Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th November 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 26 in my name. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Browne, for their support for these amendments. I declare my interest as a director of Peers for the Planet and as an engineer and project director for Atkins.

There was much discussion at Second Reading of DARPA, the agency that has inspired ARIA. DARPA succeeded in changing the world because it took enormous gambles, failing often but with a few projects that succeeded, more than justifying the payouts and creating trillions of dollars in value. This freedom to take risks and to fail is its most important characteristic. That is exemplified by the second project that DARPA funded, Project Orion: a proposal for a manned spacecraft propelled by nuclear explosions. The head of DARPA at the time astutely stated that one of the main challenges was doing that in such a way that the occupants were not killed. While that particular high-risk project did not succeed, for obvious reasons, many others did: the internet, stealth technology and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine, to name but a few.

ARIA certainly takes that lesson from DARPA to heart, as described in the Bill: getting bureaucracy out of the way and giving a high-calibre team based on programme managers the freedom to deliver high-risk, high-reward research. But there is another vital lesson to take from DARPA which I referred to on Second Reading: a clear purpose for the organisation. Everything that DARPA does is defined by its aim of ensuring the technological supremacy of the United States armed forces. In 1958, the USA fortuitously hit upon a combination of factors for a research organisation—a clear purpose, freedom to fail, programme-manager-led—that literally changed the world. The US has taken this purpose-oriented approach in all its DARPA derivatives since, including ARPA-E and HSARPA.

To have the longevity and political staying power that DARPA has demonstrated, ARIA needs to have a purpose, and that purpose needs to be closely coupled to the strategic goals of the nation. Foremost among those strategic goals are the UK’s net-zero and environmental goals. Giving ARIA a broad sustainable purpose will allow a flexible approach to research, while at the same time being aligned with the innovation strategy that highlights the need to direct innovation towards

“our top priority societal missions … like the climate and biodiversity crises”.

It will also ensure that projects and proposals that would be contrary to those strategic goals do not progress.

Attempting to reverse engineer DARPA is not a guaranteed route to success, but we need to take the benefit of real-world experience in learning the lessons of why DARPA succeeded and giving ARIA the best chance of success, which is what we all want.

We know how vital R&D is to achieving our net-zero and environmental targets. For example, the International Energy Agency has stated that almost half the emissions reductions required by 2050 are expected to rely on technologies that have not yet reached the market. In this area, what must be done—the key enabler to make net zero politically possible across the world—is to create green energy at a price point that is cheaper than fossil fuels. So, we need nothing less than revolution in net zero and environmental R&D to make our goals possible.

That brings me to the specifics of my Amendments 1 and 26. Amendment 1 is very simple. It states:

“ARIA’s purpose is to fund projects with high transformational potential in pursuit of a sustainable and resilient society, planet and economy.”


This amendment would give ARIA a broad sustainability purpose in line with the points I have made, and in that sense, I believe, would fulfil the need to orient ARIA towards alignment with the most important strategic goal of the nation, and indeed the world.

In crafting the amendment, I have listened carefully to feedback from the Minister during the progress of the Bill in the other place, in that the Government do not wish to unduly constrain ARIA. That is why the amendment is written around a broad sustainability purpose, not a specific net-zero objective or mission. My amendment is not about saying that other streams of research not specifically related to net zero or the environment cannot progress; just that any such streams must not be contrary to, and preferably support, the core strategic challenges. Having a broad purpose and key priorities in setting the direction of the organisation is what the amendment seeks to achieve, while still retaining the flexibility the Government want for ARIA.

My Amendment 26 would ensure that consideration for our climate and environmental goals is embedded within ARIA’s functions. It is modelled on similar government provisions in other legislation, including most recently in the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. As noble Lords will be aware, the Committee on Climate Change, given the advice that there is a need for a coherent approach to achieving net zero, has made it a priority recommendation for 2021 to ensure that all government policy decisions are compatible with the Government’s climate commitments.

