Dame Chi Onwurah
MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West · Labour · United Kingdom
“An extraordinary debate is going on right now inside and outside AI companies about whether the possibility of AI destroying humanity is more or less than 10%. The European Union is moving ahead with a comprehensive AI regulatory framework, but the UK continues to rely on existing regulation.”
“The Pope also highlighted how the billions of online digital twins constitute an unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of a small number of men. Among the many consequences of the 40 years of neoliberalism repeatedly called out by the Prime Minister is a libertarian attitude to technology.”
“But this stealth digital twinning violates the integrity, uniqueness and very personhood of our constituents and of all of us. Digital twins can take many forms, from content creation algorithms and deepfakes to chatbots that reflect aspects of our personalities back at us. It is particularly worrying when children are the target.”
“The automated version of our kids will grow with them, using the power of AI to target advertising and products at them, and worse. The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee has heard about some of the tragic consequences of online grooming by algorithms and chatbots—a vulnerable boy persuaded to kill himself; a vulnerable girl fed…”
“In the arts, entertainment and tech industries, many performers are agreeing to the creation and use of digital replicas as part of their work—think of ABBA Voyage. But performers increasingly encounter unauthorised digital replicas of themselves, which pose a threat to their career, livelihood and reputation.”
“Since then, deepfakes have proliferated. The hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) was shown crossing the Floor in Parliament to join Reform, to his constituents’ consternation and his own—it was a fake. Then there were the horrendous photos of naked women and girls that Elon Musk’s AI created on demand.”
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“One of the strengths of ARPA and DARPA in particular in the US is that customer relationship and an end customer saying, “This is the challenge that we need to solve, and probably we will buy it in the end if you do that really well.” The other thing that we want to think about is what challenges we need to solve as a society. What are the really thorny issues, where we know we need some game-changing steps forward in technology and where potentially Government can play a big role and have a big lever? A couple of areas that stand out in conversations with businesses are things like net zero and health, where clearly we have some big commitments that we want to reach as well.”
“One of the really exciting things for me about ARIA is that it is a big play—a big investment—that the UK is saying we are now making in science and innovation: “This is a change in the way that we are doing things, and this is the problem that we are trying to solve.” I do not think it matters, necessarily, if that problem is defined now or by the challenge director, but we need to think quite carefully about what the problem or challenge might be, and about some of the criteria that sit around that. For me, there are probably two things that stand out as vital. The first is the sense of a market for a product at the end.”
“Thinking about the role that ARIA can play, particularly in the role of missions, what is really exciting about a mission, a problem statement or a challenge is that it not only does gives an opportunity to bring together cross-sectoral players—we just heard about the role that AI and biotechnology can play when you combine them, and having a really clear mission helps to bring together those cross-sectoral players—but it also helps to advertise what you are doing.”
“Q Just to come back briefly, you have made an important point that echoes some of what we have heard already today. In terms of setting out a mission, or where ARIA should be looking, do you feel that more direction needs to come from Government or from public engagement, or should that be left more generally to the executives? As to ensuring private sector engagement, we echo the Government’s ambition to reach 2.4% of GDP spend on R&D; indeed, Labour wants us to go from the average to the excellent, and reach 3%. The private sector is integral to that, so perhaps there could be a little more detail on how to ensure the new agency supports that ambition. Felicity Burch: Definitely. It is great to hear an even bolder ambition for R&D investment. I am sure the majority of the business community would support that as well.”
“I welcome the addition to the landscape. We need long-term commitment, but the recent experience of uncertainty about next year’s funding, the chopping and changing, and the lack of clarity about Horizon, would not bode well for this. We need absolute clarity on the plan and how this is going to fit into that.”
“Even though we have a plethora of agencies in the current ecosystem, there is nothing that sets out defines itself in that way. However, if this is to work, there are a number of things still to be clarified. I will mention a few, and Jim can pick up on this. ARIA has to have operational independence, if we are in the high-risk and long-term space, but it also has to have high focus. If we are aiming for £22 billion by 2024-25, £800 million is not a large sum of money, so if we have a plethora of missions, then I think we will go wrong. ARIA has to have focus of mission and a commitment to the model over the long-term, but also, and fundamentally, leadership. This is an incredibly difficult agency, given the multiple stakeholders out there, and it will only work if it has the image and the street cred to attract and retain talent.”
