Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Broers

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th November 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Fox (LD)]

Again, this is an interesting group of amendments, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, and the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, should be congratulated on tabling them. Bearing in mind what the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, has just said, I was already planning to focus on Amendments 12, 13 and 14 and not to talk to Amendment 11, and that is probably a good idea.

However, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Browne, that I do not think his work was wasted because one way or another he has managed to uncover the fact that the Government have decided deliberately to exclude this requirement that they expect every other central government purchase to meet. The Minister has a serious question to answer as to why that is being left out.

Amendments 12, 13 and 14 cover an important issue. I do not think we need to underline, after the week or 10 days that we have just had, why it is in the interests of ARIA itself for it to be seen that there is no conflict and there are no issues around where the money is being spent. In a sense, these amendments or versions of them, will help ARIA in its own housekeeping. Of course, the Electoral Commission will register donors. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman says, we then need a list of all the companies and then to go to Companies House to find out who is registered as being in control of those companies. Making it easier also makes it clearer to the ARIA administration what it is dealing with.

I go back to the statutory instrument that we are not debating today, which talks about conflict of interest—so it is clearly relevant. It says that a member of ARIA must disclose any “relevant interests” promptly on appointment. The trouble with that is that I do not think that many people can consider their donations to be a relevant interest, but they are relevant with respect to an organisation of this nature. So something clearer needs to be spelled out, either in the statutory instrument or in the primary legislation. I would prefer it to be in the primary legislation.

When that is done, in listing the companies that are being supported, I suspect that the Minister is going to stand up, in the same way as he is going to stand up when we debate the freedom of information stuff, and say, “This work needs to be kept under wraps and kept secret”. There is a balance to run on this, and if there is an issue we need to find a third-party agency to scrutinise it on behalf of Parliament. But to hide specifically through national security or proprietorial security is wrong, because in that darkness—even if abuses are not happening—the perception of abuse will happen, which will harm ARIA before it even starts.

[Lord Broers (CB)]

I have just a word of disagreement on some of this. Short-termism has been our problem; we must keep the timescales long enough. If you keep pulling the plant up and looking at the roots, it will not grow. On the other hand, one thing that we should practise from the beginning is what is in Amendment 16 from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. The one thing that technologists have made a mistake on in the last decade or two is not to bring social scientists in early, to really look at the implications of what their technology will do. I strongly support that amendment, but I have severe reservations about the others.