EU Membership: UK Science

Lord Trees Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, I am not a member of the Science and Technology Select Committee but I have read its report with great interest—it provides a forward-looking sequel to the earlier report of July 2016. I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, and the committee on the production of an excellent report and I welcome its conclusions. I should perhaps declare my interests as an emeritus professor at the University of Liverpool and as chair of Moredun Research Institute in Edinburgh.

I want to make a few brief points, some of which have been alluded to already. The first is about the international nature of our science and technology, on which the noble Lord, Lord Winston, spoke passionately. That internationalism undoubtedly contributes to the quality of UK science. In my own field of veterinary science, in the latest global rankings of quality, the QS World University Rankings, of the top five veterinary schools in the world, three are in the UK—a fact of which I am very proud. In our veterinary schools in the UK, nearly a quarter of our academic staff are non-UK EU nationals and they make a vital contribution to our academic discourse in teaching, in clinical teaching and research, and in bench research. It is essential that we retain such people for the future.

Especially in the smaller disciplines, the critical mass which so often fertilises and nurtures new ideas and innovation can be achieved only by interinstitutional and international contact, collaboration and exchange. That is why continuing participation in EU framework programmes, the latest of which is Horizon 2020, is so important. Yes, the research funding is valuable and UK scientists have been incredibly successful in winning EU research grants, as the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, mentioned in his opening remarks—but it is the collaborations that are intrinsic to those EU research grants that are so important.

I will mention a particular EU networking programme that I do not think was referred to in the report: namely, the European Cooperation in Science and Technology—COST—programmes. I have been a participant in a number of these. Funds are awarded specifically to support networks of scientists, funding meetings and laboratory exchanges and so forth on defined topics. They do not fund actual research, so the value of the awards is relatively modest: between about €100,000 and €150,000. However, as a catalyst for multicentric research co-operation, they give a big bang for the buck. I hope that the Government can ensure in the forthcoming negotiations that the UK will continue to participate in the EU COST programmes. Will the Minister give the House that assurance? If we are not able so to do, I urge the Government to find the relatively modest budget from our future science budget to set up a UK-led equivalent scheme, which could be globally inclusive and would be real testament to the Government’s global aspirations in science and innovation.

The other aspect of EU funding that I want to mention—I declare an interest as a beneficiary historically—is that the framework programmes have often funded what one might call “applied research”, bridging the gap between more basic research for which we can seek research council funding and the downstream R&D which industry may fund. Many researchers, particularly in the biomedical and health fields, recognise the so-called “valley of death” in funding, which can result in promising areas of research never getting to commercial application. It is essential for our country’s economic success that we ensure in our future funding environment, with or without EU involvement, a steady continuum, progression and sequence of research support from basic science to ensure that ideas reach a finished outcome.

The last point I wish to make is on the report’s recommendation that the Government, working with the UK scientific community and international bodies, seek to establish one or more new international research facilities; on the scale of the Francis Crick Institute, for example. That is a long-term aspiration with which of course I completely concur. However, could I make a plea on behalf of the UK regions? Let us please look beyond the golden triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and London in which to site such initiatives. Of course, a clustering of scientific industrial and commercial activities is important for the success of such ventures, but there are good universities up north and burgeoning high-tech industries in other parts of the UK. Our goal should be to foster several golden triangles.