Daniel Zeichner
MP for Cambridge · Labour · United Kingdom
“I recall, as a shadow Minister, visiting a major institution in the country and sending the management into panic when I asked them where the bus stop was to get back to the station.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the location of bus stops. I am so frustrated when I have taken the train to Cambridge, arrive at the station, see the bus, but have to walk 200 yards around the platform, come out of the station and walk 200 yards back to the bus stop, to find the bus has gone.”
“Devolution and local government reorganisation are different things. To be honest, they should probably be considered separately, but they have become so interlinked and intertwined in this debate that it is impossible to do so. If we are to have a stronger devolution settlement, it is right to spend more time getting it right.”
“I commend the Secretary of State and his team for their determination and resolve in the transfer to renewables. In the extraordinary and unprecedented weather that we are having at the moment I can assure the House that some shade would be really welcome in parts of the east of England.”
“I commend all the hard work that has gone into both the road map and the profitability review by the civil servants, the ministerial team and so many people across the sector, including Baroness Batters.”
“On that point about speculative building, I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is probably not a fan of big, bold projects of this kind, but does he agree that there is a very good example just down the road in Cambridge?”
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“Dr Highnam: One addendum to that is that we have a notion here of Government purpose rights. Yes, the invention is owned by the creator, but if you receive DARPA funding and the appropriate terms are in the paperwork and the arrangement that we have with you then there are limited rights available to the US Government for those inventions. Dr Dugan: Just to clarify what Peter is saying, those limited rights are about making sure the invention can be practised in service of national security.”
“Q Just to come back on one point there, you say free it from the profit motive. I was quite struck through all of this by this stress on public service and honour, which is wonderful—perhaps we are struggling a bit with that here at the moment. Who owns the intellectual property on all of this? It is a complicated question. Is there a simple answer? Dr Dugan: The organisations that create the breakthroughs own the intellectual property in the case of Wellcome Leap, and that is usually the case in DARPA. Now we usually also have a backstop, which says we have march-in rights if the entity either chooses not to commercialise it or to transition it to impact. Then we would go and say, “We need to take this in service of national security,” but at its core the intellectual property belongs to the inventor of the breakthroughs.”
“Clearly, therefore, Government and a multitude of stakeholders have an interest in what the mission will be, and how the leadership of the new organisation will satisfy the desire on the part of all those stakeholders to have a finger in the pie of influencing the mission. I think that will be very interesting to see.”
“The aspiration—the 2.4% aspiration—is aiming at the average of the OECD, which has probably crept up now in any case to 2.5%. In the meantime, the United States is around 3% and Israel is around 4.7%. The big picture stuff is the total amount of investment in the R&D landscape. So I think there would be less warm support for this body if it were at the expense of that wider investment. As for who sets the mission, I think it is an extremely interesting question. There is an interesting tension between what most of us would see, which is that if this agency is to have real street cred, it needs tremendous operational independence, but on the other hand the thinking behind it is that the mission will be of great benefit to the UK.”
“Q A few years ago, we were told that there was no magic money tree. That seems to have been parked temporarily, but I fear that it will return at some point. I detect enthusiasm from all of you for this project, but how much is your enthusiasm dependent upon the money being genuinely new and additional in terms of the wider research environment? I have a second question. Through the day, we have heard from different witnesses mainly a view that there needs to be a mission but also some difference of opinion as to who should set that mission. Who do you think should be setting it? Maybe I can go to Sir Adrian first. Adrian Smith: In terms of new money or old money, I think the key thing is really to look at the big picture.”
“There is a lot of sense in that, but they cannot do that in a vacuum; it needs to make sense to a wider science innovation community, and to society in fact. That comes back to the importance of a long-term market and the social issue that we might want to address with ARIA. We will be looking out for it to do those things.”
“One other thing to note is that we have tried to create something that looks like ARIA quite a few times before. For a long time, there has been a sense that we needed to do something like this. Initially, when what was the Technology Strategy Board was founded, people talked about it looking like a UK version of ARPA. When we established the industrial strategy challenge funds, people also talked about them being a UK version of ARPA. The difference with ARIA is the legislative approach and the creation of an independent body, which means we are genuinely doing something different. This is a really exciting way to leverage some of the Government’s R&D investment. As to who precisely sets the mission, I understand that BEIS would like the ARIA team to do that.”