“I will first ask Adrian Smith, please. It is nice to see you. Adrian Smith: Thank you. Going back to the allusion to recent uncertainty about next year’s funding and where the Horizon Europe fee would come from, I stress that we need a coherent narrative and plan, not chopping and changing, and creating uncertainty. Uncertainty is bad, both within the community and for those who have to plan in the UK, but also for what we hope and assume will be our narrative of the UK being a global science and innovation player. Clarity of narrative and sticking to the plan is fundamental. Where does ARIA fit? The starting point that most have accepted and signed up to is that having a new kid on the block in the high-risk and high-reward long-term space is welcome.”
“Q Thank you very much, those are excellent answers. I see that we have been joined by Professor Sir Jim McDonald, so before my next question I want to welcome all three witnesses and say how much we appreciate your joining us this afternoon. For Adrian Smith and Professor Sir Jim McDonald: we have, very recently indeed, achieved some clarity on this year’s science budget. I know that that was a matter of concern for both the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering. There has certainly been a sense, and I wonder whether you would echo that sense, that we need long-term funding certainty—that it helps in the support of science and research more generally. Where do you see ARIA sitting in providing that long-term funding certainty, and how do you feel it can or should fit into the wider research environment?”
“It should be a disruptive innovator, but it should not necessarily damage the existing system, much of which is working well, but there are gaps that ARIA can hopefully fill in the coming years.”
“In fact, it would be even more damaging if we start the journey to have this innovation acceleration, this high-risk, high-reward agency, only to discard it within a few short years. I think that would damage business confidence, and we would also miss out on the opportunity to get the translational ability to feed out from the UK’s great research base to create new technologies. Of course, there are a number of schemes that are suggested—Felicity touched on them—and there is the exciting legal commitment that the UK Government have made to net zero. There is an economy and opportunities to build around that. Healthtech, and the whole piece around global health and how we deal with that, is another great opportunity for the UK to mark out its capability. ARIA should fit and integrate within the existing landscape.”
“To Adrian’s point on longevity, it would be good to get a planning horizon that was long—10 years de minimis and hopefully even longer, because many of the technological developments that come through these accelerated high-risk, high-reward programmes can take decades to come to fruition. Felicity mentioned the concept of a customer, and I could not agree more. The customer might be a Government Department but, for this acceleration of technology for solving challenges of scale at pace, we would increasingly need to see agencies, companies and industry sectors that can take these technological advances into practice. Late-stage R&D, which costs a lot of money, would be counter-productive.”
“Q Thank you very much. Professor Sir Jim McDonald? Professor McDonald: Just to echo what Adrian has been saying, I welcome Felicity highlighting net zero and health. The additional funding is absolutely welcome. As you have pointed out, there was great concern about the uncertainty around the funding generally. The Government’s commitment to making the UK a science, engineering and innovation superpower is exciting. It is built on what is a genuinely world-class research base here in the UK, but of course traditionally we have not done the D in research and development terribly well, so ARIA coming forward to fit into the landscape is key.”
“Internationally, it is hard to think of anything really, at scale—even if it were only in terms of being a magnet for global talent of one sort or another, an international dimension is almost inevitable and appropriate, but if it were all offshored, that would make nonsense of the agency. I have now forgotten what your third question was.”
“Secondly, the Bill makes provision for public sector R&D funding to be spent by ARIA internationally. I understand that there might need to be collaboration —collaboration drives research—between UK and international bodies, but do you think it would be appropriate for ARIA to fund exclusively international research programmes? Thirdly, do you think the UK should get some kind of tangible return from this level of investment in high-risk, high-reward research? Adrian Smith: The answer is both, of course. If there were no research element, it would be something we completely understood and all that was left would be to deploy it, in which case this does not seem to be the right kind of agency to do it. I think it starts off with a substantial element of R, but that is perhaps pointless if it does not end up with the D.”
“Q Thank you very much, Mrs Cummins. I shall endeavour to restart the exact sentence I was saying. It is noticeable that, while the Bill provides a minimum length of time for ARIA’s existence of 10 years, there seems to be no provision for a minimum length of time for funding. Those research scientists who have recently lost their funding at very short notice because of cuts to the overseas development aid budget may not feel reassured by that. I have three very specific questions. Adrian represents the Royal Society; Jim represents the Royal Academy of Engineering. We have had some discussion about whether ARIA should be looking at blue-skies research or transformational translation. I assume that you both think it should do both. Or maybe not—will you let us know?”
