Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, clearly we need to discuss the R&D and innovation context in which ARIA is designed to sit. We now know the spending context; the UK has a long-term target for UK R&D to reach 2.4% of GDP by 2027. But the Chancellor has pushed back the target of £22 billion per annum on R&D, from 2024-25 to 2026-27, which may impact on private investment.

Beyond this, there is no shortage of road maps, reviews and strategies which lay out government policy in this landscape. In 2020, we had the well-intentioned R&D road map. Since then, we have had the UK Innovation Strategy with its “Vision 2035”, the AI strategy, the Life Sciences Vision, the fintech strategic review—all, it seems, informed by the integrated review’s determination that we will have

“secured our status as a Science and Tech Superpower by 2030”—

language repeated recently by the Chancellor. I see now that we are due a review of UKRI, on top of the Nurse review. I am sure that they are meant to give us a warm feeling, but it is very unclear how all the aspirations reflected in these documents fit together, let alone with ARIA—

“a brand in search of a product”,

to quote the Science and Technology Committee.

The noble Lord, Lord Hague, wrote a wise piece in the Times a couple of weeks ago. In concluding, he said:

“But the officials working on so many new strategies should be running down the corridors by now and told to come back only when they have some detailed plans that go far beyond expressing our ambitions.”

The problem is working out how and whether the creation of ARIA is any kind of priority, and practically how it will operate in terms of skills and resources. The key to understanding this seems to be the framework document which will outline the operational relationships for ARIA, but we are told this will not be published until after the Bill is through. That cannot be acceptable.

The budget for ARIA, at £800 million over four years, looks relatively modest when compared with the research councils’ budgets, especially when funding is actually only £500 million up to the end of this spending review period. From what one can see, ARIA will be entirely independent of UKRI, as the Minister stated, including Innovate UK. My concerns are the opposite of those of the Science and Technology Committee regarding ARIA’s potential dislocation from mainstream innovation strategy. Given that, what oversight over ARIA will the Treasury have? What will be the public accountability of ARIA, and how transparent its activities? Will it co-ordinate activities with UKRI at all? Will the National Science and Technology Council have any role in relation to ARIA?

It is surely completely unacceptable, as the ICO has pointed out, that it should be exempt from Freedom of Information Act requirements. As it said:

“Without this, there will be a lack of transparency, accountability, trust and confidence in ARIA.”

After all, the US equivalent of ARIA, DARPA, is covered by the US FOIA. As the ICO also says, the FOIA

“includes safeguards which allow a balance to be struck between the public interest in transparency and the protection of legitimate interests.”

As the Minister described, programme managers, it seems, will be appointed to commission work funded by ARIA. But what is the operating model—along the lines of the Crick or the Turing or that of the EPSRC? How will it commission research and collaborate with universities, the start-up community, catapults or research operations of larger companies? Where does ARIA fit with the levelling up regional aspirations for R&D? What is the likely interaction of ARIA with the UK’s technology clusters and with initiatives for regional and local innovation? Of course, as the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has pointed out, ARIA’s existence could be short-lived—abolished by the Secretary of State’s fiat.

The truth of the matter, however, is that we do already rank highly in the world of early-stage research, and some late-stage, not least in AI. It is in commercialisation —translational research and industrial R&D—where we continue to fall down. As the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, is quoted as saying in a recent excellent HEPI paper “Catching the wave: harnessing regional research and development to level up”:

“We all know the problem – we have great universities and win Nobel Prizes, but we don’t do so well at commercialisation.”

The functions for ARIA listed in the Bill include to

“encourage, facilitate and provide advice”

and to provide grants, loans and investments in companies, so what will be the long-term relationship with Innovate UK? Despite the creation of and support from the British Business Bank, our investment culture is more risk averse than Silicon Valley. Our innovators are having to sell out too early. The DARPA model has a powerful relationship with industry. Is that the intention here?

There are many other things that we could improve in our UK R&D and innovation universe, beyond the creation of ARIA. Our research sponsoring bodies could be less micromanaging. I welcome the Chancellor’s moves to extend R&D tax credits to investment in cloud computing infrastructure and datasets, but our patent box scheme is complex to apply for and not cost effective. There should be more support for catapults, which have crucial roles as technology and innovation centres, as the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee recommended. We could also emulate America’s Seed Fund, the SBIR and STTR programmes. On the regional front, we should be seeking to make universities regional powerhouses, tied in with the economic future of our city regions through university enterprise zones.

But finally, will the Minister give us a hint as to which technologies the Government consider will form the core of ARIA’s programmes? I am very enthusiastic about the future of UK research and development, innovation and their commercial translation in the UK, and want them to thrive for all our benefit. However, I remain to be convinced that ARIA is the answer to many of these questions. It is not enough to say, as the innovation strategy paper does:

“we do not know what ARIA will create. That is the point.”