“Q That sounds like a gloriously British response to me, but I agree with it. Felicity? Felicity Burch: Similarly to Adrian’s response, support for this body comes alongside the fact that it is new money, and we need the new money in order to grow the level of R&D in the UK. The level of Government spending on today’s level—obviously, there are longer-term plans, but at today’s level—would not hit the target. I think we do need new money in the system, and it makes sense that ARIA is one of the places to which that money is directed. But we do not want to undermine other institutions, such as UKRI and Innovate UK, and catapults in particular are hugely important to businesses. We do not want to undermine that, and this is definitely about building up a coherent system.”
“Let us have the public understand why this is important, and give a voice to the science, engineering and innovation community. They should be accountable for ensuring that the idea is understood by the nation. I am not suggesting that the public would be directly involved in the agenda, but that public engagement would raise awareness of what science innovation is all about and turn some of the Government’s superpower commitments into a reality for individuals out there in society. New money, please, and a long-term commitment, and let us give this entity independence and autonomy but the accountability that sits behind it should respond to our customers’ drive for new technological solutions. That should be done in a way that drives value into the UK economy.”
“There might be some competition, which would be healthy, but there may be some articulation in complementarity that will emerge if we are doing the right things. It needs new money and long-term commitment. As to who should lead this, I buy into the model of greater independence and autonomy. The customer will exert influence; to go back to the comment about the customer being a Government Department or Departments, and industry as well, they will have an influence and try to prioritise where the CEO and the team and board will take the direction of travel for ARIA. I would like to see it exercise independence and autonomy going forward. This may have been raised earlier, but I think public communication will be critically important.”
“Sir Jim? Professor McDonald: Thank you. Coming back directly to the question, this must be new money to enhance the credibility of what is sought to be done. As you know, we said earlier that the UK’s research, science and innovation base is an absolute national asset. We cannot exploit that research base if it is underfunded and not attracting the very best talent with the very best facilities. This has to be additional investment to complement existing funding. I agree with some of the implicit elements of your question that that investment must sit within the system perspective, so although this will be a new funding model that brings a new type of leadership into the research and innovation landscape, there must be plenty of dialogue between ARIA leadership and UKRI, BEIS and other entities that Adrian mentioned.”
“Bob Sorrell: That was a great answer from David. I will just pick up on a couple of things. I go back to the fundamental issue of matching the research that is coming out of ARIA with the market pull for it. It is important to define what the challenges are up front. The role of public procurement, as David raised, is critical, as is supporting the growth of the so-called Mittelstand—the mid-sized companies—and understanding what is behind the culture that leads to so many of those companies being sold at around the £50 million level, as opposed to growing to the hundreds-of-millions-of-pounds companies that they could be. How do we support them through that whole growth cycle? There is much more that I think we could do in that space.”
“The majority was being bought by Americans—American defence and security stuff. It is a great disappointment to me that we do not have the ability to nurture and bring on. The way the Americans do it is that they have that complete system. They have an awful lot of money and effort going into procurement. Somebody spoke earlier about the infantilisation of Government Departments, and the way in which that expertise is not there. I will mention engineering again here. We need more engineers in Government, who can take those kinds of decisions and understand what we need to procure to be able to do things. That strikes me as so important. It is not to detract from AREPA, as we might call it, but in order for it to be as functional and effective as possible, we need to look at the entire system.”
“If you look at a place like Cambridge, as you well know, Daniel, we have 20 $1 billion companies. Companies that have come into existence that were not even a glimmer in somebody’s eye in 2014 and are now about to be floated. That is the kind of process we need to understand, and why we do not have more of those successes. In particular, if I may blow Cambridge’s trumpet, we need to understand why we have those things happening in Cambridge, and why they are not being replicated elsewhere. From my personal point of view, having sold a company to an American buyer last November, which, as you can imagine, was an interesting experience, it was because it had innovative technology. We were absolutely the best in the world and hardly anybody from the UK bought anything from us.”
“Q Thank you, Chair. Welcome, both of you; it is good to see you. I have been struck throughout today by the evidence that we have been looking at an American model, trying to learn lessons from it and importing it into what looks to me like a rather different environment and landscape here. I would like both of you to ignore all that we have heard today and answer the question I would ask at the beginning, which is: what is the big problem facing the UK R&D system? Do you think ARIA, as it is presented, can be bent to fit whatever problem it is that you think needs to be solved? David Cleevely: What is the big problem? The big problem is that we do not have procurement systems that buy enough stuff from small and medium-sized enterprises. Half the employment growth in this country comes from 7% of the SMEs that are fast growing.”
