Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Fourth sitting)

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Amanda Solloway)]

Amendment 7 concerns the Secretary of State’s appointment of ARIA’s non-executive members. I have spoken to many experts, scientists and researchers about the creation of ARIA over the past six months, and one thing that has been made crystal clear to me is how important finding the right people will be to ARIA’s success. That point was reiterated to this Committee in the evidence session last Wednesday. The importance of finding the right people extends to ARIA’s non-executive members, and Professor Bond offered a valuable perspective on that. He was clear that we need a balance on the board and that it should include radical thinkers and those with different backgrounds in academia and industry. I was struck by his advice that we should have a board that was,, in his words “small” and “slightly unusual”. That is an important point.

We are looking to foster a culture that takes big bets and pursues transformational ideas. We have heard over and again how rare are the people who can do that. The difficulty in finding the mix of people to best support that activity means that we should impose as few constraints as possible and cast the net as widely as we can. That is a strong argument against placing inflexible legislative constraints on the background and experience of the limited number of people we are looking for before we have been begun that process.

We will conduct robust appointment processes that will follow the governance code for public appointments. That code includes principles of fairness, merit, diversity and integrity, which speak to the intention of the amendment.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

Will that include weirdos and misfits?

[Amanda Solloway]

I can confirm that we are looking for incredible people; I have made that clear.

There is another area where we are in danger of over-engineering ARIA: in governance arrangements. Although I share the belief of the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central that a well-balanced board will be important for ARIA, I also believe that there are sufficient incentives and processes to support that without any further legislative constraint. For that reason, I encourage the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment.

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[Daniel Zeichner]

This is an opportunity; we can help spare the Government future embarrassment. Quite frankly, if we have this set of out-there people running the organisation and they then choose to appoint someone highly controversial, it could be extremely embarrassing. I remember occasions when Labour Secretaries of State had difficulties with scientific advisers. These are controversial areas, and I can foresee an extremely difficult situation. Without an ability to intervene, where does it lead?

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is important to understand that ARIA will be an independent agency, but it will be spending taxpayers’ money and it will therefore reflect the public and the national interest. If somebody is recruited who, at the time or later on, is found to have views that are abhorrent to society, or not fit to serve on the board for other reasons, by what process could or would such a person be removed from the board? If, for example, after appointment of a member to the board, it was found that they championed eugenic research or that they believed in anti-vaccination mythologies, for example, would there be any means by which they could be removed?

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[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Member for his contribution, which I think was made in a constructive sense.

I think the Chair of the Liaison Committee is making a point about that guidance. Clearly, it was not sufficient for David Cameron and it is clearly not proving to be sufficient in other cases. I hope that, as this amendment sets out, it is not simply about declaring. This is a critical part and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to emphasise it. The amendment does not say they should declare conflicts of interest; it states that the Secretary of States makes regulations—detailed, I would say—establishing the procedures to deal with conflicts of interest. That is the key thing. This stems from the need to have a close working relationship with the private sector, which will give rise to conflicts of interest that may be quite complex, especially with new and evolving technologies, which may go on to complex and potentially international supply chains. Those conflicts of interest may be complex, involving equity stakes and so on. We need procedures to deal with them that are more detailed than the current general ones and which are specifically targeted at ARIA’s unique role.

Dr Regina Dugan, the chief executive officer of Wellcome Leap, effectively supported that proposal:

“The particular way that we work is through contracts; we do not actually do grants. I also think that this position of not taking equity is important, because the non-profit element of it is part of the differentiation, and we have an entire commercial sector that is good at assessing value and figuring out return on investment.”—[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Agency Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 48, Q43.]

What is different with ARIA is that it is, potentially, going to be taking equity, which can raise more complex conflicts of interest.

Professor Pierre Azoulay of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that

“the programme managers at DARPA and also at ARPA-E—the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy—have a fixed expiration date, which means they will need to go back to academia or to the venture capital firm or large firm that they left, and generally they want to do so with their head held high and their reputation intact. I think that that has created over time a norm of correct behaviour, if you will, and the absence of cronyism.”—[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Agency Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 38, Q30.]

