My Lords, I will also speak to Amendments 479A and 481A. Perhaps I should declare a historical interest in Amendment 479A, because way back in the 1980s when there were six research councils, two of them had a non-executive chairman—the Medical Research Council, chaired by Lord Jellicoe, and what was then the Agricultural and Food Research Council, which I chaired and which has now been subsumed into the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. I think that both Lord Jellicoe and I were rather flattered when, as a result of the review of the research council model, it was decided that the other four should no longer be headed by what was called a HORC—a head of research council—but a non-executive chairman, whose job was to do what happens in good governance in any other organisation, where the chairman holds the chief executive to account and the two have very separate roles. That model has been well adopted by the research councils. I was on the Science and Technology Committee of this House at the time, when some of my colleagues looked with some suspicion at this proposal, but now it is clearly viewed with universal favour.
On Amendment 481A, it is inconceivable that Innovate UK should not continue to have a non-executive chairman, as it does at the moment. Innovate UK has got to be business related and facing business. Business needs to continue to have confidence that it is there to represent its interests and that it has not been taken over by academia and other interests. That will be a battle. As I said on an earlier amendment, the cultures will be very different. These two amendments precisely deal with this issue and like, the noble Lord, Lord Mair, I support them both heartily.
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