“Bob Sorrell: To pick up on what David is saying, ARIA is part of the solution. We need all the things that we have, effectively, to put us in a position to lead against the challenges that we face. We would not be in this position if we did not have such a brilliant research community in the UK to start with. It is fantastic that we are having a conversation about how we capitalise on that. It is not just £800 million for ARIA, which is just seed money to start it, but the investment in the overall infrastructure that will make many of these things possible. We need to commit to doing that as well, if the UK is really going to lead and be the test bed and demonstration centre for the technologies that it can lead in and deploy globally. David Cleevely: I think Bob and I are absolutely in agreement on that.”
“Q To summarise slightly—I do not want to become a grim AREPA—what we need is not only an ARIA that can do the things that we have been talking about today, but possibly other things alongside it to make it work. Would you agree with that? David Cleevely: It is fine tinkering around with the engine and putting another turbocharger on it, but if the chassis, the transmission system and the wheels will not deliver what you need, all that energy and power is going to go somewhere. In an international system, all we will do is to help to accelerate other countries that are willing to buy our stuff from us. That is fine; I am all for international co-operation, but I really would like to see a bigger contribution to economic growth and productivity improvements in the UK.”
“I am of the generation that remembers what discord in Ireland meant for people here on the mainland. I remember my mum being scared to go to work in London because of the bombs that were going off. Scared to go to work in London! What would the Secretary of State say today to those like my mum who would not understand how the Government have allowed the current situation to arise?”
“She made a couple of important points, saying that despite the welcome work done by the 100,000 genomes project at such places as the Wellcome Sanger Institute, there are still long delays, and testing is limited by resources and NHS England funding. Secondly, there is the question of making sure there is sufficient access to clinical trials. Professor Raymond suggests that as we have a limited number of nationally funded genomic laboratories, it could be possible to introduce a statutory obligation to notify, which would produce a bigger group for clinical trials. Finally, on the question of our relationship with the European Union, what progress has been made on developing a rare disease trial protocol?”
“Will she also tell us how the various initiatives, including the NICE methods review, the innovative medicines fund and the recently published commercial medicines framework will work together to support access to medicines for rare diseases? There has been a long-running issue around the NICE process review in relation to the single technology appraisal programme, which many feel is not very suited to the specialised medicines world. It led to the highly specialised technologies programme, but there is a continuing gap between the two, and perhaps she can shed some light on that. Professor Lucy Raymond was professor of medical genetics and neurodevelopment at the department of medical genetics in Cambridge, and has welcomed me on Rare Disease Day in previous years.”
“I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on securing the debate. I chair the all-party parliamentary group on life sciences and want to raise a couple of wider points. I am grateful to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry and the UK Bioindustry Association for advice. We are all familiar with the figure of Sir John Bell on our television screens, but in the current circumstances would the Minister tell us a little about the status of the life sciences industrial strategy and sector deal? It seems that the industrial strategy has gone by the wayside. What is going on?”
“The right hon. Gentleman says that the agency is modelled on the American example, but the American example very clearly has a client. Which is the client Department for this Bill?”
“Last week, I encouraged the Minister to seek operatic inspiration, but far from “Vincero”—I will win—from “Nessun Dorma”, her reaction was more, “When I am laid in earth” from “Dido’s Lament”. That is Purcell’s Dido, not Track and Trace’s, I hasten to add. We need so much more. UK research is a success story. Please stop doing unnecessary harm. In my view, ARIA is worth supporting, but it is a distraction. It is worth discussing how we can do things better, but please, Secretary of State, stop doing harm now.”
“Then there are the ODA cuts—so foolish, for so many reasons, not least the threat to our diplomatic soft power at a time when China is ramping up its influence everywhere. I am told that institutions have been sending letters to researchers who already have grant letters telling them that those grant letters will not be honoured. The system has worked for decades based on trust, and that is now being undermined. That is a clear message that with this Government, Britain cannot be trusted to keep its word. There is nothing that ARIA can do that will repair the damage—the huge damage to trust—that has already been caused and is continuing to be caused. We need a fightback within Government.”
