Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Debate between Duncan Baker and Aaron Bell

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

[Aaron Bell]

I thank the hon. Gentlemen for raising that. As a member of the Science and Technology Committee, he knows that we were looking at producing further reports into both Test and Trace and the vaccine programme as a result of our inquiry. I think the Test and Trace programme has actually got to a very good place now: the number of tests we are achieving is the envy of many other countries around the world. We could quite happily say that the vaccine taskforce is an exemplar for everything that went well, and that the Test and Trace programme has been more mixed—[Laughter.] The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) on the Opposition Front Bench laughs, but I think that the Test and Trace programme has helped our recovery from the worst of the covid pandemic. It is not the case that all that money has been wasted, as some Opposition Members say, and it is certainly not the case that it has all gone on cronyism; it has gone on the cost of the tests. That is what it has gone on. Contact tracing is hard. Some people do not want to be contact traced, but the role that Test and Trace has played is still significant, although perhaps not as significant as we hoped initially. I am sure we will move on with that in our inquiry.

Returning to what I was saying about the amendments seeking to give ARIA a mission statement, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) gave the House some good reasons to reject them. First, there is no point spending just a little bit of money on things that already have billions thrown at them; we should be looking at the things we do not necessarily even know about yet. I also think we should avoid circumscribing ARIA’s freedom. Likewise, on all the amendments that are trying to impose more bureaucracy on ARIA, the whole point is to do things differently, with freedom from all the usual processes and pressures that act on these sorts of bodies.

We need to empower scientists. My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) quoted Professor Bond, who said of freedom of information in his evidence to the Bill Committee:

“In terms of the level of transparency, transparency is a good and wonderful thing in most areas, but if you are asking people to go out on a limb to really push the envelope, I would assert that there is an argument, which has some validity, that you make it psychologically much easier for them if they do not feel that they are under a microscope. Many people tend to step back when they are there.”

Some of the burdens that people are seeking to put on ARIA would potentially circumscribe it and reduce its effectiveness. The Bill does still have a statutory commitment to transparency. We will have regular reports, and I am sure that our Committee will be regularly engaged not only with the Secretary of State, who is in his place, but with the chief executive and the chairman of ARIA, who will come to speak to us as well.

ARIA needs to have the freedom to fail. In that sense, it needs to be a macrocosm of all its individual projects that also need to have the freedom to fail. Let us truly empower ARIA by rejecting these amendments. Let us let ARIA take flight and shoot for the stars, not weigh it down and prevent it from ever reaching the escape velocity it needs and the chance that it has to boldly go—returning to the “Star Trek” references we had in the Bill Committee—not into outer space but to the very cutting edge of scientific research and discovery. If we pass this Bill today, it will be a great day for science in the United Kingdom.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

I shall try not to come up with any more “Star Trek” references as we will probably run out in a minute.

I am grateful to the Minister for all her hard work on such an interesting piece of legislation that is going to be truly transformative. It has been a pleasure to be involved in the Bill, having spoken on Second Reading and been a member of the Bill Committee. I want to deal with a number of amendments and also to make this general observation: the Opposition amendments in Committee were, in the main, tabled to hinder much of the Government’s primary intention in what ARIA was set up to do in the first place. If we recognise that ARIA is set up with the sole principle of operating at pace, with flexibility, and with freedom to aid our position in the world in continuing to be a leader in innovation and science, then we absolutely must not stifle it by filling it with bureaucracy around regulation and oversight, thereby harming its very intention. Yes, there will be failures, as we have heard today. We all recognise that; it is almost part and parcel of what is built into the fabric of the agency to help it to operate without restrictions. From board compositions to freedom of information stipulations, even to dictating the agency’s priorities over health and climate change, it is quite revealing to be met with the level of shackles that were to be imposed rather than the vision to encourage our next generation of pioneering inventors.

Amendments 8 and 14 would make ARIA subject to FOI requests. If they were to be passed, we could immediately lose the competitive edge of innovative or potentially cutting-edge scientific developments brought about by risk. Instead, we are thrusting them into the spotlight whereby that ingenuity could be uncovered by FOIs. If we restrict people’s creativity, they will play it safe. They will not take the risk that is the very essence of ARIA in the first place in being an incubator for creativity to flourish.

New clause 3 and amendment 1 take us back to the ring-fencing of ARIA’s remit by constricting its freedom across all facets of science and research. Across the entire country and across all sectors, from automotive to farming, society is striving to decarbonise. We are already a world-leading Government in our commitment to decarbonise to net zero by 2050. To make the agency specifically concentrate its efforts on particular areas is again to dictate as to its uniqueness, and that will not give it the true freedom that is at the very heart of this Bill.

Finally, any organisation is only as good as the people that make it up. ARIA will need a visionary CEO to lead the culture and set its direction. Amendments 3 to 6 would require, among other matters, that Parliament approves the CEO. However, we know that if a small organisation is to be nimble, those decisions need to be made quickly. I do not see that there is a need for approving the board with Government representatives if that process is fair and open, which we are told it will be.

As I said on Second Reading, my constituency of North Norfolk was home to one of our greatest living inventors, Sir James Dyson. I hope that ARIA will be our launchpad to uncover the very next greatest inventor.