Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Fourth sitting)

Stephen Metcalfe Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah]

These amendments are all concerned with ensuring that the benefits of ARIA are spread across our country and contribute to a more equal and prosperous country. Amendment 14 would insert a new sub-paragraph requiring ARIA’s annual report, for which there is provision elsewhere, to contain details of the geographical distribution of activities funded by ARIA, while amendments 16, 17 and 18, which relate to clause 2, would require ARIA to have regard for the benefits of its activities across the nations and regions of the UK in exercising its functions.

We tabled these amendments in a constructive spirit, to improve the Bill in line with the Government’s own aims, as we understand them. During and since the general election, there has been significant discussion about the importance of ensuring that our whole country benefits from economic prosperity and from the transformational impact of ARIA.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

I accept what the hon. Lady says about geographical spread and making sure that we are treating the country fairly and levelling up, but we have to accept that while £800 million over a four-year period is a lot, £200 million a year is not a huge amount. We know that we are focusing ARIA on a small number of projects. The danger is that we dilute the impact that ARIA could have using that money by trying to demonstrate that we are spreading it equally across the country. The danger with that is that we do not achieve what we set out to achieve in the first place.

[Chi Onwurah]

There are two challenges here. ARIA’s funding is between 1% and 2% of the UK’s science spend, depending on whether the aims of the current Government are actually met, so in some respects it is considered too small to be subject to reporting requirements. Yet we also hear of how it is expected—indeed, required—to have a transformational impact on all our lives. If that impact is going to be transformational, surely it is critical that it should be as equitable as possible.

We have tried very hard to reflect those slightly conflicting aims. Amendment 14 is a reporting requirement; amendments 16, 17 and 18 are to “have regard to”. We have not set targets. We have not said that it has to be a certain proportion, but particularly with regard to amendment 14 there can surely be no objection to reporting how the funding has been spent. That is a basic requirement of transparency.

The hon. Member is right to infer that people may draw conclusions from that reporting, but I tend to feel that information is empowering, regardless of what the conclusions are, so the amendment takes a reasonable line between requiring that the spend be in some respects regionally distributed, which it does not do, and ensuring that the information is there to assess the extent to which ARIA is living up to its overriding goal—again, we do not have a mission, so let us say goal—of transforming our society.

The Opposition believe that that goal is possible. We believe that science and research, as I have said, can be the engines of progress for our society, but it needs to be for and by everyone, not simply for the few. It is essential, as I have said, that each region of the UK benefits from the creation of ARIA. The Secretary of State told the Science and Technology Committee that the Government wanted ARIA

“to reflect the wide talent and geographical spread of the United Kingdom”,

but there is nothing in the Bill to measure the extent to which it does that. As we have seen, the Bill fails to mention the devolved nations and does not outline any reflection of the geographical realities of the United Kingdom.

Amendment 14 is simply about requiring reporting so that the Government—whichever Government we have—can measure the impact that ARIA is having on the very important desire to reduce the regional inequalities in our country. It does not tie the hands of ARIA’s leadership; it just imposes reporting requirements. That is really important when we reflect that the Campaign for Science and Engineering found that for every £1 invested by the Government on research and development we receive 20p to 30p back each and every year. Surely we have a right to know where that money is going geographically, as well as which areas it is going to.

As a northern MP, I know that the north receives less than half of the life sciences investment per head that the south of England does, despite having great teaching hospitals and significant health inequalities that truly need to be transformed. We heard an important contribution from Tabitha Goldstaub of CognitionX, who said that

“ARIA has to be independent, but it also needs to ensure that it works really closely with central Government and with regional and local government. Local government spends about £1 billion on procurement, and cities are key investors in infrastructure, so finding a good link with local government, as well as with central Government, is important…Regional strengths deliver benefits to actual localities.”––[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 56, Q54.]

We also heard from John Kingman, the chair of UKRI, that its structures involve regular consultation with the devolved Administrations. It is important that we see how well ARIA is able to benefit also from that engagement, whether indirectly through the UKRI or through its competitions and other means of funding.

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[Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

I rise, obviously, to speak in favour of SNP amendment 30, which almost ties in with what is proposed by the shadow Minister. It is about providing greater transparency on the destination of ARIA’s funding disbursements within the UK.

