Science and Technology Superpower (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register, in particular as chair of the council of Queen Mary University of London. This has been a wide-ranging debate, demonstrating that the committee’s report, despite being nearly a year old, still has great currency and relevance and its conclusions are as valid as they were a year ago. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, for her clear, comprehensive and challenging introduction to the report.

Many noble Lords mentioned the Government’s science superpower ambition. The “hot air” comment from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was pretty fair. Sir James Dyson was even ruder, describing the Government’s science superpower ambition as a political slogan. There is probably a common view that it should be dropped, but it being clearly overblown as a slogan should not detract from the fact that there are opportunities in so many different fields, as many noble Lords have said.

I very much liked the way in which the noble Lords, Lord Holmes and Lord Krebs, both talked about the secret—the essence—of success in terms of collaboration and cocreation. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned long-termism, openness, freedom of inquiry and the fact that those lessons had not been learned. As the committee noted and a number of noble Lords have said, we have had a proliferation of strategies in various areas, but with what follow up and plans for delivery? We have had a whole series of reviews, some of which were mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, but where is the result? What will the KPIs be? What is the shelf life of these reviews and where is the practical implementation?

I will take just one example: the Life Sciences Vision, which was launched back in 2021. Dame Kate Bingham is quoted as believing that the vaccine scheme legacy has been “squandered” despite that vision. Business investment is crucial and nowhere more than in the life sciences sector. A couple of weeks ago, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, highlighted the issues relating to business investment in the life sciences sector in his regret Motion on the Branded Health Service Medicines (Costs) (Amendment) Regulations 2023. All the levers to create incentives for the development of new medicines are under government control but, as his Motion noted, the UK’s share of global pharmaceutical R&D fell by more than one-third between 2012 and 2020.

The noble Lord rightly argued that the voluntary and statutory pricing schemes for new medicines are becoming a major impediment to future investment in the UK. We seem to be treating the pharma industry as some kind of golden goose so, despite the Government’s Life Sciences Vision, we see Eli Lilly pulling investment on laboratory space in London because the UK

“does not invite inward investment at this time”

and AstraZeneca has decided to build its next plant in Ireland because of the UK’s discouraging tax rate. The excellent O’Shaughnessy report on clinical trials is all very well, but if there is no commercial incentive to develop and launch new medicines here, why should pharma companies want to engage in clinical trials here? The Chancellor’s growth package for the life sciences, announced on 25 May, fails to tackle this crucial aspect, and I could repeat that for other sectors.

On these Benches, we welcome the creation of the new department and the launch of the Science and Technology Framework to inform the work of the department to 2030, but what are the key priority outcomes? What concrete plans for delivery lie behind it? Does it explicitly supersede all the visions and strategies that have gone before? The crux of this committee’s report seems to me to accord with that. It states:

“The Government should set out specifically what it wants to achieve in each of the broad areas of science and technology that it has identified. There should be a clear implementation plan.”


It also stated that,

“the Government should consolidate existing sector-specific strategies”

into that implementation plan.

We have heard from a number of Lords about vital cross-departmental working and joining up government on science and technology, but we do not yet really know the role of the National Science and Technology Council and what its key priorities are and, indeed, what the priorities of the Office for Science and Technology Strategy are.

This applies particularly with regard to the Home Office’s policy on visas. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Northover, and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, about the fact that the policy on visas and migration is directly at odds with an effective science policy. If we are going to be world-leading in our approach to research and mobility, we need to correct that in many different ways.

There are important systemic issues that should be a top priority for resolution by the new department. We have had the independent review by Sir Paul Nurse, which has been mentioned. I suspect he has calculated our spending in a rather different way from the way that the department has, but he concluded that funding, particularly provided by government, was limited and below that of other competitive nations such as Germany, South Korea and US. My noble friend Lady Walmsley asked whether we track how other nations are spending.

There is the question of Horizon, which we have disproportionately benefited from in the past, yet we have a complete lack of clarity in this area, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Brown and Lady Bennett, the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, the noble Lord, Lord Mair, and my noble friend Lady Walmsley said. We need a clear commitment to re-entering Horizon. What is the position nearly two months after the Prime Minister’s letter to Sir Adrian Smith on 14 April assuring him about our intentions on Horizon? Many other nations that are not members of the European Union belong to Horizon.

The way the UK delivers and supports research is not optimal. We have heard from a number of noble Lords about the way that the bureaucracy of UKRI operates. The Tickell review found that there are issues with bureaucracy around research and development funding. As the noble Lord, Lord Rees, says, it is extraordinary that ARIA was specifically designed to avoid bureaucracy. Its budget is tiny in comparison to UKRI, yet we have not reformed the processes of UKRI to make them less bureaucratic.

The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, talked about the role of university research, and others talked about the research excellence framework. We seem to have a rather perverse approach to this. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said, we should encourage strategic partnerships, which should be very much part of the warp and weft of what we are trying to achieve. At the moment, our research in universities is cross-subsidised by overseas students, which is an extraordinary state of affairs. We really need to look at that in some detail.

With the greatest respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, commercialisation is a crucial aspect linking R&D to economic growth. This, in turn, means the need for a consistent industrial strategy—as the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, and my noble friend Lady Northover said—with the right commercial incentives and an understanding of the value of intangible assets, such as IP and data. The noble Lord, Lord Mair, talked about catapults—I am a huge fan of them—and he was entirely right to raise the resources and the strategy that is being pursued. An update from the Minister on that would be extremely welcome.

There are many other aspects to do with the scale-up finance issues, which Sir Patrick Vallance mentioned in his evidence to the Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee last month. We have seen the whole question of listing problems in London, as well as the delay in the pension fund issue and helping to de-risk their investment in new technology—I have seen the new initiative from the British Business Bank, which is long overdue. Then we have the whole question of regulatory divergence. I disagree with those who, like the noble Lord, Lord Wei, seem to think that, if we stand out in terms of regulation, everything will be fine. Regulatory divergence is one of the real problems; it creates uncertainty. We need to align ourselves in so many ways. I could have given a whole speech on AI regulation, but I have desisted. However, needless to say, I am highly critical of the Government’s White Paper in this respect.

Finally, the whole area of diversity in STEM is absolutely crucial. In the wise words of the British Science Association, we must ensure that the opportunities and benefits are equitable in any future science strategy. There is not enough time to go into that, but I believe that that could be a real key to unlocking so much of our success. I do not have time to mention pure maths, but we also need to look at that.

There is much to do for the new department. I wish the Minister and his colleagues well, and I am sure that they will rise to the challenge. But we need to create the kind of consensus that the noble Lord, Lord Rees, advocated. That is another secret to success.