In this sense, the amendment would align this Bill with other amendments the Government have put forward across a range of recent legislation, such as the skills Bill, the Financial Services Act and the Pension Schemes Act. To meet our goals, we need carefully to consider the systems aspects of net zero and ensure that consideration of these goals is embedded into all government policy and legislation where it is practical to do so.

Given how critical R&D is to achieving our goals, I hope the Government will agree that such considerations really need to be present in this Bill in order to align it with their broader strategy. It is not about stopping projects that are not directly related net zero; rather, it is about ensuring that the impacts in the context of compatibility with our climate commitments have been properly considered and factored into decision-making. It is a question of consistency with other legislation.

In summary, consideration of sustainability goals and functions in the Bill has wide support across the academic community, including from Professor Richard Jones, the science policy expert who has been involved in much of the thinking around the formation of ARIA. The amendment provides an excellent opportunity for the Government to maximise the benefit from the £800 million of funding, to demonstrate to international partners at this critical point post COP a new model for climate and net-zero aligned R&D, and to develop the new technologies that we will need to help the UK and the rest of the world achieve our targets. Finally, it would ensure longevity and long-term political support for the organisation, irrespective of the Government of the day, something the whole of Parliament can get behind. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. Two of the amendments in this first group are in my name, Amendments 25 and 27, and I want to speak to Amendment 27 first. It is grouped with Amendment 1 because we start by debating, quite properly, the purposes of ARIA as an agency. What is it here to achieve?

As the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, said, we are not seeking to replicate DARPA but to learn from it. DARPA said that its sense of mission was part of the reason for its success. However, that mission in this context was originally

“to prevent and create technological surprise”.

That is an interesting concept—to prevent technological surprise happening to the American Government and, at the same time, to create technological surprise on its own part. One might say that you could substitute “create technological advantage” in the latter case. Interestingly, in more recent years, when DARPA staff were asked what they regarded as their mission, they said it was to be part of “shaping the future”. Indeed, I think that is where our starting point should be. We want ARIA as an agency to be part of shaping the future.

My problem with Amendment 1—actually, I do not have a problem with Amendment 1, because you could stretch the language of sustainability anywhere; that is its advantage but also its problem. I am not sure I understand what the board of ARIA, or its leading members, would interpret as being outside the scope of the sustainability criterion. Does it actually help them? I am not sure that it does. If anything, they might feel that it constrains them towards certain missions. The DARPA example we ought to learn from is that, in practice, it set out to define for itself a range of missions within the organisation.

I note that sitting next to the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, is the noble Lord, Lord Broers. I take from his Second Reading speech the thought that the programme managers are at the heart of this system, and the programme managers are chosen in relation to the programmes that DARPA is pursuing. I suspect the same will have to be true for ARIA—that it has to decide, “What are our programmes?” The programmes, in my view, might be mission-led—for example, related to adaptation to climate change—but at the same time they might be technology-led. For example, they might be to pursue AI and the data economy or to look at cell or gene therapy. There is a range of those possibilities. We need to give ARIA, as an organisation, the flexibility to decide the missions that it thinks fulfils its purposes. The missions will develop over time, but the legislation cannot change repeatedly over time, so the legislation should be sufficient to enable ARIA to select the missions it wants for the future.

My Amendment 27 is in this group. A report of July 2016 produced for DARPA about innovation in DARPA isolated four “sources of success”, as it put it, the first of which was the “limited tenure” of the leading executive members

“and the urgency it promotes”—

nobody was appointed for a period exceeding five years. The second was a “sense of mission”, which I was just talking about. The third was “Trust and autonomy”—both giving DARPA autonomy but also within the organisation trusting and giving autonomy to the programme managers in particular. The fourth was:

“Risk-taking and tolerance of failure”,


which of course we are setting out to incorporate into this legislation for ARIA. I add that DARPA interpreted this as meaning “Move fast and take risks”—do not spend a great deal of time trying to assess all the risks, because you could lose the opportunities in the process.

