Steel Industry

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, when the Government published their steel pipeline and new procurement guidance, my university contemporary, the Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark, said that the Government were,

“absolutely clear that we want to do all we can to support our world-class steel industry … This strategy will ensure we make the right investments in science, research, skills and infrastructure so that British industry wins contracts by producing the best goods and services”.

The Minister at the Cabinet Office, Ben Gummer, said:

“By updating our procurement approach on these major infrastructure projects we are creating a level playing field for UK steel”.


I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, for initiating this important debate. The history is there: employment in the steel industry was at 320,000 in 1971 and has now plummeted to 31,000. We export £4.7 billion-worth of steel from the UK and import £5 billion-worth—so there is a small trade deficit there—and 52% of UK steel exports are to the EU, while 69% of UK steel imports are from the EU. So the implications of Brexit for the industry are enormous, and there is uncertainty over future trade relationships with the EU, which will be absolutely crucial.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Steel and Metal Related Industries produced a report this year in which it talked about an “existential crisis”, as the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, said. The APPG recognised,

“the vital role that the UK steel industry plays in the UK defence, aerospace, automotive industries, and supporting key infrastructure investments in the UK economy”.

It referred to an industrial strategy for steel and said:

“Our economy is unbalanced, tipped in favour of financial services and London and the South East. Essential to building an economy of purpose and resilience will be a renaissance for manufacturing, and for that steel is a key foundation industry”.


In the UK Steel Manifesto in 2016, it was noted again that there was a reduction of almost 60% in the number of people employed in steel since 1995, a 10% drop in UK steel production compared with 2014, and yet an increase of almost 400% in Chinese steel exports compared to 2009. It said:

“The result of the EU Referendum was a blow to the steel industry”,


in the UK. The disparity in energy costs, as mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Mendelsohn and Lord Bhattacharyya, between the UK and our competitors is shackling the steel industry and preventing it being competitive. The Government must eliminate that price differential in the short term if we are to have a future. They must ensure that major procurement projects use British steel as much as possible, giving the industry confidence, and bring business rates for capital-intensive firms in line with their competitors by removing plant and machinery from the calculation. Does the Minister agree with that? There are barriers to this industry growing—cap ex, new investment and skills. Do we have the necessary skills and R&D, which I will come to later?

The British Government have been accused of disgraceful behaviour for labelling certain industries, including the struggling steel sector, as low-priority before detailed talks about leaving the EU. Can the Minister confirm that? I am a proud manufacturer of Cobra beer, with my joint venture partners, Molson Coors. We are one of the largest brewers in the world. We manufacture in Burton upon Trent in the largest brewery in Britain. Yet the 10 pillars of the Government’s industrial strategy make no mention of manufacturing. Manufacturing was 30% of our GDP in the 1970s; today it is 10%. India has a target to increase manufacturing from 16% to 25% of GDP. We have no such target. Will the Minister say why we do not?

As to the nature of the challenge, according to the Government’s industrial strategy:

“The UK has grown strongly in recent years—by over 14 per cent since 2010, second only to the United States”,


and yet the Government admit that,

“the UK needs to address the productivity gap with other leading countries”.

The Government proudly announce that they are increasing R&D investment by £2 billion a year. We invest 1.75% of our GDP in R&D and innovation, yet the United States and Germany invest 2.7% and 2.8%. If we were to just catch up with them we would have to invest £20 billion a year, not £2 billion. Does the Minister agree? The industrial strategy talks about the impact of universities. Once again, we underinvest in our universities as a proportion of GDP, compared to the OECD and EU average—forget America, which is way ahead of us—yet our universities are the best in the world. Just imagine if we invested the same amount. The industrial strategy mentions encouraging trade, yet the last Budget made no mention of the word “export”.

