Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

There is no discrepancy. I will explain why but, essentially, the Bill already sets out ARIA’s statutory responsibility to generate economic return for the UK, and the hon. Gentleman will know, as I do from my career negotiating intellectual property agreements, that at this stage it would be wholly inappropriate to mandate in statute the form that these intellectual property agreements will take. To be blunt, we do not yet know what programmes the chair and chief executive will put in place. It is only when we know the sort of science that ARIA is doing that we will possibly be in a position, through the framework agreement, to set out the appropriate ways to ensure that value is maximised.

Security issues will also be a core consideration in ARIA’s governance arrangements in the framework agreement to ensure its effective functioning as an organisation. I confirm to colleagues that the framework document, which deals with those issues, will include obligations on ARIA to work closely with our national security apparatus. That is prudent to ensure that ARIA’s research is protected from hostile states and actors and to stay connected to the Government’s wider agenda on strategic technological advantage.

The Government’s chief scientist, who will be on the ARIA board, will bring intelligence and expertise across security issues within Government, supported by the new Office for Science and Technology Strategy and the National Science and Technology Council. ARIA will of course have internal expertise to advise its board and programme managers, while also working with recipients of its funding in universities and businesses on research-specific security issues. That will be vital for ARIA to stay at the forefront of responding to the challenging nature of the UK’s interests in this area.

There is also the question of how ARIA responds to the UK’s strategic interests in science and technology more generally where they may not quite fall under the national security umbrella. The integrated review, the creation of the new OSTS and the National Science and Technology Council, on which I sit, outline our ambition to ensure that there is a serious, strategic machinery of government commitment to the strategic industrial advantage of UK science and technology. That is a fundamental priority for me and the Government more broadly.

ARIA is nestled within that structure and is required to be aware of all those priorities, but we must keep its role in perspective. It will be only a small part of a landscape that we are explicitly seeking to make independent of Government and free to explore new funding approaches. The whole point of ARIA is to be a new agency and to do new science in new ways.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

The Minister is being admirably blunt about keeping interfering Ministers and officials from controlling or influencing ARIA, but there is also influence from the scientific establishment, which has its own programmes and would like the sums of money in ARIA to go to them. Given the structure of the board, is he satisfied that ARIA will maintain its independence not just from the civil service and Ministers, but from the scientific establishment?

[George Freeman]

The hon. Member raises a very important point. Yes, I am satisfied, and for this reason: the way in which the agency has been established through the Bill and our plans to appoint the CEO and the chair on the basis that they will set out a very bold vision for ARIA to be the agency for new science in new ways. All the support that we are providing is specifically designed to allow them to operate in an environment where they can draw on the very best of UK science infrastructure and expertise, but not find themselves bound by either the short-term grant application process that dominates or the often substantial interests seeking investment in their own field. We will be able to attract the people we intend to attract because of that freedom. For that reason, I am confident—as that will be set out in the framework agreement and held to account by the board of ARIA and the scientific advisory board—that we will be able to ensure that that is the case.

Although ARIA will operate independently, it will be guided by key obligations regarding economic and UK benefit. ARIA must, in all its activity, have regard to the economic growth or economic benefit in the UK, alongside other considerations. That statutory obligation is set out clearly in clause 2(6), and it is right that that is in the Bill. Public investment in R&D must drive long-term socioeconomic benefit and deliver value to UK taxpayers. ARIA will be scrutinised by Government and Parliament on how effectively it fulfils its functions, including that one.

I can confirm that mechanisms for that scrutiny will be in the framework agreement. This includes requiring an internal evaluation framework for ARIA programmes—that deals with the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood)—and looking at, for example, their expected benefits and alignment with the organisation’s strategic objectives. It also includes setting the terms on which ARIA produces annual accounts and reporting, through which ARIA’s CEO will be accountable to Parliament for how the resources allocated to it are used. The National Audit Office will be able to examine the value for money of ARIA’s activities, and we in the Government must be assured of that value, on which ARIA’s future funding will depend. Everyone involved is clear about that.