Amendment 27 seeks to replace the language of Clause 3, not because I have any objection to the purposes set out in Clause 3; my objection is to the drafting. It says:

“ARIA may give particular weight”—


I am afraid I do not understand what is meant by “particular weight” or how people who read it subsequently will know what that means in this context—

“to the potential for significant benefits”.

We are all agreed about “significant benefits” and we know what they are because they are in Clause 2(6) above. It then refers to

“research … that carries a high risk of failure.”

It is awfully close to being a piece of legislation that says that ARIA should look for projects that are quite likely to fail because those are likely to give the most significant benefits.

This is not the approach that legislation should take. Legislation should be more deliberate. I thought: what are Ministers actually looking to do in this clause? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, in his Amendment 1. Ministers—and we—are looking for ARIA to seek to have transformational effects. I think we are agreed about that. That is why Amendment 27 refers to “transformational effects”. I have also included a reference to the possibility of technological advance through

“the development and exploitation of … research”.

I do not think that is mentioned elsewhere but I think it is helpful because, actually, many of the advances that have occurred, including in DARPA’s programmes, were not themselves the object of the mission but were the result of the process of discovery and curiosity and the exploitation of research.

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My concern is that significant decisions could be made without proper non-executive oversight and agreement. For example, paragraph 17 of Schedule 1 allows for ARIA to enter into partnerships or joint ventures—I have amendments to probe these powers later on. I do not think it would be good governance for the executives to be able to vote on the use of, say, joint venture powers using a quorum which, in extremis, would have a single non-executive member present and clearly could be outvoted. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will agree with me that that would go against the spirit of requiring a majority of non-executive members on the ARIA board. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very glad to follow my noble friend Lady Noakes, who has typically managed to make some penetrating remarks about the prospective corporate governance of ARIA. All the amendments in this group, including mine, are probing amendments; that is the nature of debate at this stage. I hope the Government will take on board some of the things my noble friend has said, think about them carefully and perhaps bring forward their own amendments. What she had to say about the size of the board and the desirability of setting a limit on the number of executive members in order to keep the size of the board as whole under control makes perfect sense, as does the point about committees of the board.

My three amendments in this group also to try to establish how the Government are going to address the membership of ARIA. The first, as my noble friend said, is Amendment 3, which would remove the Chief Scientific Adviser from the board. By the way, this is no reflection on the Chief Scientific Adviser now, in the past or in the future. The point is that if we want ARIA to be independent and autonomy is an essential part of its role, does it make sense for the Chief Scientific Adviser, whoever she or he may be, to be sitting on that board trying to make decisions that are, almost by definition, different from the decisions being made by the rest of the research and innovation landscape? Indeed, the Chief Scientific Adviser is now the head of the new office for science and technology strategy.

If the CSA is leading the strategy for science and technology across the landscape, you might say that surely, they should be there, so that ARIA fits into that strategy. That is precisely the problem: ARIA should not be led in the same strategy as the other parts of the research and innovation landscape. Does it not create an inherent conflict of interest for the Chief Scientific Adviser to be setting the strategy on the one hand and departing from it on another, which is potentially what ARIA will be doing?

Amendments 5 and 7 in my name ask whether the appointment of a chair by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy should be subject to some scrutiny. I have not gone to the step on this because I do not think the criteria are met for this to be an appointment that is subject to an agreement of or a recommendation from a committee of the House of Commons. However, given the existence of the Science and Technology Select Committee and the work it does in the Commons, it would be extremely helpful for it at least to have a hearing and to make some of its own remarks. That would help in the process of giving some democratic accountability to the initiation of the board itself. ARIA is going to autonomous, relatively independent and determined in large measure by its board. The appointments of the chair and the chief executive in the first instance are very significant in this regard.

Amendment 7 is precisely about the appointment of the first chief executive officer. I think the Government are currently searching for both chair and chief executive. The first chief executive officer appointment is not going to be made by the chair, so it is particularly important that there be a degree of objective scrutiny of that appointment. Subsequent appointments will be a matter for the chair and the non-executive members of the board.

