Catapults (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Lord Kakkar Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I join noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Mair for the very thoughtful way in which he introduced this debate on the excellent report of your Lordships’ Science and Technology Committee on catapults and their contribution to the innovation landscape, so remarkably well chaired by my noble friend Lord Patel. In so doing, I declare my interests as chairman of the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research, chairman of King’s Health Partners and chairman of UK Biobank.

As we have heard, there is no doubt that catapults have established themselves as playing a fundamental role in the UK innovation landscape. One of the most important areas of the economy with regard to innovation and economic development is, of course, the life sciences. The life sciences sector provides some 250,000 skilled and highly skilled jobs in the UK economy, and in 2019 contributed £80 billion to it. But the footprint for life sciences in the United Kingdom is truly global: 25 of the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies and 30 of the world’s leading medical technology companies are responsible for 24% of the employment in UK life sciences and 37% of the turnover attributed to life sciences in our country. It is therefore critical that the environment that Her Majesty’s Government are able to facilitate and foster for innovation and economic development as a result is attractive not only domestically but to global participants, who may wish to invest in and continue to sustain UK life sciences.

We have heard in this debate about Her Majesty’s Government’s commitment to increasing R&D expenditure, and that is of course broadly welcome. In 2020, public contribution to R&D expenditure in our country reached £15.3 billion, an increase of £1.7 billion on the previous year, fulfilling the Government’s commitment, but when one looks at that public contribution to R&D funding, £6.1 billion came from UKRI—40%, the largest single public contribution to R&D expenditure. Therefore, it is vital that the funding formulae and rules that attend UKRI are conducive to supporting the broadest possible base for R&D activity in our country.

We have heard that a number of catapults were first established in 2010-11 and thereafter in 2015, and two are relevant specifically to UK life sciences: the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult and the Medicines Discovery Catapult. The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, as an example of the success of catapults, is quite striking. It was established with great foresight and imagination at a time where there was recognition of an emerging technology—cell and gene therapies—to be applied not only to treat but potentially to cure diseases. We have seen a rapid advance in the technological base for cell and gene therapies, contributing at pace and increasing scale to the management of many diseases.

However, it is interesting that the area around Stevenage, the home of the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, is also the world’s third largest cluster of cell and gene therapy companies. In establishing the catapult, the innovation landscape has not only established the opportunity to house essential technology and equipment but provided the opportunity for nascent and established businesses to test their innovation, establish their credentials and ensure their broader application generally in healthcare. It has also encouraged the development of many novel businesses in the location and their taking advantage of those opportunities to ensure the development of jobs and economic activity.

Your Lordships’ Science and Technology Committee report identified a critical anxiety regarding funding rules attending the opportunity for catapults to avail themselves of Research Council funding and to be in a secure position to take full advantage of public funding made available by Innovate UK. These are two critical issues that my noble friend Lord Mair touched on in his presentation of the Committee’s report. I should declare that I was a member of your Lordships’ Science and Technology Committee. In making recommendations 3 and 4, we highlighted the repeated concern and the chilling effect of a restriction regarding access to Research Council funding, and that the 30% cap on Innovate UK funding to public sector organisations, which could include the two catapults or universities working together, was a substantial disadvantage. Her Majesty’s Government recognised and accepted the recommendation.

In November 2021, Innovate UK published its plan of action moving forward, recognising the success of catapults but, as far as I can ascertain, failing to address the question of restrictions to Research Council funding and the quantum of Innovate UK funding for public sector organisations. Are Her Majesty’s Government content that this issue has been addressed and if not, how do they propose to address this pivotal recommendation in the Science and Technology Committee’s report?

It is clear that public sector investment in research and development is frequently attended by a tremendous upside in terms of private sector contribution. We see this in the analysis of the biomedical catalyst fund: some £250 million of funding resulted in £1.3 billion of private sector contribution to research funding, acquisitions and other elements of commercial activity.

If the true opportunity to leverage public sector R&D in the life sciences sector is to be achieved, providing that funding consistently through mechanisms such as the catapults is of tremendous importance and significance, as is Her Majesty’s Government’s commitment to ensuring that if our country is unable to participate in Horizon 2020 funding as an associate member, that funding deficit will be matched. Can the Minister update us on the Government’s position regarding Horizon 2020 funding or its future matching, as that too plays a vital role in the UK innovation landscape?

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Lord Kakkar Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the Minister for the thoughtful way in which he introduced this Bill. I declare my own interest as chairman of the Office for Strategic Co-ordination of Health Research.

It is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Patel and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, with his very insightful observations. I echo my noble friend Lord Patel in strongly welcoming the proposition by Her Majesty’s Government to create this new agency. As we have heard, it represents a substantial opportunity to broaden the different streams of funding available to drive our broad national research and development effort.

Our nation is particularly successful at delivering research and development. There are many fine institutions. We can all draw attention to many discoveries that have had a profound impact during decades of state-directed research funding. Those research interventions have been built over time. They have been based on important principles, such as Haldane, and on the principle that Governments can define national priorities and that research effort can be directed to try to answer those priorities. It is right, therefore, that Her Majesty’s Government should decide to establish a new agency with a different and distinctive purpose.