We want to see that norm of correct behaviour established through supporting processes and procedures. I asked Dr Highnam,

“What should we be looking for in the directors and programme managers as the key positive part of the culture that ARIA should seek to build?”

He answered:

“Honour in public service is top of the list.”––[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Agency Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 39, Q32.]

I should say that I have not heard any Government witness or Minister emphasise the importance of honour as a key characteristic of board members. I think it is really important that procedures to deal with conflicts of interest are established. That view is shared by the Chair of the Liaison Committee, who has said

“After the dust settles over the Greensill affair, I suspect that we will find that the lack of judgment over David Cameron’s approaches to ministers is less important than the general failure to address what has become a casual approach to conflicts of interests amongst many in government and in politics…All can see now the general inability of the various codes and systems”—

to the points made—

“of oversight, such as the toothless advisory committee on business appointments, to provide sufficient transparency and accountability, which is why even its chair, Lord Pickles, wants reform.”

When the Chair of Liaison Committee, who is much respected on the Government Benches, says that, and when we are mired in scandals as a consequence of a lack of appropriate conduct and clear processes and procedures, I urge the Minister to accept the need at the very least for greater detail when it comes to avoidance of conflicts of interest. I urge her to accept the amendment to establish processes and procedures to avoid conflicts of interest in this new body, which is critical to our future economic and scientific prosperity.

[Daniel Zeichner]

It is a pleasure to be part of a Committee that you are chairing, Mrs Cummins. I fully endorse what my hon. Friend has said about the amendment. In fact, she has pretty much said it all, but there are one or two points that I want to add.

We are considering a profound set of issues. The evidence sessions showed some fundamental differences in culture between our country and the Americans, and it is their example on which we are largely modelling our initiative. To some extent it goes to the problem that we are facing as a country at the moment. For a long time, we rather considered ourselves not to be prey to such conflicts; we had a British way of doing it. Procedures were not necessarily written down, but there were understandings and people behaved properly. The sad truth is that over the past 20 to 30 years, somewhere that changed. That is the truth, and that is why we are in the current situation.

In the evidence session with the Americans, I was very struck at one point when we were pressing them on how they avoided conflicts of interest. Their response was a kind of American swelling of patriotic pride, as they said that they would not do that because it would somehow harm the American dream. [Interruption.] Exactly. People in Britain are different; it is not that we are not proud of our country or patriotic, but I would say that our patriotism is different from theirs.

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Perhaps the fact that DARPA is part of the US defence establishment, with all the military honour and commitment to the defence of the nation, is one of the reasons why honour was held so high by the Americans. Does he agree that the absence of any mission and any departmental ownership of ARIA means that will not be the case in the UK?

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend has touched on a very important point. It was something that I tried to draw out in some of the evidence sessions. I would point Members to an excellent book written a few years ago by Lord Sainsbury, an esteemed former science Minister. He talked about the differences in culture between Europe, America and the UK, and warned against just trying to transpose one system to another, unless one really understood the cultural context. We have not mentioned it so far today, as it has very much been about natural sciences and perhaps, mea culpa, engineering at the beginning, but the social sciences may be biggest challenge of all. That was touched on at one point in the evidence sessions when one of the witnesses said it is not just a matter of the technologies, but public acceptance and understanding of them. It will require some really innovative work from social scientists to understand how that will work.

