My Lords, it is perhaps important to point out that Innovate UK is to be henceforth merely a committee of UKRI. The scope of its work is set out in Clause 90(1), which states:
“UKRI must arrange for Innovate UK to exercise such functions of UKRI as UKRI may determine for the purpose of increasing economic growth in the United Kingdom”.
So I do not think that there is any sense in which UKRI is autonomous. Innovate UK will have no employees of its own—they will all be employees of UKRI—and it certainly will not be autonomous in any sense that I can understand. The question may be whether the result that these amendments are aiming at can be attained only by taking Innovate UK out of UKRI and giving it a separate status. There may be disadvantages in that as well, but, as presently set out in the Bill, Innovate UK is a mere committee of UKRI—and that is not a particularly elevated status. In many aspects—not all, because I have just referred to a special aspect in the clause that I mentioned—it is being treated pretty much as a part of UKRI.