We need a great deal more assurance about where it fits and whether it will be a useful addition to our R&D and innovation landscape.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 22nd November 2021 Grand Committee

20A: Clause 2, page 1, line 11, at end insert—
“(d) support the UK Government’s obligations under the Climate Change Act 2008.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require ARIA to have regard to climate change by ensuring that ARIA had an obligation to support the Climate Change Act 2008 and the obligations flowing from that Act.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, since nobody else is speaking and I had prepared a response to the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, I might as well briefly respond. I was going to say—indeed, I am saying—that this is a slightly random collection of amendments to say the least. As the noble Lord is not here, I can perhaps adopt a slightly more doubtful tone. As my noble friend Lord Oates made plain in the very good debate on Amendment 1:

“If the purpose of DARPA was to protect the national security of the United States by retaining its scientific edge against the threat of the Soviet Union, today, the threat from climate change, although very different, is some orders of magnitude greater.”—[Official Report, 17/11/21; col. GC 86.]


He went on to say that he agreed that it should be part of ARIA’s objectives. I very much agree with him.

On Amendment 26A, many of us asked this question at Second Reading; indeed, that is why we have tabled, and will be discussing, Amendment 47 regarding the framework for ARIA. It is extraordinary that we do not yet know what the arrangements will be with UKRI, research bodies and so forth, particularly in view of what the Minister said last week in Committee:

“UKRI has a broad portfolio of projects that it funds to tackle climate change across 12 different areas”.—[Official Report, 17/11/21; col. GC 96.]


He set out what all those areas are, but the risk of overlap seems considerable. Therefore, it seems important that we get to know what the relationships are between ARIA and other research bodies.

I am rather lukewarm about the renaming of ARIA. The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, quoted the Science and Technology Committee saying that ARIA was a

“brand in search of a product”.

The problem is not the brand; we want to look under the bonnet and see what it is actually going to do. The name is not what many of us are concerned about.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lord Stansgate, I should say a couple of words about his amendments. We tackled the issue of climate in some depth when we met last week; I thought that it was a useful discussion. On the name, I think that he was trying to get at why the change had been proposed. Perhaps the Minister, when he responds, can talk us through the Government’s thinking. I do not think that it amounts to a hill of beans, but it was something that my noble friend wanted to explore, to find out what was behind the change of thinking.

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[Lord Broers (CB)]

I would like to respond to that, which I find very interesting. I would like to know whether ARPA and DARPA have restraints on certain types of information. Having operated in industry in an R&D environment, I am familiar with the problems of what you have to keep secret and what you do not. In the American economy, by far the largest fraction of the vast amount of progress that is made is made in industry with private funds—and industry invests those private funds in R&D only if it can be assured that the products of that R&D will remain exclusive to it. I have been in situations where there has been industrial espionage and design manuals have been stolen for products that took billions to develop. Those thefts in the United States were of course prosecuted and those who obtained the information were fined large sums of money.

ARPA is going to be in that situation. It has to work with industry, using the results of its most advanced R&D, perhaps in new ways, to come up with new systems. It must be able to sign some memorandum of understanding, or in some way say to industry that it will protect from public knowledge that information. In an industry where you are relying primarily on novel processes, you do not tend to patent things, because patenting them puts them in the public domain. You rely on trade secrets and, to have a trade secret validated as a trade secret, you have to show that you have done enough due diligence to make sure that the information is not generally available to your competitors.

It has been a problem internationally for the past several decades that there has been international espionage on a large scale to obtain information from inside industries in the West. I ask the Minister whether that is being taken into account. Clearly, what the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and others have been saying is incontrovertible: we do not want the agency at risk because people are wasting vast sums of public money. On the other hand, you have to take into account that, if ARIA is to be successful and produce new capabilities that can be commercially exploited for the benefit of the UK, there must be adequate protection of what in industry is normally commercially sensitive and secret.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Fox, in his amendment, and other noble Lords in theirs have pointed to the anomaly of ARIA not being subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and it has been a great pleasure listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, quoting Tony Blair with approval—a rare delight.

The Government have put forward a number of weak reasons to justify ARIA not being subject to the FoIA, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, raised the first of them, the burden of responding to FoI requests—an extraordinary argument for a body that is going to have a budget of £500 million over the first three years. Many bodies subject to the FoIA have tiny budgets and staff numbers compared with those that ARIA will enjoy.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, called it costly, but will it be for ARIA? Interestingly, the noble Lord, Lord Browne, raised a number of questions prompted by the comparison or assertion that the Minister made at Second Reading that, because we do not have to pay for access to freedom of information requests, they will be pouring into ARIA, unlike in the United States. As the noble Lord, Lord Browne, pointed out, actually the requests to each of the research councils is pretty much on a par with those that are put to DARPA. I do not think that that argument is there either.

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[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I start with Amendment 24 from the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, Amendment 32A from the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and Amendment 39 from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, which all deal with the Freedom of Information Act. As I said at Second Reading, our decision not to subject ARIA to FoI was made after much consideration. As on so many of these things, I find myself in full agreement with my noble friend Lady Noakes and I thank my noble friend Lord Patten for his support during the Second Reading debate.

I was hoping that some of my noble friends who have been in government would comment on how they found the Freedom of Information Act in government. From my point of view, it is a truly malign piece of legislation. At the risk of trashing his reputation even further in the Labour Party, I agree with Tony Blair on this matter. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Fox, that all information on government contracts et cetera should be published, even if it is embarrassing for the Government. However, I think he will find that all the contracts to which he refers were not released under freedom of information but under normal government contract transparency.

