Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Flynn]

I think it absolutely fits that point. Of course, there could be new solutions that we are not aware of at this moment. On Second Reading, the hon. Member made a similar point, and I said that he should not be so narrow in his view of climate change because to meet net zero we need to operate in a vast landscape. The Government do not seem to be acknowledging that through ARIA. To repeat myself, I believe that that is a missed opportunity.

The Government will point to their energy White Paper and point to the 10-point plan, and perhaps they will point to the North sea transition deal in terms of their aims in relation to combating climate change. That is fair and reasonable, but—notwithstanding the arguments we might have on those points, of which there are many—it does not mean that we stop there, particularly in the year of COP26. I urge Government Members to reflect on that as we move forward in the debate.

That covers amendment 1, which we hope to press later, but we have tabled other amendments. Perhaps the clearest, and the one that needs to be debated in this Chamber, notwithstanding what I have already said, relates to scrutiny—the fact that the Government have sought to put ARIA outwith the Freedom of Information Act 2000. It is no longer going to be applicable to public procurement regulations. That is simply unacceptable and there is no justification for it.

I listened closely to what the Minister had to say in that regard in Committee and on Second Reading, and I have read on numerous occasions remarks made in relation to that point by those on the Government Benches, yet I simply do not understand the logic of why they are doing this. From looking at DARPA, we know that there are 40-odd freedom of information requests—40-odd for DARPA, which is on a scale vastly superior to that of ARIA—yet the Government still seek to move away from that scrutiny. From a public perspective, that does no one any favours. I am sure that, if the Government had their time back, they might do things differently, because ultimately this benefits nobody. All it does is create more clouds of suspicion around what the Government’s activities are.

That ties in with our amendment 2, which relates to cronyism and the need to avoid it. The Government’s record and reputation over the last year and a half have been deplorable. The hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) shakes his head, but that is the reality. There is a reason that his Prime Minister is so disliked and distrusted in Scotland: it is what we have seen over the pandemic—not just from the Prime Minister himself, but from his Ministers and friends, the donors, and the family members who have benefited from contracts. What we do not want to see—what we cannot see—is ARIA becoming a vehicle for that to happen. Our amendment would clearly stop that.

On FOI and procurement regulations, the Labour party has said something similar to us, just with a lot more words. It is within the Labour party’s gift to do so, although I am not quite sure why it did not just agree with us. It can do so on occasion; we will not take it personally.

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

I thank the hon. Member for his kind words. Of course, the SNP amendments were simply agreeing with Labour’s amendments during Committee. We sought to improve—as we should do—from Committee to Report.

[Stephen Flynn]

If I heard that correctly, the Labour party is not agreeing with the amendments that it tabled in Committee and that the SNP has agreed to at this point in time, so it had to add more words. But I suppose that is the nature of this place.

That takes me to transparency and scrutiny, and a key token and standpoint of those on the Government Benches: to take back control. I do not suspect that they will agree to the SNP’s view on a mission for ARIA. That being the case, the mission—to all intents and purposes, what ARIA seeks to do—will be determined by the chair and chief executive officer. They will decide what happens. In that regard, the House will, of course, have no say and we suggest that the House should have a say. It is important that this place has a role to play in the process. I would be incredibly surprised if Members who fought so hard to take back control did not seek to have their say on such matters.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah]

It is a pleasure and honour to follow the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). I am certain that the current Conservative Government could benefit enormously from her championing and promotion of an industrial strategy, and I hope that they are listening.

I thank all those who worked so hard to improve this Bill in Committee, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), for Luton North (Sarah Owen) and for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), as well as the Clerks and House of Commons staff for their excellent support.

It is vital that we get the Advanced Research and Invention Agency right. Today we will hear many Members—although not as many as we had thought—raise a wide range of important issues such as climate change, regional and national economic development, international development and democratic accountability, but at the heart of this debate is science, which now plays such a critical part in all our lives.

The UK has a proud tradition in science, engineering, innovation, research and development. We are renowned across the world for scientific breakthroughs and discoveries that pushed humanity forwards. From the discovery of penicillin to the invention of Stephenson’s Rocket in my constituency of Newcastle upon Tyne Central, again and again UK scientists pushed forward the boundaries of knowledge, shrinking the vast expanse of ignorance, which, as this pandemic has shown, may threaten humanity’s very existence.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend refers to some of that world-beating research. I chair the all-party parliamentary group on HIV and AIDS. There has been a great degree of concern among some of our global health all-party groups about the cuts that were and are coming to global health research. I totally support the amendments that we have tabled on climate change; there is also a critical link between climate change and global health. Does my hon. Friend agree that we absolutely need to continue that world-beating research, because it has so many benefits for health not just globally, but in this country too?

[Chi Onwurah]

I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friend’s all-party parliamentary group, with which I am quite familiar. I wholeheartedly agree with him about the importance of that research, and about the link between that important research and this agency. I will develop that point further in a few moments.

As hon. Members have indicated, UK science is not only inspiring; it can also be groundbreaking and is a key economic driver. Our university research base alone contributes £95 billion to the economy, supporting nearly 1 million jobs in scientific institutes, charities and businesses of all sizes. Research by Oxford Economics commissioned by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy found that each £1 of public research and development—such as the money to be spent on ARIA—stimulates between £1.96 and £2.34 of private research and development, and we cannot recover from the pandemic without inspiring and initiating more private sector investment in research and development. Together, private and public sector research can help to address the key challenges facing humanity—from climate change to inequality, from pandemics to productivity.

