Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-30
Topic: Health
John Kevin Sharkey (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 475 and 491 in this group. I declare an interest as the current chair of the Association of Medical Research Charities. The first four amendments in this group, including Amendment 475, all deal with a rather striking omission from this Bill. As far as I can tell, there is no mention at all in the Bill of the contribution of the charitable sector to UK research and no provision made for the representation of the sector anywhere. My noble friend Lord Willis has made the case forcefully and clearly for rectifying that omission. My direct experience is with medical research charities. As my noble friend Lord Willis has just pointed out, last year these charities spent over £1.4 billion on medical research, 93% of which was through UK universities. That was a greater amount than was spent by either the MRC or the NIHR. Medical charity funding is vital to our standing and success in medical research. The UK is a world leader in this area, in part because of charitable funding. Medical charities also provide an unrivalled point of contact with patients, and I know the Government will agree that the patient voice should be represented in discussions about research funding and direction I acknowledge that the Government are aware of the importance of the charity research sector and have taken important steps to rectify its omission from the Bill. For example, as the Minister said, they have listed "charity research experience" among the desiderata in the recently published recruitment ad for UKRI members. That is a good thing, but it is not a substitute for having charitable research in its proper place in the Bill. That is what Amendment 475 does. It adds a further category— "funding of research from the charitable sector"— to the list of experience that, between them, the members of UKRI must have Amendment 491 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Willis and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, deals with the research councils, rather than with UKRI. As things stand, research councils can enter into joint funding partnerships with other bodies, and they very frequently do this. For example, I believe that around 40% of current MRC expenditure on research is in such partnerships. I am sure the Minister will agree that such partnerships are not only to be encouraged but are a well-established and vital way of doing business for the research councils. Amendment 491 is, essentially, a probing amendment. Its purpose is to seek reassurance from the Government, on the record, that after UKRI is established, the subsidiary research councils will still be as free as they are now to form such partnerships. I raised this issue in a recent meeting with the chair of UKRI, Sir John Kingman. He kindly wrote to me after the meeting, saying, "Let me also be clear that whilst legal agreements will be with UKRI, I fully recognise the importance, for example, of MRC being able to continue the rich partnerships they enjoy with medical research charities. The individual councils of UKRI will of course have delegated autonomy and authority to agree these arrangements, within their areas of expertise". Could the Minister specifically endorse Sir John’s view I would also be grateful if the Minister could clarify a few further points about partnerships. What changes will research councils and their partners experience in practice as a result of the new UKRI/research council structure? What different experiences would new partners experience? Under what circumstances would a research council’s plans for research partnerships need explicit approval from UKRI before they could be activated? Finally, on a more general level, what spending decisions, if any, would be reserved to UKRI?