In my experience, not much is ever released under freedom of information that causes any problems for government; it is normally stuff that is released in the normal transparency of contract negotiations and government transparency returns. I am fully in favour of decisions, and information about them, being released, but I fail to see how the processology of government benefits at all from FoI disclosures. I find that people just modify their behaviour and communication to take account of the fact that private conversations may be released in the future. I genuinely do not think that it achieves anything at all, but that is my personal perspective and not necessarily a matter for this debate. It was also new to me to discover at Second Reading that the US charges a fee for freedom of information disclosures. I think that is an excellent idea, even if it is only a nominal amount to get rid of some of the somewhat spurious fishing expeditions that many go people in for. Anyway, that is a separate matter for different discussions.

In contrast to UKRI, which comprises the seven research councils, ARIA is a new, unique organisation that we anticipate will attract a disproportionate number of FoI requests for its size. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, I would reiterate, as I did at Second Reading, that comparisons between ARIA and DARPA do not hold, precisely because, as I said, DARPA adds a standard fee to the requester, which is not comparable to the situation in the UK, although we should certainly consider it.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, if I may have the privilege of intervening—a wonderful feeling, having been under different rules for a period of time—does the Minister not accept what the noble Lord, Lord Browne, said: that the individual research councils receive no more than the number of requests that DARPA receive, something of the order of 47? It is quite coincidental that the average is 47. Why does the Minister think that ARIA will be inundated with freedom of information requests?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Because it is a fairly new and exciting agency doing new things. I suppose we will have to disagree on that. There is no point and nothing to be gained by doing otherwise. In designing ARIA, we are envisaging a lean agency that will employ people in the tens. I do not know how many people across government are currently employed to respond to the hundreds if not thousands of FoI requests that we get, but given the bundles of documentation that sometimes pass my desk, there must be many hundreds of civil servants engaged in doing nothing other than responding to these fishing expeditions. As I said, ARIA will be an agency employing people in the tens, with around 1% of the R&D budget.

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[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Fox. It seems entirely appropriate that this committee should involve itself in asking for information from ARIA. I am fairly confident, given the Minister’s responses so far, that he would not share that view. This is the same theme that we have been on throughout all our deliberations. Whether it is this specific proposal, or one of the others that we have been trying to tempt the Government with, I am sure that we will be back at this in a couple of weeks’ time.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

This has been such a short debate that it is barely worth winding up. I will just reinforce the point that this is a cultural issue, in the sense that we are trying to get over here. It was interesting that the Minister made the rather runic comment that ARIA will interact with Select Committees of this House and the other place in the normal way. I think what we are trying to do is underline the fact that we need rather more than that; we need disclosure as well—otherwise, we are worried that we will not get that. Good heavens, the committee might even look at the framework document when it eventually sees the light of day. How about that? That would be quite novel.

One has seen the benefit of committee reports. The Science and Technology Committee has made extremely constructive comments around ARIA and UKRI. It has demonstrated the benefit of parliamentary scrutiny. Why do the Government think that parliamentary oversight is such a bad thing?

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

I rise briefly to emphasise the points made by both Front Benches and to say that the Government should welcome an amendment that enables ARIA to be subject to investigation by both Select Committees in both Houses. One of the strengths of Parliament is its Select Committee system, and the reputation of the Science and Technology Committee in another place is very high. I think that, when the Government look back on ARIA in 2031, they will rather wish to have put on record their support for amendments such as this, for the reasons given.

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[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Amendments 38, 41 and 43 are consequential on the omission of Clause 10 from the Bill and the narrowing of the power we talked about earlier to make consequential amendments through regulations. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee suggested that any necessary consequential amendments should be added to Schedule 3, so we are responding to that recommendation here. The amendments apply to ARIA a set of relevant obligations that would usually apply to “public authorities”, which are sometimes defined in reference to Schedule 1 to the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which, of course, ARIA is not listed in. Bespoke provisions therefore are required.

I will briefly summarise the obligations that will apply to ARIA as a result of these amendments. The first relate to the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 and the Social Security Contributions (Intermediaries) Regulations 2000, with which I am sure all noble Lords are intimately familiar. This legislation includes the off-payroll working rules, which are designed to ensure that individuals working like employees but through their own company—usually a personal service company—pay broadly the same income tax and national insurance contributions as those who are directly employed. These rules have been reformed over the past five years to improve compliance by moving the responsibility for determining whether the off-payroll working rules apply from the individual’s personal service company to the client engaging them. That reform came into effect in the public sector in April 2017, and in the private and voluntary sectors on 6 April this year. I do not believe that there is a justification for ARIA to be treated differently from any other public bodies here.

The second element is the Data Protection Act 2018, which gives the GDPR effect in UK law. Through the Bill as it was introduced, ARIA would already be subject to the normal requirements of the GDPR, but the obligations on public authorities are different, in terms of the bases for data processing and governance and oversight arrangements. Similarly, in this case, I do not believe that there is a justification for ARIA to be treated differently from other comparable bodies in this important area.

