Science Research Funding in Universities (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Lord Turnberg Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Turnberg (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and his committee on producing the excellent report. It is not his fault that it is now more than one year old. So much has happened since 2019 and we now have many new issues crowding in on us.

I want to focus my remarks on the devastating impact of Covid-19 on the medical charity world and how that now affects our capacity to undertake much important medical research. I express my interests as a past professor of medicine, as past scientific adviser—for almost 20 years—to the Association of Medical Research Charities and now as a trustee of a number of medical research charities, including the Wolfson Foundation. I should say that the Wolfson Foundation is relatively protected because it is an endowed charity and is doing its best to be as flexible as possible. But among the other charities, a huge number are suffering the most. Among the biggest, Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation, and Diabetes UK are suffering, but a large number of smaller charities are finding it even more difficult to keep supporting niche areas of research that are ill-supported from other sources. I fear that research into childhood leukaemias will suffer, as will that into mental illness, tuberous sclerosis and the many rare and congenital disorders that rely on a single source for research support.

The figures are frightening. The 150 member charities of the AMRC expect a 40% fall in income. They currently offer almost £2 billion of support for medical researcheach year—more than the Medical Research Council and National Institute for Health Research put together. They will have a shortfall of several hundred million pounds. Noble Lords can imagine the impact that will have if they recognise that charities support 17,000 research workers’ salaries. It is little wonder that universities are facing redundancies in their research staff and that over half the 1,300 clinical trials they support are being stopped or delayed. These are devastating figures and facts. The problems caused to university research are exacerbated by all the other pressures being borne in on them by Covid-19 and a potential no-deal Brexit. Research collaboration across Europe is being threatened, as we have heard, and the longer-term future of the Horizon Europe and Erasmus schemes is far from clear.

The prospect that the UK will be able to afford to fill the gap as we emerge from a Covid-induced depression is diminishing by the day. It is certainly encouraging that the Government produced a £250 million grant extension in June and some longer-term low-interest loans. However, that was when the Chancellor was distributing largesse like there was no tomorrow. Now tomorrow is looming and it is payback time, when the UK has a £2 trillion national debt and the prospects for longer-term support are receding.

It is therefore of interest that the AMRC is proposing a joint funding programme with the Government. It calculates that if each side contributes £310 million per annum in matched funding, it will go some way to filling the gap in medical research charity funding that seems inevitable during the next four or five years.Will the Minister give careful consideration to this proposal? Now is certainly the winter of discontent in our precious university research, unless we do something more to support it. Will healso tell us how the Government will encourage the international research collaboration that we will certainly need post-Brexit? What efforts are being made to remove barriers to joint research with such research-active countries as the USA, Singapore and Israel? I use the example of Israel with its remarkably innovative life sciences, where enhanced co-operation would give added value to research in both countries. As we lose European research support, we need to spread our net.