Higher Education and Research Bill (Third sitting)

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 8th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Q Professor McKernan, do you want to add anything?

Dr Ruth McKernan: I do not have anything more to add.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Q You have already said a bit about this, but may I just press you for specifics on the dividends that can accrue to UK plc from the councils working together? It all sounds great and very sensible. I have heard so far about improvements from the transfer of innovation to business, improving diversity and social exclusion and integrating research into teaching, but are there other specific concrete dividends that you would wish to identify that can flow from this?

Professor Philip Nelson: One of the main things that came very strongly out of the Nurse review was—there are two levels to this—that many societal challenges are intrinsically inter-disciplinary. It is about enabling us to tackle those challenges more efficiently. Take urban living, for example. Some 70% of the world’s population will be concentrated in cities, and there are massive challenges in that whole process, both here and overseas. That involves physical science, engineering and social science—all those factors come into play. We have got a pilot study running with Innovate UK where all seven research councils and Innovate UK are working on precisely that subject area.

[Alex Chalk]

Q So it improves the co-ordination of a complex issue.

Professor Philip Nelson: Absolutely. So that is one dividend. Another dividend is at the more basic science level. One sees that an awful lot of the great opportunities in science are at the interfaces between physics and biology and between biology and chemistry and so on. Those are the sorts of fundamental aspects of science where we need to be able to ensure that we do not get very innovative researchers having to deal with too many individual silos. We already take steps across the research councils to do that. We have a cross-council funding agreement. We have done our best to enable that to happen, but we can do more, especially at the more strategic level, to say, “This is clearly a cross-disciplinary work of basic science”—

[Alex Chalk]

Q So, “You do that bit, you do that bit, and you do that bit.”

Professor Philip Nelson: Exactly. There are lots of fantastic opportunities there.

Dr Ruth McKernan: I would add that where the challenge is business-led, it would probably be very difficult to make it happen without the voice of business represented in UKRI.

For example, if we wanted to be world leading in robotics and autonomous systems, that would require much of the technology that Phil’s council is developing, SMEs that are already in the space and some additional maths skills; if a healthcare or medicinal purpose was involved, you would need the participation of the MRC. This allows a process by which business could put forward a challenge that required many different groups to work together, which today would be incredibly difficult.

[Alex Chalk]

Q Right. Because it is too labyrinthine at the moment.

Dr Ruth McKernan: It is labyrinthine. We run collaborative R and D programmes that pull together people from big business, SMEs and the research environment, but as part of UKRI we will have the opportunity to speed that up—and business speed is on a quarter. It gives us the opportunity to move at the speed that business needs.

Professor Ottoline Leyser: I would echo the point that both challenge-led and blue-skies interdisciplinarity is going to be a huge benefit. I would like to add strategic oversight of various things. Large research facilities would be high on the list for me. We have a lot of large research facilities. They have appeared historically in various places for various reasons, and they are very eclectic in how they have arisen, how they are maintained and funded, and who gets to use them and who does not.

This provides exactly the kind of place where we could have a national overview of what we need, where it should go, how it should be accessed and how it should link in internationally with other facilities. We just do not do that at the moment, and there is nowhere obvious to do it.

[The Chair]

I remind the Committee that time is now beginning to press down upon us. Three Members have indicated that they wish to ask questions and we have to finish at 12.30. Should we finish earlier than that, there will be more time for the next set of witnesses. I call Roger Mullin.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carol Monaghan]

Q Having heard from the witnesses over the past couple of sittings, can you tell me what the current position is on representation of devolved Administrations on the board of UKRI?

Joseph Johnson: UKRI is a body that will represent science and research across the United Kingdom. That is in the name. We want to ensure that excellence is well represented on the board, that there is a proper understanding of the systems that are operating in all parts of the UK.

We want to ensure that there is a proper ability for the devolved Administrations to have their specific needs well understood by the board of UKRI. As you know, in the research council system there is no ex officio membership for the devolved Administrations on the boards of those bodies. We have a reserved settlement in which science and innovation are presently reserved to the United Kingdom Government. We would not want to unpick our devolution settlement in this bit of legislation on its own.

[Alex Chalk]

Q Why structure rankings by provider and not by subject?

Joseph Johnson: You are referring to the teaching excellence framework?

[Alex Chalk]

Yes.

Joseph Johnson: We are introducing the teaching excellence framework in a phased, careful approach. In the first years of its operation, we are approaching the assessment and performance ranking on an institution level. In later years—piloting in year 3 with plans for introduction in year 4—we will be moving to discipline-level teaching excellence framework judgments.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Q Can you point to the evidence base that demonstrates a lack of innovation in the sector?

Joseph Johnson: In the HE sector?