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Universities: Research Funding

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to be able to speak in the debate of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, on funding for research infrastructure. It is a pleasure, once again, to see many familiar faces connected with higher education in the House today. As many noble Lords will know, the UK is a world leader in research and is home to some of the best research universities and research institutions. University research is one of our nation’s success stories. The UK represents only 1 per cent of the global population but produces 9 per cent of the world’s scientific publications and 12 per cent of its scientific citations. Every day, researchers are making breakthroughs that revolutionise our health, security, the environment and our quality of life. By pushing the very frontiers of science, researchers have developed the fundamental building blocks upon which so many other discoveries are being made. It is vital that today’s researchers can continue to ask those important ““what if?”” questions at the edges of the unknown. Of course, research can lead to findings that were anticipated, but at times researchers aiming for one outcome stumble fortuitously across unrelated but equally valuable applications. Eureka, a recent publication by Universities UK—I declare an interest as chief executive—highlighted many diverse and serendipitous discoveries by UK universities that are regarded as commonplace today, things such as MRI scanners, DNA fingerprinting, DVD players, IVF and environmentally friendly cars. The UK’s investment in research improves the relative international and overall innovation performance of the economy. Significant innovations emerge from all research disciplines, not only in the sciences but in financial services and arts and humanities research, which underpins the UK’s enormously important creative industries and contributes £11.4 billion to the UK balance of trade. Having indicated how valuable university research can be, I should like to turn to how research funding operates within UK universities and briefly touch on some of the issues that are raised under the current funding regime. Noble Lords will be aware that in 2003-04, 75 per cent of quality-related research funding allocated via the Higher Education Funding Council and 84 per cent of Research Council funding went, as the noble Baroness said, to 25 higher education institutions. That clearly shows that the UK is highly selective in how it funds research. Universities UK has stated that supporting excellence wherever it is found is crucial if the UK is to remain internationally competitive, but there is compelling evidence that the current concentration of research funding in the sector is about as far as it should go, and any further radical concentration would be detrimental to the health of UK research. It would have a negative impact on what we believe is the necessary integration of research and teaching, the training and career development of research personnel, the interactions between universities and business and the emergence of new and developing areas. A key criticism of the current research assessment exercise process, the RAE, is that it focuses on only ““pure”” or ““basic”” research, excluding the applied and user-focus research, which, as I stated earlier, is so important to economic growth and the needs of business. Although simplistic distinctions about what types of research are the most important to the economy can be unhelpful—it must be remembered that the innovation process is very complex—the current reform of the research assessment exercise presents an opportunity to look at how it can better recognise all types of research activity. This would include pure and basic research through to applied research, including support for the creative industries, business and service sectors. However, it would be dangerous to forget that the UK is the only European country with universities in the top-20 world league of universities and, whatever one thinks about league tables, it is a considerable distinction which we jeopardise at our peril. Only recently in the House, noble Lords recognised the huge economic impact of our universities right across the board. In any developed economy a range of institutions is needed, as is a range of expertise. Every university needs a strong research base as well as a strong teaching base. I take this opportunity to remind the Minister once more that UK universities have diverse missions and drive innovation in many different ways. The challenge is to effectively recognise those strengths wherever they may lie and to reward them.