Research and Development Funding

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab) [V]]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship for the first time, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who called today’s important debate. He is a passionate champion of science and his constituency’s science strengths. In his excellent opening remarks, he set out today’s R&D landscape, and where the Government must do better. Indeed, there has been cross-party agreement in the debate about the importance of research funding. It is unfortunate that the Government do not build on that consensus.

From the gravitational constant to the structure of DNA, and from jet engines to the worldwide web, the UK has a proud tradition of science, innovation, research and development that is renowned across the world. Our university research base contributes £95 billion to the economy, supporting nearly 1 million jobs in science institutes, charities and businesses of all sizes across the country. Twenty per cent. of the UK workforce is employed in a science or research role, and those are good, high-wage, high-skilled jobs that are helping to solve key challenges facing our country and planet—climate change, disease and productivity—and helping to ensure that the UK stays globally competitive.

As the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) emphasised, the pandemic has highlighted the importance of the UK’s science research base and shown the world what we can do, particularly through vaccine research and development. However, our world-leading science sector does not have the world-leading Government that it deserves. As we have heard, the Government’s warm words on science have not been backed by action. Industrial strategy seems to have been archived, with decisions on science made piecemeal rather than strategically.

The Chair of the Science and Technology Committee, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), mentioned the importance of science to yesterday’s integrated review, but the Wellcome Trust has commented:

“There’s a growing gulf between rhetoric and reality in the government support for science. The Integrated Review is full of fantastic and achievable ambitions, but the words are meaningless if they’re not backed up with funding.”

Funding our R&D sector makes economic sense. The Campaign for Science and Engineering found that, for every £1 of public investment in R&D, between 20p and 30p was returned every year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) emphasised, R&D is a key driver in building the economy of tomorrow, creating new jobs as others are overtaken by automation, and positioning the UK as a leader on the world stage.

I am sure the Minister will agree when I speak about the importance of R&D, but let us look at the Government’s actions. Reports in the Financial Times today indicate that the Government are likely to miss their 2.4% of GDP R&D spending target following the cuts to overseas development. Labour has called for a 3% target. To fail on 2.4% would be truly shocking and, as has been said, it would be on the backs of the poorest countries in the world. Imperial College London, where I studied electrical engineering decades ago, is one of the many bodies that have written to me emphasising the need for international collaboration to be a priority. Yet, as the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) highlighted, the Government are cutting overseas development research. Why?

The Government promised to double R&D spending to £22 billion by 2024—a move supported by key stakeholders. However, as with many a prime ministerial promise, we do not have the detail. I have tabled many written questions on that, but the Minister has successively hidden behind the spending review, the Budget and, now, departmental budget reviews. As the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee mentioned, just this morning the Business Secretary admitted that UKRI’s 2021-22 budget had not yet been agreed. When Labour calls for a long-term funding plan for science, our ambition is orders of magnitude greater than three weeks.

During the Brexit negotiations, the Government sowed uncertainty and anxiety among researchers as they refused to commit to Horizon alignment. I am pleased that the eventual deal did make that commitment, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge pointed out, the Government continue to be evasive over the funding details. The Wellcome Trust says:

“Researchers in the UK welcomed the decision to continue the UK’s”

Horizon commitments, but

“they will be immensely frustrated, and with good reason, if it’s going to be paid for by cuts to other research. We urgently need reassurance on this.”

Can the Minister tell me whether the UK’s estimated £2 billion of Horizon contributions will be taken from the promised £22 billion science spend, as the right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) implied? Will funding received back from the Horizon programmes be counted as part of that £22 billion, and which departmental budgets will pay the Horizon contributions? Science spend increases are a positive break from the decade of austerity inflicted on our economy, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge explained, we need direction, not a destination-less road map, in the absence of a clear strategy.

The Government have failed to protect our research sector from the impact of the pandemic. The hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) highlighted the importance of charity medical research, which invests £1 billion into university research and development but has been consistently ignored when it comes to pandemic support. Modelling by the Institute for Public Policy Research predicts that lost charity income could mean that medical research charities invest £4 billion less in health R&D between now and 2027, with a knock-on effect on private investment of up to £1 billion. The British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK have announced thousands of lost research jobs and cut hundreds of millions from R&D budgets as the Government have turned a blind eye. Why have the Government been prepared to risk those jobs and that investment?

The failure of the Government to respond to the pandemic is costing jobs and risks creating a lost generation of researchers. There are 17,000 early-career researchers whose long-term future in research is in jeopardy. In January, researchers from the Northern Ireland and north-east doctoral training partnership, representing universities across the UK, wrote to the Government calling for them to provide security for PhD students. The Government have merely shifted the cliff edge six months back, and only for some. Will the Minister tell us what the Government are doing to support early-career researchers and the next generation of science researchers?

My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge and others have highlighted concerns about the new high-risk, high-reward research body ARIA. Although we welcome it in principle, today’s Select Committee hearing reflected our concerns that, without a clear mission beyond the ideological eyesight of Dominic Cummings, ARIA could become a vanity project vulnerable to cronyism.

If R&D is to drive our recovery and provide high-skill, high-paying jobs, it must do so for all regions. In 2018, 72% of R&D expenditure was in the south-east and south-west, with the north-east receiving the lowest per-head funding in England—just a quarter of that of the east of England. Recent decisions may make things worse. Chris Day, the vice-chancellor of Newcastle University, has written to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to say:

“The decision to reduce the budget for international development projects is deeply concerning. If funds are cut such that the Hubs contracts are terminated this will lead to immediate redundancies in North East England.”

What is the Minister doing to ensure that R&D investment is shared fairly across the regions of the UK? The Labour party would champion R&D as an engine of regional progress, strengthening regional economies by rebalancing R&D investment.

Finally, we will never unlock the full potential of our research sector if we do not use the talents of everyone. There are real issues with diversity in the UK’s science and research sectors. Diversity is an economic imperative, especially as we face a shortfall of science, technology, engineering and maths workers, so what is the Minister doing to increase diversity, and how is that reflected in the Government’s funding model? Labour would build on the UK’s science successes and ensure that we continue to be an innovation nation that draws on the talents of all.

The Royal Society said that the Government’s actions are undermining their ambition for the UK to be a science superpower. Government indecision and inaction have made the impact of the pandemic worse for our critical research sector. They must now provide the long-term funding needed for the recovery.