By definition, research is attended by uncertainty. It is part of the scientific method. This is not so much a criticism as a recognition that many of the agencies and structures that we have developed, such as UKRI, the research councils and Innovate UK, are obliged to conduct their approach to making funds available for research to institutions and entities beyond the public sector in a way that is somewhat bureaucratic. There has not been the tolerance for failure. Indeed, if anything exists in our system, it is a deep dissatisfaction with a failure of research. Where projects have failed or where it has been considered that public funds have been used inappropriately, there has always been substantial criticism.

For ARIA to be different, it needs to be released from some of the bureaucratic constraints that attend other funding agencies, if it is to achieve its principal objective of being able to support proposals for research that will be truly transformational and have potentially the greatest impact. Therefore, some of them will be attended with the greatest risk of failure. I fully accept what the Minister said in his opening comments, that it would be completely wrong to create a new agency that is constrained exactly by the constraints that attend our current funding agencies.

In equal measure, however, in creating such an independent agency, predicated on the basis that failure must be accepted, the real challenge is the potential for risk. There are three important questions which I hope that the Minister will be able to answer, not necessarily in this debate, but while the Bill is in Committee

The first is to provide clarity about the relationship between ARIA and current existing agencies such as UKRI, the research councils and Innovate UK, but also more broadly in our research funding eco-systems—the charities and others which might have an interest in some of the areas of research that ARIA decides to support. I know that in the other place Her Majesty’s Government were unable to accept amendments to the Bill attending the question of a formally defined memorandum to describe these relationships, and that is acceptable. However, there needs to be absolute clarity about how these relationships will be defined, and how in practice ARIA will sit alongside these other agencies and ensure that there is not unnecessary duplication and waste in terms of its use of public funds, as we have heard, in comparison to what other agencies may be doing successfully at the moment.

The second is the question of accountability. Clearly, it is essential for any public body to have a form of accountability. The Minister spoke about this, and, indeed, in the Explanatory Notes, there is clarity about ARIA having to lay its accounts before Parliament and being subject to review by the National Audit Office. Indeed, as I understand it, the Secretary of State will have to answer for ARIA in the other place.

However, I have a concern in this regard, and it is slightly counterintuitive. Although we will all be very enthusiastic about the establishment of an agency that will tolerate failure, how confident can we be that our system will actually tolerate that failure? At some moment in time, will that failure become too much to accept? It might be that, in terms of the scientific approach—the project-led approach by those driving the agenda within ARIA—it was perfectly acceptable to take that approach. However, let us say that the broader political system, the commentators and others, will not accept it. There needs to be some protection for ARIA by way of appropriate accountability so that it can defend itself against the kinds of criticisms and attacks that might happen in the future when failure starts to occur. In that way it will not be undermined, and what is an important contribution to the research-funding landscape will not be inadvertently or too soon undermined and destroyed.

The final point is that we need to be clear about where this fundamental research, invention and discovery go in terms of the next stage. We should not, of course, replicate the model of DARPA in the United States; it has a completely different purpose. The purpose of ARIA, quite rightly, will be much more broadly defined. There needs to be some clarity about how government departments and other agencies might participate in taking advantage of the benefit of the product of ARIA to ensure that there is continued funding and support so that that translation and ultimate application is not lost.

Science Research Funding in Universities (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Lord Kakkar Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Kakkar (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Patel for his leadership of the Science and Technology Committee, for the thoughtful way in which he led this inquiry into science research funding in our universities and for how he introduced this debate. In so doing, I declare my own interest as professor of surgery at University College London, chairman of UCLPartners, and an active biomedical researcher.

We have heard during the debate that the future funding of the research base in our universities is important not only to the universities themselves, but to our country more generally. It is our ambition that we become an economy driven by technology and innovation, and to be able to deliver that we have to have the appropriate science base in our universities. We have seen in recent months, with the Covid-19 pandemic, the importance of the science base to protect our population and drive forward innovation. Life science, as it has been described in this debate and in previous debates in your Lordships’ House, is, after the financial services industry, the second most important part of our economy. It employs directly some 250,000 people, with a further 250,000 jobs dependent on life sciences in our country.

The United Kingdom has been at the forefront of research developments in the Covid-19 pandemic, demonstrating the importance of the availability of an effective and mature research base in our universities to address critical questions at a moment’s notice. This report, as we have heard, was published over a year ago, before the Covid-19 pandemic and its implications for our universities, and, of course, before the withdrawal agreement from the European Union had been concluded —and, indeed, before the current trade negotiations have run their course. The impact of our departure from the European Union and the broader impact on our economy that it will have on our research funding remain most pertinent.

I will focus on two issues. With Brexit, as we have heard during this debate, it is essential that Her Majesty’s Government commit to three principal areas. Yes, of course, one is funding to ensure that the shortfall that will arise as a result of our no longer being able to participate directly in European funding schemes is met by Her Majesty’s Government. However, that funding shortfall must also facilitate collaborative research within the European Union—that is, our own university collaborative participation—as well as collaboration with research networks elsewhere in the world. Of course, we must also do everything to ensure that mobility of researchers is maintained. In this regard, the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, are critical, on ensuring that the visa system facilitates the ability of not only researchers to come to our country, but their families too.

Secondly, on public funding for research, we have heard about the importance of ensuring that QR funding, that second important element of the dual support mechanism, is maintained at levels that guarantee an inflationary increase. We need also to ensure that the shortfall in funding provided by charities to support research in our universities, particularly biomedical research, is addressed. Charities are responsible for some 15% of research funding. As we have heard in this debate, a 1% reduction in support for universities is expected this year.