Science and Technology Facilities Council Order 2007

rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 20 November be approved [Second Report from the Statutory Instruments Committee]. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the purpose of the order is to establish a new Science and Technology Facilities Council under the Science and Technology Act 1965. The Act requires that a draft of the Order in Council declaring the Science and Technology Facilities Council to be a research council and specifying the new body’s objects must be laid before Parliament and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament. The draft royal charter under which the new body will be incorporated has been placed in the Libraries of both Houses as background to this debate. The aims of the new council will be: to create a more integrated approach to large scientific research facilities, including international negotiations, for long-term projects involving several countries acting together; to obtain more value from the knowledge and technologies that are developed as a result of the new council’s programmes; and to deliver those goals using the two science and innovation campuses at Harwell and Daresbury as identifiable knowledge-transfer centres that host UK-based large-scale international facilities. The new council will be created by the merger of the activities of the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and the transfer to it of the nuclear physics research activities of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The proposal will give the council the scope to carry out those activities. The proposals to create such a council were subject to public consultation following the 2006 Budget. There was wide support for the creation of a unified council dealing with the large facilities previously managed by the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and for keeping the research and postgraduate training powers of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council within the new council. That is how we propose to proceed—noble Lords will notice that we are not shortening the names of any of the research councils involved. Professor Keith Mason, the chief executive of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, has been appointed as chief executive designate of the proposed new council and is leading the necessary transition work at the councils. I am grateful for the leadership he is providing. All the staff, assets and liabilities will be transferred from the existing councils concerned to the Science and Technology Facilities Council under the terms of a further order made under the Science and Technology Act 1965 using the negative resolution procedure. It is planned that the council will start work on 1 April 2007. I beg to move. Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 20 November be approved [Second Report from the Statutory Instruments Committee].—(Lord Truscott.)