Research and Development Funding
Daniel Zeichner Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the future of research and development funding.
It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Mr Dowd, and to have the opportunity to discuss this vital question, which is extremely timely. Has there ever been a time when the public were so interested and indebted to the work of our researchers? Quite simply life-saving and life-changing, with huge social and economic consequences, the vaccine development is not the subject for today. The research and development, the research institutions and universities that support them are a cause for global celebration and thanks.
That opening sentence makes it clear that this a huge and complicated area. I suspect that in 90 minutes we will not be able to do full justice to it, not least the complicated and important relationship between public and private funding, which I suspect others will touch on. I will concentrate on some of the key, immediate questions facing particularly public funding and its future. The debate is also timely for different and, frankly, much more political reasons.
I will concentrate on public funding issues relating to Horizon, the impact of official development assistance cuts, and the curious case of the new kid on the block, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, which I know was discussed earlier today at the Select Committee on Science and Technology, chaired by the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark). I am sure he will have more to say about that later.
Although for obvious reasons the debate is about money, money is only part of the challenge. The vital resource is people. Throughout the difficult debates of the past few years, I have spoken to many people in the research and development and science sectors, and that is a point they come back to every time: it is about people, relationships between people and scientific collaborations. Science is global and research is global. Those relationships matter.
I am delighted to see my neighbour, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne), who shares some of Cambridge with me. My constituency is in an area that is about research and development to its core. It boasts countless institutions working on a dazzling range of areas. To cover it geographically, from north to south and east to west, we see a huge array of start-ups at the innovation centre to the north, very close to the science park, which hosts UK success stories such as Owlstone, now the Bradfield Centre.
Nearby Darktrace, the world-class laboratory of molecular biology, whose iconic building is a gateway to the south of the city, has been conducting research for decades to understand biology at a molecular level, and whose work has produced no fewer than 12 Nobel prizes. That is now located, by no accident, very close to the new AstraZeneca building, to allow collaboration to thrive, as it does right across that area of the biomedical campus.
Green aerospace design work will be found at the Whipple to the east, a project that is well known to the Minister and is very topical. That is not far from the British Antarctic Survey, while the huge international success story that is Arm is to the west. Marshall Aerospace is also in the private sector, providing world-leading aerospace development as well as materials development.
Go further to see the Cleantech works being done at Allia, and go past the railway station to see the Sainsbury Laboratory of plant science. Step forward to find Anglia Ruskin University, with its hugely important research into climate and environmental change. We then find our famous colleges, which host such relevant thinkers as Professor Dasgupta, whose recent review of economics and nature must be transformative. There is huge expertise among our social scientists, helping our understanding of our past as well as our future, our legal frameworks and our relationships with other countries.
I could speak for 90 minutes just listing all the amazing things going on in and around Cambridge. I will not do that, but I can hardly fail to mention the National Institute of Agricultural Botany and the surrounding science parks, Babraham and the amazing DNA sequencing at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. I will have missed others and I apologise to them. In all of them, people are the key. The money counts too.
For a considerable time, the importance of research and development work and the funding for it has been recognised on a cross-party basis. There is widespread agreement that UK spending on R&D has historically been too low. Although R&D investment in the UK has risen over the past 30 years, the amount we actually spend on it as a proportion of GDP has been flatlining, hovering at between 1.5% and 1.7% of GDP over the past two decades. It is behind the European average of 2% and the OECD average of 2.4%.
Our key neighbours and allies have been successful in investing far more. We often claim that we punch above our weight and get more for our money, but how much better we could be if we were matching that. The Government acknowledge this and have pledged to catch us up with the rest of the developed world, with a target of raising investment to 2.4% by 2027 and to increase public investment in R&D to £22 billion a year by 2024-25. This is welcome, although we know it will be a challenge.
This week we have seen studies showing that such targets are often set but have historically been difficult to reach, despite good intentions. It is important that we have this as an ambition and set a clear pathway. There are growing concerns in the R&D sector about how that figure is to be achieved and whether, beyond the rhetoric, the Government really still have that commitment to meet that ambition.
I will turn to the immediate problems, the first of which is Horizon. For many of us, there was little to welcome in what I would call the slapdash, desperate, last-minute trade and co-operation agreement that the Prime Minister salvaged with the European Union, but one glimmer in it was the framework for the UK’s continued association with the EU’s newest and biggest research funding programme, Horizon Europe. With a budget of €100 billion, it is the world’s largest and most competitive research funding programme.
We know that membership of the EU’s 2014-2020 Horizon research programme has been extremely beneficial to UK research. The UK has been one of the largest beneficiaries of the nearly €60 billion of funding that has been allocated over the past six years, receiving more than €7 billion. The vast majority of that has gone to our excellent UK universities, with academic research in the social sciences, arts and humanities particularly dependent on this stream of income from the EU.
The harsh reality of leaving the EU means that we are undoubtedly in a worse position this time around. While the rules for our participation have yet to be completely settled, it is clear that we will now be participating as an associated country, meaning that although we can lead and participate in collaborative research projects, we will have no formal decision-making power over the programmes and we will not be involved in discussions about which areas should receive priority for funding.