Finally, the amendments to the Enterprise Act 2016 and Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 allow us to avoid a situation where ARIA is considered part of the private sector for the purposes of business impact assessments of regulatory activities. Again, I do not believe that it is appropriate for impacts to ARIA, as a public sector body, to be included in any such considerations. I also do not believe that it would be appropriate for ARIA to avail itself of the support available through the office of the Small Business Commissioner, which is intended for private sector entities. So, while public authority obligations in other legislation have been considered, they were not assessed to be sufficiently relevant to ARIA to make further amendments here. I beg to move.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, there is a splendid irony in what the Minister has just said as he trotted through the contortions of these amendments. I think he had a former life as a contortionist: it was quite extraordinary, really.

I do not think that these amendments are consequential; I think they are “Oops, we forgot something, actually”, as far as the Bill is concerned. Because of the way they treated the FoIA, suddenly everybody woke up to the fact that, for the purposes of that, ARIA was not a public body, because the Government had been so keen not to define it as a public body and therefore it had to be defined as a public body for the purposes of other legislation in a rather different way. So I do not think that this is consequential—except that it is something that probably should have been thought about when the original FoIA omission decision was made. No doubt everything will be clear after Report: the Minister will have his definition of a public body, everything will be logical and clear, and we will not have to have contortions such as this.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his explanation, which I find rather more digestible than the Minister’s. It would be very inconsistent of me not to make this one point: we would not need to be going through all of this had the Government done what they ought and subjected ARIA to FoI. It shows what a strange decision it was that the Government have had to do all this. I just wanted to make that point, really. I do not think there is much more to say about all of this except that, should the Government change their mind, or have their mind changed, on Report, we might have to have this kind of carry-on again as a consequence. Let us hope that we do.

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[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

If ARIA does not exist until the Act is commenced, how can there be a framework agreement that involves ARIA being a party to the agreement to be tabled before the commencement of the Act?

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I do not need to do very much more. My noble friend is finishing this symphony of a Bill Committee con brio, with metaphorical charabancs, mystery and magic. What more do we need at the end of a Bill stage?

I point out that the equivalent UKRI document of 2018 runs to 60 pages and 16 chapters. It covers a huge range of information: the purpose of UK research and innovation, its powers and duties, its aims, the partnership principles, and the responsibilities of the CEO. It then goes on to deal with devolution and relationships with other bodies, public appointments to UKRI, reviews of boards and committees, and so on. There is some really important content in the UKRI framework document, and I am sure that the ARIA document will not be very different. I very much hope that the Minister will reconsider the decision. On the arrival of the CEO, the Minister said that it followed the Treasury’s standard template. Even something in draft, which does not have to be agreed by the CEO, would seem fundamental to our understanding of what ARIA is going to do.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 14th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to the centrality of intellectual property to the Bill and, in particular, on two themes, very briefly. First, on the protection of intellectual property, the noble Lord, Lord Browne, spoke very movingly and interestingly about the concerns that were brought up by George Freeman in the meeting that we had. It was reassuring to hear George Freeman speak so clearly and emphatically. That is why Amendment 2 is very interesting and worth a really good look.

I am very concerned that, in our efforts to build Britain into a science and research superpower, all that we will be is a laboratory for others to borrow from and that we will simply supply the unicorns of the future from overseas. Somehow, we have to capture that value here in the UK.

The second point, which the noble Lord, Lord Broers, spoke so movingly about and selected such a good example of, is about how we encourage the breed of entrepreneurs that I hope will come out of ARIA. We must encourage this. We should not have something like Amendment 17, which somehow suppresses the entrepreneurialism of our researchers and scientists. I have been to Kendall Square on the MIT campus, next to the Harvard campus, which is buzzing with excitement, with start-ups and major new enterprises feeding off the intellectual energy of those great universities. That is what we need to have here in the UK.

On Clause 1, I am torn between my noble friends Lord Lansley and Lady Neville-Rolfe, who both put their arguments so well. I would like to split the difference and agree with the noble Lord, Lord Browne, that these are things that I would like to hear about from George Freeman from the Dispatch Box. That argument has merit.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I am largely going to speak to and support Amendment 1. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for raising these important issues on the question of ARIA’s ability to impose investment conditions. Unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, I do not see those as bureaucratic constraints.

One key issue in delivering technology into the market in this country is the commercialisation and translation of that technology. We have seen report after report telling us about that. The UK is a top nation for the global impact of its R&D but not so effective at innovation, where it ranks 11th in the world for knowledge diffusion and 27th for knowledge absorption, according to an October 2021 report by our own BEIS department. The greater risk averseness of the VC and private equity market for technology start-ups in the UK compared to that of the US is common ground in the investment community itself; we need to hang on to our unicorns. As a result, outside fintech, we have seen too many high-technology companies sold to overseas companies at too early a stage. We have heard examples from the noble Lords, Lord Broers and Lord Morse—and, in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Browne, took the risk of quoting the Daily Telegraph.

