Catapults (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Lord Patel Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I am a minnow sandwiched between two competent and much more distinguished and knowledgeable speakers, the noble Lords, Lord Mair and Lord Willetts. Before I make my brief contribution, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mair, for leading the debate and doing so comprehensively—in fact, so comprehensively that there is not much left to say. I will probably end up, as might happen to others too, emphasising what he has already said.

As the noble Lord was the key driver of the inquiry, it is appropriate for him to have led the debate and not me, just because I happened to be chairing the committee at the time. However, as the then chair, I thank all the committee members—many of whom are taking part today—for their contributions. As noble Lords know, much of the hard work of running the committee and producing the reports is done by the staff of the committee. I therefore join the noble Lord, Lord Mair, in thanking all our committee staff who he mentioned.

My brief comments are mostly related to chapter 4 of our report, which focused on the wider issues in relation to innovation, particularly those affecting the private sector, and the role that catapults can play in achieving the greater involvement of the private sector in the journey from research to innovation and commercialisation.

I would also like to link the evidence and references in our report to these issues to subsequent government policy in the innovation strategy, published in July 2021. The strategy, entitled UK Innovation Strategy: Leading the Future by Creating It, was the first report of its kind in 15 years, and it has high ambitions of making the UK a global hub for innovation by 2035. The report announces no new funding, but the hope is that government policies will lead to a greater involvement of businesses in investing in innovation. Certainly, the main focus of the report is on business. The report was widely welcomed even though there is more work to do, especially with regards to how the various components will be implemented. I think the report was widely accepted because the Government involved a wide range of institutions, including professional institutions, and businesses in developing it.

Our report called for developing greater involvement of business, academia and private investment in UK innovation and for simplifying the interface between UK research, innovation and business. Our report saw a major role for Innovate UK, and in particular the catapults, while the government report on innovation sees Innovate UK having greater powers and becoming the UK innovation agency—although it is not clear how—and is silent when it comes to the role of catapults, as the noble Lord, Lord Mair, briefly referred to.

Our report saw catapults as having a wider role, maybe even increasing their number in the area of government technology priorities. We saw an opportunity for the role of catapults to be expanded, perhaps even becoming the UK innovation agencies and bridging the interface between research, industry and business, rather like the Fraunhofer institutes in Germany. This is a model that would allow for academia to be part of the business community and for people in the institute and business to be part of academia, even to the point of innovation, and for agencies such as catapults to run their own research programmes in academic departments. So I ask the Minister: in the Government’s innovation strategy, what role do they see catapults having to implement the policy? With a change in their remit, catapults could also have an important role to play in the Government’s levelling-up agenda and ambitions, as the noble Lord, Lord Mair, already mentioned.

Our report emphasised the need to have a balanced view on competition as a driver of research and innovation. The representatives who gave evidence from the CBI commented that competition at all times is not a good idea for innovation. Our report asked that policies should make a co-operative model of innovation more possible. The Government’s innovation strategy gives the impression that a competition model is the one that they favour to encourage business to invest. It cannot be good, for example, for universities and catapults to compete for funds for innovation.

The inquiry’s report recommended longer-term funding for catapults and fewer reviews. The government response to both recommendations was, to put it generously, to pass the buck to UKRI and Innovate UK, and the subsequent government innovation strategy confirms that view. I am tempted to make the assumption that the Government are not clear what role catapults will have in the future, or maybe even that they see a different model to deliver their innovation strategy. I hope that the Minister will have some comments to make on that.

Finally, I make a plea. I feel that the innovation strategy is such an important part of the Government’s long-term R&D agenda and its implications for economic growth that the House should have an opportunity for a fuller debate on that strategy. I hope the Minister could be tempted to use his offices to persuade the business managers to facilitate this.