There are many ways in which the obligations that I have set out might be felt in respect of how ARIA operates. For example, ARIA may employ contracting arrangements that require funding recipients either to seek to exploit the outputs in the UK or forfeit the funding, as other funders routinely do. In some cases, ARIA may retain IP rights—it has that freedom—and will be able to draw on specialist support from the new Government office for technology transfer. That will help ARIA to extract the greatest possible value from its knowledge assets.

In general, we expect ARIA programmes to produce long-term, deep scientific benefits that are felt over the long term, and to support the highest-risk research where there is a clear role for public funding. It would be premature to seek to legislate in statute at this point, before the appointment of the CEO and the chair or the establishment of the funding programme plan. In addition to that being premature, given that its very freedoms will be a major attraction for people to come from around the world to work at the agency, we are concerned that to be seen to shackle those freedoms in statute may well disincentivise the most innovative scientists and researchers from coming to join programmes.

Finally, this issue encompasses the entirety of our R&D system and approach to investment in UK science and technology and we are extremely focused on it, but changes to ARIA alone cannot alter the wider environment. We must ensure that funding from ARIA is not subject to more stringent conditions than other public R&D funders, because that would undermine the independence and agility that are the defining characteristics of this exciting initiative for UK science.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the Minister for that intervention, which demonstrates that he is with us in spirit but he just does not want to be with us in actual legislation. There is something of a confusion of thought there. I am very familiar with the clauses that require ARIA to have regard to economic benefit, but if he thinks this is something ARIA should be doing and should look to do—again, as we have said, this amendment is enabling and not prescriptive—surely he should be happy to make that clear. If he thinks it is too constraining for ARIA to do this, he ought to make that clear. He is the Minister and this Bill should reflect what the intent is, and the intent should be to ensure that the benefits from intellectual property generated, created and invented in the UK should be felt in the UK.

Lords amendments 2 to 8 limit ministerial powers to dissolve ARIA, in response to the delegated powers in the Regulatory Reform Committee’s report on the Bill, and we will not oppose those amendments. They prohibit the Minister from making consequential amendments to primary legislation and from dissolving ARIA in the first 10 years. Lords amendments 9 and 10 remove the Minister’s powers to determine a pension or gratuity for non-executive ARIA members. It should be noted that the Minister appoints non-executive members to ARIA’s board, and it is refreshing to see a Conservative Government taking steps to limit cronyism in advance of major losses to the public purse. Lords amendments 11 and 13 mean that ARIA will no longer be treated a reserved matter in relation to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and we also do not oppose this. Labour is clear that devolved voices must be heard and that scientific opportunities must be spread across the UK, so the consent of devolved Administrations is crucial.

Lords amendments 12, 14 and 15 provide for ARIA to be treated as a public body under the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, the Enterprise Act 2016 and the Data Protection Act 2018. My colleague in the other place, Baroness Chapman of Darlington, pointed out, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), that this would not be necessary if ARIA was subject to freedom of information requests, something that Labour has repeatedly called for. The Government were so busy trying to ensure that ARIA would not be treated as a public body for the purposes of FOI that they had to tack on these amendments. That these amendments were tabled only at the Committee stage in the Lords points to Government negligence. We have here a Government too busy trying to avoid accountability to do their job properly— why does that sound so familiar?

[Graham Stringer]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, during the covid epidemic we have been through, some of the mistakes that have been made came about because the Government were not as open as they could have been with the scientific advice, and that FOI and openness are of value to the scientific method itself? To exclude this body from FOI potentially detracts from the science. We saw another example of this 11 years ago, with the “climategate” emails at the University of East Anglia, when people did not operate openly and it caused scientific problems.

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend makes two very important points. First, many of this Government’s mistakes have been due to lack of transparency, not only in the original policy of giving contracts to friends but in the follow-up of explaining those actions. Transparency is always a very good thing. Secondly, the scientific method is about openness. That is how ideas, inventions and progress are made in science. Critically, DARPA, on which ARIA is supposedly based, is subject to the freedom of information process and finds that that helps it in its work.

To conclude, Labour welcomes ARIA. Science and research can be the engine of progress for our society, and we welcome investment in our sciences. That investment, however, must benefit the people who pay for it: the British public. Without Lords amendment 1, we have no assurances that that will happen. If the Government want Britain to be a science superpower, why will they not protect British science and tech IP?