UK and EU Relations

Lord Kakkar Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I thank Her Majesty’s Government for providing the opportunity for a debate specifically on the position papers. I will confine my contribution to the paper on science. In so doing, I must declare my interest as professor of surgery at University College London, chairman of University College London Partners and UK business ambassador for healthcare and life sciences.

The president of the Royal Society, Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, in providing his response to the position paper on science, on behalf of the Royal Society, recognised the Government’s commitment to the science agenda and the aspiration in the tone of the paper, but remarked that there was much work still to be done. That is true, and important, because science and innovation play such a vital part in our economy. When we look at research output from the United Kingdom, 50% is results from international collaborations. Of the internationally co-authored publications from UK science, 60% are co-authored with European collaborators. The £1 billion a year of funding that we receive from the Horizon 2020 programme and the regional development research funds of the European Union represent 10%—or the equivalent of 10%—of the expenditure in research and innovation provided by government, and about 5% of gross expenditure on research and development, for both the public and private sectors. If we look at UK scientists’ collaborations globally, the country with which there is the greatest amount of collaboration is of course the United States of America but, of the top 10 countries for UK collaboration, seven are from the European Union. So this is a very important issue.

There is considerable anxiety still in the science community over the way forward, despite the publication of the science position paper. There are three areas where it will be vital to make early progress to provide the detail attending the aspirations laid out in the paper. The first is research funding. There is a commitment to continued funding obligations for Horizon 2020 until the time of departure from the European Union, but that important commitment needs to continue throughout the Horizon 2020 commitment period and beyond to the next framework of research—framework 9. Discussions are now starting on the nature of that programme to support research and research excellence. It will be vital for our country to find a way to influence both the discussions on and the structure of those programmes, and to be in a position to make commitments on our longer-term participation and funding in that area.

The second area is research scientists—that is, people. Again, there are substantial anxieties. There are fewer applications now to UK institutions as a result of that uncertainty, with regard to collaborative scientists coming to work here. However, a very interesting observation was made in the science position paper on the Rutherford Fund. This fund has been developed to promote excellence in collaboration and to encourage both early-career scientists and established investigators to come from around the world and be able to work—funded—here in the United Kingdom. Is it possible that this programme might be extended, both in the scope of funding available—currently £100 million a year in this interim period—and that some mechanism might be found to guarantee the visa status, and therefore the ability, of scientists wanting to come to work in our country, when they have programmes of research funding by those UK Government-designated research funding opportunities?

The final area is regulation, again identified in the science position paper. The point is made that our country will be uniquely positioned with regard to regulation post-Brexit, because we have been part of the regulatory frameworks in science to date. These are all vital, and relate to such issues as clinical trials and data protection, as we have heard in this debate. The issue is that we are not only well aligned in regulation at the moment but we have influenced much of the nature of that regulation. A mechanism must be found to ensure that we can continue to influence the development of regulation, so that we can remain completely aligned with it and, therefore, can participate in the research programmes, collaborations and networks going forward. We must also ensure that our innovation and technology businesses continue to be able to participate in the important European markets.