I just want to pick up on a couple of things that have been said already. The shadow Minister reflected on the fact that the Bill makes no mention of the devolved nations. She almost seemed surprised, but that took me a bit aback because I am not surprised at that in any way, shape or form. I do not think anyone even on the Government Benches is over-surprised that they forgot to mention Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock mentioned his concerns about drawing conclusions. Yeah, I will be drawing conclusions about where that money goes and I am sure that every single person in Scotland will.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

If we were discussing how the Government aim to spend our £22 billion a year on science and research, there would be a much better argument for the amendment. But we are talking about high-risk, high-reward science, where a focus on a particular technology has the transformational effect that we are after. That might be the University of Strathclyde and its quantum technology research—I have no objection to that being the area of funding. But if the area happens to be Cornwall, Cambridge, London or somewhere else, I do not think we should hamper ourselves on this particular aspect of a new agency by trying to set targets. We know that if we set a target, someone tries to meet it.

[Stephen Flynn]

I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, although I would caution that, when speaking to an MP from Aberdeen, people do not tend to mention a Glasgow university—it doesn’t go down too well, that’s for sure.

I understand the purpose of the hon. Gentleman’s point, but he must understand our concerns about making sure that Scotland receives its fair share of funding and investment from the UK Government while we remain a part of the United Kingdom. That ties into the wider narrative from this UK Government since the 2019 election. The views and will of the people of Scotland have been completely disregarded.

What we are seeing from the UK Government are attempts to impose their will on Scotland. We saw that with clause 46 of the Internal Market Bill and with the levelling-up fund that bypasses devolution but does not deliver for the communities in Scotland that it is needed for. This fits into our wider concern about the direction of funding from the UK Government.

As I said earlier, £800 million is involved. While Scotland is still a part of the UK we will take an interest and argue Scotland’s case for getting that funding into Scotland. It should, of course, be at the Barnett level. I would welcome assurances from the Minister that we will see investment in Scotland—not necessarily in Glasgow or at the University of Strathclyde, but perhaps in Aberdeen: that would be much more beneficial. I hope that we will see that level of investment in Scotland and I hope that she will provide that commitment, in which case I will be able to withdraw my amendment.

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[Chi Onwurah]

It has been a long day and we have had lively debates covering many important themes set out in this admittedly short Bill. We now come to one of the critical themes: the mission of ARIA. What is ARIA for?

Amendment 15 would require ARIA to consider its core mission in exercising its functions. Under the amendment, for the 10 years following the passing of the Act, that core mission would be to undertake activities to support the achievement of net zero. Thereafter, its mission would be established by statutory instrument, subject to the draft affirmative procedure.

I am surprised that I find myself in the position of needing to argue that ARIA—the Advanced Research and Invention Agency—requires a mission and that that mission should be net zero, which is the greatest existential challenge facing our country and the world right now.

We welcome ARIA, as we have said. We recognise that there is a gap in the UK’s research capability, which ARIA can and should fill, but we believe strongly that ARIA will succeed only if it is given a well-defined mission, which the Government must play a significant role in setting. As we heard in the evidence sessions—and as is, I believe, the opinion of the Minister—ARIA should not try to replace either blue skies research institutions or translational institutions, but should bring the two together to focus on the transformative effects that science and technology can have on society. I am sure that we are all united in the view that ARIA can have a transformative impact.

This is an opportunity for the Government to establish a mission-led funding agency that can benefit us all. With no mission and the whole of the realm of science—the whole of the unknown and the less understood—to choose from, the risk is that ARIA will be directionless, providing no societal return for taxpayer investment, or that it will be prey to vanity projects, providing return only for a few.

In evidence to the Science and Technology Committee, Dominic Cummings—I am mentioning him once again as the original inspiration and architect of ARIA—held up some sort of a diagram and said that general UK research was one bit and that ARIA should look at all the rest. That gave the impression that it would be like the SS Enterprise going off in search of new areas, but even the SS Enterprise—I know that “Star Trek” fans are present—had a mission, which was to seek out new civilisations. It was not a mission to—

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Chi Onwurah]

I am speaking about “Star Trek”, so let me finish my point and then I will give way. It was not a general mission to go around the universe and galaxies. It was not a mission to look at mining new minerals or whatever. It was a mission to seek out new civilisations, yet here we have ARIA being proposed as an agency without any mission whatever.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Just to clarify, I think it was the USS Enterprise. I believe that ARIA has a mission, which is to boldly go to areas of science that we have not gone into before. A focus on impact, high risk and high reward is not what we currently have, and we should not hamper it at this early stage. I would not for one moment deny that climate change is a huge threat that needs to be addressed, but that is not necessarily where the agency should focus. Why would we want to tie its hands before it has even started to look at the transformational science out there?

I also have great concerns, because the hon. Lady said she felt that the Government should have huge input into the mission of ARIA. That would potentially breach the Haldane principle, which Government after Government have applied and stuck to in order to make sure that politicians are not influencing scientists in what areas that they research.