The National Security and Investment Act will impact on that to some extent, but in a limited number of sectors involving national security. Without this kind of scale-up support we cannot become—to coin the phrase so often used by this Government—a science and tech superpower by 2030. This excellent amendment will, I hope, ensure that those making decisions about future financing at least have some friction in the system to ensure that they have to think twice about where and how to raise capital for the future; at the same time, it gives ARIA skin in the game to help it do so. The Minister has said in correspondence that he shares the objectives of this amendment, so I hope that he will agree at the last stage to accept it.

As regards the other amendments by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in this group, I agree in principle with many of the issues that he has raised and the support for intellectual property rights that should be retained by ARIA in certain circumstances. He had powerful support from the noble Lord, Lord Broers, whose expertise we are certainly going to miss when he retires from the House.

As the noble Lord, Lord Browne, says, we have only this Bill today. We cannot solve all the problems relating to the taking of stakes by companies or our research institutions, but we can put this into ARIA’s terms; I very much hope that we will do so today.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, I find myself listening to some excellent speeches and frantically scratching sections from my own contribution as I do not see the point in repeating the points that have already been made. I put on record my thanks to my noble friend Lord Browne, in particular, for his generosity with his expertise and time in working so collaboratively on this issue, which has support on all sides. The principle is very simple: the state is taking a big risk by granting funds to speculative research projects. In cases where that risk pays off—we hope that is not an infrequent event, but we understand that this is about high-risk ventures—ARIA should have the ability to protect the potentially significant benefits that will arise from initial taxpayer support. It seems equally appropriate that ARIA has a say in potential takeovers or transfers of intellectual property. We know that there is a big market for speculative purchases of new technology. While ARIA may decide that there is no public interest in preventing certain events from taking place, there might be other investments that should be safeguarded.

It is clear from the debates that we have had in Committee and this evening that there is a shared desire on all sides—including, to be fair, from the Minister—to deal with this issue. He has correctly observed previously that the problem we are trying to fix is not limited to ARIA; that is understood and agreed with. However, while the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, does not fix everything, that does not mean we should not try to fix the thing that is in front of us now. It moves us in the right direction and is appropriate given the specific activity of ARIA; the Opposition are solidly in support of Amendment 1.

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[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great delight to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, who brings his business acumen and passion for both innovation and climate change to the feast. We have discussed these together often in Peers for the Planet.

We have the climate change Acts, and a huge amount of attention is paid to climate change in every part of government life and in their multi-billion-pound R&D budget. ARIA is a small, independent body and should be left to decide what is most important to our future and to the inventive opportunities that it is set up to create. That might include climate change, health, poverty or the quality of life. Technology, for example, improves our lives, but it also brings risks. ARIA should be left to decide what is most important. It should be able to think completely outside the box and make its own choices, and not be bound by precedent. I am afraid that I am therefore sceptical about these amendments.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and my noble friend have made a compelling case for supporting this amendment, based on the climate and ecological emergency that we face. Tackling those challenges will require massive innovation and ingenuity and the development of practical applications from that. If ARIA has the bold, independent, innovative culture that the Minister emphasised throughout Committee, then it must be the ideal vehicle for this research, and we should spell it out. We should make ARIA an essential component of the net-zero strategy.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, for bringing back his amendment on these important issues. It has been a real pleasure working with him and hearing from him throughout the debates on this Bill. In Grand Committee, Labour proposed making addressing climate change a core purpose for the first two years of ARIA’s existence. It is, after all, one of the greatest challenges, if not the greatest, that we face, and it is science and technology that we look to for new tools and solutions. We were disappointed by the Minister’s response to that suggestion and to the proposals put forward by other noble Lords. We feel this is of critical importance, so we would be prepared to support Amendment 4—depending, of course, on what the Minister has to say.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, has tabled Amendment 5, which seeks to promote three of the UN sustainable development goals, which Labour supports. My noble friend Lord Collins of Highbury looks for any opportunity to press the Government to secure progress on them, domestically and overseas. Without wanting to soften the Minister’s cough—as I think we say where we are both from—I am sure he will say that the Bill is not the correct vehicle. However, whether or not there is a vote, the Government should understand that amendments such as this, which embed climate as a golden thread in legislation, will be put forward by noble Lords and Members in the other place at every opportunity.

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Moved by

[Lord Clement-Jones]

6: Clause 2, page 2, line 18, at end insert—
“(7) ARIA is a public authority within the meaning of section 3 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and Schedule 1 to that Act is amended accordingly.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would subject ARIA to Freedom of Information requests.

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[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 6 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Fox, the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, and the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate. As my noble friend said in Committee, without the FOI amendments, ARIA would follow in the footsteps of a very small number of institutions that currently do not have Freedom of Information Act obligations. I will not extensively rehearse all the arguments, but suggest that the organisations involved, which include the Royal Family and security and intelligence bodies, are not natural bedfellows to ARIA. The Minister complained about the burdens for ARIA of responding to FOI requests but nowhere, not even in Dominic Cummings’s evidence to the Commons Science and Technology Committee last February, was the FoIA identified as an obstacle to ARIA’s success.