Taking back control turns out to mean not being in the room when decisions are being taken and, incredibly, having to beg others to make the case on our behalf. It does not matter how it is dressed up, our influence is reduced. In another blow this week, we have learned that we could also be excluded from major quantum and space research projects.
Whatever one thinks about all that, one of the biggest question marks is about how the Government will be funding the UK’s association with Horizon Europe, which is expected to cost about £2 billion a year, and who in Whitehall will be managing this. Post Brexit, we know the Horizon Europe bill will be paid in isolation rather than as part of overall EU membership, and that there is no existing budget provision for it. It was notable, despite many calls from the sector, that plans for where the funding would be sourced were conspicuously absent from the Budget earlier this month. There are significant and growing concerns among scientists and research funders that it could now be taken from the UK’s existing science budget. That would pit different elements of UK R&D against each other and would see a collective diminishing of the overall pot. It could set us back in our progress towards 2.4%.
Universities UK has warned—I am sure that the Minister will be aware of its letter to the Prime Minister this week—that if the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is required to fund the costs of participation out of the existing budget, it will amount to an effective cut of something in excess of £1 billion, roughly equivalent to the cost of funding the entire Medical Research Council and the Science and Technology Facilities Council combined. Reduced domestic funding would also damage our ability to compete for Horizon Europe funding, risking a double loss. Universities UK estimates that a £1 billion reduction in funding would be equivalent to cutting more than 18,000 full-time academic research posts, distributed across all parts and all four nations of the UK, and could potentially lead to a further reduction of up to £1.6 billion in private R&D investment that would have been stimulated by public investment.
The Campaign for Science and Engineering—I am, as ever, indebted to Professor Sarah Main for her advice—warns that sourcing the Horizon bill from the current science budget in the way I referred to would effectively negate two years of Government increases in UK R&D funding, so it is a serious issue. I am sure that the Minister is well aware of it, and I hope that she will be able to confirm that the Government are on the case. Ideally she would confirm that the cost of association to Horizon Europe will not be taken out of the existing UK Research and Innovation budget.
I am afraid that what I have been describing is only one of the pressing problems. The Government’s recent decision to cut £4 billion from the aid budget prompted fury in Cambridge, where we take those things very seriously, not least because it broke a manifesto promise by the governing party to maintain spending of 0.7% of gross national income on aid. However, it is becoming increasingly clear this week that as a consequence the plug will now have to be pulled on hundreds of international collaborative research projects funded with UK aid. In passing, I want to pay tribute to Chris Parr and his colleagues at Research Professional News, who uncovered much of the detail. UKRI, left with a £120 million shortfall, has had to announce this week, with just four months’ notice, that most of its aid-funded research projects are now unlikely to be funded beyond 31 July, regardless of the stage that the research is at.
Those projects are aimed at tackling some of the world’s major problems, such as climate change, antimicrobial resistance and poor health and nutrition across the world. Projects that were previously funded through the global challenges research fund and the Newton fund, which usually receive official development assistance, have seen UK universities take centre stage in efforts to address plastic waste management, develop renewable energy and clean water technology, improve worldwide labour laws and roll out 5G networks in lower and middle-income countries. In the past year alone, lessons learned from ODA-funded projects have enabled UK universities to support the national effort against covid-19 through enhanced virus detection technology and online rehab services to help those suffering the long-term effects of the disease. I am grateful to Universities UK for its advice. As I said, the Minister will have seen its letter this week, which I thought was an unusually strong warning and intervention.
In Cambridge I am already hearing that there could be an impact on internationally important scientific programmes, such as those run from the UN Environment Programme world conservation monitoring centre, which is based in the city, as well as on many university projects that are currently focused on international development. Once again, I could read a long list of projects. I will not, but I will say that a consistent message is coming from all those people about the soft power delivered for us by those projects, which are of course good in their own right, but are also how we still have influence in the world. Those people all tell me that that is based on trust, and that if we break that trust it is hard to get it back again. There is much more than a financial cost.
That response is not only coming from Cambridge. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) just missed the deadline for speaking today, but he asked me to mention that the all-party parliamentary group on global tuberculosis recently conducted an inquiry into the UK’s investment in global health research. It found that the sustainability of the UK’s funding across the full product development pipeline is essential to getting life-saving new tools from UK labs to patients around the world. Cutting that funding will have enormous implications for the lives of the most vulnerable, collective global health security, the UK’s research infrastructure and our standing on the international stage. He urges the Government to think again.
It is shocking that the Government are punching a hole in such important research, particularly in a year when we are recovering from a global pandemic and, of course, hosting the G7 leaders summit and the crucial COP26 climate summit. Frankly, in terms of diplomacy, how inept does it get?
Universities have rightly warned that the cuts will harm our international standing, curtail successful programmes that have been a key vehicle for UK science diplomacy for many years, and lose international science and research partnerships that have taken a long time to establish. Stopping funding mid-cycle frankly shows blatant disregard and disrespect for our international partners. It is hardly surprising that six academics from a key research council advisory group for international research resigned this week in protest. The publication Research Professional News put it well yesterday when it noted:
“Anyone who has held a grant from the Global Challenges Research Fund will know that the UK goes out of its way to carry out rigorous due diligence on international organisations to ensure that they are reliable partners. It turns out that Her Majesty’s government was the party that everyone should have been keeping an eye on.”