We know that the steel industry has halved and that China has quadrupled its production since 2000. Yet, as the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, said, there is a global capacity that exceeds demand by 600 million tonnes per year. The noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, mentioned Tata Steel. Britain should be grateful to Tata for its billions of pounds of investment in British steel over the years. It is one of the largest manufacturers in Europe and has strong links with universities. It has endowed a chair at the University of Cambridge. I declare my interest as chair of the advisory board of the Cambridge Judge Business School. Some 60% of Tata Steel’s sales are to UK manufacturers and 25% are to the EU. The most important thing about the company is that it tries to be innovative. It has said that you must continue to drive innovation, but it pleads for a level playing field on energy costs, anti-dumping and business rates. Does the Minister agree with that? Tata Steel says that the success and future of the steel industry depend on innovation and skills and that the Government need to support periods of transition when the steel industry goes through ups and downs. In the past, the Government have said they would support this industry, yet when the Prime Minister went to India in November she did not even meet anyone from Tata.

The University of Cambridge produced a paper entitled A Bright Future for UK Steel. Once again, this talked about innovation but it also mentioned that half the steel used in this country is in construction. This sector, which has a plan for building lots more homes, employs 250,000 people from the European Union. What are we to do when Brexit happens? I am delighted by the recent news that:

“The UK steel industry has welcomed anti-dumping duties announced by the European Commission on some Chinese products”.


Can the Minister expand on that?

In conclusion, an article in the Financial Times asked:

“Is UK steel really a strategic industry”?


It said that it is to a town such as Port Talbot, but asked how strategic it is when it represents a small proportion of our economic output. Paul Forrest, head of economic research at the West Midlands Economic Forum—I am chancellor of the University of Birmingham—said that 260,000 jobs in his region are part of the steel supply chain. Local sources of steel production are helpful to the UK’s manufacturing ambitions. Nissan’s factory in Sunderland, which is the largest car plant in the UK, buys 45% of its sheet steel from Port Talbot.

Professor Andy Neely, a fellow of Sidney Sussex College and head of the Institute for Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge, said:

“Steel is undoubtedly foundational for so many products—but so is cement or plastics. You can … make the case that steel is a strategic material”.


But what if you can get the supplies from elsewhere? The reality is that the steel for Trident nuclear submarines is supplied from France and the latest generation of Ajax armoured vehicles will use Swedish steel. According to Philip Dunne, the Defence Procurement Minister at the time, no UK steel manufacturer could meet the requirements. There are some implications for sectors such as automotive, which require just-in-time availability, and, where it is available, UK steel plays a role in equipping our Armed Forces. Our latest Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers are built by Tata Steel.

John Louth of RUSI said:

“The quality of British steel has made a big difference to the UK defence industry”,


including for our aircraft carriers. Close to 60% of steel used in the UK is imported, while two-thirds of UK output in the past couple of years has been exported.

I conclude with the words of Professor Andy Neely of the Institute for Manufacturing in Cambridge, who said that while steel may no longer be a vital input, it is part of the strategic argument over the shape of the UK economy. He said:

“If the UK says it cannot compete on steel, where does that process stop? The danger is that you end up saying the same in other sectors and we end up with a hollowing out of the British economy”.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 15th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bhattacharyya (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as declared in the register, and specifically to my chairmanship of WMG at the University of Warwick. I should also mention that I served as a member of Sir Paul Nurse’s review of the UK research and innovation landscape that put all this together.

As peace appears to be breaking out today, I hope that those who laboured for so long in the salt mines of Committee will allow me a few brief words on Amendments 166, 173 and 183. All three will help Innovate UK promote partnerships between business and academia. I can tell your Lordships that that can be a tough job. When I started WMG, we encountered a lot of opposition. Academics are protective of their independence from commerce. However, engineers like making an impact—the bigger, the better—so their curiosity won out in the end.

We know that academic traditions can obstruct business collaboration. For example, grant application writing is a highly prized skill in universities, for a very good reason: critical assessment of research proposals is vital to academic debate. Businesses see this rather differently, especially if they are expected to disclose commercially sensitive knowledge. The Technology Strategy Board was created to address this cultural gap. We debated it here for about four years before it was formed because there were arguments on whether government should intervene and pick winners and many other arguments at that time. But we won and the Technology Strategy Board was created. Of course, this body is now Innovate UK.

