Asked by
To ask His Majesty’s Government what financial assessment they
have made of the benefits to the United Kingdom’s economy arising
from scientific discoveries or advances achieved as a result of
the United Kingdom’s former participation in Horizon Europe.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Science, Innovation and Technology () (Con)
We are moving forward with discussions on the UK’s involvement in
Horizon Europe. That is our preference, but our participation
must work for UK researchers, businesses and taxpayers. If we are
not able to secure association on fair and appropriate terms, we
will implement Pioneer, our bold and ambitious alternative. Our
participation in previous European programmes had positive
employment and commercial effects, hence our position on Horizon
Europe and our development of Pioneer as an alternative.
(Con)
Since my noble friend is obviously struggling to answer the
question and quantify the benefits to the economy of our former
participation in Horizon Europe, can he explain why the
Government appear to be so keen to rejoin? If they are going to
rejoin, will he consider at least getting an opt-out from
clusters 2 and 3 of Pillar 2, which fund social sciences
research, from which I really cannot see any advantage at all to
the working people of this country, who are being expected to pay
for them?
(Con)
I thank my noble friend for the question. The Government really
do see benefit in our past and, I hope, future association to
Horizon and its predecessor programmes. Analysis of our
participation as a member state in the previous framework
programmes found that UK participants received approximately €7
billion in framework programme 7. That represented 15.4% of the
total awarded, which exceeded by 16% what would have been
anticipated on the basis purely of our GDP share. As regards the
pillars we would join, I note that under the terms of the TCA, we
opted out from the Pillar 3 equity fund but otherwise elected to
join all the remaining pillars, and those are the terms under
which we continue to seek association today.
(Lab)
Does the Minister accept that the main benefit that universities
see in Horizon is the potential to build close and lasting
partnerships with institutions on the continent, for which there
can be no domestic substitute? It is from those partnerships that
the benefits about which the noble Lord, , inquired flow in great
measure.
(Con)
Indeed, and the Government recognise very strongly the benefits
of collaboration not merely with the EU 27 but globally. The
range of benefits includes not just academic benefits but the
ability to build our R&D capacity; employment effects;
commercial benefits, of course; and leveraging in additional
investments as a result of the research.
of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, do His Majesty’s Government have any other metric of
assessing the benefits of membership of Horizon Europe beyond the
purely financial that the noble Lord, , is looking at? Already, we
have heard about patterns of co-operation. At this point, I was
going to declare my interests as stated in the register, but I
might just point out that I am a professor of European politics,
which fits into social sciences, so I do believe that
co-operation can be very beneficial.
(Con)
Indeed. As the specific analysis for association to the Horizon
Europe programme is currently being negotiated, I cannot comment
on what the analysis is there. I can say that, going back to
framework programme 7, the predecessor programme to Horizon,
almost 91% of UK participants stated that their project would not
have gone ahead had they not participated in FP7. That equates to
roughly 41,000 partnerships at risk of never having happened and
29,000 collaborations with non-UK participants potentially
lost.
(CB)
My Lords, Horizon framework programmes and Horizon 2020
programmes contributed enormously, as the Minister just said, to
research and development in the United Kingdom. But coming back
to social sciences and humanities, the figure quoted was over
£600 million of EU funding, particularly to Oxford University. So
it does have economic benefits.
(Con)
I take the point, but I am not sure there was a question there
for me to answer.
(Con)
The benefits of Horizon are frequently asserted but very rarely
demonstrated. Often those assertions come from those who have a
vested interest, having been recipients under the old system, as
indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, was just honest enough to
admit in the form in which she put her question. Will my noble
friend the Minister tell me whether the Government have done any
cost-benefit analysis of Britain joining on the terms the EU is
demanding?
(Con)
Indeed. As all noble Lords would expect, a very detailed and
comprehensive value analysis has taken place as part of the
current ongoing negotiations to associate with the Horizon
programme. In the words of the Chancellor yesterday, the
negotiations have reached a point that is “crunchy”, and for that
reason, I cannot discuss any of the details of our negotiating
position, not least our evaluation of various outcomes.
(Lab)
My Lords, if we are going to quote important people in relation
to this debate—and I commend the noble Lord for asking this
Question, although I disagree with him—can I point out that the
president of the Royal Society, Sir , is on record as saying that
people are leaving Britain to do research elsewhere or not coming
to Britain because we are not members of Horizon Europe? The
Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Sir Paul Nurse, head of the
Francis Crick Institute, has said that every month that goes by
without an agreement is deeply damaging both to science and to
the country. Does the Minister agree, and if so, what are the
Government doing about it and when will they make a decision?
(Con)
As I have said, the Government’s preferred position is to
associate to the Horizon programme. As to what we are doing about
it, we are negotiating purposefully with the EU to bring that
about. However, that association has to take place on fair and
appropriate terms. Should we not be able to secure those fair and
appropriate terms, we will implement Pioneer, our bold and
ambitious alternative.
(Con)
Can my noble friend the Minister reassure us that the Government
see that there is a world beyond white Europe—that there is much
innovation across the world, not just in the EU? While of course
we want to be members of the Horizon scheme, we should not enter
at any price. An example I would give is that when I was an
academic, we got money from the Jean Monnet fund, and it insisted
that we rename our international business course “European
business”—a small European view of the world, when we should be
looking globally.
(Con)
I thank my noble friend for making that important point. When
talking about Horizon, we often slip into the language of
concerning ourselves only with collaborations with the
universities of Europe. Nothing could be further from good
scientific practice or, indeed, from anybody’s intention.
(Lab)
We recognise the Government’s ongoing safety net for researchers
in the absence of the Horizon programme. It is welcome. However,
it is the continuing uncertainty that has led to the drop-off in
participation and, as we have heard, projects moving overseas. As
a member between 2014 and 2020, the UK received a
disproportionately beneficial amount of funding, leading to
ready-made routes and established funding streams into a range of
projects, covering heritage, AIDS vaccines, autonomous vehicles,
aerospace manufacturing, and noise pollution. This is urgent.
When can we end this uncertainty? Can we have a clear route to
the decision-making process that is needed?
(Con)
My Lords, I would like nothing more than to give a definitive
date by which a decision will be made one way or the other. The
negotiations are ongoing and at a mature stage, with purpose on
both sides. More than that I cannot say for fear of prejudicing
their outcome.
The (CB)
My Lords, it is now four months and a day. The urgency has been
rather absent in the various remarks of the Government. I support
the comment made by the noble Baroness, Lady Blake. This is a
straight argument about money, and if one tries to amortise this
amount of money over one or one-and-a-bit Horizons, you come up
with a difficult analysis, where it looks very expensive. If you
try to amortise it over several Horizons, you suddenly
realise—this applies to both parties in this negotiation—that one
is arguing about a row of beans. Can the Minister give us some
comfort at least that the British side is seeking to amortise the
costs involved over a number of Horizons and therefore is
beginning to see that this is not a very large amount of
money?
(Con)
Yes, I very much take the point that scientific research does not
take place over intervals of seven years but is a long-term
undertaking and an important endeavour. Certainly, the
Government’s thinking is very much aligned with that. I hope that
my words can convey some of our sense of urgency but in these
negotiations, we cannot set firm deadlines.