The Minister has continually highlighted that ARIA is modelled on DARPA. ARPA was subject to the US Freedom of Information Act and DARPA is subject to it as well. This has not prevented them achieving the successes which the Government wish ARIA to emulate. We talked in Committee about the equivalent number of requests received before the restructuring of the research bodies, which were exactly equivalent to those of DARPA. The argument that DARPA charges fees falls away too. The main classes of requester—the news media and educational staff—and requests in the public interest are not charged. In practice, only commercial requesters have to pay.

As I said in Committee, there is no question that, under the FoIA, ARIA’s research programme could be prejudiced, given the clear exemptions under the Act for research interests. In Committee, the Minister gave away the real reason for the Government’s refusal to include ARIA under the FoIA. He illustrated his general contempt for freedom of information legislation, saying:

“From my point of view, it is a truly malign piece of legislation”,


and that

“there must be many hundreds of civil servants engaged in doing nothing other than responding to these fishing expeditions”.

It looks like this is personal—or is the truth that the Government find the daylight shed on them by the FoIA truly inconvenient, and ARIA is just the start of an erosion of FoIA rights?

Transparency is crucial for all our public institutions. ARIA will be in receipt of a substantial amount of public funding—£500 million over the next three years—so there are compelling grounds for its inclusion. Coming under the FoIA is an essential part of retaining public trust.

As regards Amendment 7, which relates to procurement, the Minister said in Committee that:

“When ARIA is commissioning and contracting others to do research for it, it will be operating in a fundamentally different way from traditional R&D grant-making where procurement rules do not apply.


In my view, it is therefore appropriate for ARIA to be given freedom from procurement rules to ensure that the agency has greater flexibility in its contractual arrangements.”—[Official Report, 22/11/21; cols. GC 147-49.]


If ever I heard a circular argument, that was it.

Why are the Government having to perform drafting contortions to exclude ARIA from these procurement requirements in the Bill? Why on earth should ARIA not be subject to exactly the same procurement regime as other public bodies? UKRI is subject to rules and procures and commissions services, including research services. What makes ARIA so different? I beg to move.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 6, to which I added my name. This is a subject I raised at Second Reading, but I reassure the noble Baroness acting as the Whip that, on this occasion, she can relax; there is unlikely to be any need to interrupt me on the grounds that I have gone on too long, because I want to be very brief.

There are two reasons why ARIA should be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The first is one of principle. Public bodies set up in statute should be subjected to the same FOI requirements as apply elsewhere. In this country, I submit that FOI legislation is an essential safeguard in the political world in which we now live. To reject this amendment will send a bad signal and set a bad precedent. I even suggest to the Minister that he may reconsider his view as and when he sits on these Benches in the future.

The second reason is practical. We do not want to allow ARIA to come to be viewed with public suspicion and distrust, especially as it has the right to fail, so being open about its work will be beneficial. If it turns out that it is not easy to discover what it is doing, public support for ARIA might be damaged, to the detriment of its wider role. It is not difficult to imagine circumstances in which a campaign is waged against ARIA for excessive secrecy, possibly utilising inaccurate information about it, and for public support to be damaged; nor, in my judgment, would making ARIA subject to freedom of information turn out to be an excessive practical burden. Moreover, if there are aspects of ARIA’s future work that turn out to be sensitive, the Government already have powers elsewhere in the Bill for the Secretary of State to intervene on grounds of national security.

I will leave my remarks there, but I strongly urge the acceptance of Amendment 6.

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[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I think the noble Lord will find, if he looks at my remarks, that I did not say that every applicant will pay fees but that there is a general expectation that a fee of $25 will be charged, or even more in some cases if more information is required. However, there are exemptions to that, which can be exercised. If the noble Lord looks back at Hansard, he will see that I did not say that everyone would be charged a fee. In most cases, a fee would be applicable, but there are certain exemptions.

I turn to Amendment 7, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Fox, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, which relates to procurement regulations. I note that the noble Lords did not address this, but it is worth while setting out the Government’s position on that amendment. I believe there are clear reasons why this exemption is beneficial to ARIA and why it will be integral to the agency’s effective operation. First, unlike other R&D funders, ARIA will be commissioning and contracting others to do research for it in pursuit of its own technological visions or research goals. The process of contracting and commissioning means ARIA will be operating in fundamentally different ways from traditional R&D grant making, where procurement rules already do not apply. Placing ARIA outside the existing public procurement rules will mean that the agency can freely procure expert investment and consultancy advice, which will be important given the highly varied and technical nature of the agency’s work.

While we imagine that the bulk of ARIA’s research activities will be carried out by its partners and funders, it remains possible that ARIA may wish to procure and own a piece of research equipment to crowd-in interest from other research partners, or to accelerate the progress of a project. Freedom from traditional procurement rules will facilitate ARIA making those investments quickly and with ease. In my view, it is appropriate for ARIA to have greater flexibility than the R&D exemption would afford it so that it can design and tailor its contractual arrangements to precisely suit its research endeavour.

