Research and Development Funding and Horizon Europe

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Tuesday 18th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Hosie; it is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on opening the debate with such a comprehensive analysis of what is happening around Horizon Europe.

Before the Minister makes all sound well and plausible, I want us to appreciate the environment in which we are calling for immediate and urgent talks to settle our future in Horizon Europe. I welcome the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, which brings focus, and I welcome the commitment on energy. However, President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is dwarfing the global community. His “Build Back Better” plan for life sciences, climate mitigation and industrial investment is ambitious, challenging and market-changing, built on invest-to-save principles. He is investing half of what he will see in return, posturing as a global leader and ensuring that he is sucking in the global science community. Things are scaling and advancing at pace.

We need to be alert to what is happening across the water, and of course must integrate it with the focus around the bioeconomy strategy, which, over 20 years, will bring a possible 30-fold return. That can go back into resourcing the Government and the science community. We can start to see the power that has been realised in the States. That power has clearly not been realised by this Government. This is a wake-up call for Europe. Of course, we are talking about not just the flows of money, but the whole scientific community and the opportunity that it presents. If it is happening in the States, it is happening in China, too. We need to wake up.

I was speaking to scientists this morning who said that UK Research and Innovation and Horizon have been dwarfed into “irrelevance”—that was the word used by those leading scientists, including people leading in the field of biotechnology. That brings home the scale of what we are talking about and the importance of investment. Horizon Europe is investing £95.5 billion in this cycle, and it is really important that we understand what that brings. It is not just the investment; it is about one community. It is about one set of regulations from conception, research and innovation to scaling and manufacturing. It is about one market, and it is about how that market interacts with the rest of the world. Of course, we are now sitting outside that, as a result of decisions taken in 2016 and consequently.

Behind Horizon Europe is a brand that is understood on a global scale, builds confidence and delivers. The next phase is up to 2027, and there will no doubt be another to follow, yet we have lurched into a short-term commitment from February to June this year. What comes after that? Who knows? Who will make investments when there is no security or guarantee of where that will take us? We have heard about the Pioneer programme, which might be laudable if we were just an island, but we are part of the global community. This is certainly not the way that research works. Pioneer will not deliver the scale, connectivity and research interfaces required in today’s world of research to get the capacity that we need.

I particularly draw the Minister’s attention to the focus that is needed. Look at the BioYorkshire project. I have had debates in this place on it, and have engaged with the Prime Minister, Ministers and former Prime Ministers on it, but three years down the line, after UKRI and the Government recognised the importance of the project, we still have not seen any money. The investment is small compared with the return it will bring in 10 years; the amount returned to the Treasury will be greater by a factor of 8.3, and the project will create 4,000 jobs, return £1.4 billion of gross value added and upskill 25,000 people. It will also bring 2.8 million tonnes of carbon reduction and 1.2 million tonnes of landfill reduction. It is the biggest green new deal on offer and could be world changing, but the Government have failed to bring forward the money, despite how long we have begged for it.

As the days slip by, others across the globe take up these innovative technologies and advance, and that shuts down our opportunities to be world leaders in this field. We feel frustration; “negligent” does not begin to describe the Government. They really need to get their act together, get investment into the hands of scientists, universities and places of research, and bring these projects forward.

I could talk about the benefit we have seen at the University of York under Horizon 2020, for example through the European training network for safe autonomous systems. I could talk about supporting health technology through Horizon. I could talk about wellbeing-inclusive sustainable economies, and about the research and innovation at the cutting edge of bioarchaeology. We have seen so many benefits at the University of York; it has punched above its weight when it has been in receipt of funding. However, if the Government do not start to invest, we will seriously be left behind.

The Government need to get their act together. I echo what has been said by colleagues from across the Chamber: the Government need to get an agreement signed with Horizon Europe, because we need to keep up with the European community, let alone the global community, and time is running out.