Change is constant, so Innovate UK needs leaders who understand the way business and science are changing, as well as the flexibility to create the right partnerships. Amendment 166 would ensure this. Today, every business is multidisciplinary. If you make cars, you need programmers, cryptographers and medical researchers, as well as metallurgists and engineers. Bringing Innovate UK and the research councils under the same roof makes both scientific and commercial sense. Amendments 173 and 183 will ensure both business and scientific knowledge in Innovate UK’s leadership, allowing it to build flexible partnerships with business.

Innovate UK’s role is to act as a catalyst for business collaboration and partnership with academia. However, although flexibility is needed, Innovate UK should not be a bank. It has neither the resources nor the skill set. Instead, it should use its commercial expertise to create incentives to encourage businesses to invest in innovation. Its role is that of a matchmaker, not a moneylender. Its role has to be to improve productivity in this country via scientific research. The amendments in this group will help Innovate UK deliver on that vital task. More generally, the amendments proposed elsewhere today will do the same for UKRI as a whole.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, in relation to Amendment 166, I want to emphasise again the importance of having individuals from a business background because, all too often with these initiatives, the Government have the best of intentions but there are people involved who do not have experience in business and have not run businesses, and it is when you run businesses that you realise that innovation and creativity are at the heart of it. I would go further and say that they must come from science-related business backgrounds. Any good business has to be innovative. In my industry—food and drink—you have to be innovative. But the key issue here is having people with business backgrounds at the top table.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I confirm that we are signed up to Amendment 166 and support the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brown. It is important to get the balance right. There is probably another Goldilocks pun there but I am sure the Minister will pick it up and we will get a response to that.

We have also signed up to government Amendments 173 and 183, which are at the heart of the debate we had earlier. Again, this plays to the argument made by the Minister that there are ways of improving the Bill. We have been able to explore them in Committee and now on Report, and it is good to see that there are movements here that have support right round the House, which we are pleased to be part of.

We also feel that more constraints may emerge from the business consideration than have perhaps been allowed to emerge so far. As my noble friend Lord Bhattacharyya pointed out, given the genesis of all this through the Technology Strategy Board, and now through Innovate UK, it is important that institutions learn from their history and gain from their experience over time. The formation of UKRI and the involvement of Innovate UK in that was not recommended by Sir Paul Nurse, who just felt that the issue should be looked at. But the Government decided to move forward and it is therefore their responsibility to make sure that we get the most out of it.

My noble friend Lord Bhattacharyya was also at pains to point out that we are talking about the creation not of a bank here but of a ginger group. It is an opportunity to create incentives and a ginger group that moves forward with the support of industry will be much better than one which tries to do it on its own. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, I have my name on this amendment. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, for moving it so fully and eloquently, and I entirely agree with everything that he said.

It seems extraordinary, and I thought this at Second Reading, that the research knowledge and capability is at UKRI but—so far as I know, and I will be corrected if I am wrong—there is no requirement of any sort that the Office for Students should have any particular knowledge or experience of research or, for that matter, research degree-awarding powers. Therefore, the decision is to be taken by people who profess no particular knowledge of the subject matter of research degree-awarding powers. That is to be left to a matter of advice. The difficulty with that, as the noble Lord, Lord Smith, has pointed out, is that when it comes to accountability all that the Office for Students can say is, “Well, we got this advice from UKRI. That’s our defence”. Surely, the people who should defend the advice that is the essence of the matter should be the people who give it. There is a difference between decision-makers and advisers, as we were authoritatively informed some years ago: Ministers decide, advisers advise. In this context, the decisions are to be taken by the Office for Students while UKRI, with all its expertise, is relegated to being an adviser.

I have interests in the University of Cambridge, in the sense that I am an honorary fellow of two of the Cambridge colleges and I am a member of the Council for the Defence of British Universities. However, my view, which I have expressed consistently since Second Reading, is that UKRI’s research capabilities mean that it should be involved in the decision-making process as a decision-maker, not merely an adviser. As the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, said, we got a letter this morning, which was followed up by an invitation to telephone. Naturally, I accepted the invitation to telephone as soon as I was free to do so. We had a considerable discussion, and I was asked whether the second part of the amendment was as important as the first, the second part being about research students. I said, “Not for me”; I thought the essential part was the first part. I thought, “This sounds good”. Your Lordships will no doubt wait with bated breath to hear what the answer is to that. Anyway, I expressed the view that the second part was not so important. Therefore, if at some stage the amendment is subject to further consideration, I would be perfectly happy—I think this goes for its co-mover as well—to forget about that. The essential part is the decision-making. Surely the Government recognise that there is a difference between a decision-maker—a person with some responsibility for decisions—and an adviser. I strongly support the amendment and feel rather disappointed that the Government have not seen the logic of its position.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Smith, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, have said.