All this is taking us in a worrying direction, when looking at that 2.4%. It seems to be flying in the face of the Chancellor’s stated aim of making the UK a scientific superpower, which was reiterated only yesterday by the Prime Minister. Universities UK has estimated that on top of the cost of Horizon association, the cut to ODA research funding could lead to a £1 billion reduction of the overall R&D budget. I suspect that, in the end, these are Treasury decisions. The Minister may well agree with the rising number of voices speaking out against many of the cuts. I urge her to do all she can to ensure that they are reversed and the vital projects that the funding supports are maintained.
Given all those pressures, it is perhaps surprising that the Government are considering diverting funding into a new, untested idea—the Advanced Research and Invention Agency. I will try not to duplicate this morning’s discussion. I will also try not to let my view of its leading proponent prejudice my thoughts, but I cannot help reflecting on the delicious irony of the name transition. DARPA—the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency—sounded like a rather crude 1960s American missile system. ARIA is much more, dare I say it, European. Names aside, it raises a whole series of questions about how it fits into a delicately balanced landscape.
The Haldane principle, dual funding, mechanisms to safeguard blue-sky research—people have been wrestling with these issues for years. The raison d’être of the Cambridge college system is to preserve space for imaginative and creative thinking. I do not say that there is no scope for change or improvement, but please identify the real problem. As David Sainsbury has so sensibly warned in the past, we should not just try to import something from another culture or another system; it is much better to nurture and encourage what we are good at. We should maybe look at the real problem: the much-talked-of valley of death—getting our great innovations developed. If we want to borrow from America, we should perhaps look more closely at the Small Business Research Initiative and the role of public procurement.
Where is the overall plan? I have to say that there was not much that the Opposition welcomed from the previous Conservative Government, but an industrial strategy—now apparently sadly discarded—was a step forward. A huge amount of work was done across many sectors, although I fear there is only limited public awareness of it. The Opposition would certainly have preferred the mission-oriented approach championed by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), but at least we had a structure.
Let me conclude on two further issues. These sources of public funding are vitally important for R&D, but given that public funding made up only 26% of total R&D funding in 2018 and the majority of funding currently comes from the private sector, we know that much more needs to be done to encourage private sector investment. According to Government estimates from 2019, we will need an additional £12 billion per year of private investment to meet the 2.4% target. That is significant.
Currently, British businesses invest less in R&D than those of similar nations. Investment is concentrated in major players in just a few sectors, with the life sciences sector consistently the largest R&D investor in the UK, but my understanding is that this, too, has been flatlining in recent years. There are concerns over the long-term certainty of key schemes which have been supporting early stage innovation in the UK life sciences sector. I chair the all-party parliamentary group for life sciences, and colleagues tell me that despite being recognised by the Government as a highly effective scheme for driving business investment in R&D, the biomedical catalyst scheme still has no confirmed budget for the 2021 competition. I could say more, but time presses.
I will touch briefly on workforce issues. Back in 2019, the previous Science Minister, the right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), highlighted that, as well as private investment, one of the key challenges we may face in meeting a 2.4% target will be the workforce, with an estimated 260,000 additional researchers working in R&D across universities, business and industry likely to be required. He was right. We should be concerned, because there are a number of known workforce issues facing those in R&D.
As the Royal Society has helpfully set out, the UK immigration system is still one of the most expensive in the world, which is a particular deterrent to international researchers and entrepreneurs considering making the UK their research home. Careers in R&D are not as attractive as they should be, with relatively low salaries, short-term funding, unclear career development and difficulties facing researchers and technicians looking to shift between academia and industry at various times during their careers.
Diversity is also an issue, with only about 7% of managers, directors and senior officials in academic and non-academic higher education positions being black, Asian and minority ethnic. Despite many excellent initiatives, such as Athena Swan, still too often there are too few women.
All of this must be challenged in order to create a welcoming working culture in R&D. I recognise the good work that the Minister has done, and is doing, to tackle this. I am glad that the Government have made at least some moves in the Budget to undo the damage inflicted by their predecessors, by looking again at visa restrictions, with a view to attracting global talent, and that they have recognised the need to tackle these wider issues in their recent research and development road map. I look forward to seeing the detail of the people and culture strategy that has been promised.
Unfortunately, as the trade union Prospect notes, public sector research establishments have found themselves constrained by public sector pay freezes by successive Conservative Governments, and unable to match the competitiveness of pay offered by universities and elsewhere in the private sector. Another former Science Minister, David Willetts, admitted in 2020 that it was only when George Osborne visited Cambridge’s Medical Research Council laboratory of molecular biology and saw the impediments to performance caused by public sector rules that the then Chancellor was convinced to grant it and similar bodies greater freedoms. I am told by Prospect that those freedoms have once again been removed. If that is the case, they should be restored.