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I will comment briefly on amendments 16, 17 and 18, which would require ARIA to have regard for the benefits of activities across the nations and regions. ARIA presents an opportunity to drive innovation across the country, and this is about ensuring that it does not deploy a business-as-usual approach, which would risk undermining the shared benefit that it should provide. Research and development is a vital driver of growth, both nationally and at regional level. In its current form the Bill requires ARIA to promote scientific innovation and invention “in” the United Kingdom. The amendments suggest simply changing that word to “across”, so that the benefits accrue to all constituencies, towns and villages. As I have said previously, the Government have made many promises over the past 18 months to level up all of the UK’s regions. We would like to see those promises translated into institutional reality, and that is what these three amendments seek to achieve.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I feel passionately about this issue because I represent a part of the country that often comes in for criticism, in the sense that some people, even some of my colleagues, say to me, “You’ve already got everything—you shouldn’t be getting any more.” This is a complex argument. If some areas have a long tradition of doing well and competing internationally, we can hardly deny them the resources to carry on with their work. However, we are painfully aware that there is a danger of overheating in some parts of the country.

I chair the all-party parliamentary group for the UK’s innovation corridor, which is, essentially, London-Stanstead-Cambridge, and there is much discussion at the moment about the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford arc—the so-called golden triangle. The discussion seems to have been going on for years and years—certainly for as long as I have been in this place, and long before that. There is this hope that through the clustering effects we can do much better than we already do, and we look to examples in other parts of the world to see how it is done.

The reason I support this amendment is that this is not simple or easy. There have been many attempts to spread the Cambridge cluster effect. In fact, ironically, it often seems to cluster more and more in particular bits of Cambridge. It is very hard to get people to go to other places, but that is what we want to try to encourage. One of the ways in which we will do that is by having the data and the information. This is a great opportunity for ARIA to be mindful of that in its report. It is not a difficult thing to do. It should tell people what is going on and where it is putting its resources. If it is not working in the first few years, that would give us the opportunity to intervene and make a change.

[Chi Onwurah]

Once again, my hon. Friend has reminded me in his excellent contribution of an important point that I should have made, which was that the regional development agencies, abolished by the Conservative coalition in 2010, did report on regional innovation and science spend. Whenever I speak to the North East England chamber of commerce, I am told that one of the difficulties in making the knowledge exchange framework accessible or understandable is the lack of data on regional science spend. Part of the point of this amendment is to help restore some of that data.

[Daniel Zeichner]

That is absolutely right. One of the many tragedies of the last 10 or 15 years has been the fact that strong attempts by the last Labour Government to have a positive regional policy were swept away. Vince Cable, I think, described the destruction of the regional structures in 2010 as positively Maoist. Astonishingly, Lord Heseltine later came to Cambridge to bang the drum for regionalism outside the very offices that had been shut by his own Government a few months earlier.

We do not have a good record on regional policy in this country. We need to do better in future, for everybody’s benefit. Frankly, my city can do without the overheated house prices and the problems that come with everything being clustered in one place. It would be good for us, but also for everybody else, to get more balanced economic growth across the country.

We could do one small thing today—and I really do not see how it would be difficult for the Government to concede. I do not know how many Bill Committees I have been on—I have never yet had any success, although I live in hope. I make this plea, however, because I really do not see how the concession could be that painful.

[Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

I rise, obviously, to speak in favour of SNP amendment 30, which almost ties in with what is proposed by the shadow Minister. It is about providing greater transparency on the destination of ARIA’s funding disbursements within the UK.

I just want to pick up on a couple of things that have been said already. The shadow Minister reflected on the fact that the Bill makes no mention of the devolved nations. She almost seemed surprised, but that took me a bit aback because I am not surprised at that in any way, shape or form. I do not think anyone even on the Government Benches is over-surprised that they forgot to mention Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock mentioned his concerns about drawing conclusions. Yeah, I will be drawing conclusions about where that money goes and I am sure that every single person in Scotland will.

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We agree that ARIA can play a significant and transformative role in our future scientific and research landscape. We agree also that ARIA must focus on a small number of specific missions or challenges if it is to make an impact. We heard so much confusion about what ARIA was for during the evidence sessions, because of a lack of clarity from the Government. If the Government do not set the mission so that the £800 million is spent in a focused way that makes a significant impact, and so that the Government are accountable and take responsibility for the success of the agency and can command the buy-in of all Departments across Government, as well as of the public more generally, ARIA will be subject to the whim or influence of an individual chief executive or chair or those who have their ear, and the agency will not be set for success, which is what we want to see.