I shall read out the mission statement for the University of Cambridge, which is very short:

“The mission of the University of Cambridge is to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence”.


That came home to me when I was a student there. We finished the last supervision of term in my favourite subject with a brilliant supervisor, and he said, “Have a good holiday. Now I can get on with my real work, which is research”. That is the importance of research to our top academics.

At the University of Birmingham, where I am chancellor, I chaired the annual meeting earlier this month. We announced that Birmingham had won three more Nobel prizes, taking our total to 11, because of our research.

The University of Cambridge Judge Business School, where I chair the advisory board, has in just over a quarter of a century become fifth in the world in the global FT MBA rankings. One of the main reasons for that is the absolute priority placed on research.

Anything we can do to make sure that we have robust support for our research—not just through advice but taking the expertise of UKRI along with that of the OfS, jointly—would be good for the future of research and the excellence of our universities.

Economy: Productivity

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Wednesday 8th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The noble Lord raises an interesting point. Since, I think, 2010, our economy has grown by 12%, which is the highest in the G7, yet our productivity growth over that period has been low, as the noble Lord said. The reasons for that are broad and manifold, but he puts his finger on it when he says that, in part, it is to do with a lack of investment in key infrastructure and technical skills. Both those things are absolutely centre stage in our new industrial strategy.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister acknowledge that one of the best ways of increasing productivity is to invest in higher education and research and development innovation? Would he also agree that we underinvest as a percentage of GDP in our higher education, compared with the OECD EU average, and way under America, and yet have the best universities in the world? When it comes to R&D innovation, we invest 1.7% of GDP compared with 2.8% in the United States and Germany. We would have to invest an extra £20 billion a year just to catch up with them.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The noble Lord makes a good point. The fact is that the productivity of our investment in research in British universities is incredibly high and the output of our top universities is fantastically high by any world standards. He will know as well as I do that we are now committed to raising an extra £2 billion a year in research by 2021, which is a very significant increase. He is also right that even after that increase we are still not investing as much on a per capita basis or on a percentage of GDP basis as some of our biggest competitors—Germany and the US, for example. So we are making good progress but the job is not yet done.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 30th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oxburgh (CB)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak today. I declare my membership of the Foundation for Science and Technology, chaired by the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, and my honorary professorship of the University of Cambridge. The comments I wish to make cut across many of the amendments that we have discussed, both now and earlier.

Reading the Bill as it stands, you could believe that from a research point of view the UK was an island sufficient unto itself. There is almost no reference here to any international work. I think the noble Lord, Lord Willis, made a passing reference to that in one of his interventions in today’s debate, but it is crucial. There are whole areas of science in this country where we would not have a presence without successful international collaboration. A very good example is marine work. Marine research ships are very expensive to run, and frequently they have been run in collaboration with other countries. One could also mention big science facilities.

My concern with the Bill as it stands is that paragraph 16(3) of Schedule 9, which deals with supplementary powers, says:

“UKRI may not do any of the following except with the consent of the Secretary of State: … enter into joint ventures”.


Does this mean that if one of our research councils or other parts of UKRI wish to set up a collaboration with one of their opposite numbers, be it on the other side of the Atlantic, in mainland Europe or anywhere else, they have to go to the Secretary of State before they can do so? I hope that that is not the case, and that the importance of international work can be a little more clearly expressed in the Bill before we finally approve it.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chancellor of the University of Birmingham and chair of the advisory board of the University of Cambridge Judge Business School. On that note, if I may boast, today the FT global rankings for the MBA came out and the Judge Business School rose from number 10 to number five in the world. This is a business school that has been around for only 26 years, compared with the Harvard Business School, which is over 100 years old. One of the reasons for that success is the excellence of research at a university like Cambridge.

