Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Richard Fuller Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

We shall look forward to the Secretary of State getting a satisfactory result. I am not sure that I always got a satisfactory result with the Treasury, although I was in the Treasury at one point, at least as an adviser. This is very important and, as I say, people’s jobs and livelihoods and the scientific base of this country, of which we are all so proud, depend on it.

Let me come to the Bill, which we support. The Bill is important—the Secretary of State said this—because there is incredible work going on in the scientific community, but there is consensus that there is a lack of a mechanism to identify, build and fund truly ambitious, high-risk, high-reward programmes. We recognise the case for an independent agency that operates outside the established research funding mechanisms, but we feel that the Bill requires improvement.

I guess our concerns cohere into a different view about the role of Government and the lessons of DARPA, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) talked about, on which in some broad sense—maybe not in the Secretary of State’s mind, but in others’ minds—ARIA is modelled. It is impossible to ignore what we might call the spectre of Dom in this debate. He was at the Science and Technology Committee—chaired by the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells—and he does rather hang over this Bill. He is its sort of governmental godfather. In his telling, DARPA’s success—I think this is important—is simply because the Government got out of the way and let a bunch of buccaneering individuals do what they liked. It is definitely true, as I understand it, that DARPA has important lessons about the need for the culture that I talked about, including higher reward and, of necessity, a higher chance of failure, but it is simply not true that DARPA was somehow totally detached from Government. DARPA had an obvious client—the Department of Defense—a clear mandate around defence-related research, a clear synergy in its work with the procurement power of the US DOD and, incidentally, abided by laws on freedom of information.

I want to suggest that there are two different views about ARIA: one is that we should let the organisation simply do what it wants, relying on the wisdom of a genius chair and chief executive; and the other subtler and, in our view, more sensible approach—one more consistent with the lessons of DARPA—is that Government should set a clear mandate and framework for ARIA and then get out of the way and not interfere with its day-to-day decision-making. I also believe there is a democratic case, because the priority goals for the spending of £800 million over this Parliament should be driven by democratic choices; not about the specific items that it funds, but about the goals and mission.

That takes me to the three points that I want to make: first, about the mandate for ARIA; secondly, about its position in the wider R&D system; and thirdly, about accountability. I will try to emulate the Secretary of State’s brevity—perhaps not exactly his brevity, but as much as I can.

The deputy director of DARPA says about its success that

“having national security as the mission frames everything.”

The Secretary of State said to the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells at the Science and Technology Committee:

“If I were in your position, I would be asking what the core missions of ARIA are.”

I think the point that Dominic Cummings made, or I am sure would have made, is that this will be a job for the people we hire who are running the organisation. The Secretary of State went on:

“It will be up to the head of ARIA to decide whether he or she thinks the organisation should adopt what the innovation strategy suggests…or reject it.”

I really understand the wish to give freedom to ARIA, but surely it is for Government to shape and not shirk the setting of priorities, and it is not just DARPA where we can learn that lesson. Moonshot R&D—the Japanese agency established in 2019 to fund challenging R&D—has seven specific moonshot goals set by the Japanese Government, and my understanding from the evidence taken by the Science and Technology Committee is that the UK scientific community agrees with that idea.

I notice the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) putting his head in his hands. He has done that before when I speak, but let me just make this point in seriousness: £800 million is not in the scheme of things a huge amount of money, certainly when compared with UKRI’s budget. The concern is that unless, as the Select Committee said, ARIA focuses on a single or a small number of missions, it will dilute its impact.

Take the net zero challenge. I believe it is a challenge of political will and imagination, but it is also a technological challenge. If it is the No. 1 international challenge, as the PM said last week, and if it is the No. 1 domestic challenge, as I think it is, why would it not be the right mandate for ARIA for at least its first five years? Indeed, Professor Richard Jones and Professor Mariana Mazzucato, who perhaps have even greater claims than Dom to being godfather and godmother of this idea, said that climate change would be an ideal challenge on which an agency such as ARIA would focus. To be clear, providing a mandate does not mean micro-managing decisions, and it would be grossly simplistic to suggest otherwise.

