Catapults (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Mair, on the eloquent way in which he introduced and took us through the Committee’s report. I am privileged to serve on your Lordships’ Science and Technology Committee. Unfortunately, I did not become a member of it until after this report was put together, but I echo all the comments that noble Lords have made regarding the staff, clerk and support for the Committee. It is always a tremendous team effort, with everybody playing their part—not least one of our former chairmen, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, who provided inspirational and supportive leadership during the first couple of reports I was involved in.

If we are to recover from Covid, build back better—or whatever phrase we choose—and come through this horrific situation in Ukraine, it will come down to the interplay of inclusion, innovation, talent and technology, and optimising all therein. My noble friend Lord Willetts was quite correct that talent and skills are a key part of the issue right now. Credit must be given to my noble friend Lord Baker for the work he has done with university technical colleges and the powerful role they play, not just in producing people to fill these roles but in enabling technical education to have the status it should, rather than being seen as somehow secondary. As the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, said, that was potentially the view going right back to the Butler Education Act 1944.

However, we have many reasons to be cheerful in this country, and the catapults are a key part of that. We are not short on world-beating universities, and we are not short on brains—my noble friend Lord Willetts, famously, has two. We are good at the ideas but when it comes to spinning out and, crucially, scaling up at pace, there is such a long way to go, not just in the reasoning for the establishment of catapults but in the key role for them to play in that space. We need more scaling of catapults to enable scaling of the UK economy and all those brilliant ideas to come to fruition.

The Digital Catapult has taken public funding and applied a significant multiplier to it to make a difference right across the country—over 400 businesses each year since its establishment. On levelling up, look at the work in Northern Ireland that the Digital Catapult is doing with nano manufacturing businesses: a clear example of how the catapult can play a critical role in that part of the ecosystem, add pace at that stage and be a key part of the Belfast innovation district. Again, that shows that this is not just about individual entities, individual parts of the state trying to operate as verticals or in isolation. It has to be an ecosystem, a district, a cluster and a collaboration between all those elements, right across the United Kingdom.

We have the opportunity. Crucially, it comes down to enabling that talent and technology to come together—that inclusion and innovation. To answer the question that still exists in this area, as much as in so many areas of our lives, the talent is everywhere. The ideas are everywhere. Crucially, the opportunity still is not. Catapults have a crucial role to play and we should all continue to be supportive of their work.

Finally, I ask the Minister for his view on what more we need to do to ensure that we get to the 2.4% and beyond. As I have the microphone, I hope I will be indulged in asking him where the Government are on the leadership of ARIA and how he sees the role it can play in the overall innovation space. It will be the so-called new technologies that build economic growth and, through that, the social, psychological, community, city and national growth that we need to move forward for the benefit of us all.