The problem that is overlooked completely by the Bill is that we in this country carry out excellent research despite underfunding it compared with competitor countries. We spend 1.7% of GDP, compared with 2.8% in the USA and Germany. Our research councils, which are world-class and respected around the world, have been doing a great job as autonomous units. One of the main worries about the Bill in universities and research councils is the removal of the autonomy of these institutions. They function well thanks to that autonomy.

I support Amendment 490D from the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, and the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, which would leave out the words “as UKRI may determine”. Under Clause 89, headed, “Exercise of functions by science and humanities Councils”, UKRI would have the right to determine what they do. This is absolutely wrong. Whatever the reasons the Government have given for having a layer like UKRI, many people—the noble Lord, Lord Rees, has argued well against it—have said it is completely not necessary and could be damaging to the whole sector. The analogy made was setting up a body to represent all the world-class museums in London, which are the best museums in the world. That would be completely unnecessary as they are doing a great job on their own. We have to ensure that the autonomy of the research councils is protected, whatever happens, even with the existence of this body called UKRI.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay kindly referred to my usual clarity. I fear, in so far as I ever had any clarity, it is rapidly dissipating as time goes on. Still, I will try to respond to many of the issues that have been raised in this very interesting debate.

I shall start with the governance relationship between research councils and UKRI. I will resist the temptation to address the broader issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, but I recognise that the UK still underfunds research compared with many of our competitor countries. Nevertheless, the £2 billion increase coming into UK research in 2020 is a significant change. One has to ask oneself whether that would have come about without UKRI being about to become our key co-ordinating research body.

Through Clause 89 the research councils retain their right to make decisions within their respective discipline areas. I assure noble Lords that UKRI must arrange for the seven research councils to carry out their roles and functions within their areas of activity. UKRI cannot prevent any of the research councils carrying out their functions in their respective areas.

I thank my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay for pointing out that references to “humanities” are in fact defined in the Bill, in Clause 105. It makes it very clear that they are defined as including the arts, and references to “sciences” include social sciences.

In discussions in the other place, the Government were clear that funding allocations would be made to each of the councils by the Government in the UKRI grant letter. Delegated authority limits will be set for the research councils to operate independently but additional approvals may be needed, including from the UKRI board, in line with current government best practice.

It is an important part of these reforms that UKRI will empower the councils to work together. The amendments would not prevent UKRI operating in this manner, but would obscure our intent for UKRI to take strategic decisions and facilitate development of the overall direction.

To address the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, this reform is about far more than efficiency savings or a reduction in bureaucracy. We must deliver these where we have the opportunity to, but not at the expense of the strengths of the current system. However, the removal of the current duplication of back-office functions across multiple bodies will ultimately drive efficiency savings and reduce the administrative burdens placed on research and innovation leaders, freeing them up to focus on strategic decision-making. It will also help to deliver simplified systems and processes for funding recipients.

On Amendments 485C and 195A, I welcome the opportunity to assure noble Lords that UKRI’s core purpose is to seek to improve the UK’s science and knowledge base, and it will seek to improve knowledge and understanding through research. Advancing knowledge is a critical role of the whole of the UK research base, including UKRI and the research councils, and we will look carefully at this matter before we return to the House on Report. I share the aspiration of the noble Lords, Lord Willis and Lord Cameron, for UKRI to support research programmes that can help to shape government policy, ensure resilience and respond to key challenges facing the UK.

On social inclusion, community cohesion and social and cultural well-being, I am certain that the current duty on councils to consider the desirability of improving quality of life is sufficient to cover these.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 30th January 2017 Lords Chamber

