Science and Technology: Economy

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is an honour and a privilege to be the first to commend the powerful and important speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman of Steventon, and to welcome her to this House—I will describe her accurately, if perhaps not technically, as my noble friend. Her diligence in listening and learning as a new Member has, I am sure, been noted across this House—scientists like evidence. I have long proclaimed, to audiences up and down this land, that we need more people from a scientific background in this House, and indeed across politics. I am very glad that the noble Baroness in particular heard that message, for, with her long experience in health and environmental issues, and particularly her knowledge and skills in explaining risk, the House is truly getting a gem.

As the noble Baroness explained, she joins us from her role as the executive director of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, part of the Cambridge Faculty of Mathematics. If that sounds a little daunting, I should add that she also has experience in designing websites, games and social media content, so we need have no fear of incomprehension. For those in the House who, like me, are subscribers to the frequently terrifying Retraction Watch, it is worth noting that she has a long-time interest in reforming the science publishing system and led the UKRI-funded Octopus platform for primary research publication.

The noble Baroness referred to her work with the BBC. One of her other programmes was “Climate Change by Numbers”. Some of the noble Lords who took part in last week’s climate action impact debate might like to reconsider their approach for the future.

But what about dealing with politics in your Lordships’ House? Preparing for today, I went back to the noble Baroness’s Oxford PhD thesis, which in part covered the mocker swallowtail butterfly. The females are polymorphic—have many different body forms—and come in three main groups of colours. That sounds like good preparation for your Lordships’ House, at least as currently instituted.

Like everyone else, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, for securing this debate. My speech very much follows on from that of noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, for the economy is a complete subset of the environment: the physical, biological and social environment determines what our economy is like. This morning, I was at a round table discussing the Carnegie UK Life in the UK 2024 report, which reported “persistent inequality” and a “stagnation” in well-being. Our collective score for well-being was 61 out of 100 —in many university contexts, that would be a fail. The science is telling us about the reasons for that and we need to do much more to listen to that science, for the benefit of all of us, as well as for the economy.

I draw attention to an event this morning. Defra, operating on behalf of three government departments, has settled the legal case over the tragic death of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who was killed by air pollution in 2013. The scientists keep telling us, again and again, at increasingly higher levels, how much damage air pollution is doing. Just this week, a report highlighted how about 4,000 premature deaths are caused by gas cooking in the UK each year—54% of UK homes use gas cookers.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, said, there is much focus on science making money, but we need a lot more focus on science that looks after our society and its well-being. With that thought, I welcome the Minister to his place and ask one question—I will understand if he needs to write to me. Agro-ecological approaches to producing healthy food are absolutely crucial to fixing our broken food system. How much of the research going into agriculture is going into agro-ecological approaches?