Our amendments 43 to 45 are on collaboration between the OFS and UKRI. I will come to those and the Minister’s comments on them in a moment, but shall start with amendment 42.
Amendment 42 would allow Research England to co-ordinate with its devolved counterparts. Labour considers this an important principle to establish in the Bill. The Committee did not include members from Wales or, obviously, from Northern Ireland, yet, in both Wales and Northern Ireland, universities and higher education institutions will be significantly affected by the process. They will also be affected if the process with the new bodies is not universally seen, at this important time for our university system, to be fair in sharing out its attentions. Not to consider including such provisions in the Bill is a great mistake. Surely we should consider those interests when setting up a new research body.
This is highly relevant to the future of those research bodies. The Minister will be well aware that research bodies are generally still not entirely mollified by the various blandishments and reassurances given, particularly on the role of research councils. I am sure he will hear more about that when the Bill goes to the other place. While we have not pressed further any of the amendments that were proposed in Committee, because of time pressures, I assure him that our noble Friends in another place will want to scrutinise in detail what he has said and what he is planning to do.
These are not arcane arguments about technical details. One of the problems the Government face is that they have overlooked a vital factor. There is little sense of what the knock-on effects of all this will be on the
importance of what I describe as the brand UK plc in HE—particularly so, in view of the further uncertainties that have arisen since the advent of Brexit. I am not the only person to make that observation; other commentators and academics have also done so.
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HE providers across England and the devolved nations are internationally competitive because there is a trusted UK brand. If we are to maintain a trusted UK brand, it is important that all the integral parts of the UK feel that they have a say at the table. If they do not feel that and there is disgruntlement and dissension, at a time when the UK Government need to do all they can in the Brexit negotiations to safeguard that UK brand, there will be a weak link. There needs to be a proper UK-wide strategy to safeguard the positions of our researchers, as the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) mentioned.
Amendments 55 and 56, tabled by SNP Members, provide a valuable service to the Government by waking them up to some of the implications of having a body—albeit not one that they might wish for—that appears to be too Anglocentric. Reference was made to the amendment tabled in Committee that would have given the devolved nations more input. The Welsh Government in particular are concerned that Government amendment 45, which is the UK Government’s response to the amendment tabled in Committee, will not be adequate. Their view is very simple: Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, although they have some similarities—in that they are not English—are not a homogenous group of countries. They have very different histories, interests and experiences of HE and research and innovation, which needs to be reflected in the architecture.
The Minister is at his most emollient this evening, on the back of the announcement today of a £2 billion industrial strategy fund, which is going turbo-charge the future for UKRI, so that it can power away and all the rest of it. The truth of the matter—and the Minister knows it—is that the architecture that will need to be constructed and consolidated in UKRI, with Innovate UK, the research councils, the devolved Administrations and so on, is complex. It is going to take time to develop.