That brings us very neatly to the broken promises of this Conservative Government on overseas development aid, as raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), and how that betrays the poorest among us and the critical challenges faced by us all. With over £4.1 billion slashed from overseas development aid, the £120 million cut from science and research programmes may appear minor, but that has already had a devastating impact on science here and abroad. Cutting funding from global challenges research fund hubs, for example, threatens researchers at Newcastle University in my constituency, as well as scientists in developing countries working together on water security. These cuts are a consequence of the Government’s decision to scrap the legally binding 0.7% of GDP target for overseas development aid.

New clause 4 tabled by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), which sought to reverse that decision, has not been selected for debate, though a debate on the issue may follow; certainly, the debate is not going away. Particularly in relation to ARIA and the amendments before us, it is really important to emphasise that for UK science, research and credibility, these cuts have a significant impact. The UK has been the only G7 country to cut aid in the middle of a pandemic, and in so doing it has united hon. and right hon. Members across this House who are horrified by the harm done—harm such as, in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, in Yemen, slashing aid by 60% without conducting an impact assessment, and harm such as cutting bilateral funding on water, sanitation and hygiene—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I would like the hon. Lady to return to the Bill.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, because that is exactly the point to which I am going—to the amendments. Just to say that the funding for coronavirus research, which is the kind of world-beating or leading research that we would hope ARIA will be looking at, has been cut by 70%, which will kill the project. A Government happy to withdraw support for vital research projects across the globe are not a Government who wish to act in the best interests of science, the country or the world.

On ARIA itself, we have many serious concerns. We recognise the need for new mechanisms to support high-risk, high-reward research in our science sector, and as such ARIA is a step in the right direction. ARIA can transform our scientific landscape and we can build an institution that furthers our societal aims for decades to come, but we have concerns, which our amendments seek to address, about the lack of direction, strategy and accountability in the Government’s current proposals. Without such improvements, we fear that the agency could be used to pursue vanity projects disconnected from the public interest.

The first major issue with the Bill is the absence of a mission for ARIA, which has already been raised. What is ARIA for and what is it working towards? Labour’s amendment 12 would require ARIA to have a specific mission for ARIA’s first decade, and we want that mission to be climate change.

[Richard Fuller]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for reverting to items that are in order today. On amendment 12, she mentioned that that should be the “core mission”. The hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn) talked about its being part of a bigger whole, but it is still a relatively small amount of money. Does the amendment mean that that is the only mission? Essentially, when she says “core mission”, what she means is the only mission and the agency cannot do anything else other than that for 10 years.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for seeking to aid Madam Deputy Speaker in determining what is in order. I am not sure whether that was necessary.

On the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, I fail to see why he thinks that pedantry can make up for a lack of argument. Climate change is a core mission. We are not seeking to hem in the agency with absolute linguistic barriers for what exactly should be done, but we want it to have a direction. We want to know where it is going and what it is seeking to do. The core mission, as I intend to set out in detail, will be climate change. I do not intend to limit its interpretation of climate change, but I will set out the reasons why climate change will be its core mission.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

As the hon. Lady will recall, we had similar debates in Committee. Does she completely dismiss the idea that the mission is to find cutting-edge science, to explore it, and to go where no other agency is willing to go at the moment, because they will have to follow too many metrics to prove their effectiveness? That is its mission. This agency does not have to have a mission beyond trying to find something exciting, new and potentially really beneficial to mankind.

[Chi Onwurah]

I have a huge amount of respect for the hon. Gentleman, but I fundamentally disagree with him on this issue. To go where no one has gone before is not a mission or a direction; it is a deliberate absence of direction. I spoke earlier about the vast expanse of ignorance that can present us with huge, existential challenges. The history of science has been about trying to reduce that huge expanse of ignorance, and for us to leave ARIA without any mission or direction in addressing that vast expanse of ignorance that is before us will severely limit its likelihood of success. That, together with other aspects of the Bill with regard to accountability and transparency, leave it open to cronyism as well as other issues.

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

The hon. Lady talked about lessons learned from the pandemic. May I ask her to think about the fact that we were prepared for a flu pandemic but not a coronavirus pandemic? By stating that we have to have a core aim or principle for the ARIA Bill, is she not heading for the same problem? She says that this agency must be focused on environmental matters, but if something else were to come along of equal importance, would we not have limited ARIA already?

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, which gives me the opportunity to clarify again that the difference between a flu virus and a coronavirus virus may be significant in medical terms, but it is not what we are talking about. We are talking about climate change—the existential challenge. We are not saying that it should be one part of climate change. To say that it is like preparing for one virus as against another virus is not an equivalent comparison. This is a much vaster challenge. Indeed, I think that she answered her own question. If something more important than climate change comes along in the next 10 years, with climate change being the existential challenge of our times, we would have significant issues to face as a Parliament. If she can think of something more important than climate change coming along in the next 10 years, would she like to intervene on me and suggest what that might be?

[Dawn Butler]

The UK Government have set the most ambitious climate change target, which is to reduce emissions by 78% by 2035. Would it not be ridiculous if ARIA were to pursue something that undid that good work?

[Chi Onwurah]

Absolutely. As my hon. Friend says, the UK has set the most ambitious climate change target, but the Committee on Climate Change has said that the Government are currently on course to miss their manifesto commitment of achieving net zero by 2050. Amendment 12 aims to support the Government in that mission.

I now wish to make some significant progress in my comments, so I will not take any more interventions for a while. The lack of mission is a concern shared by many. The renowned economist Mariana Mazzucato suggested during the evidence sessions that achieving net zero should be ARIA’s mission. The Secretary of State said that ARIA needs a “laser-like focus”, but failed to provide it. The Institute of Physics said that a clear mission is “essential”, and the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) raised concerns about ARIA’s lack of focus and purpose. The president of the Royal Society said that

“£800 million is not a large sum of money, so if we have a plethora of missions, then I think we will go wrong. ARIA has to have focus of mission and a commitment to the model over the long-term”.––[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Agency Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 63, Q62.]