[Chi Onwurah]

I accept that it is indeed the USS Enterprise, and I thank the hon. Member for that correction. On the rest of his contribution, I will say once again that I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Member, but to boldly go where no one has gone before is not a mission. It is not even a direction—it is explicitly not a direction. As I said, the USS Enterprise’s mission was to seek out new civilisations, so it was anthropological rather than another domain of science. ARIA has no mission.

We do think we have to talk about the Haldane principle, given that we have seen the acceptance of mission-oriented research, including the grand challenges that were discussed during the evidence sessions. That makes it clear that we can ascribe a mission to ARIA without breaching the Haldane principle. The Government should not outsource their responsibility to direct the transformative change that ARIA can bring to our greatest challenge, which is one that—the hon. Member is familiar with this—inspires so many young people and that can get public buy-in: climate change and the need to address the impact it will have on our planet.

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[Stephen Flynn]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge. I am not quite sure whether lagging roofs is necessarily within the remit of what I would expect ARIA to be doing. I like to think that the Government could do that notwithstanding any new technologies, but I appreciate the point he was making. I assure members of the Committee that there will be no “Star Trek” references coming from my mouth whatsoever—[Interruption.] Or “Star Wars”. We have had quite enough of that. I rise to speak in support of amendment 35, tabled by the SNP, which again is directly related to climate change and the drive towards net zero.

If ARIA is to have a mission—I think it should, and the majority of witnesses last week seemed to be in favour of that—there can be only one focus. I understand the premise of the Government’s not wanting ARIA to be constrained. I think the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock said that he did not want to hamper ARIA, but I disagree, and I think it is an honest disagreement to have. I do not see how instructing an agency to try to combat climate change and allow us to meet our net zero aims is hampering it. I think that provides not only the focus that the agency needs but the focus that we should all want it to have, because it is the biggest existential crisis facing us.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

I do not deny that climate change is the biggest issue that we need to address, but a huge amount of research is already going on in that area across UKRI and its £8.8 billion-plus budget. To focus all £200 million a year for ARIA on climate change could miss the point of what we are trying to set up. To me—it may just be me—it is blindingly clear what the mission is: to find areas of research for which funding currently cannot be accessed because it is too risky, and fund that. We talk about high risk, high reward, and that is the mission: to find science that is worthy of research but cannot get funding or support now. If we do that, we might find the next global positioning system, the next computed axial tomography scanner or the next hadron collider—something really inspirational and transformational.

[Stephen Flynn]

I certainly understand the hon. Member’s point, and, to his credit, he is persuasive in his arguments. None the less, hon. Members will be unsurprised to hear that he has not quite persuaded me, and I do not think his argument would necessarily persuade the witnesses—the likes of Professor Mazzucato and Professor Wilsdon—from whom we heard last week. It is right that we have this discussion, and it is good that we are having it in a positive and constructive fashion, but ultimately I believe there still should be a mission for ARIA. Without it, we are not doing all that we possibly can. DARPA is the clearest example of why a mission is important in this regard. We spoke about it on Second Reading, and we heard from the horse’s mouth just last week about the importance of the mission to DARPA.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (First sitting)

Stephen Metcalfe Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Daniel Zeichner]

Splendidly diplomatic answer. I will pass you over to colleagues.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your leadership, Ms McVey. Good morning to both of you, and thank you for your presentations. I truly believe that ARIA will significantly add to the research and innovation landscape, in an area where we perhaps have not done that before. That does beg the question of where those visionary ideas would have gone up until this point.

The question that I would like to ask is, what role do you believe that ARIA and UKRI have in ensuring that ARIA-funded research becomes a tangible service or product and actually supports the UK economy? If we are investing £800 million, we need to make sure that there is a benefit. I fully accept the high-risk, high-reward model—I think that is an important part of it—but we need to make sure that we support that innovation and that research along the technology-readiness scale to make sure that it turns into something tangible that adds to our overall wealth. How do you see that role playing out?

Professor Leyser: To me, a key question in our R&D system altogether is connectivity. We have a spectacular international reputation for the quality of our R&D base right across the disciplines and in both the public and the private sectors, and we have some fantastic innovative companies creating extraordinary products and services for the UK. However, there is an acknowledged weakness in our system in the middle, so to speak, which is sometimes referred to as the valley of death. There is a lot of analysis as to what is going on there. It is partly to do with getting the right pathway of funding that supports activity across that gap.

I personally think that a bigger problem is our relatively balkanised R&D system. I think that we need to focus very hard on building much higher-quality connectivity and networking, right across the system and across that gap. We tend to think of this as a very linear, translational process, and it does not work that way. It is about joining up all the parts in a way that information, ideas, skills, know-how and, crucially, people—all those things are carried best by people—flow to and fro across that system.

