Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Sixth sitting)

Virginia Crosbie Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah]

My respect for the hon. Member only increases because he does not wish to repeat what somebody else has said. That is not always the case in this House, as we know. I welcome the intervention from the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, and I would welcome a long discussion on probability, mathematics and statistics, but I can see that my Whip might not be entirely happy with that, so let me confine myself to this. I was not claiming that the estimate was rigorous. The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme suggested that because there will be more interest in ARIA, it will receive more Freedom of Information Act requests. That might be true for the first two or three years, but I do not think that level of interest would be maintained, even if it received more requests proportionately.

I mentioned funding because that is what enables activity, and freedom of information requests relate to that activity. Therefore, even if we doubled the greatest estimate to, say, 12, what price does the Committee think should not be paid for accountability and freedom of information? What would be too much? I was not here in Parliament for the expenses scandal, but we saw the impact that had on public confidence as we now see the cronyism scandals and their impact on public confidence and trusted institutions. Freedom of information and transparency is an essential part of that.

The Campaign for Freedom of Information reports that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, with its significantly higher budget, was subject to just 48 requests in 2019. During the evidence sessions, we heard that UKRI was happy to deal with FOI requests, because it viewed them as an important aspect of spending public money. We also heard—this was telling—that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, although it is not subject to FOI, behaves as if it is and responds to requests because it views them as an important aspect of transparency. Regardless of whether the Minister accepts the amendment—I very much hope that she will—ARIA should echo the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s approach.

We heard in evidence from DARPA that it believed that rather than hindering the agency, the transparency offered by FOI requests was useful in building public trust in its work. In fact, DARPA’s deputy director stated that the level of oversight that it is subject to is “important to its success”. Other high-risk, high-reward agencies such as the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation in Germany, Vinnova in Sweden and the French National Centre for Scientific Research are all subject to the freedom of information requirements of their respective countries. What makes ARIA so different?

The protection of sensitive information cannot be used as justification for a blanket exemption, as the Freedom of Information Act 2000 already provides exemptions where disclosure would prejudice research or commercial interests, or cause a breach of confidentiality. In their initial response to the Secretary of State’s announcement of ARIA’s FOI exemption, NESTA said:

“Radical openness and honesty is needed or distrust will undermine it. The public will expect to know what’s happening with public money”—

I think we can very much see that now—

“and greater risk requires transparency and evaluation in order to determine what works.”

The Campaign for Freedom of Information said that ARIA

“will spend hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money on high risk projects but the government apparently wants it to be less accountable to the public than parish councils, which are subject to FOI.”

In the evidence session, Tabitha Goldstaub said that

“at Google’s moonshot factory, X…they started in secret and everything felt so appealing, to protect people from any feeling of failure, but what they learned is that there are so many other much better ways than secrecy to incentivise people and to give them the freedom to fail. Actually, allowing for more transparency builds much more trust and encourages more collaboration and, therefore, better breakthroughs.”––[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Agency Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 57, Q55.]

On what we are trying to achieve with this agency, the Minister has mentioned her concerns about bureaucracy a few times, but I think we as legislators have to decide whether we believe that rules and regulations are simply mere bureaucracy to be thrown out whenever possible, or whether we believe that they can contribute both to the effectiveness of an agency and to the contract that we in Parliament have with the public to take their hard-earned taxpayers’ money and spend it as best we can to encourage and enable growth, prosperity, and a national health service—all things from which the public benefit. We cannot do that in secret; we have to do it publicly.

I really urge the Minister to accept the amendment. She knows that the exemption has come in for much criticism and that the controversy around it will continue to mar the progress of the agency. I urge her to listen to the siren voices of concern and to accept the amendment to remove ARIA’s exemption from the Freedom of Information Act.

[Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I would like to speak briefly to amendment 22. In the past week, we have discussed the concerns about exempting ARIA from FOI requests, and we have heard evidence about the potential burden of administration. UKRI told us that it has a team of staff purely to deal with the 300-plus FOI requests that it receives annually. In addition, Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser said that although UKRI is happy to be able to respond to FOI requests,

“there is a judgment call about the burden of administration”.––[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Agency Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 9, Q4.]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme so eloquently put it—echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock—with unique freedoms and independence to enable transformational research, ARIA will inevitably receive a number of FOI requests that is disproportionate to its size.

Our vision for ARIA is that it should be lean and agile. Do we really want it encumbered by that level of administrative burden? Do we want ARIA’s brilliant programme managers to be stifled by bureaucratic paperwork?

We have also heard about whether ARIA will deliver the game-changing R&D that we want if it is subject to FOI. It was Tony Blair who gave us the Freedom of Information Act and it was he who subsequently described it as

“utterly undermining of sensible Government.”

To use his words:

“If you are trying to take a difficult decision and you're weighing up the pros and cons, you have frank conversations...and if those conversations then are put out in a published form that afterwards are liable to be highlighted in particular ways, you are going to be very cautious.”

Professor Philip Bond put this view into an R&D context in his discussions with us last week. He said that

“if you are asking people to go out on a limb to really push the envelope, I would assert that there is an argument, which has some validity, that you make it psychologically much easier for them if they do not feel that they are under a microscope.” ––[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Agency Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 29.]

Mr Blair and Professor Bond perfectly highlight the fundamental reason why ARIA should be free from FOI. The last thing that our scientists need when they are looking for the next internet is to be held back by caution.