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman tempts me to my feet, first, because I think he does a tremendous disservice to Dominic Cummings. Without his inspiration, this Bill would not be before this House. Secondly, I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware of the chart that Mr Cummings showed while giving evidence to the Select Committee. It showed a large circle of areas with potential for people to investigate and a smaller segment of that, which is where all of the foreign Governments and our Government focus their research, precisely because they are driven by the political decisions, frameworks and missions that politicians set. Does the right hon. Gentleman not think there is some opportunity for us to do something slightly different and without the sticky fingers of Government interfering?

[Edward Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman and I have a respectful disagreement on this: I think it is for the Government of the day and this House to say what are the massive national priorities. Then it is for an organisation such as ARIA to fund the research in the high-risk, high-reward way that I mentioned. That is simply a difference of view. Without a clear policy mission, we risk a fragmented approach.

I will make this other point, which is that the chair and chief executive will be in the somewhat unenviable position of having to decide which Government Departments to prioritise. Of course they can work with different Departments, but let us set a clear challenge for the organisation.

The second point is not just about the question of mandate, but how it sits in the life cycle of technological innovation and how it works with other funding streams. ARIA is born of a frustration about the failure to fund high-risk research. We do not disagree with that thinking, but that makes it especially important that it does not duplicate the work of existing funding streams. Let me give an example. Innovate UK, part of UKRI, is supposed to be a funding stream to turn ideas into commercially successful products. I do not know from reading the Government’s statement of intent what Innovate UK would fund that ARIA would not and what ARIA would fund that Innovate UK would not.

The vagueness of the mandate for ARIA is matched by vagueness about where in the innovation cycle it sits. I was not doing Mr Cummings a disservice on this score by the way, because I support the Bill, but he said to the Select Committee:

“My version of it here would be…to accelerate scientific discovery far beyond what is currently normal, and to seek strategic advantage in some fields of science and technology…I would keep it broad and vague like that.”

He went on to say that he would say to the agency:

“Your job is to find people…with ideas that could change civilisation completely”.

I am sorry, but that is too vague, and I do not believe it unreasonable to say that there needs to be greater clarity about where in the life cycle ARIA sits.

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[Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Select Committee on Science and Technology. Like other Members, I tuned in, eyes wide open, to hear what was said. I look forward to further instalments of that show in the month to come, as I am sure others do. I place on record my thanks, as other Members have done, for the fantastic work that has been undertaken by scientists in the UK in relation to the vaccine programme. It is something that unites us all. We all know that it will transform our lives, and we are collectively thankful on that front.

I commend the Secretary of State, as he has achieved something that is quite remarkable, certainly during my short tenure in the House. He appears almost to have united everyone in vague or cautious support for the Bill. On the face of it, it is something that we can welcome, but we have concerns, which I shall come on to, and reservations that need to be addressed in a positive manner, and hopefully the Secretary is willing to do that.

Before I deal with that, I am conscious that for my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray), who is sitting to my left, today is his last day in the Chamber, and he will make some valedictory remarks. I wish him the best going forward. As everyone in the Chamber will be well aware, all Scottish nationalists do not want to be here. He is getting away a little sooner than the rest of us, but we wish him well, and I am sure that Members across the Chamber do likewise.

Turning, you will be glad to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, to the substance of the Bill, I hope that, while I have made some positive comments, the Secretary of State will forgive me for saying—perhaps I have picked this up wrongly—that his short speech may reflect the fact that the Bill is incredibly vague on details. The first thing to reflect on in that regard is the wider mission of the Bill. That was addressed at length by the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) and by the Select Committee in its hearing last week. What is the Bill trying to achieve? Is it health outcomes, defence outcomes or transport outcomes? The clarity is not there. I heard what the Chair of the Select Committee said about having a focus on two issues. That is all well and good, but we do not have those answers yet from the Government. We need them moving forward, because there is a real concern and risk that what we have is something that becomes a jack of all trades, but a master of none. The Committee said that it was

“a brand in search of a product”,

which is entirely apt at this stage.

The right hon. Member for Doncaster North has rather stolen my thunder in that regard, because I want to discuss what the Bill could seek to do. It could follow Scotland’s lead. In Scotland, we have the Scottish National Investment Bank, which has a clear purpose to invest in net-zero technologies. Why do we not replicate that in the Bill? Why do the Government not put that front and centre of their agenda? The hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) is shaking his head, and he is more than welcome to intervene, to state why climate change should not be at the forefront of the Bill’s agenda.