Secondly, in designing ARIA, we have put a premium on the agency investing and acting quickly. In our view, this agility would be incompatible with the public tendering process mandated in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, which can require contracting authorities to put contracts out to open tender for up to two to three months. Such a delay could prevent critical investments being made with sufficient speed or, indeed, at all. In choosing to exempt ARIA from standard procurement rules, we have learnt from the successful approach taken by DARPA, which benefits from “other transactions” authority, giving the agency the flexibility to operate outside traditional US government contracting standards. It is our belief that ARIA should benefit from similar flexibilities.

I also dispute the notion that taking ARIA outside traditional procurement rules will leave the agency vulnerable to cronyism. I think this was a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, in Committee. This exemption will ensure ARIA’s leadership and programme managers—who have been recruited for their technical expertise and scientific vision—can take decisions on ARIA’s procurement with autonomy, as they will have the freedom to procure at arm’s length from government and Ministers.

As I have already detailed, ARIA has clear lines of accountability, transparency and scrutiny in the preparation of its an annual report, scrutiny by the NAO and an annual independent audit to report on its procurement activities. As I have already alluded to, to reflect the constructive and considered debate in Grand Committee, ARIA will publish information on its delivery partners, and this expectation will be detailed in ARIA’s framework document. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, for tabling an amendment to that effect previously. I hope she and other noble Lords welcome this principled commitment to transparency, which would extend to delivery partners supported through the full range of ARIA’s funding mechanism.

In conclusion, I hope noble Lords have been assured that exempting ARIA from traditional procurement rules will be integral to the agency’s effective operation. The package of accountability, conflict of interest procedures and governance provisions that sit within this Bill are an appropriate counterbalance to that. Taken in the round, this represents an essential, proportionate and balanced freedom, placed in the hands of ARIA’s incoming leadership and programme managers. Taken together, I hope that the assurances and explanations I have been able to provide for noble Lords will allow the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and thank noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. There is clearly an argument to be had on our Amendment 7 and the whole procurement regime. The one argument that the Minister has is that DARPA is not subject to procurement rules.

However, the position is quite other on Amendment 6, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, has said. This is a matter of principle. The Minister keeps coming up with some quite colourful phrases. This evening he said that scientists should not have to be fearful at the prospect of FoI disclosure. That is quite an interesting phrase—those scientists quivering in their labs, waiting for freedom of information disclosure. I must say it is quite a colourful way of looking at the situation, but, clearly, we have a matter of principle to decide on here, and I would like to test the opinion of the House.

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[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

We come to Amendment 7 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. Is it moved or not moved?

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I am speaking to and will support Amendment 9.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

One moment. I asked about Amendment 7 in the noble Lord’s name.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

Not moved.

Amendment 7 not moved.

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Moved by

[Lord Clement-Jones]

9: Clause 8, leave out Clause 8

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[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, in Committee the Minister explained that he accepted the DPRRC’s recommendations regarding Clause 10, and indeed was taking it out of the Bill, but added:

“Clause 8 is, I believe, an important part of the Bill. Although the DPRRC also raised concerns about this power, there is a strong policy rationale and a clear precedent for this particular delegation of power.”


He was then able to cite one solitary example, the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, which was dissolved by the super-affirmative procedure, but he admitted that that was in the context of widespread public body reform. He continued:

“In contrast, the power in Clause 8 is narrow, such that ARIA can only be dissolved. It cannot be merged or have its functions or governance changed in any way, as set out in my response to the DPRRC last week.”—[Official Report, 22/11/21; cols. GC 162-63.]


I still believe that the objection from the DPRRC stands. It said it was not necessary legally, politically or practically for something created by primary legislation to be dissolved by secondary legislation. On the contrary, if Parliament creates ARIA, the right to dissolve it should naturally belong to Parliament.

This is all reinforced by the recent report of the DPRRC, Democracy Denied? The Urgent Need to Rebalance Power between Parliament and the Executive. This kind of power assumed by the Government is what it objects to. I agree with the committee’s conclusions that we need to stop this accretion of Henry VIII powers by the Government, who are still proceeding willy-nilly in the face of the clear views and warnings of one of our own very well-respected committees.

The Minister said that these were narrow and limited powers, but what could be wider than abolishing the very subject of the Bill? That seems to be an extraordinarily wide power and a completely unjustified use of a Henry VIII power. So I look forward to the Minister’s reply but I very much hope that the Government will rethink their response to the DPRRC’s objections to the inclusion of Clause 8. I beg to move.

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[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply, which, I am afraid, amounted to a very polite raspberry to the DPRRC. She used very polite phrases such as “carefully considered”, but the fact is that the Government are intent on ignoring one of the major recommendations of the committee—namely, that the powers in Clause 8 are inappropriate.

The Minister talked about a clear precedent, and I referred to the precedent that the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, cited in Committee. But when the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council was abolished, it was done by the super-affirmative procedure, and the Government have not even offered to use that in this case. This is rather different to that situation; this is effectively abolishing the whole substance of what the Bill is about: ARIA itself. I do not think there could be anything more radical than a Henry VIII power that does that.