One of the major priorities for UKRI is to consider the dynamic career pathways that people need to follow to connect that system up better and to support researchers in different parts of the system moving to other parts of the system—so from academia into industry and, crucially, from industry back into academia, which our current incentive structures in academia do not adequately support.

I think that that “bridging the valley of death” part is a key role for UKRI. That is exactly what we can do, because we bridge all the sectors and we have some levers on a lot of those incentives that are currently driving balkanisation. If we add ARIA into that properly connected system, then the ideas and innovation that emerge from ARIA will feed into that system in an entirely productive and creative way.

It is not ARIA’s job to think about the system and to build bridges across the valley of death; its job is to push those transformative ideas to try to drive step changes in particular areas and technologies where the experts in ARIA think the best opportunities lie. If those seeds are sown on fertile ground, they will transform into that knowledge economy that I keep talking about. My job is to make sure that the ground is fertile.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

Q Dame Ottoline, you said earlier that you expect a close working relationship with ARIA. What does that actually look like? Legislatively, what should that look like?

Professor Leyser: It is an interesting question as to the extent to which that needs to be written into legislation. In my experience, the kinds of relationship that one wants to have with key players across the system are not things for which you necessarily legislate. They are about maintaining open lines of communication and building high-quality personal relationships with different actors in the system. There are a lot of players in the R&D system. I spend a lot of my time talking to people who run other agencies—for example, in the charity sector and those who run R&D activities in businesses— connecting them up, understanding what people’s needs are, what the opportunities are and building the joined-up system I have talked of about before.

So I think the personal relationships are going to be almost as important as anything that one can write into legislation. None the less, possible tools for connection, such as seats on each other’s boards, are certainly worth considering, as is observer-type status, rather than formal status, given that high-quality boards tend to be small. Our board worked really well where people were not representative but bringing their skills and expertise round the table. One does not want to bog down the governance structures for a light, agile and out-there organisation with representative requirements. As I have said before, active and engaged communication is going to be essential for ARIA, because it needs to understand the breadth of opportunity in the system to work well. It will be in everybody’s interest for those activities to work well. Because of that, they will happen naturally, in the same way that I spend a lot of time talking with other funders of research and innovation already in the public and private sectors.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Second sitting)

Stephen Metcalfe Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Stephen Flynn]

That is very helpful, thank you.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your leadership this afternoon, Ms Cummins. Thank you to our excellent witnesses. I am interested in the practical approach. When you have made some breakthroughs on these various high-risk projects, how do you ensure that the breakthrough reaches its full potential? Is it done through the ARPA model, passing it on to someone else to take it to the next stage? Is it the project manager who has a role in ensuring that it goes into safe hands, or is it the churn of people—the revolving door—that helps transfer that knowledge out an ARPA and into business, so that it can create service and product?

Dr Highnam: If I may, I will take the first shot at this one. It is the first two: we do not rely on the churn, as you say, of people for transition, but when you show up—when you come here—you come to make a difference. So you are always focused on transitioning the knowledge that is discovered in a more systems-oriented research programme—the thing or the entity—across into service of the nation. It is part of what you do. I think, as someone said earlier, it is that intersection of managerial and technical expertise, and a passion: those are the people you want at DARPA at any given time to frame and to drive—and not just to drive to discover, but to drive to transition as well. We watch that very carefully and the responsibility belongs to all of us in the agency.

Dr Dugan: We used to say at DARPA—and this is, I think, generally true of most organisations—transition is a full-contact sport, always has been and always will be. It is very difficult. Transitions of breakthroughs that are showing what is now newly possible, or a solution that did not previously exist, require a tremendous amount of effort. I think that it is important to recognise that there are many transition paths that grow out of an organisation that is ARPA-like. Some of the programmes, in the case of DARPA, transition to our military counterparts. Some of them transition to the commercial sector and then are bought back by national security or military. There are many different pathways. In some cases, programme managers go to other Government organisations to help in those transitions. In some cases, they rotate out and go to new things entirely.

It is important to recognise that the breakthrough itself is not sticky through the organisation that it was created in. The breakthrough then gets transitioned to impact and scale in the most suitable organisation in order to create that ultimate impact. I would add, in addition to the passion that many programme managers and directors feel, they are also impact junkies. They really come to make a difference. So the ultimate transition—the ultimate scaling and impact—is the goal. Make the breakthrough, and then transition it to scale.

