Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-30
Topic: Technology
Jonathan Mendelsohn (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I shall speak to our amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, has made a very good case. The long and the short of how we see this is that we do not think it was a very good idea in the first place and time has passed on. Many of the comments that have been made will find an echo in our thoughts It is worth returning to the original Nurse review. The report states: "In relation to Innovate UK, as stated earlier, the current delivery landscape is too complex and there should be a smoother pathway to more applied research. Integrating Innovate UK into the Research UK structure alongside the Research Councils could help such issues to be addressed However, Innovate UK has a different customer base as well as differences in delivery mechanisms, which Government needs to bear in mind in considering such an approach and which this review, according to its remit, has not looked at in depth" The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, made exactly that point: what evaluations were made when it went in I would suggest that both its target audience and the mechanisms that Innovate UK uses are so dramatically different that it is unlikely to be able to perform such an effective function within the context of UKRI. I think that it would be a terrible misfortune if Innovate UK, which has proved itself over some years to be a very effective body doing great things, were to come into UKRI with its current framework. That would not just be restrictive but could possibly be quite damaging for an institution that is following a good path I also think that this is a policy that was designed for a pre-Brexit world. In a post-Brexit world—which we are not in at the moment—we know that we are going to have to rely on research an awful lot more, and a great deal will be required of it. I cannot imagine that in such a situation we would ever put one of our most significant levers into this sort of environment; we would leave it to work independently. With the industrial strategy having now been published, it is absolutely clear that there is a massive hole in the delivery of its research objectives that would have been filled by Innovate UK. That is a mistake that the Government would be wise to take note of By the way, it is important to understand that Nurse himself recommended: "At the very least, the Chief Executives of HEFCE and Innovate UK should be represented, on the Executive Committee of Research UK", or UKRI. And that was probably a very measured judgment My final very brief point is in relation to what it is necessary to do to make the best of our university sector and to be able to commercialise at both ends of the spectrum via big company investments and tracking what research is being done as well as smaller companies emerging as the result of venture capital. An awful lot is going on in this area. Recently I spent time with some of the companies at Cambridge Enterprise Limited. Innovate UK is not the only solution that is required, and I think that it would be a colossal mistake to expect UKRI to perform that role and to forget the other things we may need to do. To restrict UKRI in that situation has the potential to do great harm to the long-term needs of our country, especially in an environment where we need an effective industrial strategy.