I hope that the Government will at least recognise the potential merit of the Science and Technology Committee having a hearing in each case and offering its views.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has said regarding his Amendments 5 and 7. One of the amendments lost to the Committee was drafted very much along the same lines, although mine made it. This is a very important issue. The work of the Select Committee in the House of Commons is superb. The former Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, knows all about it.

This is a very important principle, especially as we are discussing something so new and there is so much about it that we do not yet know. It is essential for the Select Committee to explore these matters with the chair and chief executive designate. I would go further than the noble Lord and make the appointments subject to the agreement of the Select Committee. Indeed, I regard this as an important principle to apply in general across many appointments made by government, many of which could be made subject to the agreement of the appropriate Select Committee.

As to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, I found myself wondering, especially in regard to Amendment 2, whether her remarks about the ideal size of a board apply to the membership of a Committee stage of a Bill. Are we too large a group of people around this table effectively to conduct our business? I have an open mind on that, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister says in reply.

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[Lord Callanan (Con)]

This group of amendments relates to the balance that we need to strike between ARIA’s independence from and accountability to government, which is a difficult balance to draw. I shall begin with the amendments relating to the composition of ARIA’s board.

Amendment 2 from my noble friend Lady Noakes would limit the executives on ARIA’s board to just the CEO and the CFO. I appreciate the spirit of her amendments, trying to ensure that ARIA is an agile body with a streamlined board, but we have decided that the number of executives should be at least four. We have said that in the interests of representing the different executive functions within the organisations. Similarly, we have imposed a maximum number to try to keep it as efficient as possible.

As the majority of the board members need to be non-executives, in our view, that means that the minimum total number of board members will be nine, to ensure a majority of non-executives, and our expected maximum is 15. We believe that this is very much in line with standard practice. It is not usual for legislation to specify quoracy arrangements, and the Bill’s current provisions mirror some of the procedural arrangements that are in the Higher Education and Research Act. I am also happy to confirm that it is not our intention to offer non-executive members pensions or gratuities—I do not want to get into a definition of gratuities—but it is commonplace to ensure that the provision is available.

The drafting that we have used is also found in the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 for UKRI non-executives under paragraph 7(2) of Schedule 9, and indeed in the Energy Act 2013 for the Office for Nuclear Regulation’s non-executives under paragraph 11(3) of Schedule 7. I therefore do not see that Amendment 8 in the name of my noble friend Lady Noakes is necessary.

I turn to Amendment 3. In our view, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser will bring a somewhat unique perspective to the ARIA board in their independent advisory capacity, with awareness of science and technology across government. It is important to emphasise that he or she will be on the board in their capacity as an independent adviser, not in their science and technology strategy capacity. Indeed, it is perfectly possible for there to be two different people in those roles. It is also important to emphasise that they will not do so on a privileged basis. Other non-executives will have been appointed for their expertise, their wide experience and their special knowledge of different facets of the research and development system, and they will equally provide ARIA with independent advice in the best interests of the organisation and its objectives, as the Chief Scientific Adviser will.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Before my noble friend moves off this particular point, he will know, and the Committee will have observed, that in paragraph 18 of Schedule 1 the Government are proposing to take a power to substitute somebody else or some other office for the Chief Scientific Adviser. What my noble friend was just saying gave me the impression that this is something that might be contemplated in circumstances where the two roles that he refers to are held separately.

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I turn to the amendments spoken to by my noble friend, of which I am very supportive. They impact on the issues which occupy the other place today—maybe we should all stand back and wait to see how they play out there and then adopt whatever the House of Commons now requires of its Members. I support all these amendments, for all the reasons my noble friend explained to the Committee so well.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

The noble Lord was chastising the Explanatory Notes earlier for not explaining. On this occasion, I think the Explanatory Notes explain that the purpose of paragraph 11 of Schedule 3 is to exclude ARIA from the application of the Public Contracts Regulations. It does not include them.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

I apologise for wasting the Grand Committee’s time. I go back to the simple argument I made in relation to Amendment 16; in today’s global arena, setting an environmental, social and governance strategy is seen as an important benchmark of how a responsible organisation operates. This will be a responsible organisation, so it should therefore have that obligation. I do not understand why it should be excluded from passing that obligation on to people to whom it gives public money.

