EU Referendum and EU Reform (EUC Report)

Lord Taverne Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taverne (LD)]

My Lords, the last speaker was correct in telling us that there are some very unpleasant elements inside Europe in some of the parties. What the noble Lord did not mention is that all our friends—our allies, members of the Commonwealth, the democracies of the world—are desperate that we should stay a member, while the voices which are keenest that Europe should break up are those of Mr Donald Trump and Mr Vladimir Putin.

This has been an excellent debate and I have learned a lot from it. I had not appreciated fully, until I heard the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, and the very effective speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Liddle and Lord Jay, quite how huge the problems are of extracting ourselves from the European Union and how serious the consequences would be of the prolonged process which would have to take place.

I want to refer to a more particular issue: science and the European Union. A recent survey in Nature showed that 83% of scientists want Britain to stay in the Union because being in the European Union is good for British science. Sir Paul Nurse, for example, an ex-president of the Royal Society and a Nobel prize winner has written:

“Permeability of ideas and people is crucially important to science, and it flourishes in environments that pool intelligence, minimise barriers, and are open to exchange and collaboration”—

a point which has been made by many people in this debate. The European Union, he wrote,

“helps provide such an environment, and scientists value it”.

Then there were the 150 fellows of the Royal Society who wrote in March to the Times warning that Brexit could be “a disaster for science”. The reaction of the leave campaign was, as usual, to trot out someone from the small minority who contradicts those views. That is its normal reaction to the majority views of experts who seek to destroy its arguments.

When the IMF, the OECD, the Bank of England, every international economic authority and 90% of British economists concluded that Brexit will reduce our growth rate and adversely affect wages and jobs, their views were contemptuously dismissed. When the universally respected IFS, whose objectivity has never before been questioned, confirmed the Treasury’s detailed forecast of the harm Brexit would cause, we were told that the IFS was a lobby for the European Commission. Here I should declare an interest, because a long time ago, in 1971, as a recent Financial Secretary, I was asked by the founders of the IFS to become its first director, was responsible for its launch and helped it take some of its early steps. I am rather proud of having been the midwife at the birth of this baby, which has grown into such a formidable adult.

This excellent and most informative report from the Science and Technology Committee illustrates many of the reasons why scientists are so strongly pro-EU. They want to be part of a body that promotes big science, that is, science that is now performed on an increasingly large scale. The report quotes Professor Cowley, head of the UK Atomic Energy Authority:

“In the years since the early 1980s, Europe has become the world leader in big science. More and more science is progressing towards big science”.

One could cite many examples, but perhaps the paragraphs that sum it up most comprehensively, and which have been referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, and others, including my noble friend Lady Sharp, are paragraphs 157 and 158. Paragraph 157 states:

“It was repeatedly put to us that one of the most significant aspects of the UK’s EU membership is the provision of opportunities to collaborate. We view the EU to have three main influences: the provision of collaborative funding schemes and programmes; ensuring researcher mobility; and facilitating and fostering participation in shared pan-European research infrastructures”.

The next paragraph continues:

“Many would maintain that the provision of collaborative opportunities is perhaps the most significant benefit that EU membership affords science and research in the UK. These collaborative opportunities are not just between Member States but can extend to non-EU and non-European countries”.

What are the arguments against? Several have been referred to, but the main culprit, as usual, is bureaucracy. As the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, pointed out, there is an urgent need for reform of some of the regulations, but I quote Sir Paul Nurse again. He says:

“The UK can be very bureaucratic. At the Francis Crick Institute, where I work, we recruit the best in the world, wherever they come from, so we plough through the paperwork. But it costs us effort that would otherwise be spent on biomedical science. In contrast, when we recruit scientists from within the EU, the bureaucracy is much less”.

Our excellence in science is one of our greatest national assets, and so is that of our universities. The effect of Brexit on science and our universities has seldom featured in media reports of the referendum debates, but let me once more cite the views of people who are not generally politically partisan but who know what they are talking about: Universities UK and the vice-chancellors of the Russell Group. They are unanimous in expressing their deep concern about the serious damage Brexit will do to both those precious assets. For example, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, the eminent vice-chancellor of Cambridge, has warned that Brexit could mean that Cambridge could no longer expect to maintain its status as one of the very top universities in the world.

Brexit would harm science and diminish our universities.