In conclusion, we all recognise the importance of this sector to the future of the UK. I suspect that the Minister is fighting her corner, and all power to her. If she needs an aria, she should look no further than Puccini, “I will win—vincerò!” “Nessun Dorma” did once capture the public mood, and we need to show that our victory against the virus, if it is secured, will have come on the back of UK researchers and our great universities. We should celebrate them, but that means securing the funding. Minister, please sort out how Horizon is to be funded, restore the ODA cuts, and start to undo the damage that I fear has already been done to our international reputation.
Peter Dowd (in the Chair)
I ask Members to speak for no more than five minutes.
Daniel Zeichner
I thank all hon. Members for the high quality of their contributions, as one would expect given that we had former Science Ministers and former Secretaries of State involved. It was an excellent discussion. I am particularly grateful to the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) for mentioning the medical research charities; others picked that up, including the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas). I probably should have alluded to them in my introduction. They have been very hard hit and they do vital work.
I note, as I had expected, that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and others suggested that the golden triangle is in a privileged position. We are and we do get the lion’s share of research, but I gently suggest that when talking about levelling up we should always be aware that there is a danger of dragging down. We are world leaders, but that does not happen by accident. I have always said that future success cannot be taken for granted, and we have to make sure that we continue to support what we do very well in this country. Some of that is in the golden triangle, and we should not be ashamed to say that.
In conclusion, I say to the Minister that I am a little disappointed. I had hoped to hear a little more than that the budget would be resolved in due course and the cuts would be managed to minimise the impact. I hope that she will be fighting our corner, because this is so important, and not just for the future of this sector or for particular parts of the country. This is what we do so well. If there is a future for Britain in the world, this is it, but it cannot be done by making short-term cuts because the budget cannot be sorted out for a few months for bureaucratic reasons. I hope that the message will go back to Government loud and clear that we are looking for better.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the future of research and development funding.
Oral Answers to Questions
Daniel Zeichner Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Amanda Solloway)
The Government are now implementing their ambitious R&D roadmap, published earlier this month, reaffirming our commitment to increasing public R&D spending to £22 billion by 2024-25 and ensuring the UK is the best place for scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs to live and work.
Daniel Zeichner
I appreciate the recent announcements, but can the Minister reassure us that all universities will be able to access those loans, with freedom to invest in line with local priorities? Will she take a look at the proposals from the new Whittle laboratory in Cambridge, which needs to match the already secure £23.5 million in private sector funding to develop the first long-haul zero-carbon passenger aircraft?
Amanda Solloway
I give my assurance that one of the things we are addressing in the roadmap is ensuring that we become a science superpower. Within that, we are levelling up across the whole of the country. I am committed to making the workplace diverse and ensuring that we have a culture that embraces that throughout the whole of country. We will ensure that UK scientists are appreciated and rewarded.
Covid-19: Business
Daniel Zeichner Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Alok Sharma
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Yes, the guidance has been prepared with those individuals in mind. As I have said, we obviously require employers to adhere to existing equalities legislation and are also asking in the guidance for employers to monitor the wellbeing of their employees, particularly those who may be working from home, and to take into account the protection of those who may be at higher risk.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
The discussion around return to work is very welcome, but in areas such as Cambridge with above-average rateable values, many quite small but vital businesses, such as pubs and restaurants, are really struggling just above the £50k threshold. Much loved cafés such as The Copper Kettle and Benets in King’s Parade and businesses such as the innovative Rainbow Rocket climbing centre all face that problem, so could the Secretary of State remind us how that £50k threshold was arrived at and what would have been the costs and benefits of a different threshold? Would he now consider a higher threshold, particularly for areas with above-average rateable values?
Alok Sharma
I understand that the hospitality, leisure and retail sectors face a particular challenge right now. The Prime Minister has set out a road map for how we might get to opening them, but we have to keep a tight grip on the R factor. The hon. Gentleman will know that there is a one-year rates holiday for businesses of all sizes in the sectors he is talking about. I hope that businesses will also take advantage of the loan schemes, particularly the Bounce Back scheme.
Tuition Fees: EU Students
Daniel Zeichner Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I was reading Philip Norton’s text books as part of my undergraduate studies 35 years ago, but of course, Philip Norton was a very, very young man as a distinguished academic at that time. He does not seem to have got much older as far as I can tell.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
These exchanges have shown exactly the problems with the political declaration: the Minister talks about guarantees, but of course they are not guarantees; they are aspirations for future negotiation. But there is one thing he could do today, which is reassure the 17,000 Erasmus+ students who are likely to be approved in May or June this year about 2021. Could he at least do that?
Chris Skidmore
The Government guarantee, when it comes to participation in the Erasmus programmes, has stated that all successful participations as approved by the EU Commission will be eligible for the Government guarantee. I wrote to every single Higher Education Minister in Europe and the European economic area to ensure that they were aware of that guarantee commitment—many were not. I think that it is often a case of communication to make sure people are aware so that when it comes to those Erasmus participations being approved, the Government will fund them—not just for the year, but for the entirety of the exchange programme as it takes place.