“At the weekend, Stephen Toope, the University of Cambridge’s vice-chancellor, warned that Government claims about global Britain risked ringing hollow. As he says, “World-leading research cannot just be turned off like a tap. Once our highly trained young researchers leave our universities they will not come back, and once they leave the country they will not return.” He is so right. I visit many labs in and around Cambridge—the magnificent Laboratory of Molecular Biology being just one of them—but what strikes anyone who goes into any of them is that it is an international microcosm, with people from all across the globe. We are good because good people want to be here, but they can always go somewhere else. I tell the House, there are plenty of people who want them and plenty of inducements.”
“As we have heard, the great challenges are not that different, but for iconoclasts, of course, everything that went before has to be laid to waste. Not a very British approach, I would say. What is very British is the tradition of paying public servants badly. If ARIA can free up pay levels, good, but it really does not need an ARIA to do that, so stop making a song and dance about it; get on and do it. All this is important because we have excellence. How ironic that the Government have turned a potential good-news story into a story about cuts. As we have heard, Universities UK estimates that if the cost of Horizon association is taken out of UKRI, it will cost 18,000 research jobs. That would certainly be a big hit to cities like mine.”
“The obvious question about whether the current system can be reformed to address some of these concerns is also not answered, and some of the potential problems have been made worse by decisions the Government have already taken, or sort of taken. Reference has been made to the disappearing industrial strategy, which must be rather galling for the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells, given the effort that he and others put in and the huge amount of work done across so many sectors. What is to replace it? Perhaps the Minister can tell us later. Perhaps it is nothing, but the mission-oriented approach that ARIA points to and that is widely welcomed replaces, frankly, something remarkably similar.”
“He also rightly queried the lack of co-ordination of research across Departments—an issue that I suspect is yet to be seriously addressed. David Connell has been a passionate advocate over many years of small business research initiatives—something we have adopted and adapted from the Americans—and of using contracts rather than grants and driving innovation through procurement. That idea has too limited an uptake, I would say, and needs a stronger champion in Government. Is DARPA really a model for the UK? Well, the US has an infamous military-industrial complex and we have nothing similar here. Who will be the client? The Secretary of State seemed to be touchy about this, but whether it is learned from, not modelled on, is a key question.”
“Thoughtful contributions have been made by entrepreneurs such as David Cleevely, who rightly pointed out throughout the Cameron-Osborne years, when they were promoting Tech City in London, that we already have a tech city; it is called Cambridge and it is just up the railway line, along a powerful innovation corridor that has huge potential. There are other powerful voices who identify a very different problem from the one that it is suggested ARIA might address. Take David Sainsbury and David Connell. Lord Sainsbury is a highly regarded former Science Minister; look at the work he did a few years ago on economic growth, in which he cautioned—sensibly, in my view—against trying to import systems from elsewhere and expecting them somehow to work in a different culture.”
“Add the catapults launched a few years ago under the coalition and the result, if we are not careful, is lots of people competing for the same funding. It is not simple, and it is frequently a subject of discussion in Cambridge, as I am sure the House can imagine. To be frank, in Cambridge the general view is that the issue is not finding the breakthrough ideas, but how they are developed and taken forward, as the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock just said. Sadly, we have very few home-grown unicorns like Arm, although we have done better over the past 30 years because we have a strong investor community in Cambridge and real efforts are made through organisations such as Cambridge Enterprise to develop our spin-outs.”
“Of course, our answer as a country is always yes, but if this is really about setting people free—and who does not want to cut the bureaucracy and set people free?—is it not curious that just yesterday, the Government announced a review, to be led by Professor Adam Tickell, the not “bog-standard” vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex, of the whole issue of bureaucracy in our research sector? I suggest that there is muddle, not least around the problem we are trying to solve. Could we do better? The landscape of research funding is complex. UKRI is a relatively new organisation, but there are some long-established principles in this country—the Haldane principle, dual funding and QR, or quality-related research funding. Add Horizon, and there is a balance in there.”
“I just caution Government Members that they may not want to associate themselves too closely with a man who, in the public’s mind, is very much associated with one set of rules for some and a very different set of rules for them. Many will wonder why a vanity project designed to assuage the ego of one key adviser is being pursued by the Government when they have finally had the sense to ditch that adviser—or was it that he ditched them? Who knows? We will be generous, and I will ask an open question: can we do better?”
“It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe). Anyone who has attended the annual STEM for Britain event hosted by the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, which he chairs, will know that we are a country not short of brilliant ideas and young people—and many of them, I have to say, come from Cambridge. However, that immediately begs the question, is ARIA a solution in search of a problem? As the excellent Science and Technology Committee report put it—I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) and his colleagues on that—is it “a brand in search of a product”? We have heard a lot about Dominic Cummings.”
