Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill — House of Lords, 2021-12-14
Topic: Government Operations
Jenny Chapman (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I recognise the expertise of noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, on issues of corporate governance and, like my noble friend Lord Browne, I have enjoyed listening to her in Committee and again today. I will be interested to hear what assurances the Minister is able to give as a consequence of her amendments. I have learned a lot from her through this process and I look forward to learning more in the future I welcome Amendment 17 from the noble Lord, Lord Morse, whose case is no doubt bolstered by his experience over many years. It is a real joy to me that we have come to this House at more or less the same time. This is our first Bill together, and I am very pleased to add my name to his amendment There have long been concerns about "revolving doors" in politics—it is not something that started with this Government—but my noble friend Lord Browne was correct to observe that concern about issues such as those dealt with by Amendment 17 is growing, and frankly the Government have brought it on themselves. There is deep concern in the public mind about these issues and we shall see on Thursday what the people of North Shropshire make of it all I am struck by the fact that the Minister has taken the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Morse—a very good amendment which we support—and has directed us to look at paragraph 11 of Schedule 1, which states: "The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the procedures to be adopted for dealing with conflicts of interest." They may, but "may" is doing a lot of lifting there, and obviously they may not as well, so there is nothing to give us any assurance that the danger of which the noble Lord, Lord Morse, is correct to warn us could be averted by that provision. We are just not buying it. Although the Minister has, for illustrative purposes, provided a suggestion of how the regulations might look, that does not provide us any assurance whatever Given the Minister’s reluctance to accept any of the suggestions that we have made—none of the suggestions, from FoI to reporting, have been taken up by the Government—he is somewhat leaving ARIA exposed, in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Morse, explained so well. We want this organisation to succeed, but because of the Government’s rigidity on these issues, the fear is that we are setting it up with a weakness: this lack of transparency and ability to challenge The Minister is kidding himself if he thinks that these issues will not be scrutinised and that some of the problems that may emerge will not somehow get out. I am sure that the Public Accounts Committee will enjoy crawling all over this when it gets the opportunity to do so. We want this to work, but I am afraid that the Government’s approach is not doing ARIA any favours I want to hear what the Minister has to say and whether something can be done to provide us with the assurance we are looking for that ARIA will not be characterised—or mischaracterised, I hope—as some sort of secret agency. That would only cause this fascination and determination to probe into its activities to grow.