Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Stephen Metcalfe and Daniel Zeichner

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.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Stephen Metcalfe and Daniel Zeichner

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[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.