Climate Action and Extinction Rebellion
Daniel Zeichner Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Claire Perry
Of course, and part of the reason that I am so passionate about this is that I studied climate change, geography and meteorology at Oxford University many years ago. Many of the people associated with the university have been world leaders in understanding the science, and Oxford City Council has done some amazing things in this space. Again, we are really keen to learn. I do not accept that there are knee-jerk political reactions. The clean growth strategy sets out what we will do over the next 25 years to meet our budgets, but if we have good ideas, let us stop hoarding them; let us share them.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
One of the sectors that has not done well on reducing carbon emissions is road transport. One of the policy levers that used to be available was the fuel duty escalator, which the coalition Government ceased to proceed with and which the current Government do not want to return to. Does the Minister agree that that matter needs to be looked at again and that, in terms of carbon emissions, those decisions were a mistake?
Claire Perry
I mentioned at the beginning that we have to do things that are proportionate and fair. I know that the hon. Gentleman supported the cap on fuel prices that we put in, because we had to ensure that it was not the least well-off who were paying for the transition. I pay tribute to his work and to his own personal cycling activities. As he knows, the city of Cambridge is an exemplar for cycling and for effectively ensuring that road transport becomes a thing of the past.
Terms and Conditions of Employment
Daniel Zeichner Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Andrew Griffiths
The hon. Lady mentioned VAT. Is it her party’s policy to lower VAT, should it ever come into power?
Chi Onwurah
As one of my colleagues helpfully says, the hon. Gentleman must wait and see. In our 2017 manifesto, we set out our fully funded taxation and spending policy. The hon. Gentleman needs to recognise that a fairer taxation policy would not only enable us to fund our public services better but ensure that our economy was growing and that the growth was shared by all those who contributed to it, unlike what is happening at the moment. Last month, we learned that household debt was at its highest rate ever. Many people are reliant on borrowing, not for luxuries but for essentials such as putting food on the table for their children, and food bank use has skyrocketed.
Kelly Tolhurst
Absolutely. My hon. Friend is right. The rates that come into force in April will be the same whether we leave the European Union or not—[Interruption]—as we leave the European Union.
Those increases did not happen year on year under the last Labour Government. This Government have made and delivered that commitment. This year, we have come forward with another plan, which accepts the recommendations of the independent Low Pay Commission. It takes its job extremely seriously, produces great reports, consults businesses and workers, and ensures that its independent recommendations to Government are objective and fair.
Daniel Zeichner
Will the Minister remind the House who introduced the national minimum wage and the Low Pay Commission?
Kelly Tolhurst
I point out that we introduced the national living wage in 2016. As I said, we have made increases year on year and stuck to our commitment.
I want to answer a few more questions, particularly the question that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) asked about pay for the Department’s security staff. We value all the staff, who deserve fair and competitive wages. The Department has agreed with its contractors to align the pay of cleaning, catering, mailroom and security staff with the median rates for those occupations. That will come into effect on 1 March.
Crown Post Offices: Franchising
Daniel Zeichner Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans, and a particular pleasure to follow a very powerful speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle). It was a salutary warning, and I suspect that some of my comments will echo the concerns of others about the so-called consultation process. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on her powerful introduction. She speaks for all Labour Members on these important issues.
The announcement a few months ago that Cambridge was one of the post offices to be put through this process was met with incredulity in my city. People are absolutely furious. I will say a few things about our local circumstances, trying not to repeat some of the points that have been very well made already, and then make some general reflections.
The Crown post office in Cambridge has around 15 very experienced staff, who between them have 150 years of experience—experience that is likely to be lost if this process continues. The post office has already been moved across the street—that was not a popular decision eight years ago—from one of the many fine buildings in Cambridge, in order, we were told, to secure its long-term future. There are some interesting definitions of “long-termism” in the modern world. That post office is one of the most successful in the region and possibly, I am told by my colleagues in the Communication Workers Union, in the country. It has been one of the top-selling post offices for travel currency, travel insurance, travel-related products and passport checking. It is one of the top-performing post offices in the area, so we might expect it to be celebrated as a success story.
That post office is also one of the few nationally to carry out biometric services and provide international driving permits, which is what I want to focus on. There has been a huge change in our country for those coming here to work or study, which most of us—who do not have to go through such processes—are probably only dimly aware of. Those people have to have biometric residence permits. If we are to have that system, we also need a system to allow them to register their biometric data, and in my area it is the Crown post office in Cambridge to which they are directed.
[Mr Graham Brady in the Chair]
In conducting the research for this speech and talking to people locally about how the whole system works, I stumbled on what can perhaps only be described as a coincidence. In November, just after the announcement of the consultation, guess what quietly happened? That biometric information system has been very quietly transferred from the post office—although it still exists there at the current time—to the local library. However, it is hard to know how anyone would find that out, because if they go to the Home Office website or Post Office website, they will still be directed to the Cambridge Crown post office.
Let us, for the moment, continue to follow the public advice, because biometric residence permits are needed by all foreign nationals from outside the European Economic Area if they want to stay in the UK for longer than six months, extend their visa, or settle in the UK or have other interactions with the Home Office. In areas such as mine, which have huge numbers of people coming to study or work, and contribute to our local economy, this issue is enormously important. For instance, I am told that almost all the 2,000 non-EEA staff at the University of Cambridge will need to have used, or will need to use, those services, and if they cannot go to Cambridge, they will have to go to Huntingdon, Harlow or Romford, which requires hours and hours of travel on public transport.