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Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

18: Schedule 1, page 10, line 24, at end insert “and other property”

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[Lord Lansley (Con)]

This group consists entirely of amendments in my name. Very helpfully, they have been grouped together so you do not have to hear from me too often. Helpfully, it also groups together amendments which, from my point of view, are about the way in which ARIA acquires, creates, disposes of, retains and shares intellectual property. That is what we are really on about in this group.

Amendment 18 is the simplest and least interesting of them. It bears on this same area of the Bill and the question of the supplementary powers. In Paragraph 17(2)(b), where the power is given to

“acquire and dispose of land”,

the amendment would add the words “and other property”. I may be told that it is unnecessary, but I am not quite sure that I understand why, and why land is referred to while other property is not. Very often in legislation, “land and other property” is referred to.

Amendment 19 is in the same part of the Bill. It adds a further provision, concerning the powers that ARIA would have in connection with the exercise of its functions, for it to be able to

“acquire and license intellectual property”.

Maybe it has the power to do that, but I am not quite sure why other things are referred to as being supplementary powers and why the acquisition and licensing of intellectual property should not be referenced here. The purpose of my amendments generally is to try to give ARIA as much flexibility as possible in the way in which it acquires and uses its intellectual property. This amendment would say that it has the power to acquire and license, so licensing would be a specific power that it was able to exercise.

Amendment 22 gets us back out of the schedule and on to page 2. This is the point at which, under Clause 2, ARIA may attach conditions to the financial support that it gives—so imagine the relationship between ARIA and researchers, institutes, bodies, companies or whoever. Some conditions are referenced in Clause 2(4) about financial support being repaid, property being restored or information being provided. In Amendment 22 I propose that we want to make it clear that intellectual property forms part of those conditions and that it may be held by ARIA itself under those conditions or shared with the beneficiaries of support, obviously in ways that it chooses. From my point of view, ARIA wants to be able to hold on to intellectual property in some circumstances; it definitely wants to be able to share it with the beneficiaries of support in others.

In this context, the beneficiaries of support could include researchers who themselves become part of ARIA for a time. As I mentioned at Second Reading, one of the most notable characteristics of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, which used to be in my constituency, was that its researchers were able to generate, from very basic research, some applications that had substantial intellectual property value. For example, Greg Winter was at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and made discoveries that led to monoclonal antibodies. If I remember correctly, he left LMB to form companies and exploit that, and then subsequently came back to LMB to do more research.

This is the kind of interchange that I suspect we want ARIA to be able to undertake. We want it to be able to bring people in and say, “We are going to share intellectual property with you. You will be able to exploit it and we will be able to exploit it. We can set up whatever arrangements are necessary in order to do this.” Amendment 22 would explicitly allow ARIA to enter into those sorts of arrangements with those who are the beneficiaries of its financial support and indeed those who are working directly for it as short-term researchers. The nature of the programme managers and researchers will generally be fixed term and quite short term.

Amendment 28 is in a slightly different part of the Bill—the part that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, was talking about earlier, concerning grants made by the Secretary of State to ARIA itself and the conditions that may be applied. I am suggesting that there should be conditions, but conditions that in this case allow the Secretary of State, having made grants to ARIA, to allow the agency, having acquired intellectual property and value out of that research, to retain and reinvest it. That is a potentially not insignificant provision. On some occasions, for example, the LMB was generating more by way of revenue back to the Medical Research Council than the Medical Research Council was giving it in grants. DARPA in America, if I understand correctly, was investing in messenger RNA for vaccine production from 2013 and that has led to Moderna, which has valuations in the tens of billions of dollars.