“So I would encourage international connectivity, but, speaking as an engineer, I would like to see good outcomes that impact on the economy positively, build industry, support the creation of supply chains, support indigenous supply chains and create new ones around new technologies, whether in net zero, health tech or AI, to build an industry through which we can drive the economy to keep that virtuous circle of driving economic strength so that we continue to invest in science, research and innovation. There is a circularity here, and I would suggest that we do not fragment and see these things in a systems perspective—that is what engineers will propose in any case—but see ARIA as part of a larger system. But driving that through to economic and societal benefits is key for me.”
“We should be promoting that, showing confidence in the UK that we are building on our outstanding research base but we now have another mechanism through which we can drive technologies, find solutions and indeed build economies. So I echo Adrian’s point: this could be a great magnet for talent into the UK and those excellent international individuals who want to come here, some of them pursuing research but many of them also engaging in that exploitation, in that high-risk, high-reward programme.”
“While the fundamental research is not viewed as the primary focus of ARIA, it should be keying into a rich base to draw from in the UK research base. Of course, there is an opportunity here for international collaboration as we drive development towards application. However, it is not unreasonable to imagine that ARIA could commission basic research work that emerged as it sought to solve some of these major challenges. The international connectivity is important, even at the highest level. Telling the world about our ambitions around being a science superpower and trying to become one of the world’s most innovative nations is not something that we should keep to ourselves.”
“Should the UK get a return on this investment? Adrian Smith: High risk, high return is the mantra, isn’t it? So I think an expectation of substantial transformational return is implicit. Professor McDonald: First and foremost, ARIA should be a funding mechanism that delivers innovative solutions to ambitious, real-world challenges, bringing together and developing breakthrough research and technology. It is worthwhile reiterating that. Of course, that has to be driven by substantial funding. The flexibility—I am sure we will come back to this—the independence and autonomy for this agency are going to be fundamental to its success. Adrian has mentioned skills a few times. I absolutely agree with that.”
“Q Thank you very much. Adrian, I was very interested in what you said about the number of people in organisations who want to influence the terms of the mission. Obviously, if the Government set the mission, they have a democratic mandate. If the CEO or the director sets the mission, how would you suggest that we can test that he or she is not simply being influenced by their pet projects and preferences? What kind of test could we set out? Adrian Smith: Whoever is chosen to be the chief executive and whoever surrounds that person in governance must be people the rest of us will trust. They will have the stature to be trusted. Without that, I think we are in trouble.”
“Q So you think it is only trust, and there has to be trust in governance? Adrian Smith: I think it is an essential element. As I said earlier, I think genuinely that whoever is going to lead this and oversee the governance has to think very hard about how you interact with both the hard-nosed stakeholders and, as Jim and others have alluded to, the public, in terms of taking them along with the idea that this is a mission that is ultimately for the good of all of us.”
“The point is that we need to think about this, as Felicity said, in a coherent way, including all the way through to procurement.”
“I have one other thing to say, which is slightly cheeky, but I have been listening to the proceedings so far, and they are extremely interesting—it is one of the most interesting sessions I have ever attended. All the examples given of contributions that make a difference have all been, it strikes me, about engineering, so I suggest that we rename this the “Advanced Research and Engineering Agency”. To be honest, “invention” strikes me a bit like something in the 1950s, with somebody emerging from a shed with a gadget that has just blown their hair off. Peter Highnam pointed out “projects”, so we might actually consider it to be the “Advanced Research and Engineering Projects Agency”. No doubt we will get on to why I might say that.”
“First, serendipity does not happen by accident, so we need systems and processes to enable the network diversity and uncovering the unexpected. I am hoping that the new agency will do all of that. To begin to address some of your other points, we need to improve the whole of the national innovation system. That means not putting in late stage R&D, translation and, in particular—this is something of a bugbear of mine—procurement. If you do not have revenue and if you cannot get product into market, no amount of R&D at the front end will necessarily get you anywhere. If we do not do that, we are always going to be trapped into saying that we need more and more R&D and simultaneously mourning our inability to translate this into economic growth and productivity.”