[Daniel Zeichner]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend, who has made a strong case. This issue goes to the heart of the discussion we have been having all day and goes back to some of the comments I made in my opening remarks.

We were castigated earlier for talking too much about Mr Cummings. I say that we must cast off the curse of Cummings. I thought the Government had moved on—they got rid of him—but the Bill still has all his hallmarks. The chaos and confusion that he espouses—his raison d’être—will make this agency fail. That is the problem. I encourage the Government to move past it. The evidence from the witnesses all the way through was about the confusion. I understand Marina Mazzucato is advising the Government. She made it ever so clear that ARIA will only work if there is a clear mission. The Americans made it absolutely clear that if we want to do something like they have, that is the way to do it.

The Government seem to be completely confused about whether they want to learn from examples elsewhere, or do something very different—although they are offering no evidence as to why that should work; sadly, we have seen examples in the past of attempts to do this kind of thing that have not worked. If we are going to learn from the examples elsewhere, surely we have to listen to the people who know how they work. I am at a loss to understand why the Government are not listening to the advice.

The first point to make about the amendment is whether to have a mission or not. Do we do it in the way that might work? It is clear that we have to. The second point, which follows, is that if we are to choose something, what should we choose? Witnesses pointed out that there a number of choices. Unsurprisingly, climate change came up on a number of occasions, as it is obvious we should seek to address it. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central has made all the points on that.

We have an extraordinary situation in that we have COP26 coming up in a few months. Would it not be wonderful if we had this new agency established to address those huge challenges? I fear we are not going to have it, though. We might have the agency and someone sitting around scratching their head saying, “What shall we do today?” when it is entirely obvious what they should be doing.

As I said earlier, we could have some social science challenges. A big one is: how is an advanced country like ours not able to lag a few lofts? We have had 10 years of failure in these schemes, with one scheme under the coalition, and the latest scheme from the Government collapsing a few months ago. It is extraordinary when we know that one of the biggest problems is the state of our housing stock, yet we cannot seem to find a way to run a scheme to improve it. That challenge would fall very much within the scope of our amendment. We want this to succeed.

Finally, I cannot help but refer to the extraordinary document that Dominic Cummings waved at the Committee. I could not see it on the TV screens, so I went and printed it off. I will hold it up. I do not know if anyone has seen it, but this is primary school standard. I want to put in a word for taxi drivers, actually, because what was said earlier was slightly unfair. I am quite happy that taxi drivers are scrutinised—and members of the ARIA board. I also do not want to be in any way disrespectful to primary schools, but really? Do not place the future of the agency in the hands of the legacy of Dominic Cummings.

[Aaron Bell]

I just wanted to say that that document has been entered into evidence and is available on the Science and Technology Committee website.

[Daniel Zeichner]

And I am eternally grateful, because that is where I found it. I must say that I was still surprised, because it looks to me more like something that came out of “Star Trek” many years ago.

[Stephen Flynn]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge. I am not quite sure whether lagging roofs is necessarily within the remit of what I would expect ARIA to be doing. I like to think that the Government could do that notwithstanding any new technologies, but I appreciate the point he was making. I assure members of the Committee that there will be no “Star Trek” references coming from my mouth whatsoever—[Interruption.] Or “Star Wars”. We have had quite enough of that. I rise to speak in support of amendment 35, tabled by the SNP, which again is directly related to climate change and the drive towards net zero.

If ARIA is to have a mission—I think it should, and the majority of witnesses last week seemed to be in favour of that—there can be only one focus. I understand the premise of the Government’s not wanting ARIA to be constrained. I think the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock said that he did not want to hamper ARIA, but I disagree, and I think it is an honest disagreement to have. I do not see how instructing an agency to try to combat climate change and allow us to meet our net zero aims is hampering it. I think that provides not only the focus that the agency needs but the focus that we should all want it to have, because it is the biggest existential crisis facing us.