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

Lord Rees of Ludlow Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB) [V]]

Our research universities are major assets because of the collective expertise of their faculties and the consequent quality of the graduates they feed into all walks of life. They are a seedbed for new ideas, some of which have major potential impact, but our top institutions will not retain their standing unless they continue to attract top talent from this country and abroad. Some nerds—I am one of them—will become researchers come what may but a world-class university cannot survive on just these weirdos. It must attract a share of ambitious young people with flexible talent—the kind who are savvy about their options and increasingly associate academia with uncertain prospects, bureaucracy and undue financial sacrifices, as measured by this report.

Even if we continue to generate 10% of the world’s best science, 90% of clever new ideas still germinate elsewhere, so we should not overfocus. The system as a whole must retain enough across-the-board expertise to sustain a “watching brief” across all global science, and thereby seize on a new idea from anywhere and run with it.

Achieving the social and economic benefits of research is a prolonged process. The inventors of lasers in the 1960s used ideas that Einstein had developed decades earlier; they could not themselves foresee that their invention would be used in eye surgery and in DVDs. Likewise, the pay-offs from, for instance, quantum computing and graphene still lie ahead.

Research universities are not optimised to spearhead long-term R&D, especially when they are constrained by perverse incentives such as the REF. That is why it is good that they are embedded in an ecosystem of small companies, NGOs and so on; that is why the catapult centres were set up. Government research establishments provide, in some areas, valuable long-term programmes. Indeed, such establishments already exist for fusion research, biomedicine and environmental science, but we need more. For instance, the new Faraday Institution for battery research—a welcome step—could be the nucleus of a larger venture, meshing public and private funds and encompassing other energy technologies.

There is an especially compelling case for prioritising energy R&D. Without innovation, we will not meet our 2050 net-zero target, but that in itself cuts global emissions by less than 2%. It is more important that these innovations could have a benign multiplier effect and perhaps accelerate the developing world’s efforts to leapfrog to clean energy. Then—I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, would approve of this—we would reduce global emissions by far more than 2% and help the developing world.

Likewise, our leadership in plant science could facilitate the switch to the sustainably intensive agriculture that is needed to feed the world’s 9 billion people by 2050. It is hard to envisage a more inspiring challenge for young scientists than providing food and energy for the developing world. We need to ensure that these scientists are educated, motivated and supported. Our schools, universities, and high-tech businesses—supplemented by national laboratories—must all match the international best if we are to prosper.