Jo Stevens
I have a similar situation in Cardiff Central, where the biometric centre was in our post office, which is due to be put into WHSmith. I met with the post office to ask whether the biometric service would transfer to WHSmith, and guess what? It will not. Does my hon. Friend agree that that creates another barrier for people who are already in a vulnerable situation?
Daniel Zeichner
I totally agree, and that is an important point. Apparently, only 37 WHSmith stores across Britain have the wider access for wheelchair users, and if that is no longer available, people from my area would have to travel to Luton, Milton Keynes or London—a major diminution of service. It may be possible that those services can be provided elsewhere. Frankly, who knows? Maybe the Minister can enlighten us. Maybe she can tell us whether the timing of this transfer was random chance or coincidence. Maybe she can guarantee the future of our local library. I do not know, but my guess is that the Government have very little clue about the future, and I doubt that any answers at all will be offered. We shall see.
Other Members have mentioned disability access, and I concur entirely with the comments made about WHSmith in general, which I will not repeat. What I will say is that those of us who have been in and out of WHSmith in Cambridge know that it is already a crowded store. It is not listed by WHSmith as one of its wheelchair-friendly stores, and the idea that it is going to be a pleasant experience for people seems almost unimaginable, frankly. We have huge doubts. These services should be available to people and properly accessible. I say to those running the campaign on behalf of the Post Office that they should be careful of who they are taking on, because we have some pretty powerful campaigners locally. Councillor Gerri Bird led a campaign a few years ago to stop the toilets in the Lion Yard shopping centre in Cambridge being moved from one floor to another. After months of campaigning, she won and the other side lost. I say to the Post Office that it should be careful who it takes on. It would do much better to back down soon, gracefully.
Let me turn to some of the wider issues. As we have heard, the Government have said that they are worried about the high street. That is understandable; we all are. There are huge challenges, but we should not make them worse. This is not just about where a service is provided; as other Members have said, it is about the kind of institution. Many years ago, I worked for John Garrett, the former MP for Norwich South—some Members may just about remember John. He wrote a book, presciently entitled “Westminster: Does Parliament Work?”, which is good reading in these troubled times. I remember going around the local post offices in Norwich early in the morning with him, and the thing that struck us was that at every post office, there was a queue. An accountant, I suspect, would say, “Why are these people standing outside the post office when, if they came an hour or two later, they could just go in and be served?” The answer, of course, was that this was the occasion when most of those people got to see their friends. They were standing outside; as other Members have already said, it was part of a wider social issue. For the bean counters who are looking at the Post Office balance sheet, that probably does not count for anything, but it really counts in looking at the NHS balance sheet, in terms of the impact on people’s mental health from loneliness and so on. That is why the Post Office is a public service, not just a business.
People may also remember a recent, much-loved BBC television series, “Lark Rise to Candleford”. Some will remember the inestimable postmistress Dorcas Lane, who was at the heart of that local community. I suspect that series was much loved partly because it spoke to a conception of Englishness—one of fairness, kindness and public service—that many people still crave. As other hon. Friends have already alluded to, that also goes to the heart of the debate that is happening in the Chamber just a few yards away. Others have written eloquently on these related issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas), who was in the Chamber earlier, wrote of the then coalition Government back in 2011:
“The government is not conservative; it is liberal and extreme. Through its indulgence of the banks and corporate and media power, and attempts to sell off parts of our English common life to the highest bidder—forests, waterways, ports, the Post Office, sport and culture—it is systematically destroying the hard-won victories of generations and, in so doing, unravelling the essential fabric of this country.”
These post offices are part of that fabric. For my city of Cambridge—high-tech Cambridge—our post office is part of the essential fabric of our city and our community. I may be dismissed as a romantic socialist, and I would not disown that label, but I will conclude by posing a question to the Minister: what kind of conservative does not understand the place of the post office in an English country town or community?
Budget Resolutions
Daniel Zeichner Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Greg Clark
I agree with my hon. Friend. I had a good meeting with the global chief executives of some of the most important life sciences companies around the world, in which it was readily acknowledged that the strength of our science base, and the visibility of our commitment to reinforce it, to invest in it and to apply it in manufacturing, is causing investment to be made here. The global pharma and life sciences company MSD has announced that its new research centre is going to be here in the UK, and I had the pleasure of opening the Novo Nordisk facility just a few months ago. It is evident that there is more to come. One of the benefits of a long-term strategy and commitment is that it can have short-term results because people invest on the back of it.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is talking positively about the future of the life sciences sector, but does he recall that just last week the head of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry told the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union that without full membership of the European Medicines Agency, the future of the life sciences industry was not tenable in this country?