“I reflect on the fact that this country has many virtues, but self-knowledge is useful, and we sometimes tend to over-complicate and over-bureaucratise. In the past, we blamed that on Brussels. It is now down to us, so my plea is, can we ensure that these schemes are simple enough to deliver the outcomes we all want? In particular, we do not want funding being taken from farmers and going not to the environment—we do want funding there—but ending up in a sea of bureaucracy.”
“I am disappointed and would like to hear the reasoning behind that. Finally, the plan outlined remains through to 2027. Frankly, when we were discussing it in this room a year ago, no one could have anticipated the year we were about to have, and there is a question whether we plough on regardless or move at a pace that reflects the difficulties of the past year. The schemes were all supposed to be about simplification. I was talking to someone the other day who pointed out that CAP effectively had three schemes, but, by their reckoning, we are already up to 14 and counting. We might well need a new dictionary for our conversations as we sort our ELMSs from our SFIs and our ATPs. It is all getting very complicated.”
“I am sure farmers will welcome advance notice being given on some of those checks, but where is the assessment of potential downsides? We all hope there is not abuse out there, but are we sure? This is quite a lenient approach. Given that enforcement is already an issue, is there some naivety here? The virtual inspections sound intriguing and could be a good model for the future. It would be interesting to hear a little more from the Minister about how they will work. I have a query about paragraph 10.5 of the explanatory memorandum, which says: “Land Management Plans… will not be published.” I recognise that that might be a response to representations made, but as I asked during consideration of the Act, where is the public voice in that? I think taxpayers and local residents have a role.”
“Perhaps the Minister will tell us, because it looks as though the integrated administration and control system and cross-compliance system are being gradually dismantled. It is telling that it is the money, not the environmental concerns, that seems to be the priority. Yet again, this measure is England-only. We really are becoming a very disunited kingdom. Four schemes are outlined. I quite understand that, but it seems that we may have different rules applying to different schemes. This seems to be only for the environmental land management scheme pilots, so presumably it will have to be revisited at the various stages of ELMS, and we will probably have a countryside stewardship system running alongside the current EU countryside stewardship system. So, there is quite a lot of complexity.”
“Clearly, simplifying the overpayments system and doing calculations in sterling make sense, as does changing the percentage to calculate young farmer payments to reflect the changes already made with respect to the removal of the greening payment. However, I must draw attention to the phrase “no…significant…impact on business” at paragraph 12 of the explanatory memorandum. Really—when money is being taken away? Maybe that is now the Conservative line. I look forward to the Conservatives taking the same view when Labour redistributes resources in future. I suspect that there is an impact, and we all know it. The second SI is, I think, more straightforward. It concerns measures to ensure that there is proper oversight of financial assistance. I have to say that this is interesting: where is the environmental equivalent?”
“I wonder whether there will be an effect on the overall amount that others receive, because my recollection is that calculations start and work back from the overall financial ceiling. That may have an impact. Wales and Scotland used capping to divert funds to environmental and rural development measures. We have had that discussion before, and I gently remind the Government that when they were criticising the EU scheme for failing on environmental grounds there was the opportunity to use those mechanisms, but they chose not to do so. The Minister frequently accuses me of being too gloomy, so I should say that there are some positive things.”
“The document also says, revealingly: “Phasing out Direct Payments will free up money to support agriculture in different ways, including paying farmers to improve the environment.” Why “including” when the word could have been “by”? It is reasonable to suggest that there are questions to be answered. Has there been a casual oversight in the wording, or does the document, as I suspect, suggest that money will leach out, away from farmers? Quite possibly it will be well spent, but farmers deserve to know. May I query why the 5% reduction with respect to payments over £150,000 is being omitted? How much money will that save, where will it go and what will it be spent on? The suggestion is that it is complicated to do the calculation, but I am sure that the Department has a spreadsheet somewhere that could do it.”
“I thought that we had got past that, but on the policy background, paragraph 7.2 of the explanatory memorandum to the direct payments regulations contains this assertion: “Direct payments are untargeted, can inflate land rent prices and can stand in the way of new entrants.” All that is true, but it could also be said that they are universal, relatively simple to administer and a vital lifeline for tens of thousands of farmers, with key knock-on benefits for many rural communities. Would it really be so difficult for those who draft such points to acknowledge, when other things are also true, that the issues are complicated?”
