Technology Strategy Board Order 2007

My Lords, I should first declare an interest: I am a professor at University College, London, and I am chairman of a small company. At University College we work with the insurance industry in the Lighthill Risk Network. One of the problems in dealing with industry and research that has been focused on more this year than normal is the extreme difficulty of industry obtaining data from UK research organisations. I am sure that noble Lords are familiar with the fact that in the United States, data from its research community are pretty well freely available. In the UK they are not, because guidance is given by Government to their research establishments to charge for their data. They often make it very difficult and there is no general data policy. I am chairman of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and part of its remit from the Government is to ensure that it charges for the data that come from its establishment. I support that in the frame with which it is done but I believe there is considerable conflict and confusion in this area. If you really want UK research to get out to small industries, you have to change dramatically the whole structure in which data are made available. You will find in the world of the environment that it is absolutely normal for most people to give up trying to get data from the UK research community. You have to go to theUnited States or elsewhere. This is an extremely serious position. A very welcome point about this document, which has been a progressive change by this Government and I understand is now welcomed by the Conservatives and the CBI, is the role of procurement by government agencies in helping industry. When I ran the Met Office, I was told by the then Government that it was not the job of a UK government agency to support small industry through procurement. That was something that they did in France, I was told. I am glad we now do this in the UK but is it possible for UK government agencies to procure new technology under EU rules or will it have to be done on a competitive basis across Europe? It was not at all clear from his statement to what extent it will be possible to focus these activities on UK small industry, as opposed to actually sponsoring research across the whole of Europe. My last point, which involves the text of the document, is that one of the ways in which the Government can help small industries—that is beginning but much more could be done—is to publicise UK companies working for the UK Government. Many foreign organisations comment that where excellent work is being done by UK small businesses, the UK Government do very little to publicise it. We well know that the UK Government are very good at publicising the Shells, BPs, BAEs and Rolls Royces of this world, but they are not very good at publicising the very small companies. My noble friend Lord Sainsbury once commented upon that point. I very much hope that you will encourage this and I look forward to some new initiatives and the wider use of the internet for that purpose.