Draft European Research Infrastructure Consortium (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2018 General Committees

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair for this Committee, Mr Sharma.

I am a member of the House of Commons European Statutory Instruments Committee, which decided to refer this SI back to the Government and ask them to have an affirmative debate on it—perhaps that is why I am here. We did not do that because we wanted to cause trouble; rather, we felt that the structure the SI amends is so important to the UK that we needed some explanation on the record from the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth, which would say a little bit about future policy. She has begun to do that, but I wanted to ask her a few questions about how she and her Department see our ongoing approach to ERICs evolving over time.

The Minister rightly says that two ERICs are hosted in this country. What effect, if any, will our leaving the European Union have on the size and workload of the ERICs that are hosted here? Might there be moves to take them somewhere else as a result of our move from EU member status to non-EU member status? Will she comment publicly on whether our move from EU member status to third-country status will have any implications for how the ERIC process works, especially with respect to the setting up of new ERICs? Do she and her Department have in mind policy changes, administrative changes or changes of approach, rather than a technical amendment, which is important but not the whole story, to ensure that, in the move from EU member status to third-country status in the ERIC structure, we shore up our involvement?

Does the Minister feel that, as a third country, there is any possibility that we will host a new ERIC? Given that we do not have any idea of what our immigration policy will look like, as the White Paper on that has been delayed until after the meaningful vote in a couple of weeks’ time, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central said, will the Minister indicate her Department’s approach to immigration policy? When I was campaigning for this country to remain in the EU, I went round a lot of universities and one of the main things I was told was that it would be catastrophic for research and being leaders in the field to have a narrow approach to immigration. In particular, there must be collaboration across borders. Those of us who have been involved in science policy know that having cross-border co-operation without barriers is key to keeping this country at the forefront of future policy, as knowledge becomes more and more specialised.

Will the Minister give us a few indications of her Department’s thoughts on these important issues, so we can set a policy context for the draft regulations? The issue is not that the regulations are not technical—they are—but that the context in which ERICs have operated in the past will now change. Will the Minister tell us a bit more about her thought process and her Department’s approach to how we deal with trying to ensure that our commitment to ERICs and our capacity to be involved and to have a leading role in new ERICs is projected effectively in the future in the new context?

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[Claire Perry]

The hon. Lady is right. It is why the proposed framework is to have as close as possible alignment on goods. I know she speaks to many universities and researchers, so she will know that we have an endemic problem with scale-up. What tends to happen is that the intellectual property is sold overseas before the commercialisation stage, and often the full commercialisation of projects and services is done by overseas companies, rather than the IP being held back in the UK—but I am digressing slightly. Forgive me, Mr Sharma.

I am going to address the migration points. I thank the hon. Member for Wallasey for her contributions to the European Statutory Instruments Committee. I know she has a lot of stuff going on with that, and these are important questions. Third countries cannot host ERICs, so there is a question about hosting versus participation. We host two ERICs and we are members of 12. This relates to our future negotiations, which are spelled out in the political declaration, but we have expressed a desire to continue to host. We hope that our special status as one of the world leaders—I cannot remember the patent numbers, but I believe we are up there with economies very much larger than ours—will allow us some special status for ERICs hosting. I believe that is part of the future negotiations.

[Ms Eagle]

Clearly it is worrying that third countries cannot host ERICs given that we are about to become a third country. Will the right hon. Lady indicate the sort of timescale and approach or process that will be in place for trying to negotiate ERIC 2 or whatever we want to call it?

[Claire Perry]

I will clarify my remarks to the hon. Lady in writing, but I believe that forms part of the negotiation we are having around Horizon 2020 and the entire science and innovation piece. It is part of the ongoing negotiations before we have a legal political declaration, if that makes sense, on a future framework, but I will clarify that in writing to her.

The hon. Lady asked me a very important point about migration. She is absolutely right. We have benefited enormously from the incredible talent of those who come to study in the UK and who often choose to remain and work here, and that absolutely must continue. She also asked me to say a little bit about policy. I do not want to pre-empt my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, but essentially the policy position we have taken on migration is one that is entirely consistent with wanting to remain a world leader in science and innovation, and that has been stated in every public declaration. It has also been reiterated in every conversation we have.

Since January 2018, we have made a series of changes to the immigration rules to support that objective. For example, we have doubled the number of exceptional talent tier 1 visas for those qualifying in science, engineering, the humanities, medicine and so on. We have expanded the number of institutions that can sponsor international researchers, making it easier for research councils to bring in researchers for two years under a temporary work route. We have waived the resident labour market tests for supernumerary international researchers and members of sponsored research teams, and we have enabled faster switching between students visas, which are tier 4, and highly skilled tier 2 visas.

[Ms Eagle]

Obviously, any expansion and increased flexibility in that area will be very important to maintaining the UK’s leading place as a centre of scientific and research excellence. The Minister will probably be more familiar with this than I am, given her announcement regarding her personal arrangements, but when I went around the country meeting university researchers, what I heard about that concerned me more than anything else was the bureaucracy involved in granting visas. It takes much longer to get researchers from non-EU countries, as well as to get UK researchers into third countries. There is a bureaucracy issue, a timing issue and uncertainty about whether visas will be granted, which makes it much easier to organise research where there is free movement. That is the key issue that will bind us in the future if we do not get it right.

[Claire Perry]

As always, the hon, Lady makes an important point. She is right to distinguish between EU and global talent pools. Of course we want to attract the best and the brightest, wherever they come from, to work in the research and innovation sector, to be part of the industrial strategy, and to benefit the wider-UK economy.

Something that is not in my briefing notes but which the hon. Lady might find interesting is that one of the challenges, I am told, is that not enough home-grown students, particularly women, are emerging from our education system to be grown into those research and innovation positions. One might hope that, in time, we will see more acceleration of women and others through our education system, until we reach the point where we can fill more of those important research positions with UK talent. Regardless, we will still be open to the best and the brightest supporting our world-leading research and innovation base, and as we have been absolutely clear, both in public and in conversations across Government, we want to make sure that we work closely with the research sector to ensure that our visa arrangements are closely aligned to the sector’s needs. She makes an important point: it is not just the availability of research, but the ease of access. If we are bidding in a global talent pool, we must make sure that we have streamlined activities.