Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and encouraging that there is broad support for this initiative, albeit with some concerns raised by noble Lords on all sides of the Chamber.

As the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, said, in his informative and well-informed speech, ARIA needs a licence to fail. I need look no further than some relatives of mine to learn the lesson that repeated failure is often a necessary part of the process. I am distantly related to Orville and Wilbur Wright. They would not have succeeded without years of crushing failure. These self-taught engineers took years and countless attempts to get anywhere close to powered flight, but get there they did. At times, they thought it would never happen, and yet here we are, in 2021, discussing whether there is now too much air travel.

The Wright brothers were, of course, American, but the UK is also a nation with a proud scientific tradition. Alexander Fleming, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Francis Crick and Tim Berners-Lee are just some of the names we can look to for inspiration. For a nation with such a proud tradition as ours, it has been disappointing that, for the past decade, the Government have neglected investment in education and our future scientists. Also missing has been sufficient long-term, high-ambition research and development, so it could be that this Bill marks a turning point.

These Benches support the creation of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, and for that reason we do not intend to oppose the Bill. We will, however, seek to amend it because, in its present form, we do not believe that it properly prepares the agency to succeed in the way that we all want it to do. It is disappointing that the Bill does not offer direction, purpose or mission—as we have been calling it today—for the agency, despite the expectation that it would do so. Various schedules and accompanying framework documents have been referred to but have not yet been made available to noble Lords to assist us in our consideration of the Bill. Without any real accountability or defined strategy, there are obvious concerns that ARIA could end up pursuing vanity or pet projects, rather than the public interest.

We want the agency to work for and invest in all regions and nations, to unlock potential across the UK. We view this somewhat differently from the noble Lord, Lord Patten. Science and innovation have enormous capacity to help address regional inequality and bring opportunities to towns and cities across the four nations of the UK. After all, investment in research means investment in jobs. This will happen if ARIA is given a duty to make it happen. We make no apologies for asking the Government to explain how every region benefits from the £800 million spend, because, as things stand, they are leaving too much of this to chance.

On climate, we meet today as COP takes place in Glasgow, as the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, said. ARIA presents an opportunity to enable scientists to do more to find solutions to the threat of climate change. The agency must contribute to action on climate and help in the mission to net zero. That is why the Opposition Front Bench in the other place called for the environmental emergency to be the driving mission of ARIA’s first decade. At that stage, the Government did not want to make climate the priority—and did not want to make anything else the priority either. The danger is that, if we do not prioritise, everything becomes important and less is achieved.

Many noble Lords have made the point that letting a thousand flowers bloom is a lovely idea but if we want to make impact we need to make choices. Labour believes that the prioritisation of climate research is essential. We will continue to put this case to the Government, who may be more receptive to the idea, given the benefits of investment in technology they will have seen at COP. Only through well-defined ambitions such as these can the agency fulfil its potential.

On the issue of governance, as we have heard, ARIA has, in principle, cross-party support, but to stand the test of time the agency does not need a clause in a Bill guaranteeing its survival—as it currently has—as my noble friend Lord Davies explained. I refer noble Lords to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 as evidence of how to get around attempts of predecessor Governments to bind the hands of their successors. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said, the key to ARIA’s survival is that it must act, and be seen to act, in a way that is solely for the benefit of scientific discovery—not following the passions of the chief executive, not benefitting the business associates of any of the board, and with a clear idea of what success looks like, especially given that ultimate success may take years to realise.

Helpfully, in July 2020 the NAO published a paper for the Science and Technology Committee designed to assist the Government in establishing what was then known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency. The report looked carefully at how to balance the independence of what is now ARIA with the assurance that is needed for it to be secure politically. Without this assurance, ARIA will always be vulnerable to attack on the basis of value for money, cronyism or whatever else. I invite noble Lords to imagine the pressure upon Ministers to intervene should it emerge that grants had been given to a company in which a board member, say, or a member of their family, has an interest. We must ensure, therefore, that the public have absolute confidence, not that every venture will result in a scientific breakthrough but that decisions are made in the interests of science alone. It is in ARIA’s own interests to get this right.

The NAO report refers to what it calls the six principles of effective oversight of new bodies that it would like to see ARIA adopt. These are: clarity of purpose; clear alignment of objectives between departmental plans and the new body; a balanced approach to financial risk; a proportionate and transparent approach to oversight; streamlined processes that avoid overlap with other bodies, which was a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rees; and taking opportunities to provide greater value by involving the body in policy development. So far, the information available from the Government is insufficient to enable us to assess whether ARIA will meet any of these principles; indeed, some of it has made clear that it will not meet some of these principles. For instance, it has to stop large sums of money being spent on operating costs as opposed to research. What is to prevent ARIA spending large sums of money on projects that benefit close friends or associates?

When I raised this concern with the Minister at the meeting he helpfully organised for us last week, I was advised by officials that, in essence, I did not need to worry about these issues, as Schedule 3 to the Bill would answer my concerns. Following the briefing, I read Schedule 3 and, from my reading, it seems that paragraph 11 amends the definition of “contracting authority” in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 to exclude ARIA. This means that the obligations in these regulations that apply to a “contracting authority” will not apply to ARIA. It will not be subject to FOI, as we have heard, and it will not be subject to public contracts regulations. This is an issue that we need to return to as the Bill proceeds.

What about ethical issues? What about animal experimentation, publication obligations, intellectual property and conflicts of interest? We will be asking the Government to come up with answers to these questions too.

Often, failure is all part of the long process of discovery. As the Wright brothers show us, it is perseverance, not a quick win, that changes the world. Inventors and scientists need to be allowed to fail, but ARIA does not need to fail. We will challenge the Government on the Bill, not because we want it to fail but because we want it to succeed.