I am afraid that I do not really regard what the Minister said as a full response to the DPRRC, and I am certainly not persuaded by the Government’s position. But this is part of a longer, long-running argument between the Executive and Parliament. Clearly, the DPRRC, which I support very strongly, wants much greater parliamentary involvement and oversight in decisions such as this. It believes that, where possible, primary legislation is the appropriate instrument, not secondary legislation. Does the Minister want me to give way?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps I could come back on the specific point he made about the Public Bodies Act. This Act was developed in the context of widespread public body reform. It was therefore appropriate that the super-affirmative procedure was applied. In the context of much broader powers, it was right that their use was subject to this higher level of parliamentary scrutiny. In contrast, the power in Clause 8 is much more narrowly defined, such that ARIA can only be dissolved—it cannot be merged, or have its functions or governance changed. That is a significant difference between the two.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, that is a significant difference between us. Merging is one thing, but total abolition is another. Perhaps the Minister could have offered the super-affirmative procedure in those circumstances. As I say, this is part of a long-running argument. The Executive are determined to hang on to their Henry VIII powers. I hope that Parliament will continue to press for fewer Henry VIII powers, much greater use of primary legislation, where appropriate, less use of skeleton Bills, and so on. This is a very broad landscape that we are debating. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 9 withdrawn.

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I look forward to the Minister’s reply, because what she could do very quickly and easily is reassure the mathematical community that it is included in the definition under Clause 11 and that, to some extent, this whole debate may have been unnecessary, as long as it is made clear from the Dispatch Box that mathematics is valued and included.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I have signed and I support Amendments 12, 13 and 14. As someone immersed in issues relating to AI, machine learning and the application of algorithms to decision-making over the years, I, too, support Protect Pure Maths in its campaign to protect pure maths and advance the mathematical sciences in the UK—and these amendments, tabled by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, reflect that.

The campaign points out that pure maths has been a great British success story, with Alan Turing, Andrew Wiles and Roger Penrose, the Nobel Prize winner—and, of course, more recently Hannah Fry has popularised mathematics. Stephen Hawking was a great exemplar, too. However, despite its value to society, maths does not always receive the funding and support that it warrants. Giving new funding to AI, for instance, risks overlooking the fundamental importance of maths to technology.

As Protect Pure Maths says, the 2004 BEIS guidelines on research and development, updated in 2010, currently limit the definition of science and research and development for tax purposes to the systematic study of the nature and behaviour of the physical and material universe. We should ensure that the ARIA Bill does not make the same mistake, and that the focus and capacity of the Bill’s provisions also explicitly include the mathematical sciences, including pure maths. Maths needs to be explicitly included as a part of scientific knowledge and research, and I very much hope that the Government accept these amendments.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I thank the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, for tabling Amendments 12 to 14, and those who contributed to the debate. We recognise the fundamental importance of pure and applied maths to other sciences, and as the focus of scientific inquiry in its own right. It is right that we take the opportunity to note that importance here.

The noble and gallant Lord gave a number of potent examples of the importance of mathematical contributions to scientific innovation. Much like, we hope, the projects and advances that will be supported by ARIA, breakthroughs in mathematics can lead to unexpected leaps of progress in separate fields or find application in solving intractable and seemingly unrelated problems in other areas of science. As we just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, who rightly reminded us, the UK has been home to many outstanding mathematicians of global significance, from Isaac Newton to Andrew Wiles.

However, I emphasise to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, that the drafting of the clause that they have sought to amend follows existing powers in the Science and Technology Act 1965, and the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. It is important that it does so. Research into mathematics, including pure mathematics, has been funded in the UK using those powers for over five decades. Maths research is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council—one of the research councils that make up UKRI. The EPSRC spends more than £200 million on this theme, which includes research into maths in areas from number theory to topology and artificial intelligence. It is clear that maths is included in the definition of sciences as currently included in the Bill.

The 2004 guidance referenced by the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, predates the Higher Education and Research Act, which makes it clear that maths is included in the definition of science as drafted in the Bill. There is no need to particularise the interpretation through these amendments. Indeed, it would clearly be undesirable to seek to list exhaustively every possible field of scientific inquiry within the Bill. Departing from the existing embedded way these powers to fund research, including in mathematics, are drawn would be unhelpful.

ARIA’s programme managers will set ambitious programme-level goals. Although we do not often expect programme-level goals to lie within pure mathematics, it is right to highlight that ARIA might need to draw on pure and applied maths to achieve those goals, given their importance within the new fields noble Lords highlighted. It is right that ARIA may fund research in those areas.

We are confident that any activities of this nature that ARIA will seek to pursue are covered by its functions, and that the results of scientific research will encompass the results of mathematical inquiry that might be needed by ARIA. ARIA’s supplementary powers provide further reassurance. When exercising its functions, such as funding a programme with a specific scientific objective, ARIA’s supplementary powers allow it to do whatever is necessary in support of that. It is therefore the case that any mathematical endeavours that ARIA needed to draw on for a programme—for example, in support of a particular objective for machine learning—could be funded under its supplementary powers as well.

On that basis, although the noble and gallant Lord and the noble Viscount have raised important points, I hope they will be satisfied that there is no need for their amendments and feel able not to press them.