[Richard Fuller]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me a chance to speak. I want to check that we are talking about the same aspects of the Bill, because he is trying, while saying what he thinks in a broad way, rather narrowly to define the scope of what research science projects can be. Does he not accept that there is a tension there, and that the Scottish example is precisely not what this is about?

[Stephen Flynn]

I reject the suggestion that climate change is a narrow focus given that climate change covers a whole host of areas. I see the Secretary of State nodding along with that. Presumably he is in agreement having previously been the Minister of State for Business, Energy and Clean Growth. When we look at this, we need to bear in mind DARPA, which has been talked about at length by others. DARPA had that clear focus, and that clear focus has allowed it to excel, in terms of GPS, the internet and the like. We should seek to replicate that, with climate change at the forefront.

It is regrettable that the Government have not simply made that suggestion, but it is not surprising, because, just last week, they sought to invest billions of pounds in new nuclear weapons. They could have said, “Here is £800 million that we are going to invest in trying to save the planet rather than destroy it.” In relation to the mission, therefore, the Secretary of State still has a great deal of work to do.

The second key area that I would like to pick up on is in relation to the wider leadership on the Bill. Although that has been referred to already, we do need to have clarity about how that process will work. What will be its outcome? Who will be the leader, or the leadership team, that takes this forward? There have been suggestions, indeed by Dominic Cummings himself, in relation to eminent scientists—scientists who, unfortunately, have been excluded from their professional role given the comments that have been made in relation to eugenics and race. Although I appreciate that the Secretary of State may not be in a position to say what the qualifying criteria will be for someone who takes on this role, I expect him to say what the disqualifying criteria will be. I certainly expect that someone who projects views of eugenics would fit into that disqualification category.

My third point relates to resources and accountability. I am very conscious of the fact that much of what I am saying is a repetition of what has already been said, but that is often true of what is said by everyone in this House, and I am sure that there will be more of that to come. I cannot get my head around this notion that we can throw away freedom of information and public contract processes in order to achieve something. I may have incorrectly picked up the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) on that point he made earlier about being inspired to do that. I do not see it as inspired. I do not think that the public will see it as inspired. They certainly will not see it as inspired coming, as it does, from a Conservative Government, given what we have seen over a number of months in relation to cronyism and the concerns that we all have about that. When it comes to public money, public trust is of paramount importance. Frankly, the Government are not being as clear, transparent and open as they should be about the Bill.

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[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is genuinely a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who speaks with great knowledge on this issue and who of course represents an area where many people will be interested in the Bill.

In common with other hon. Members, I welcome the Bill, but I just want to make sure I am welcoming the same Bill as they are. In many of the contributions today, Members appear to have aimed their guns at destroying those elements of the Bill that are unique, special and different. The shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), who is no longer in his place, started that off by talking about R&D as an example of an industrial strategy. Well, industrial strategies are playthings of Ministers and, as we know, Ministers can change from time to time. The whole design of the Bill is intended to prevent those issues.

The spokesperson for the Scottish nationalists, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), chided me a little about the importance of the environment and asked whether that should be a focus. I am not denying that the environment and climate change is an important issue, but the point here is that we do not prescribe that that is the only thing that this organisation can research—I am not saying that it should not look into it.

I do not wish to smother at birth the unique characteristics of this organisation. Essentially, the purpose of the Bill is to create an institution that, in Donald Rumsfeld’s terms, would look at the unknown unknowns, and politicians are not in the right place to define what those would be. If I may, I would gently disagree with the Chair of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), when he said that we should choose a couple of focal points for ARIA. That really gets to the point, because the question would then be, did we choose the right focal points? I am not sure that that is something the Bill is seeking to do with this agency.

I want to ask some questions, and perhaps the Minister can cover them in her summing up or perhaps we can cover them in Committee. Many hon. Members have spoken about the importance of the programme manager in DARPA. I looked at the worked case example cited in the policy statement released for ARIA. In it, somebody was recruited on the basis of a £50,000 grant and a three-month project. Subsequently, on review, they would, in this example, be granted £20 million for further research. I would say to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench that there are three key tensions there that we need to tease out.