The measures proposed in the amendments, particularly Amendments 495D and the earlier one, head in the right direction. I am not suggesting that the Secretary of State should give carte blanche; that is unrealistic. However, once we have thought through the implications of Innovate UK being within UKRI, it has to be clear to members of the business community—after all, it rightly looks to Innovate UK as something facing them—that there is not going to be mega-interference from people on the UKRI board who are much more interested in the other end of the spectrum than in its part, which is about developing innovative products with commercial possibilities and possibilities for improving our quality of life.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, last year I shared a platform with the chief executive of Innovate UK at the International Festival for Business in Liverpool. We have heard from my noble friend Lord Mair about the great work it is doing and how important it is for our economy to encourage innovation and the translation of research from universities to business. Is it not ironic that here we have this Bill about which our greatest worry is its threat to autonomy—the autonomy of our universities, of our research institutions and, now, of Innovate UK? We cannot in any way stifle Innovate UK’s work or its ability to partner with or have joint ventures with organisations or to be innovative in itself. We cannot spoil Innovate UK being innovative. I urge the Government to listen to the amendment in the name of my noble friends Lady Brown, Lord Mair and Lord Broers and enable Innovate UK to be innovative itself.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)]

My Lords, I will begin by saying that I agree 100% with the principles behind many of the amendments in this group. It is absolutely right that Innovate UK should have as much autonomy as possible over all matters related to its remit and mission. We are fully agreed on that. However, I disagree with my noble friend Lady Neville-Jones. I fundamentally believe that Innovate UK will be better off within UKRI and that bringing together into one organisation research and the translation of research will create a much stronger one. I also feel that, when it comes to negotiating budgets with the Treasury and the like, again Innovate UK will be much better off within UKRI than if it were a separate body.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (CB)]

When the Minister replies, perhaps he could say something about the role of UKRI in the thinking about regulatory harmonisation. Would he like to say something to create a bit of certainty regarding medical research, clinical trials and so on?

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, today I hosted a group of education leaders from India and in our discussion, they asked: “What are your worries about Brexit when it comes to the UK education sector?”. In listing my worries, a list which is too long to talk about now, I stated that one of my biggest concerned research. It is all very well for the Government to say, “We’ll keep giving you the funding for research that we get from the European Union, even if we leave”, but it is much more important than that. That is why I support Amendment 488 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay.

The key to research is collaboration. Already, we are seeing EU-funded research universities in Europe not partnering with UK universities because they are worried that we will be leaving the European Union. If I may illustrate the power of collaborative research, while I was in India in November, at the same time as the Prime Minister and the Universities Minister, Jo Johnson, the University of Birmingham held a workshop with the Panjab University. There we showed the power of collaborative research: when the University of Birmingham conducts research, our field-weighted citation impact is 1.87. The Panjab University figure is 1.37. Yet when we carry out collaborative research, the impact is 5.64, or three times the Birmingham figure. When we do research with Harvard University—I am an alumnus of the Harvard Business School—while Birmingham’s impact is 1.87 and Harvard’s is 2.4, our combined impact is 5.69. This is serious. We must encourage collaborative research with the European Union and this amendment should be in the Bill.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I think we are all pretty much in violent agreement about the critical importance of collaboration across countries, but also about being able to attract the best and brightest to the UK. There is no question about that. When one hears the story from the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, about individuals who have decided not to come here for various reasons because of Brexit, it is depressing. On the other hand, only today Novo Nordisk, the big Danish pharmaceutical company and diabetes specialist, announced that it is investing £100 million at Oxford. AstraZeneca is also building its global research facilities at Cambridge. The truth is that anecdotes can be misleading and that the jury is out.

We have to demonstrate to the international community that we are open for business, and persuade it that that is the case. Other countries have similar issues at the moment. I imagine that many scientists in the USA are thinking, “Should we stay in the US or move?”. Scientists in other parts of Europe will be thinking similar things. We have to demonstrate to this increasingly internationally mobile part of the community that Britain is the place to be. I was struck that at the Crick institute, some 34% of all its principal investigators are EU nationals, which illustrates that it is essential that we reassure them of their welcome here.

That is what the Prime Minister has been doing. She said in her Lancaster House speech on 17 January that we will,

“welcome agreement to continue to collaborate with our European partners on major science, research, and technology initiatives”.

She went on to describe her vision of,

“a secure, prosperous, tolerant country—a magnet for international talent and a home to the pioneers and innovators who will shape the world ahead”.

There should be no doubt that the Government are fully apprised of this issue and that we are determined to be, as the Prime Minister said, a magnet for international talent. I do not suppose that the country is going to be glued to reading Hansard tomorrow, but it worth making that point on any opportunities that we get.