Greg Clark
I do not agree. I think that the future of the industry is strong in all scenarios. I regard our ability to participate in institutions and research networks as being of great importance, and that is why I hope that the deal that is being negotiated will succeed and that we will be able to move forward based on that confidence.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake). We are discussing the economy, growth and productivity. I have been saying for some time that growth cannot just mean “more”; it has to mean “better”—a point echoed in Dame Kate Barker’s excellent recent independent report on the Cambridgeshire economy, which was launched by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy a few weeks ago. That means upskilling, reskilling and, most importantly, giving young people the best start in life, equipping them with the skills and tools that they need for the future. That is how we create not only a productive workforce, but happy, sustainable, resilient communities. Unfortunately, however, this Budget fails to achieve that. While the skilled workforce in Cambridge has been the driving force behind our economic success, uncertainty around our future relationship with the EU, coupled with the Government’s regressive immigration policies and a failure to make the right investment in skills and infrastructure, risks internationally focused businesses looking elsewhere—a point also echoed in Kate Barker’s report. We must do better.
This Budget failed on substance, but there was also the matter of its tone, as other hon. Members have pointed out. Promising a paltry £400 million for schools to
“buy the little extras they need”.—[Official Report, 29 October 2018; Vol. 648, c. 658.]
is an affront—a shameless insult. The Chancellor may say that school funding will be considered in the spending review, but teachers and parents in my constituency have a clear message for this Government: schools are stretched to breaking point. That line from the Chancellor, reminiscent of a 1950s patriarch to a subjugated wife—“Get yourself some little extras. Don’t step out of line. How dare you ask for more?”—shows this Government’s disrespect for not only our hard-working teachers and schools, but future generations, too.
Like many colleagues, I regularly visit schools and colleges. In recent weeks, I have been in nurseries, primaries, secondaries and colleges, and I have been told by two separate headteachers that if funding does not improve, their school will be making redundancies, despite staff already being overstretched. Staff are going off sick due to stress. Some staff recruited internationally have trouble getting visas. The number of children with complex and special educational needs has increased, but schools do not have the resources to provide the support that those children need.
I agree with Kevin Courtney, the joint general secretary of the National Education Union, when he says:
“The Chancellor has shown in this budget the depth of his ignorance on school funding. Schools have a £2 billion shortfall in funding a year—which is set to get worse. Capital funding has been cut by a third. A £400 million one off payment for ‘little extras’ will do nothing to address this. The Government has promised more money for potholes than schools”.
Let me briefly divert into those potholes, because £400 million may sound like a lot, but I hope that Members are aware that the backlog repair bill is £12 billion, meaning that just one in every 30 will be filled. That is a promise for our roads, and I doubt that even one school in 29 will find the “little extras” adequate. A little bit will help, but do not forget the Education Policy Institute’s recent report, which showed that just 60% of teachers continue to teach in state schools five years after qualifying and that applications for teacher training are falling. Despite pupil figures rising by 10% since 2010, teacher numbers have remained static, meaning pupil-to-teacher ratios have risen. Class sizes are bigger, and teachers are working harder and longer hours.
This is not just about schools. Nurseries will struggle to stay in business, according to the Department for Education’s own figures. When I visited a local maintained nursery recently, I was told that, without extra help, it will hit the buffers next April.
At the other end of the age range, sixth-form colleges, too, have been treated with disdain by the Chancellor and his team. Despite the call from the Sixth Form Colleges Association to increase the base rate for all 16 to 18-year-olds, it is currently frozen at £4,000 per student and £3,000 for 18-year-olds—it has been cut twice since 2010.
There is no mention of further education. The further education commissioner told the Select Committee on Education earlier this year that further education funding is “unfair” and “sparse.” I have seen that at first hand at Cambridge Regional College, which I visit regularly. The staff do excellent work with students and apprentices from across the east of England, but the college remains under-resourced and overstretched.
For a Government who claim to care about skills, this is a disgrace. They are failing to provide young people with the education they need to succeed by crippling education budgets. Time is spent on scrimping and organising substitute teachers to plug the gaps, rather than on educating future generations. I was a chair of school governors in the mid-1990s, and it felt just the same under a Tory Government then—what a change a Labour Government made. The current mean spending regime is not the way to create a workforce of creative, empowered and optimistic young people; it just tells them that the Government do not care.
Oral Answers to Questions
Daniel Zeichner Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Greg Clark
The hon. Lady knows, and retailers will tell her if she listens to them, that the change in the pattern of retail trade, as more of us are buying more goods online, is going to make a change to the high street. Everyone accepts that. Do business rates make a contribution, and can they help? Yes, of course. That has been behind the changes that have been made. I have said before, and I said it today, that it is reasonable for the taxation system to reflect the contribution that high street businesses make to communities.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth (Claire Perry)
As the hon. Gentleman will know, on Monday I wrote to the chair of the Committee on Climate Change for advice on how to get to a zero-carbon future. We did not ask for a specific date. We asked for advice on what date would be appropriate, as well as an analysis of the costs and benefits. I expect a response by next March. He will know, as the proud representative of one of the finest universities in the world, that so much of that change will be based on innovation and research, much of which is going on in his fine city. That is why we have contributed more than £2.5 billion during this Parliament to support that research, which can help us to save the planet.