The first is that that approach places tremendous responsibility on the evaluation of those initial projects, so how do we see that going? What are we thinking about in terms of the framework in which that evaluation will take place? That seems a very thin basis for the initial judgment—it is not wrong, but it is a thin basis.

Secondly, the appointments of the chief executive officer and the chair, which my right hon. and hon. Friends are already considering, also seem to be extremely important, because they will, in such an important way, define the culture of this organisation—certainly for the initial five-year term of the chief executive and at least for the first 10 years of this organisation.

Thirdly, DARPA has been commented on a number of times. It estimates that 25% of its programme managers turn over annually, so there will be quite a large turnover of these key members of staff in the UK. What is our expectation? As the hon. Member for Cambridge said, America can draw on an enormous pool of talent. Is the goal that we will be able to draw on a larger, perhaps global pool of talent to play a role in this agency? That would be a very good aspect of global Britain.

In 2019, 65% of DARPA projects were undertaken by companies, and only 17% by universities. Is that the intention here? If so, I would very much welcome that. Also, there is the opportunity in the Bill for ARIA to create companies and joint ventures, and a document will come out to explain how that will work. However, it would be helpful to know whether it will also include what happens to any returns from those joint ventures and companies, and whether the money will go back into ARIA itself or be returned to the Treasury—I think we all know what the answer to that might be, but it would be interesting to at least pose the question.

The Secretary of State will know that ARPA was set up in the same year—1958, if I can read my writing—as the Small Business Investment Act was enacted in the United States. I would like to close on this point. There is very positive reinforcement between the initiatives being taken in the Bill and encouraging support for venture capital and small businesses. I refer Members to my declaration of interests on the issue of venture capital. There is a tremendous opportunity.

DARPA likes to say that it created the internet, but venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins can point to the fact that it made billions out of Amazon, billions out of Netscape and billions out of Google. That is the essence of the problem we often hear about in this country. We are very good at doing the research, but we are very poor at commercialising it. Can we see further efforts by the Department to ensure that we have the same parallel tracks as the United States had when it successfully launched its equivalent of our initiative, ARPA, in 1958?

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Flynn]

I cannot imagine why so many people have withdrawn, given the exciting topic that we are going to discuss here this evening. I will speak to amendment 1 and in favour of all the following amendments and new clauses in the name of myself and my honourable colleagues. Of course, the context for what we are about to debate has changed markedly from this morning and, indeed, much of the last week. For the avoidance of any doubt, my colleagues and I were very much in favour of new clause 4, and while the Government may have not been defeated today, their card has certainly been marked.

To the matter at hand, which is of course the Advanced Research and Invention Agency. Much of what I seek to say will repay repetition. Many of the points were covered on Second Reading and in Committee, but I feel it is important that we cover them again, because, despite the concerns that we have expressed on these Benches and that have been echoed by the official Opposition, the Government have not sought at any stage to amend the Bill up until this juncture. That is something of a missed opportunity. The reality is that across the Chamber, nobody is criticising the ethos of the Bill or the aim of the Bill to try to improve the UK’s standing in relation to this specific topic, but we feel that the Government can and should be going further.

The first matter on which that is fairly obvious is the lack of a mission, a purpose, a raison d’être for the Bill. There is no clear mission for ARIA as it stands, despite much to-ing and fro-ing on this topic. The Government have been clear on their reasoning as to why they do not want that to be the case, but I find it extremely regrettable, when we know there is a climate emergency—hopefully everyone across the Chamber is in agreement on that—that the Government still refuse to make the climate emergency a core purpose of ARIA to ensure that meeting our net zero targets is the aim of this agency.

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

On a point of clarification, could the hon. Gentleman tell the House whether there is no mission for ARIA, or is it just that ARIA does not have the mission he has just outlined?

[Stephen Flynn]

That is an interesting point that. I believe it is regrettable that there is no set mission. The mission should be to combat climate change and to meet our net zero targets.

