Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-30
Topic: Technology
Robert Stevenson (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for introducing it so well, because he covered all the nuances. We have one amendment in this group, Amendment 500A, which complements the points that he was making. It reflects the need to make sure that Research England, in its functions, which would be very narrowly focused on England—including, of course, the north of England—could have the capacity to consult other bodies that perform the same functions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That goes with the general grain of what is being discussed I have a fantasy that this area was probably dreamed up in the good old days before Brexit was on the horizon, in the confident assumption that there would be no separate Scotland—and certainly no separate Wales and Northern Ireland, if these issues are still in play, as I am sure they are. That reflects a relatively straightforward analysis of what had to be done to pay lip service to the need to ensure that those people not physically located in England were seen to have some influence on the levers that generated the money. But that is such a naive view of what is now such a complicated world that I wonder whether what is in the Bill is sufficient to take that trick. It is one area in which reflection will be required, as the noble and learned Lord hinted, because I do not think that what we have here will do I take it as axiomatic that UKRI is not a representative body and that there would be no advantage in making it so—so we are not talking about ensuring that the representation on it is in some way reflective of the various agencies and constituencies that need to be served by it. However, there are optical issues—it has to be seen to be representative in a way that would not have been the case two or three years ago. The idea that, as we heard from the letter of invitation, it has an acknowledgment of the need to recruit from people with obvious experience in an area will probably will not be sufficient. We are talking about the allocation of resources getting scarcer as we go forward, despite the Government’s reasonable largesse, in an environment where it would be very difficult for those bodies that have been funded to seek alternative matching funding. The institutions we are talking about are not all universities, because research is carried out outside the universities—although much less than in other European countries—in research institutes and similar places. Up until now these have been very reliant on external funding and, as we will hear in later amendments, they are feeling a cold wind coming. In this very complicated area we have to ensure that the funds will reach the institutions which are best able to provide the research services which UK plc is looking for and in a way that is seen to be fair We have not touched on the fairness issue. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, talked about the need for firewalls to make sure that the funding streams were not absorbed by other pressures and under other arrangements. That is probably a necessary but not sufficient condition and does not need to be in the Bill. However, the idea exists that England, because of the golden triangle effect, has a pre-eminent chance of getting all the funding and that, despite the way in which these funds will be allocated—through the Haldane principle and others—there will be enough room left for those who wish to make trouble about this in, say, Scotland or other places. This is a worry and it will need to be looked at very carefully before the Minister comes back. I do not have a solution to it, but we are not necessarily in the right place at the moment.