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[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord a question, to be absolutely clear about his Amendment 22? Let us say that ARIA comes up with a fantastic invention. Would his amendment enable ARIA to vest the intellectual property of that invention, which might be worth millions, both in itself and in the researcher or researchers who were personally involved in discovering it?

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

The purpose of Amendment 22 —this is in the part of the Bill about what conditions ARIA might attach to its financial support—is to give ARIA the flexibility to attach whatever conditions it wishes. In some cases, it might give financial support and not seek to retain intellectual property, or it may enter into an arrangement which says that it retains all the intellectual property, or somewhere in between. However, that is for the circumstances of the individual project rather than something mandated in legislation.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, the more I look at this and listen to the wisdom of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and, previously, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, the more curious paragraph 17(2) of Schedule 1 becomes, because of both what is in it and what is not. I am prepared to accept the thesis of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that “and other property” would add some copper plating to it.

I hark back to the end of the response of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, at Second Reading, where I popped up and asked a question about property. The Minister was clear that this would include ARIA purchasing pieces of research equipment. Research equipment can run to many tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pounds—at least as much as property—yet, somehow, that does not appear to be on this list either. There is perhaps work to be done to understand the objective of this list. I am sure that the Minister will say that it is to afford ARIA the amount of freedom that it needs, but it seems to be quite a selective list, and I wonder what it was based on in the first place.

I turn to the other amendments before us and suggest that perhaps the most important is Amendment 28. It is a great shame that, because of a prior appointment, my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones was not able to be here for this section at least because, when it comes to intellectual property, most of us know that he has a strong expertise. I know that he will read very closely the Hansard report of this and, far from marking the homework of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, I am sure that it will be the Minister’s homework that he will be marking. I hope that we can return to it.

Looking at Amendment 28, it seems eminently sensible to legislate for success, because we want this to succeed. If this succeeds, there should be a flow of revenue coming back into ARIA. We need to understand that this will not then become a cash cow for other parts of BEIS or indeed the Treasury. What this amendment therefore seeks to do—and, I think, would achieve—is to put that ring-fence in place; for that, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, should be congratulated.

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[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend, particularly because, as far as I can tell, we are all agreed that ARIA should have the flexibility to do these things. Where we not quite all in the same place yet is that it seems to me that the legislation can make that clear and it would be helpful if it did. Maybe we will come back to it and my noble friend will enlighten me. She seemed to say that in paragraph 17 of Schedule 1 the reference to property encompasses intangible and intellectual property but the word “property” is not there. That is my point. The word “property” needs to be there in order for intangible and intellectual property to be encompassed within it.

There are circumstances—for example, where the Secretary of State makes grants to ARIA and where ARIA provides financial support—where my noble friend seems to be saying that it will have the flexibility to enter into all these agreements, to share its intellectual property, to secure the benefits and retain them and reinvest them but that does not need to be in the Bill. Yet, we have these places where there are little lists of what the conditions might be like or what the provision might include. They may be non-exhaustive lists but the only things that seem to be listed are things that constrain ARIA, rather than making it clear that intellectual property, which is at the heart of its activity, is something where it should absolutely have this kind of flexibility.

I know the Treasury would hate to have it in the Bill that ARIA can retain intellectual property revenues and reinvest them for its purposes but that is exactly why we should put it in the Bill. I think we will return to this issue. I gladly give way to my noble friend.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I reassure my noble friend that paragraph 17 is not an exhaustive list. ARIA can develop and exploit scientific knowledge and this covers it getting a patent, under Clause 2(1)(b). The supplementary powers in paragraph 17(1) of Schedule 1 allow acquisition and disposal of property including intellectual property—

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Paragraph 17(1) allows anything.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

Is that not the point?

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[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

Can I ask my noble friend the Minister to ensure that when she comes back she explains the relationship between paragraph 17 in Schedule 1 and Clause 2, which sets up ARIA’s functions but seems to go beyond functions into things it can do? Paragraph 17 then comes and says again the things it can do. I find that confusing and that confusion may be shared by other noble Lords.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. We are going to return to some of these issues and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 18 withdrawn.