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[Richard Fuller]

I was not on the Committee, but there is a fundamental point here. I recall from the debate on Second Reading that the objective of ARPA is to think beyond what is normally thought about. The issue about the climate emergency is that we know it is a problem. We know that there are multiple solutions in multiple areas, which people are already working on. We also know that there is tremendous commercial interest, from the point of view of people investing in relation to the climate emergency and companies that are trying to sell products in that area. To what extent does the objective that the hon. Gentleman proposes fit that “beyond beyond” mission that I thought was the original purpose of ARPA?

[Stephen Flynn]

I think it absolutely fits that point. Of course, there could be new solutions that we are not aware of at this moment. On Second Reading, the hon. Member made a similar point, and I said that he should not be so narrow in his view of climate change because to meet net zero we need to operate in a vast landscape. The Government do not seem to be acknowledging that through ARIA. To repeat myself, I believe that that is a missed opportunity.

The Government will point to their energy White Paper and point to the 10-point plan, and perhaps they will point to the North sea transition deal in terms of their aims in relation to combating climate change. That is fair and reasonable, but—notwithstanding the arguments we might have on those points, of which there are many—it does not mean that we stop there, particularly in the year of COP26. I urge Government Members to reflect on that as we move forward in the debate.

That covers amendment 1, which we hope to press later, but we have tabled other amendments. Perhaps the clearest, and the one that needs to be debated in this Chamber, notwithstanding what I have already said, relates to scrutiny—the fact that the Government have sought to put ARIA outwith the Freedom of Information Act 2000. It is no longer going to be applicable to public procurement regulations. That is simply unacceptable and there is no justification for it.

I listened closely to what the Minister had to say in that regard in Committee and on Second Reading, and I have read on numerous occasions remarks made in relation to that point by those on the Government Benches, yet I simply do not understand the logic of why they are doing this. From looking at DARPA, we know that there are 40-odd freedom of information requests—40-odd for DARPA, which is on a scale vastly superior to that of ARIA—yet the Government still seek to move away from that scrutiny. From a public perspective, that does no one any favours. I am sure that, if the Government had their time back, they might do things differently, because ultimately this benefits nobody. All it does is create more clouds of suspicion around what the Government’s activities are.

That ties in with our amendment 2, which relates to cronyism and the need to avoid it. The Government’s record and reputation over the last year and a half have been deplorable. The hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) shakes his head, but that is the reality. There is a reason that his Prime Minister is so disliked and distrusted in Scotland: it is what we have seen over the pandemic—not just from the Prime Minister himself, but from his Ministers and friends, the donors, and the family members who have benefited from contracts. What we do not want to see—what we cannot see—is ARIA becoming a vehicle for that to happen. Our amendment would clearly stop that.

On FOI and procurement regulations, the Labour party has said something similar to us, just with a lot more words. It is within the Labour party’s gift to do so, although I am not quite sure why it did not just agree with us. It can do so on occasion; we will not take it personally.

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[Chi Onwurah]

I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, because that is exactly the point to which I am going—to the amendments. Just to say that the funding for coronavirus research, which is the kind of world-beating or leading research that we would hope ARIA will be looking at, has been cut by 70%, which will kill the project. A Government happy to withdraw support for vital research projects across the globe are not a Government who wish to act in the best interests of science, the country or the world.

On ARIA itself, we have many serious concerns. We recognise the need for new mechanisms to support high-risk, high-reward research in our science sector, and as such ARIA is a step in the right direction. ARIA can transform our scientific landscape and we can build an institution that furthers our societal aims for decades to come, but we have concerns, which our amendments seek to address, about the lack of direction, strategy and accountability in the Government’s current proposals. Without such improvements, we fear that the agency could be used to pursue vanity projects disconnected from the public interest.

The first major issue with the Bill is the absence of a mission for ARIA, which has already been raised. What is ARIA for and what is it working towards? Labour’s amendment 12 would require ARIA to have a specific mission for ARIA’s first decade, and we want that mission to be climate change.

[Richard Fuller]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for reverting to items that are in order today. On amendment 12, she mentioned that that should be the “core mission”. The hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn) talked about its being part of a bigger whole, but it is still a relatively small amount of money. Does the amendment mean that that is the only mission? Essentially, when she says “core mission”, what she means is the only mission and the agency cannot do anything else other than that for 10 years.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for seeking to aid Madam Deputy Speaker in determining what is in order. I am not sure whether that was necessary.