“Q Hi, David and Bob. It is great to see you both and thanks for giving your time. I do not know whether you have been able to follow our evidence sessions, but we have had a lot of discussion about the purpose and remit of ARIA and the extent to which it addresses fundamental failings—if there are fundamental failings—in how the UK chooses and commercialises research. I would like to ask you both your opinion on the remit and purpose of ARIA. What is the failing that you see ARIA fixing? How does it need to change to fix that? Are there things that it is not addressing that it needs to? I will start with David Cleevely. David Cleevely: Thanks, Chi. I would like to start by saying three things rather briefly.”
“To get that in place would mean having a really good dialogue between academia and industry and all parties involved to understand what those challenges really are. I also suggest, looking at the DARPA model, that we should back this up by having a really strong public procurement model. Again, we have seen that in covid, and we could see it here, providing a first customer and enabling some of these technologies to be developed. That would be really key. The final thing I will say is about the personnel involved in this, because that has also come up several times. They really need to have autonomy; they need the ability to make the decisions and choices on what projects they pursue. Equally, they need to be able to start and, critically, stop things. I have much more to say, but I will stop there.”
“Having something that can respond to the types of challenge that we face, which quite frankly do not respect sector or skills boundaries, is really important today. In particular, there are real opportunities to learn off the back of the covid experience, which has allowed us to really accelerate innovation at quite an incredible pace. If we can take some of that and operationalise that within an ARIA-type environment, that would be a very positive thing. One thing I have heard, because I have also been listening to the sessions through the day, is mention of crossing the valley of death. For me, there needs to be a matching market pull for the wonderful research products that will come out of ARIA.”
“Q As a chartered engineer, I am always happy to put engineering in anything. The Advanced Research and Engineering Projects Agency would be AREPA. Your point, which has come up a number of times, is whether this is about, if you like, cutting-edge research, or whether it needs to be looking at transformational translation of existing research, or whether it needs to do both. Certainly, the economist Mariana Mazzucato, as you probably heard, made the point that having the basis there is important, and you seem also to be saying that it needs to look at both, and that it needs to get its purpose right. Let me go now to Bob, and then we will come back. Bob Sorrell: Thank you very much. Picking up on David’s comments and your question, I am very excited about the potential creation of ARIA.”
“The other part that is often missed in this is the social science aspect, because there has to be a level of public acceptance around the things that people are developing on their so-called behalf, and that part is also incredibly important. We need to have a very open process for how we decide on those projects so that we avoid, as you say, falling into the traps of vanity or pet projects. If you have clear criteria from the outset and stick to them, you will be fine in that regard.”
“In the same way, for defence it was to not be surprised by innovation and to make sure the technology was available for defence in the United States. Within that, DARPA went ahead and looked for things that met that overall goal. Bob Sorrell: I think there needs to be an overarching structure set for the areas ARIA pursues. In identifying these grand challenges, there is a list that we could reel off right now that would fit the scope. Earlier, I heard conversations about having six wise people who would make these decisions and cover these areas. I worry about that approach. I think you need people who are really up for engaging people to understand the nature of the problems and translating them into meaningful challenges.”
“He talked about the way in which there is autonomy within DARPA to do things within a general area set by Government. Then, within that, there is a peer-review system that enables us to overcome some of the cronyism that you talk about. The more open you are about what you are doing, the less easy it is to hide the fact that you have let particular contracts and so on, so there ought to be a mechanism within the governance structure of the agency to do that. There is a two-level thing here, but it is up to the Government to decide where the UK’s priorities are. Are we, for example, really concerned about climate change? Can we specify challenges within climate change that will make a difference?”
“I think it is for the Government to set the priorities where they feel that there are specific challenges. We have talked about climate change, for example. That is one, and there may be others that one would want to address, either in health or in other topics. That is the point at which the handover occurs and whoever is running ARIA takes that particular domain or challenge. I have been involved, for example, in the Longitude prizegiving, and it was very interesting how we focused down on antimicrobial resistance and testing. A lot of interesting things came out of that. By the way, all the solutions were engineering. The point is that we should listen to Peter Highnam’s testimony really carefully. Honestly, that was one of the most interesting insights into DARPA that I have had.”
“Q Thank you for both of those responses. To follow up, you both emphasised the importance of procurement and market pull. It seems to me that there is such a vast range of areas, issues or challenges that ARIA could look at. What are your views on who should decide what it looks at? Is there a need for a mission, and who should that be set by? If it is left to four, five or six individuals to set the missions, how do we ensure that it is not simply about vanity or pet projects, and that cronyism—we are having some challenges with that at the moment—is not promoted? How do we avoid cronyism and support diversity? David Cleevely: I notice that this came up in the previous session. I think the answer is, in one sense, very straightforward.”
