Brexit, Science and Innovation

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

The right hon. Gentleman pre-empts what I was going to say. That was the subject of our second report, and he is right that, whenever we go to a research lab in a university or a research institute, we find a global community—a community not just of Europeans but of people from around the world.

If our pre-eminent position is to be maintained and indeed strengthened, we need to make sure we can continue to attract people to our country.

I have one other point to make about the danger of this uncertainty. Why would anyone risk their bid, which might involve other universities from across the EU, by listing the UK as a lead partner if there are question marks as to whether we can receive funds on behalf of others? The danger of this continuing uncertainty is also that the UK, which has been very good at leading research collaborations, will lose out on the opportunity to do that during this period of uncertainty.

The Committee also argued that it was important to try to separate out science and innovation from the rest of the process so that it does not become collateral damage. The no deal technical note shows why that is a pressing issue; science could suffer as a result of a no deal scenario, and it is in no one’s interests to let that happen. I would like to hear the Minister’s views on the possibility of creating an accord on science and innovation that could withstand a no deal scenario. I hope he will address that during the debate.

Access to funding has clearly been a big issue in this report, but we are also clear that a science and innovation pact—this relates to the point made by the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn)—has also fully to cover the people element. We were told that a pact that did not address the need to attract and retain the people needed to support science and innovation would be of limited value. We were given the clear message that access to the best people is the most important priority; beyond the collaboration and the funding issues, we have to be able to bring in the best people for research in this country.

At the time, the Migration Advisory Committee’s report on immigration and the UK economy was many months away. We were told it was due in September, so, presumably, it is due any day now. We recommended in March that the MAC should be asked to bring forward its conclusions relating to the migration of scientists and researchers so that the comprehensive pact could be agreed early on. The Government rejected that recommendation in their response. We were told that agreeing a pact—now described as one of the “accords” in the most recent Brexit White Paper—remained an ambition but that we would have to wait until September for the MAC to produce its report before anything relating to immigration could be considered. We are in September now and this becomes a pressing issue.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for what he has said. I declare an interest: I am a member of the board of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the Innovative Vector Control Consortium. Does he agree that in attracting the highest calibre scientists and researchers from around the world, any legislation needs to look at the qualifications and experience of those people, not just a purely salary-based criterion? So often, science does not pay enough; the salaries are not high enough. We might find that if an arbitrary limit of £30,000, £35,000 or £40,000 a year were set, we would be excluding the best and the brightest, simply because scientists do not work for lots of money—they work for other, higher ideals.

[Norman Lamb]

Was I right in hearing that the hon. Gentleman was referring to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, an amazing place, which I visited in my role as Chair? It undertakes incredible work in a previously deprived part of Liverpool and demonstrates that investment in science in some of the poorer regions of our country is vital. He makes an important point and, like the right hon. Member for Leeds Central, he pre-empts what I will say on this subject.

As a result of issues such as the one the hon. Gentleman raises, we decided specifically to explore the issue of immigration rules and what will be needed to ensure that the UK can maintain its pre-eminent position. Again, I do not think that this should be in any way controversial, for either Brexiteers or remainers; those who favoured Brexit were simply arguing that they wanted control of immigration rules, not that we should exclude the brightest and best people from our country. So for our report “An immigration system that works for science and innovation”, the second cited in today’s motion, the Committee asked the science community to work quickly to set out what it wanted to see in an immigration system. We are particularly grateful to the Wellcome Trust for hosting a workshop so that we could develop some concrete proposals. I hope that they will be of use to the Government as they seek to navigate their way through to their future position for this country.

Our proposals were designed to tackle the rapidly approaching problem of what to do about European economic area immigration when the transition period ends. We were warned that the worst thing to do after Brexit would be to roll EEA countries into our existing rest-of-the- world system, as that was seen as too restrictive and so would not facilitate the free flow of people to carry out research in our country. But in the future, if our proposals relating to EEA countries are accepted, we saw that there would be advantages to rolling out our proposals beyond the EEA, so that there is a single immigration system that works for science and innovation, and that attracts great people from wherever they are around the world to come to work in this country.

Our proposals for a new immigration system that works for science and innovation are based on several principles. We must bear in mind that this is important not just for academia, but for industry, and it is therefore crucial for our economy, too. Let me set out those principles. The first is that we need to be able to attract individuals who have different types and levels of skill, and who are at different career stages, as well as their dependants. That means going beyond the “brightest and the best” whom the Government refer to so that we can attract and retain people such as the technicians, who are so crucial to undertaking research; they may be part of a team we are seeking to recruit from overseas. Secondly, we need to be able to attract and recruit highly skilled people, wherever they are from, without being subject to an annual limit.