Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill — House of Lords, 2022-02-09
Topic: Education
Christopher Fox (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, it came as no surprise that the Government used their majority to negate the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Browne. The noble Lord has, in his tenacious way, set out why he regrets that, and I agree with him. It is not to be—it will not go to a vote—but I hope that the ARIA leadership will be more careful when they write the contracts for the money that they will give than perhaps the Government seem to be with enshrining this in law I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that the Science Minister’s comments were very helpful. They were more than we would usually get in these games of ping-pong, and that is to his credit As the Minister set out, since we sent this Bill to the other place, the name of the ARIA CEO has been announced. It is nice to see the Minister looking so pleased about things. He often looks quite downcast, so it is quite good for him to arrive with something that he can be pleased about. We wish Dr Highnam all speed and wish him well in what is a very important task Others have suggested that we look forward to the framework document emerging. In answer to the previous speaker, I do not think that the Minister has not shared with us something that he is sitting on; the Minister has not seen the framework agreement yet either, because it has not been written. However, we look forward to seeing it as soon as it has The Government have also had some important things to say about their focus for future research funding—I am talking here about the UKRI numbers. In their levelling-up White Paper, they announced the intention to increase the percentage of funding from what is rather dismissively called the golden triangle to other institutions, often but not exclusively further north. I should remind your Lordships that I am an alumnus of Imperial College Very briefly, I wanted to relate this to ARIA and, more importantly, to the commercialisation of innovation. There is a disparity between universities that are better at commercialising their innovation and thereby having another income stream, and those that are less good at that. I hope that ARIA is able to lead some excellence in that and spread the effective commercialisation of knowledge and innovation better. That would contribute to the Government’s levelling-up agenda at the same time I also recently met with the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund—known as UKI2S—which, as the Minister will know, acts as a bridge between public sector research and private capital. I would be interested to know from the Minister how this organisation can fit with ARIA and improve our overall commercialisation. I am sure the Minister will admit that the UK’s record on commercialisation has been patchy in the past and could definitely improve. I would suggest that UKI2S is one of the models that ought to be taken into account. I hope that the Minister might meet with me and that organisation to discuss this and how it might play into this space with its track record in order to deliver on the promise of ARIA. I think we all share the Government’s desire to—in the Minister’s words—drive the agenda for strategic, industrial advantage. With that, we hope that in 10 years’ time, ARIA will be seen to have played an important part in achieving that objective.