“I think we have to take some of that learning to see how we can get public procurement to work in a better way going forward.”
“I completely agree with you that it has been far easier, in all my companies, to sell stuff into the United States—particularly into the United States defence market—than it has ever been to sell into the UK. Bob Sorrell: To build on that, I did a couple of terms at Innovate UK and we tried stimulating public procurement during that period. I think a lot of it is about the culture and getting it right, to allow people to invest in those smaller companies and different technical solutions, to move them away from the existing ones. We got that to work during covid. We managed to get it to work, and we managed to get ourselves investing and procuring things in a different way. That is why I keep coming back to that and looking at what we did differently then that allowed people to make those different choices.”
“You have DASA and various others playing around with projects within the different services, for acquiring different kinds of technology. I think the phrase “a bit more coherence” was used by Felicity. I think we need to understand what the map of that innovation system looks like. I am pretty convinced that people are pretty smart—they will make the right decisions. You just need to give them the right structure, hence my point that serendipity does not happen by accident. These kinds of things happen because you have constructed systems and processes so that people bump into and talk to each other, and will exchange ideas. ARIA is fine as it stands, but it sits within quite a complex system. I would like to see much more recognition within Government about how complex that system is, and how it actually operates.”
“Q If nobody else has a question, I will take the opportunity to come back on that point, particularly on procurement. I remember having a great deal of difficulty persuading the Prime Minister that the American Department of Defence was far better at buying stuff from UK small businesses than the UK Ministry of Defence, as the figures show. What do you think we could do, or what should Government be doing, to enable, require or ensure that ARIA, or AREPA, better supports small business growth and, at the same time, addresses the issue of market pull? David Cleevely: The general thrust of what AREPA—if we are going to adopt that word—is trying to do is right. There are a number of things going on in bits of defence, for example.”
“Wylam Brewery in my constituency has a fantastic location—our old science museum—and wonderful beers, which I have personally researched. The EU accounted for half its business last year, but since the Government bungled the EU trade deal, Wylam beers have been stuck in ports or sent back. Official Government advice is to set up a European office, effectively moving jobs from Newcastle to the EU. This week’s Food and Drink Federation figures show that Wylam is not alone in seeing exports collapse, so will the Minister meet me and the brewery to get this sorted and Wylam beers once more enjoyed on the continent?”
“In lockdown, we have all become much more dependent on technology, yet that technology is not designed to treat us equally, with video-conferencing and photo-sharing apps that do not recognise black faces, recruitment algorithms that discriminate on ethnicity, and the Home Office’s own visa application algorithm withdrawn because of bias. In this week of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, what is the Minister doing to prevent structural racism from being further entrenched by new technologies?”
“Everyone who has had a coronavirus vaccine knows of the deep sense of gratitude to scientists. In facing the challenge of climate change, future pandemics and technological change, we look to science. At the general election, the Prime Minister promised to double science spend. Instead, we appear to have a £1 billion cut to the science budget plus a £120 million cut to our overseas development science as part of a “new settlement” that protects “the most effective research programmes.” Can the Minister say which programmes will be cut, which scientists will lose their grants, and which institutions will close? The Government who clap the NHS but impose a real-terms pay cut now plan to praise science and cut scientists.”
“We believe that science is an engine of progress and that ARIA can accelerate it, but we also believe that it must have a clear mission to address our great societal challenges and that it must be accountable. It is not as if there were a lack of challenges for it to address. Indeed, there are many, but without direction from the Government, the agency risks losing its way. We are determined to amend the Bill to empower ARIA to succeed, and I look forward to working with Members across the House to achieve that.”
“It is also interesting that the worked example in the statement of policy intent from the Secretary of State uses—I think that is the most appropriate term—a female programme manager. Women are hugely under-represented in science research. They make up just 15% of the principal investigators applying for Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grants, for example. I am sure the Minister would agree that this lack of representation holds science back, and I hope she will tell us how ARIA will help to address that and the other fundamental disparities in science. Labour wants ARIA to be a success, and we support its creation.”