Professor Azoulay: I want to note that there is a distinction between DARPA and other ARPA-like agencies in different contexts. I am sure Dr Highnam and Dr Dugan will think that it is an oversimplification, but to some extent there is one customer for the projects that come out of DARPA, whereas for something like ARPA-E it is a much more diverse and scattered ecosystem. The breakthrough needs to latch on to the energy system, and there are lots of different actors with lots of different interests. At ARPA-E that has meant that they have created explicitly a tech-to-market group, to try to get ahead of the translation problem of the project that has come out of the agency. I want to say that this is not independent of the mission. To create a good tech-to-market group, you need a certain scale within a certain scope, and to the extent that your projects are too scattered, it is going to be a lot harder to create that scale, and so harder to create the transitions.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Just to follow up briefly, thank you for that; it is comprehensive and helpful. It highlights the fact that you are looking for more than just individuals with some inspiring ideas. They have got to have the ability to own the research and inspire the next stage in its progress. I just think we should put that on record—that programme managers have to be multi-skilled in a number of different areas. So thank you for that.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

Q It is great to serve under your chairmanship today, Ms Cummins. Thank you very much to the witnesses today. It is very enlightening. On the back of the last question with regard to managerial content I really like the idea that the transition is an impact or contact sport. You go in, do your best work and get out with your reputation intact. I have two questions about that. First, how do you reach those people who are not known—who may be working on something very creative but are not well known in the industry? Secondly, you have talked a lot about evaluations. Are they peer-to-peer evaluations, and is that evaluation transparent? Perhaps we will go to Dr Highnam first.

Dr Highnam: We do—I am very proud of this—full and open competition to the greatest extent possible. The process is approximately like this. A programme manager has framed a programme, using the Heilmeier questions, and received approval to launch. They put out various announcements in different places. They organise industry days—these are more virtual than in person, but we do both. We put it into the various mailing lists in all manner of technical communities. We push it out through small business and make sure the universities and the vice-presidents for research and development are all aware. We make the maximum push that we can, certainly for unclassified activities.

Then, when proposals come in—we are very clear on what we expect to see in a proposal, which is how we then evaluate proposals; we are very transparent on the requirements for that—we take a look and, surprisingly often, to respond to your point, you will find a technology or a small business had an idea that meets the goal. We do not over-engineer the request for proposals. We say, “Here’s what we want to do. Here are the boundaries, if you like, in terms of technical elements we are interested in. It’s up to you guys. Come back with the best team that you can and the best approach that you can for solving this.” And there is always a surprise. From a PM perspective—Regina and I have both been PMs at DARPA—you always find yourself saying, “Oh, I didn’t think of that. That may be the one that actually wins; we don’t know.”

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[Stephen Flynn]

That is really helpful. Thank you, both.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Q Good afternoon and thank you for joining us and for your excellent contribution. Anne, you made a very interesting point about the independence of ARIA, to avoid it being used potentially as pointing at political failure. If you are investing in high-risk, high-reward research, there will be failure—that is undoubtedly true. May we ask for your advice on how we should measure the metrics of an ARIA over the early years, before potentially there is any output that has demonstrated a transformational benefit to society? On top of that, could you give us some advice on advising project managers on how they should go about selecting projects to explore? Should it be just on the basis of interesting science, or should there be a vision of the commercialisation of that science at the end, to motivate them? We are only going to be able to fund a certain number of projects, and presumably applications will outstrip the funding fairly quickly.

Professor Glover: How we measure success in the early years is a very important question. I am not going to give you an exact answer, but what I might say is that maybe we should not try. That would be unusual, wouldn’t it? That is what I meant earlier about not just following the formula of, “You need to tick these boxes to demonstrate success.” Of course, you would hope that whoever is leading ARIA would have an idea of how you are developing the innovation ecosystem that will be supported by ARIA. They might have some ideas about numbers of applications, where they are coming from, and having a good look at and analysing that, and looking at the amount of interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary research that comes forward. That is always quite hard to fund. Historically, when I have been involved in such things, interdisciplinary research tends to get kicked around different agencies: “This is more for you.” “No, this is more for you.” Everybody is worried about their budget and thinks, “If you fund it, we won’t have to fund this from our budget.” Thinking about the number of applications that could come from a broad range of different disciplines—that would be good. I am not answering your question directly. I am just saying that it is very easy to say, “Let’s have a way of measuring success,” but sometimes that can be stifling.

It is a bit like—perhaps not in the years timescale of ARIA—how it is around the time of year when we plant seeds in our garden or wherever. If you want to measure how well a seed is germinating, if you keep pulling it up and having a look at it you are really going to set it back, so sometimes you just need to think, “I’m hoping that in four or five months’ time this is going to be a broad bean plant with broad beans on it. I just need to wait and see.” I know that that is difficult to do.