On the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, I fail to see why he thinks that pedantry can make up for a lack of argument. Climate change is a core mission. We are not seeking to hem in the agency with absolute linguistic barriers for what exactly should be done, but we want it to have a direction. We want to know where it is going and what it is seeking to do. The core mission, as I intend to set out in detail, will be climate change. I do not intend to limit its interpretation of climate change, but I will set out the reasons why climate change will be its core mission.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

No. 10 on the speakers’ list has withdrawn. No. 11 is not here and Nos. 12 and 13 have withdrawn, so I call Richard Fuller.

[Richard Fuller]

It is a surprise to be called so early, but it is nevertheless welcome. I was not on the Public Bill Committee, which I know will have been a sadness for all its members, but for me it was of particular sadness because for the future of our country and most other countries, the way in which we nurture and promote innovation is crucial. Although this is a small Bill that generally has wide support across the House, it is rather important that we get it right. It is therefore important that today we debate some of the issues on which the Committee was not able to reach a full conclusion.

Innovation is crucial for our success, and I hope that the Minister and the Department will move on from the fact that we have innovation to look at ways in which we can promote the implementation of innovation, particularly through the removal of barriers and the promotion of competition, so that we can see the fruits of this investment in tangible economic and social success for our country.

Looking through the amendments, I would group them into three areas that it seems were not fully resolved in Committee: first, the extent of oversight; secondly, the issue of purpose or mission; and, thirdly, appointments. On oversight, although each of the proposed steps might be worthy, each of them is also an impediment. If there is one driving value that I hope we have for the Bill at this stage, it is to have the courage to enable this new and additional form of innovation investing to have the freedom to grow and do what it wishes to do.

If, at some point in the future, we find that the programme has gone off the rails somewhat and gone beyond what we know, it would perhaps then be useful for us to put more bureaucratic layers on top of it, but we certainly should not do so from the outset. If we do that from the outset, essentially we are killing the idea in its entirety. It is so easy for us here to say, “We really believe in this, but we would like this or that.” It is quite natural, as protectors of taxpayers’ money—that used to be a role of this House, but sadly it is one that has been lacking for about 40 years—that we want to take that responsibility seriously and to be thorough, but with this Bill we have to accept that if we are going to take that step, we have to put trust in this group. I would be interested to hear what other Members, particularly the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) with his long experience, have to say about whether this is the right step. I will come back to that point later in respect of appointments.

On the issue of purpose, the Labour Front-Bench spokesperson, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah)—I know she has a strong and real passion for science, and I have listened to her speak up for science over a number of years, so I know her intention is right—has tabled an amendment saying that the core mission should be about the climate change goals. The SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), who opened the debate, similarly said that we should focus on the environment.

It is important to ask what impact it would have if we made the environment the focus. We currently have $30 trillion-worth of environmental, social and governance assets in the world. The Bill is proposing to add a flow of approximately $1 billion a year, or 1 in 30,000 of the assets that are already there. In terms of where moneys are flowing, this year’s flow of ESG in the private sector is about $130 billion to $140 billion. If we were to make the environment the core mission, we would essentially be tossing £800 million on top of an enormous pile of assets that is already there and an enormous additional inflow this year that is already happening. By its very nature, we would be doing the thing that we are not supposed to be asking ARIA to do, which essentially is to do what everybody else is doing. The whole purpose of ARIA is to do those things that other people are not doing. I feel that it is a mistake to say, “This is a really important mission—aren’t you terrible for not saying that we should focus on it?”, rather than “There are other missions—there is a bigger mission out there that perhaps we as politicians do not have the insight to understand.” That is the whole purpose of setting up ARIA, because with our bureaucratic fingers and our tiny political minds we just are not able to think of those things. It is worth our while considering that, so I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) that it should not have a mission. The whole purpose of ARIA is to do those things that other people are not doing. I feel that it is a mistake to say, “This is a really important mission—aren’t you terrible for not saying that we should focus on it?”, rather than “There are other missions—there is a bigger mission out there that perhaps we as politicians do not have the insight to understand.” That is the whole purpose of setting up ARIA, because with our bureaucratic fingers and our tiny political minds we just are not able to think of those things. It is worth our while considering that, so I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) that it should not have a mission.