“I want to be clear that we want the environmental land management scheme to work. We understand the need to do pilots, and to learn, but it seems very slow and I must remind the Minister that I asked many of the questions I am asking today a year ago. A certain amount of vagueness at that point might have been reasonable, but we need to move on. I hardly need tell her that farmers have to make decisions. The cycle is long, and people need to look ahead, but it is hard to make business decisions when they are uncertain about levels of support. The Minister might remember that on one or two occasions I was quite cross about some of the language used in my favourite document.”
“Part of the reason I am concerned is that when the SFI was announced last week—I think that was the latest announcement—a few hundred pilots were suggested. A few hundred is very different from the 80,000-plus who receive basic payments. The Country Land and Business Association tells us that, using DEFRA’s own figures, 75% of farming enterprises are unprofitable without direct payments. The problem seems pretty clear to me: there is a major mismatch. What was also disappointing about last week’s announcement is the fact that those on stewardship schemes at the moment do not seem to be eligible to apply for the pilots. While that is perhaps not a departure from a specific promise—clearly, they will be able to transition at some point—people could rightly feel disadvantaged. I worry about where the money might be.”
“What many people want to know is where the money is going, and how it is to be used. Will all the money being saved go to farmers? I note that the Minister’s words were, as ever, carefully chosen, in that it would be used within this Parliament. That is an interesting point, because she is probably much more expert than me on how departmental budgets are managed, but is there a roll-over facility, and if so, where is it? Can we see it? Can we question it? How much do we expect to be spent this year, and how much to be carried over into following years? That matters, because if the money is not spent, I fear that in the current financial climate there may be eyes in the Treasury looking to recoup some of it. The Minister shakes her head knowingly, but I suspect that there are.”
“I still have a dog-eared copy here, from a day I will never forget: the rushed-out photocopied versions to give the Secretary of State cover at the Oxford farming conference, as I recall. In that document, we had the implications for, or what would happen in, subsequent years, and, as the Minister has rightly said, late last year we saw the figures for subsequent years. I wonder why we are doing this one year at a time. The EU used to have a seven-year budgeting period. It seems to me that we are in danger of regressing to annual short-termism, which I do not think is welcome, so I wonder whether the Minister can confirm that—other issues permitting—we will be back here this time next year discussing the 2022 figures, and I suspect in subsequent years, too. However, that is only half the story, because this is about the reductions.”
“I think the wording is quite interesting: it almost lays down a challenge for devolved institutions to follow. Of course, different strategies are being adopted in different parts of the United Kingdom, and English farmers might well feel that they are immediately put at a disadvantage and might wonder why, especially in a week in which Sainsbury’s has followed Tesco in demanding lower prices from suppliers. With all the problems facing people at the moment, some might feel that they are not so much being squeezed as strangled. However, perhaps the key point in the Minister’s opening comments, as is now clear from the documents, is that this is the 2021 scheme year—that is, one year only. The Minister will remember discussing what I used to describe as my favourite document.”
“It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Paisley, for what I think is the first time, and, of course, a pleasure to continue the ongoing dialogue with the Minister. As ever, she has laid out the measures clearly. As she would expect, I have a critique of them, although I can assure her that we will not be opposing the SIs, because we have no desire to bring an unnecessary number of people into the Committee Room. However, we do have some concerns. We are, as she rightly said, a year on from the discussions on the 2020 Act. We now finally have the tables of reductions that we were considering over a year ago in the legislation, which is a start. I am interested in the fact that both measures relate to England—paragraphs 3.2 to 3.5 of the explanatory memorandums for these regulations make that clear.”
“I would dearly like to come to see one of those—that is part of the problem of the past year—but, while I understand that those engaged in the process are probably positive about it, my worry is not for them, but for the huge number who are not engaged. That is where my concern lies.”
“We all know how important the flow of data is for UK business, but frankly the Government have handed the powers to the EU to turn our data on and off. They have turned us into supplicants, effectively. What are the contingency plans, given that relationships are frosty, should the EU use those powers?”
“I suspect that the Minister is fighting her corner, and all power to her. If she needs an aria, she should look no further than Puccini, “I will win—vincerò!” “Nessun Dorma” did once capture the public mood, and we need to show that our victory against the virus, if it is secured, will have come on the back of UK researchers and our great universities. We should celebrate them, but that means securing the funding. Minister, please sort out how Horizon is to be funded, restore the ODA cuts, and start to undo the damage that I fear has already been done to our international reputation.”