The second thing you asked is about commercialisation. I cannot for the life of me remember who said this, but someone once said that there are two types of research: applied research and research not yet applied. That is quite true. There might be some areas where you think that there is a very easy market for this, but if we look back and learn from experience we find that an awful lot of research has been developed. The whole area of medical diagnostics, for example, was pure research. There was no commercialisation; it was just a fundamental biological problem that was being investigated. Some of the outcomes of that research led to molecules called monoclonal antibodies. It is quite a beautiful specific diagnostic—supremely sensitive—that can pick out particular molecules of interest that might tell you if you have a particular disease or have been exposed to a particular compound or whatever.

In renewable energy or an area around that, you might understand that there will be a lot of potential commercial partners and opportunities. In some other areas, perhaps not. This might be an opportunity to think about what the relationships would be like between ARIA and existing research funding, because it might be part of an ecosystem. I would hope that there were distinct roles for UKRI and ARIA but very good communication between the two, as well as very many other stakeholders, in order to identify areas that might not be suitable for UKRI funding but that might have a strong commercial or development potential that ARIA would be much more adept at supporting.

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. Anne, you talked about citizen buy-in. That would take an element of trust, so my two questions are around that. What could or would good transparency look like without stifling innovation, in both of your opinions? Secondly, if we do not have FOIs and we do not know precisely how this will be reported to us, do we need an ethical baseline to ensure that we are spending public money on the greater good?

Professor Glover: On the citizen buy-in, I think that would be reasonable to consider achieving. I do not think that it would be insurmountably difficult in many ways. If I give you the example of some of the grand challenges that were funded at European Commission level, it was getting down to three brilliant projects. Which one will we fund? If the European Commission made the decision about which one was going to be funded, inevitably different member states would complain: “Why is that getting funded in that member state? This other project was just as good.”

All sorts of problems can arise. Whereas, if you asked European Union citizens which one they would like to be funded, they would say what matters most to them. That is quite an interesting insight into the mind of the European citizen, or it would have been, in that particular instance.

I do not think you are in any way betraying confidences; you are talking about whether it is a project looking at delivering limitless amounts of sustainable energy, or a project in mapping the functioning of the human brain, so that you might be able to exploit that in other ways. You are not saying how you are going to do those things; you are not revealing confidences or information that would be inappropriate or undermining of those doing the research. I think we might be worrying needlessly about that.

As to the ethical baseline, of course this has to be ethical. Tabitha and I are probably agreeing too much with each other, or perhaps we are going back to the same thing. If you are not open and transparent, you will have problems. That is just not rocket science. For example, there are many agencies that are not part of Government but that might receive governmental funding. Scotland’s National Academy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, is one of those. We are completely independent from Government. We get funding from the Scottish Funding Council, which gets its money from Government. We are not subject to FOI requests but we voluntarily behave as if we are. If we did not do that, people would say, “They’re being directed by Government, so the reports that come out of the RSE will be influenced by Government.”

If we say, “This is how we approach it,” and if somebody comes to us and asks for information, we behave as if it were an FOI. It has never been too onerous. The only onerous time for me with FOI requests was when I was chief scientific adviser to the President of the European Commission, when it became unrealistic, because I had such a small team and there was such a lot of FOI requests. Generally, that is the direction we should be moving in. You do not want to hobble a new agency by making it seem that any aspect of it is secretive. To be able to demonstrate ethical compliance, you need that transparency.

Tabitha Goldstaub: Ethical transparency is key, but we also have an opportunity with ARIA to set a robust, rigorous ethical review process that is fit for the AI era. We do not currently have that.

There has been a tremendous amount of attention on the public-facing ethical principles and frameworks for assessing AI products, but relatively little on the frameworks and practices for assessing research, or how to launch and manage a data science and AI ethics review board, in any way that would cut across disciplines, organisational, institutional or national boundaries, as ARIA would need to.

If ARIA can work with others, such as the Health Foundation, which is in collaboration with the Ada Lovelace Institute, or the Alan Turing Institute, on this problem, ARIA could achieve its mission responsibly, become a beacon for other ARPA-like programmes, and tolerate failure much more safely; because ultimately we need to break new ground and to do so with an ethics review, specifically with research that has anything to do with artificial intelligence. It would enable us to set real international standards, if we can get that right. It is both a risk and a huge opportunity for ARIA.

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[Aaron Bell]

Perhaps we need someone with particular expertise in portfolio management as well, because it seems the risk/reward of these missions is so key. I will leave it there.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Q Good afternoon, all. I have a quick question for Felicity. We heard earlier from Dr Highnam from DARPA about the high level of churn among the project managers and that they move between academia, business and, in their case, DARPA and that creates the right culture. Presumably it requires flexibility from the businesses themselves. Do you see your members embracing that kind of secondment into a research body such as ARIA, even though it may not lead to anything?

