EU Referendum and EU Reform (EUC Report)

Baroness Sharp of Guildford Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak mainly about the report from the Science and Technology Committee on European Union membership and science. Before doing so, I would like to say how much I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, when they said how important it was that we should not throw away the lessons of history. I was born just before the Second World War. My parents experienced both world wars across Europe. Like them, I believed strongly that it was necessary to create a kind of united states of Europe, as Churchill put it—a confederation that would stop European nations constantly warring with one another. The project of my lifetime has in many senses been the construction of the European Union. It is a huge achievement. It would be very sad and retrograde if we were to throw that achievement away. As my noble friend Lord Maclennan suggested, that might happen if we exit the European Union.

I was not a member of the Science and Technology Committee. I was in the past, but I came off it at this time last year, and I have therefore not played a part in putting together the report on EU membership and science. My claim to speak in the debate on the subject is in having authored two books, in the 1980s and 1990s, on the early development of these European Union programmes.

It is interesting to note that in those early days when the programmes were being forged, first by the late Lord Dahrendorf when he was a European commissioner—and who until about 10 years ago was a member of this House—and subsequently and more decisively by Vicomte Davignon, in the early 1980s, they were to a considerable extent shunned by the British Government and British academia. The general feeling was that if the members of the then European Community wished to get together and collaborate over science, that was fine, but it had at that point very little to offer us. Our links were primarily with the United States and other English-speaking countries, such as Australia and Canada. The feeling was that the more profitable links were likely to remain that way.

In fact, measured by collaborations, in terms of publications, by the end of the 1980s UK collaborations with our European partners overtook our collaborations with our US partners, and it has remained that way ever since. As the evidence taken by the Science and Technology Committee demonstrated, these collaborations are now very highly valued. I was amused to compare the conclusion of the committee:

“It was repeatedly put to us that one of the most significant aspects of the UK’s EU membership is the provision of opportunities to collaborate”,

with the conclusion of the 1998 volume authored by me and John Peterson:

“What is striking about these programmes is the very high value placed by their participants on collaboration per se, as opposed to public funding per se, or the effects on competitiveness”.

Again, the Science and Technology Committee report states:

“We view the EU to have three main influences: the provision of collaborative funding schemes and programmes; ensuring researcher mobility; and facilitating and fostering participation in shared pan-European research infrastructures”.

The 1990s evaluation of what the UK gained from the framework programme, written by Luke Georghiou of Manchester University—now Vice-President for Research and Innovation there—identified four key benefits: access to funds for collaborations; enhanced skills training; access to improved and new processes; and commercial links.

It is important to remember that the most effective way to transfer knowledge is through people. Collaborations and working together with other scientists and researchers in other countries, especially when accompanied—as many of these European Union programmes are—by exchanges of doctoral and post-doctoral researchers, involve learning about new and different approaches, ideas and processes. It is this interaction that has proved so valuable, especially for our younger researchers and for those countries in the European Union that are relatively new to research activities. The great benefit for the so-called cohesion countries of southern and eastern Europe was the opportunity for their researchers to work alongside scientists at institutions such as Imperial College or University College, London—or for that matter at the Institut Pasteur or the Max Planck institutes in Germany.

I have two further points in relation to the report. The first is on downsides. The report raises two issues, bureaucracy and low participation by industry. On bureaucracy there have been endless promises of simplification but very little seems to have been achieved. One can have some sympathy with the Commission, which is constantly being accused of being too lax with its money and of not having a proper audit trail. The science and technology field is one of the few areas where it has responsibility for disbursing resources. Agricultural and structural funds rely on national Governments, where it is often difficult to keep track of precisely who is spending what, and where. However, where it does have control the Commission rather overcompensates.

The issue of poor industrial participation has been around since the start of the programmes. It arises partly because the programmes aim at pre-competitive R&D. Originally the focus was on early-stage R&D. The development of the European Research Council has tipped the balance more towards blue-sky, pure research. Governments in continental Europe have been more sympathetic than UK Governments of all complexions to getting involved with applied research and helping companies bridge what is here called the “valley of death”. The Catapult programme was developed under the coalition to respond to this. But, as the committee notes, greater discretion given to regional governments in other European countries, combined with stronger regional banking systems, has often provided a better framework for industrial participation, frequently alongside university partners.

Finally, I would like to say a brief word about the role played by Britain in European decision-taking. There is a tendency to talk a lot about unelected bureaucrats in Brussels taking decisions. In this area the decisions are in fact taken by myriad advisory committees of one sort or another, with only the really contentious issues going to co-decision between the Council and Parliament. The key decision-makers are to be found in the nexus of these committees, which is effectively a complex and somewhat incestuous system of advisory committees and peer review. Many smaller countries do not have the experts or the capabilities to play a significant part in this process—but it is one in which many British experts have played a substantial role.

I will take the example of Horizon 2020. As the committee points out in its report, 46 experts have played a key role in advisory groups, developing the Horizon 2020 programme. The UK CEO of Syngenta, giving evidence to the committee, said that,

“if Britain went its own way in Europe, we would lose the most powerful, most influential, significant voice pushing for a rational, science-based regulatory system governing our technologies”.

There is no doubt that the British voice in science and technology is heard in Brussels. Its loss will be a loss not just to Britain but to the whole of the European Union.