Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

My Lords, I will be brief and will refer particularly to Amendment 26A. I repeat that I am a member of the board of UKRI and so have a particular interest in this. The more the Minister can say about ARIA alongside UKRI, the better—it would be very helpful. I do not mind if there is overlap; I am not a purist on this. Indeed, some overlap may be an inevitable result of having ARIA and UKRI. In fact, I would prefer overlap to the alternatives, which are either that UKRI is seen to be unable to do high-risk, high-reward research or that it is somehow seen as second best to ARIA. I hope that the Minister will assure us that UKRI will be able to carry on doing the wide range of activities that it does—including through Innovate UK, in particular—with the application and successful commercialisation of technologies. I see ARIA as supplementing that rather than displacing it, so anything that the Minister can say about that relationship here or in answer to subsequent amendments would be very helpful.