Horizon Europe

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his—as usual—to the point question. The Government are committed to making the UK a global science and research superpower. We are a partner for choice for many world-leading and rapidly growing R&I nations. Through our interactions with other Governments, we know that there is significant and growing demand from world leaders such as the US and Japan to commit more funding to collaborative research. I could point my noble friend and the House to various examples, including the £12 million UK-Japanese LongOps project to help faster and safer decommissioning at Fukushima; the £20 million UK-US collaboration on the Thwaites Glacier; and the New Variant Assessment Platform, which is undertaking Covid-19 genomic sequencing at Porton Down for the whole world.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, in his speech in Lisbon last week, the noble Lord, Lord Frost, simply stated flatly that the UK’s request for participation in the Horizon programme had been blocked. That seems slightly at variance with what the noble Baroness said in her original Answer to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. Which is the authorised version, and if it is blocked, what are the Government doing to get it unblocked? Is it anything to do with other issues which are not going so well between the UK and the EU?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, the authorised version is that the delay is not coming from our side. The UK’s participation in the Union programme under the TCA and the Northern Ireland protocol—the issue to which he alludes—are completely separate issues. We see no legal or practical reasons why we should not be able to formalise our participation swiftly. The UK-EU joint declaration published alongside the TCA set out both parties’ intention to formalise UK association at the earliest opportunity, and we stand ready to implement that agreement. It is regrettable that, as regards the negotiations with Switzerland, Commissioner Gabriel has brought in other issues to delay its entry into the same programmes, notably in relation to the EU cohesion programmes which the EU wish Switzerland to pay for before it is allowed to enter Horizon.