Higher Education and Research Bill — House of Lords, 2017-01-30
Topic: Technology
George Willis (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendments 480 and 481, which stand in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Sharkey. Before doing so, I offer support to the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, particularly for proposed new paragraph (a) in Amendment 479A, which would insert a requirement for a non-executive chair for each of the new research councils. I totally agree with the point she made. Having worked under two non-executive chairs at NERC, I know that the advantage they bring to the challenge facing the chief executive and to leading the board in terms of that challenge is of fundamental importance, and doing so would be difficult without it. I await the Minister’s response on why the Government have chosen the route of an executive rather than a non-executive chair. That is a huge departure from the way in which we have approached the research councils in the past. I confess that I tabled Amendments 480 and 481 to try to tease out from the Minister why the councils should consist of between five and nine members rather than between nine and 13, eight and 14 or some other number. There does not seem to be a clear explanation as to why those numbers have been chosen. I admit that I generally prefer to have small boards—of one person, if possible—because they are likely to be far more effective, efficient and dynamic, but there is clearly an optimum size depending on the nature, the mission, the budget, the governance and the expectation of the organisation The Bill—wrongly, I think—assumes that each of the new research councils will be exactly the same, but they will not; they will have very different aspirations, albeit a general one in terms of promoting research. The current research councils have memberships ranging from 10 on the ESRC to 17 on the EPSRC, and that is entirely possible because the Science and Technology Act 1965 did not say anything about numbers. I suggest to the Minister that, rather than adopt an amendment of this sort, it may be better to remove this requirement altogether and to allow the newly formed research councils, with guidance from the Secretary of State—we are very keen on that—to decide what number of members would work well for each one Amendment 481, the second amendment in my name in this group, is perhaps more significant. The one thing I have learned while I have been on a council—sorry, I have learned a lot of things; that sounded awful. But one of the most important things I have learned is the value of the lay members who come along to challenge the executive, and indeed the council, in ways that I did not think were possible. That has been particularly important as our research council has tried to remove our research institutes into different governance arrangements. It has been hugely important to have people who actually understand the machinations of changing governance and financial structures and who are able to look at complex organisations working with each other. Therefore, Amendment 481 says that on every research council there should be a minimum number of lay members to allow that challenge. If you had a board of five, it would be very difficult to say what the minimum number should be. I accept that four is a purely arbitrary number, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.