Felicity Burch: I have not talked to them directly about this in the context of ARIA, but I can reflect on conversations about business and university collaboration more generally. I think our members do see value in seconding people to research teams to learn new skillsets. Likewise, we would love to see more people from university sectors being seconded into businesses. Were there a world-leading agency like ARIA, being able to say, “My people have worked on one of these teams” would be quite a prestigious thing for businesses. I guess the flipside of that is this: how do we make sure that we build ARIA to be that prestigious body that businesses feel comfortable seconding their people to?

I think that time and again we hear businesses saying that that fluidity of people between the business sector, the university sector and the research sector more generally is really important for successful innovation and building an ecosystem. I am sure that if any business pointed to any one individual, they might not want to lose them, but I think this is much more about how we build a really flexible and really brilliant innovation ecosystem, and to that extent I think that businesses would be really happy to see those moves.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Q Have you any advice on how we should approach building such an organisation?

Felicity Burch: In the sense that it would encourage businesses to second people on to ARIA?

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Yes. You said that we have to build an ARIA that encourages that kind of collaboration. What is your advice about doing that? Where are the risks and rewards from an employer’s point of view?

Felicity Burch: One of the challenges is making sure that ARIA has its own clear purpose, so that businesses know why they would second people to it. The truth is that we have a lot of other institutions in the research/innovation landscape, as we have already referred to throughout this conversation, and as you have heard from the previous panels today. However, once ARIA is up and running, has a clear mission, and has some really great people on it who you can point to as being leaders in their field and really pushing the boundaries—when you can tell a clear story about what the organisation is set up to do—it will become a lot easier for a business to make the case that, “Yes, it makes sense for me to put a person on there; they are really aligned to what I am doing,” or not.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q A few years ago, we were told that there was no magic money tree. That seems to have been parked temporarily, but I fear that it will return at some point. I detect enthusiasm from all of you for this project, but how much is your enthusiasm dependent upon the money being genuinely new and additional in terms of the wider research environment?

I have a second question. Through the day, we have heard from different witnesses mainly a view that there needs to be a mission but also some difference of opinion as to who should set that mission. Who do you think should be setting it? Maybe I can go to Sir Adrian first.

Adrian Smith: In terms of new money or old money, I think the key thing is really to look at the big picture. The aspiration—the 2.4% aspiration—is aiming at the average of the OECD, which has probably crept up now in any case to 2.5%. In the meantime, the United States is around 3% and Israel is around 4.7%. The big picture stuff is the total amount of investment in the R&D landscape. So I think there would be less warm support for this body if it were at the expense of that wider investment.

As for who sets the mission, I think it is an extremely interesting question. There is an interesting tension between what most of us would see, which is that if this agency is to have real street cred, it needs tremendous operational independence, but on the other hand the thinking behind it is that the mission will be of great benefit to the UK. Clearly, therefore, Government and a multitude of stakeholders have an interest in what the mission will be, and how the leadership of the new organisation will satisfy the desire on the part of all those stakeholders to have a finger in the pie of influencing the mission. I think that will be very interesting to see.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Stephen Metcalfe Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con) [V]]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this important debate on the creation of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency.

As they say, necessity is the mother of all invention, and that necessity has never been greater as we try to build back better following the huge consequences of the pandemic. It is fitting that we should hold this debate today, as we mark the one-year anniversary of the lockdown. As well as looking back over the past year, the Bill gives us an opportunity to look forward.

Before I look forward, I want to look back at the incredible contribution that UK scientists have made to scientific endeavour and their list of achievements. Over centuries, the UK has been responsible for many great discoveries and inventions—from the first refracting telescope in 1668 to the discovery and understanding of DNA, and from the humble tin can to the jet engine. Probably the most poignant today is, as we have already heard, the development of the first vaccine more than 225 years ago in 1796. That discovery is helping the UK and the world to tackle the ravages of covid today.

UK research and the work of UK scientists have truly led to inventions that are potentially saving the world. But we cannot rest on our laurels, which is why I welcome the Government’s ongoing commitment to science and research and development. I welcome this debate and the meeting of our manifesto commitment to establish a high-risk, high-reward research agency, ARIA.

With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish to talk a little about the wider R&D landscape. I warmly welcome the Government’s ongoing commitment to making the UK a science superpower. Their commitment to spend 2.4% of GDP on R&D by 2027 and the £22 billion commitment to science in 2024-25 are fantastic but, as we have heard, there is no point in our making progress in one area if we are taking funds from another to do that. I will not labour the argument about funding for our participation in Horizon Europe, but needless to say I would like to see that money coming from a different pot rather than the existing ones.

