My Lords, since nobody else is speaking and I had prepared a response to the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, I might as well briefly respond. I was going to say—indeed, I am saying—that this is a slightly random collection of amendments to say the least. As the noble Lord is not here, I can perhaps adopt a slightly more doubtful tone. As my noble friend Lord Oates made plain in the very good debate on Amendment 1:
“If the purpose of DARPA was to protect the national security of the United States by retaining its scientific edge against the threat of the Soviet Union, today, the threat from climate change, although very different, is some orders of magnitude greater.”—[Official Report, 17/11/21; col. GC 86.]
He went on to say that he agreed that it should be part of ARIA’s objectives. I very much agree with him.
On Amendment 26A, many of us asked this question at Second Reading; indeed, that is why we have tabled, and will be discussing, Amendment 47 regarding the framework for ARIA. It is extraordinary that we do not yet know what the arrangements will be with UKRI, research bodies and so forth, particularly in view of what the Minister said last week in Committee:
“UKRI has a broad portfolio of projects that it funds to tackle climate change across 12 different areas”.—[Official Report, 17/11/21; col. GC 96.]
He set out what all those areas are, but the risk of overlap seems considerable. Therefore, it seems important that we get to know what the relationships are between ARIA and other research bodies.
I am rather lukewarm about the renaming of ARIA. The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, quoted the Science and Technology Committee saying that ARIA was a
“brand in search of a product”.
The problem is not the brand; we want to look under the bonnet and see what it is actually going to do. The name is not what many of us are concerned about.