Daniel Zeichner
I thank the right hon. Lady for her reply, but does she not understand that freezing fuel duty and cutting support for electric vehicles and hybrids is in no way going to help us to achieve the goal that we all want to arrive at?
Claire Perry
I know the hon. Gentleman’s city well and I commend the council there—it is the wrong colour, but it is making many good decisions on such things as solar bins, cycling and walking, which are very possible in a city such as Cambridge. In constituencies such as mine, people have to rely on their vehicles. We know that the cost of living is an issue and it is right that we continue to help people to put some money back in their pockets. On electric vehicles, 13% of new vehicles sold in August this year were ultra-low emission. That market is evolving and the cost of those vehicles is coming down. We have spent half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money subsidising the purchase of those vehicles and my expectation is that the price will continue to fall faster as we see the infrastructure build up.
Economic Growth: East of England
Daniel Zeichner Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing the debate. We co-chair the all-party group, and he has excellently described the work it has done since it was inaugurated just over a year ago. It is truly cross-party. Although the issue of what defines the east is sometimes a matter for debate, I strongly believe that, given that sub-national transport bodies are emerging in other parts of the country, as well as in our own region, it is in our very best interests to work together in the east. That is particularly important, given its geographical proximity to London. Although the east is, by many measures, an affluent area, if the wealth generated by people commuting to London is taken out, the figures suddenly reflect what we actually see on the ground in much of the region: in many places, for many people, life is a daily struggle. I will use the old six-county definition of the east, which many of us still hold dear.
The east is indeed a net contributor to the UK economy and the Treasury, and its industries are world-leading. In my constituency of Cambridge, we have life sciences and tech—I do not need to rehearse the arguments. However, the region is not without its challenges, which were outlined very effectively in the Budget submission. There is a need for more housing, given that so many are priced out of it. Just last week, it was shown that my city of Cambridge is one of the most expensive places for young people in the ratio between income and rent, and buying is almost out of the question for most people. The need for improved transport and infrastructure is well known. We also have a future skills deficit, which risks causing employment growth to slow and eventually to reverse—and, indeed, possibly worse than that.
Those issues are very well explained in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough independent economic review, which the Business Secretary and the Mayor of the combined authority launched in London yesterday. It was produced by a high-powered commission chaired by Dame Kate Barker, and its high-powered and knowledgeable commissioners include Lord Willetts and renowned telecoms entrepreneur David Cleevely from Cambridge. I hope Ministers will look closely at its work.
The review points out that, without the right tools to tackle these issues, employment growth in Cambridge could level off in the next couple of years, and there is the risk that it will go into reverse after 2031. Most people would find it surprising to learn that there is a danger that big businesses in the area may have to move away. The review’s conclusions are clear: future prosperity is not guaranteed, and if action on transport, housing, infrastructure and skills is not taken soon, there will be adverse effects not just for Cambridge or for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, but for the wider region and the whole of the UK economy.
The review rightly highlights the need to spread wealth more fairly and protect all that makes areas such as Cambridge so special for people. That is a very important point. It is about not just the traditional measure of growth—just more—but doing things better, being more productive and improving the quality of life for everyone. Our skilled workforce has been the driving factor in Cambridgeshire’s success in recent years, but given that our future relationship with the EU is uncertain, a failure to make the right investment in skills and infrastructure could cause internationally focused businesses to look elsewhere.
I have inevitably emphasised Cambridge so far, but those lessons hold good for much of the rest of the region. I believe that cities will be the driver within the region, but their relationship with the rural—or, perhaps more accurately, semi-rural—areas and market towns is vital. Skills and labour will be essential in our future relationship with the EU, not least because the agricultural sector relies so heavily on seasonal workers.
Transport is a huge issue, of course. The BBC’s Andrew Sinclair recently pointed out that it can take as long to travel the 110 miles from Norwich to London as the 220 miles from London to Liverpool. We desperately need to unlock transport infrastructure across our region to improve our productivity.
There are things we can do. For instance, I am told that digital signalling on our rail network would cost about £1 billion, but the benefits to quality of life and increased productivity would pay that sum back many times over. It does not require building new lines and upsetting people all over the place; it is about using the existing capacity better. It is the same message again: we should improve productivity, not just of people but of assets. If we can improve our links from places such as Cambridge though Stansted to London, we will create vital connections to the wider world.
Although our councils are struggling horribly with underfunding at the moment—it is frankly a disgrace that Cambridgeshire County Council has been reduced to forcing staff to take unpaid leave at Christmas—our ask is slightly unique, in that it is not always for more funds. We want the means to raise our own revenue. I used my first speech in the House three and a half years ago to speak not about glamorous issues but about the slightly arcane subject of tax increment financing. That and land value capture, which the Mayor of the combined authority has argued for, could unlock the investment needed. It would not cost the Treasury. We are prepared to take on the risk. The benefit sharing scheme got so close to being approved by the Treasury, but it was killed. We just need the authority and the tools to get on with the job—to borrow a phrase—of opening up access to jobs, skills and housing.
The east is a region with enormous potential, but we are reaching the point at which business as usual is not enough. Future prosperity has to be earned, but it also has to be shared fairly. Many in the east are up for the challenge, but we need the Government to work with us.