Let us talk about the positives and the investment of £800 million in a new advanced research and invention agency, based on the principle of high risk and high reward and free from Government interference. To make the most of that, we have to change our view of risk. Risk here is good. That requires us to acknowledge—indeed, to embrace—failure as part of the process.

For the agency, that is fundamentally about people. It is about having top-quality, confident and knowledgeable people in the right places—the right chair and the right chief executive. It is also about having a command structure that is fleet of foot, which is why I think some of the measures in the Bill to exempt ARIA from FOI are the right thing to do.

ARIA needs to encourage and embrace new and novel ideas in the areas of artificial intelligence, quantum and, potentially, superconductivity. I accept that some of its endeavours, if not many of them, will fail, but even where there are failures, I still want its culture to be one of encouraging future submissions—a culture where project managers are not judged on individual outcomes that encourage them to play safe.

ARIA should be judged as a whole, and only after a reasonable time. It should work with both the usual suspects—the established research bodies—and potential sectoral disrupters. If we are searching for inventions, ARIA also needs the ability to work with individuals who may have promising ideas but not necessarily the resources or experience to make them work. ARIA has a role there to help people find the right development path.

While there will be failures, I am sure there will be many successes, so I would like to hear more about how a successful ARIA-funded project will make the transition from lab bench to product or service. The UK has a great track record of innovation and invention, but we do not have the best track record of commercialisation—of turning an idea into an industry that keeps the rewards here in the UK and provides our citizens with well-paid, rewarding jobs.

ARIA needs to help research to cross the so-called valley of death, and it needs to be alive to that challenge. It needs to work with ideas to ensure that they do not fail due to a lack of funding, support or interest. If an idea is novel enough that it has potential, ARIA needs to support it until it can hand it off in the confidence that it will be in safe hands and that it will thrive. There is no point having taxpayer-funded research or invention only for it to fail through lack of practical support.

I welcome this Bill. The creation of ARIA gives us a fantastic opportunity to fill a gap in the current landscape, and I very much look forward to working with Ministers as we take the Bill forward and reap the benefits that it can provide us with.

Covid-19: Business

Stephen Metcalfe Excerpts

Tuesday 12th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his election as Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, and I look forward to further interactions in the future. He raises a point about the support available for businesses. The Chancellor spoke earlier, and he set out an extension to the job retention scheme. He has also made available loans and grants, so there is a lot of support out there. On the point about ACAS, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Where employees feel that they have an issue they are not able to resolve, they absolutely should go to ACAS.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con) [V]]

I am sure we all welcome the reduction in the prevalence of the virus in the general population, but we also know that we are not going to beat this thing in weeks; it will take us months. Therefore, will my right hon. Friend join me in calling on everyone—individuals and businesses alike—to stay alert and to follow the rules, so that we can keep the very important R rate down?

[Alok Sharma]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The message is very clear on staying alert. It is about keeping the R rate down. That is the only way in which we can proceed—with baby steps, rather than giant strides—and make sure that we are keeping safe and preserving lives, but at the same time doing all we can to open up the economy further.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Metcalfe Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

The hon. Gentleman knows that the tourism economy is particularly important for the UK. While I am happy to meet him, we hear representations from the sector regularly. Despite the earlier comment to the Secretary of State about a reduction in our engagement with businesses, we are actually stepping that up. He will know that we will bring forward plans on immigration and the floor that he mentioned, but I am more than happy to hear his particular point.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

One thing that all businesses—large and small—depend on is having a skilled workforce. What is the Department doing to improve skills overall, and particularly engineering skills, on which more and more companies are now dependent?

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I welcome my hon. Friend back to the Chamber and thank him for his interest in this area. He knows that, as we leave the European Union, we want to ensure that we have a good distribution of engineering skills—not just in the south-east, but across the country—and help people to increase their skills. I am a great lover of apprenticeships, of what some small businesses are doing with apprenticeships, and especially of our degree-led apprenticeships involving organisations such as BAE Systems—which, I should say, operates in my constituency.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Nadhim Zahawi)]

Yes, she does.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

T5. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on what plans the Government have to secure the number of scientists, researchers and engineers we will require to reach the 2.4% GDP spend on research and development?

[The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Chris Skidmore)]

I start by thanking my hon. Friend for all the hard work he is putting in as the Government’s envoy for the “Engineering: Take a Closer Look” campaign, which is encouraging young people to consider science, technology, engineering and maths as a future career.

Our new fast-track immigration scheme, including a global talent visa and the removal of the cap on tier 1 visas, will enable a wider pool of scientific and research talent to come to the United Kingdom. We are also investing in the number of researchers we need for the future, including £170 million for bioscience doctoral students and £100 million for artificial intelligence doctoral training centres.