been, of successfully identifying commercially successful projects arising out of science research. Too often in this country, as noble Lords will know very well, we have suffered from what is called “the valley of death”—that is, we are good at discovering new things but bad at developing them and exploiting them for commercial success. However, it is hard to legislate for success.

The agency will not automatically succeed. On the contrary, one of its earliest proponents suggested that if ARIA is not failing then it is failing, which is an interesting point. Last weekend, I went to see the latest James Bond film—I recommend it—and it occurred to me that there is a link between those films and this Bill. If the Minister was promoting ARIA as a movie, I can see it now: “ARIA—Licence to Fail.” Whether it does or not is almost impossible to predict because we do not know when a transformational breakthrough will be made, so consistency of funding over the next 10 years will be crucial.

One thought that comes to mind at the start of the many questions I want to put is about the agency’s proposed name. We know that much of the inspiration for ARIA comes from America. When this idea was first mooted by the Government in March 2020, they called it ARPA. They have now chosen the letter “I” for “invention” rather than “P” for “projects”, and that is an interesting distinction worth exploring. “Invention” conveys more of an individual exercise, whereas “projects” suggests a more collaborative approach with many more people involved, so we may discuss in Committee whether we should reconsider the title.

I am grateful to all those organisations that have been in touch to offer advice on ARIA, and I am sure there will be a lot more as we go through Committee. They include the Royal Society of Biology, the Biochemical Society, the Physiological Society, the Campaign for Science and Engineering, the Royal Society of Chemistry and others.

My own list of questions is not exclusive; I am sure that other noble Lords tonight will have many more. But they include the following: what will the relationship be between ARIA and the existing parts of the research landscape, such as UKRI, in particular? What will it be with the new science and technology council, recently established by the Prime Minister, and the new Office for Science and Technology Strategy? What about its relationship with the Council for Science and Technology, currently co-chaired by the chief scientific adviser and the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Madingley?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I gently remind the noble Viscount that there is an advisory speaking time limit of seven minutes. If we go on from the first speech, we get rapidly out of control.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

It is kind of the noble Baroness to mention it. If I had a pair of scissors, I should have to cut this speech in half, and noble Lords would no doubt be only too grateful. I will do so verbally.

One area where I think we will divide in Committee is that the Government are determined to exempt ARIA from freedom of information. Like other noble Lords, I received a briefing from the Information Commissioner’s Office, which strongly advocates that FoI requests should be allowed. The News Media Association has also taken the trouble to write to us on the same issue. I am sure that is something we will explore.

In drawing my remarks to a close, I will mention the famous questions that DARPA used to identify projects which were worth funding. First, what are you trying to do, and can you explain it in jargon-free language? Secondly, how is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice? Thirdly, what is new in your approach, and why do you think it will be successful? Fourthly, who cares? If you are successful, what difference will it make? Fifthly, what are the risks? Sixthly, how much will it cost? Seventhly, how long will it take?

Finally, the Bill proposes that the Government must wait 10 years before taking any action to close ARIA down, so I look forward to taking part in the Second Reading of the “ARIA (Continuation) (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2031”, when we will at least have the experience of 10 years to guide us in our debates.