My Lords, I support Amendment 489 from the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and shall speak to Amendments 503A and 505A in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Krebs. Amendment 503A follows on from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, about the Haldane principle. At Second Reading many noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, and the noble and learned Lords, Lord Kakkar, Lord Winston and Lord
Krebs, urged the Minister of State to be bold and take this opportunity to, as the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, put it,
“hardwire the arm’s-length, Haldane principle into the Bill”,
or, rather more to my taste, as Lord Waldegrave said more simply,
“let us at least try to put the Haldane principle on the face of the Bill”.—[Official Report, 6/12/16; cols. 624-27.]
In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, when he was Minister for Universities and Science:
“The Haldane principle means that decisions on individual research proposals are best taken by researchers themselves through peer review … Prioritisation of an individual research council’s spending within its allocation is not a decision for Ministers”.
He said the principle was,
“vital for the protection of academic independence and excellence”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/12/10; col. 138WS.]
Its presence in the Bill would remove many of the other concerns about the autonomy and operation of the research councils in the new UKRI organisation. Amendment 503A would put a specific reference to the Haldane principle in the Bill in relation to the Secretary of State’s direction to UKRI.
Amendment 505A picks up the important issue of ensuring the continuation of the dual funding model for research. It seeks to assure that the streams of funding for research grants, distributed by the research councils, and for QR, distributed on the basis of the results of the research excellence framework by Research England, could not be redistributed or used for cross-subsidy. It is important that the two funding streams remain distinct and complementary. In addition to the eloquent support from the noble Lords, Lord Kakkar and Lord Kerslake, for the dual funding systems in their Second Reading speeches, Sir Paul Nurse commented in the Nurse review, on which much of this part of the Bill is based, that having QR in addition to research grants was:
“one of the reasons behind the UK’s success in research and these separate funding streams should be preserved”.
These two streams should be evaluated and distributed in separate and complementary ways, as should other funding streams such as HEIF, as we heard earlier.
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