“I am sure I am not the only one to be somewhat dismayed by the languid tone, during his short opening remarks, in which he said that discussions were ongoing. The Government have also failed to support medical research charities. They have failed to support early career researchers and doctoral students during the pandemic. The Government like to talk up research, but their actions do not match their words. My right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North asked how ARIA would work with existing bodies, given the lack of clarity on its mission. I am concerned that it may end up competing for existing funding rather than leveraging in new funds. That is a criticism levelled against some Catapults.”
“The Government are reportedly on course to miss their target of spending 2.4% of GDP on R&D by 2027 following cuts to overseas research, which the vice-chancellor of Newcastle University, Chris Day, tells me may lead to immediate redundancies in the north-east. Labour is committed to raising the proportion of GDP spent on R&D to 3%, and for this Government to fail to reach their target of 2.4% would be shocking indeed. Further, and even more astonishingly, just two weeks before the new financial year, the scientific community still does not know what funding is to be allocated for science. Just this morning, the Secretary of State did not deny the prospect of £1 billion-worth of cuts to next year’s science budget. He must stand up for science in his negotiations with the Treasury.”
“Let us not kid ourselves: high risk means failure. There will be failures—high-profile, expensive failures with public money. Is the CEO expected to weather that storm without ministerial accountability? Is it the Government’s intention to be able to throw ARIA to the wolves and keep Ministers safe? The creation of ARIA must not serve as a distraction from the UK’s wider research and development challenges. My hon. Friends the Members for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) and for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) both emphasised the lack of certainty and ambition on science funding now, and they both represent great science communities.”
“The Secretary of State tried to present freedom of information as an obstacle to the UK being a science superpower, but he also said that ARIA was inspired by DARPA in the US, which is subject to freedom of information. We are concerned that this Government are driven more by an ideological disdain for scrutiny than by a desire to further UK science. The Campaign for Freedom of Information shares our concerns, fearing that without public accountability, ARIA will lack the weighty public interest needed to support its mission. I also want to add a word of warning here, echoing the words of many Members today including the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), and the chair of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe).”
“Leadership in any organisation is critical, but ARIA seems entirely dependent on its CEO and chair, with little external accountability or ministerial direction. Hon. Members, including the hon. Members for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) and for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), highlighted some of the concerns this raises, including the potential for crony and vanity projects. I would like to add two points. First, however great the initial CEO and chair are, they will move on. What then? Secondly, science is a collective endeavour— perhaps one of the greatest collective endeavours—yet the Government seem to believe that by recruiting one or two star performers, ARIA can transform our science landscape. We need to build an institution that furthers our societal aims for decades to come.”
“Setting a mission would bring together business, Government and the wider public in support of ARIA. This Bill seems more designed to set it adrift. We heard from Government Members best described as the disciples of Dominic Cummings. The former adviser to the Prime Minister said that the UK was in need of a blue-skies thinking agency. But can I gently suggest that we should not test Mr Cummings’s ideological eyesight by driving to a scientific Bishop Auckland without a credible mission—not with public money at least? On the “Today” programme this morning, the Secretary of State for Health said that the vaccine programme “will be a model of how Governments can make things happen and move fast and deliver for their population”, but not, it would seem, when it comes to scientific research. The vaccine programme definitely had a mission.”
“Of course we want Britain to back similar high-risk, high-reward research that unlocks the full potential of our scientific creativity. But there are concerns—concerns shared across the House. Many Members highlighted the lack of direction for ARIA. The Secretary of State claimed that the Bill equips ARIA with the “tools and freedoms that it needs”. By implication, then, it doesn’t need a mission. But the renowned economist Professor Mariana Mazzucato has said: “ARIA should be oriented around societal challenges with broad buy-in that define the 21st century and can just as effectively stimulate cross-disciplinary innovation, for example climate change”. The Institute of Physics has said that a clear mission is “essential” and the Chair of the Science and Technology Committee raised concerns about ARIA’s lack of “focus and purpose”.”
“Research by Oxford Economics commissioned by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy found that each £1 of public research and development stimulates between £1.96 and £2.34 of private research and development in the long run, and together they help address the key challenges facing humanity, from climate change to inequality, from pandemics to productivity. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) said, Labour recognises that the UK needs new mechanisms to support high-risk/high-reward research. As such, ARIA is a step in the right direction. The United States Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency programme, which the Secretary of State cites many times in his statement of policy intent, has helped give us inventions from the internet to Siri, from cyborg insects to GPS technology.”