Examination of Witness (Questions 578-579)
MONDAY 17 MARCH 2003
RICHARD LAMBERT
Chairman
578. Can we start the formal proceedings, and
welcome Richard Lambert to our proceedings and say thank you very
much for your attendance. As you know, the Committee is looking
at the White Paper, but it seemed to us that it would be remiss
of us if we did not call you in, because you are undertaking a
review, originally for the Treasury but expanded by the Department
for Education and Skills, to have a look at a number of issues.
Richard, I understand that you would like to have two or three
minutes, to open up, and then we will get started on questioning?
(Mr Lambert) Yes, if that is agreeable
to you, Chairman, that will be good. I would like to thank you
very much for allowing me to come and explain what I am up to.
I would like to say that this project is at a very early stage,
and we are in the kind of human sponge mode at the moment, so
we are soaking up as much information as we can, and hopefully
without any particular preconceptions about what we are doing.
As you will see, coming from a standing start, you will find gaps
in my knowledge. I hope very much that I will have the chance,
perhaps in a few months' time, in June, or sometime like that,
to talk again, when we have got in all our evidence and are starting
to think things through and forming judgments about what we have
learned from this process. Just a background of what we are up
to. This review was commissioned by the Government last November
and it is couched in a way that we are looking at the question
of the university-business relationship from the demand side,
so we are interested particularly in the business side of the
story, that is our starting-point, and we will be talking to lots
of businesses, of all shapes and sizes, in the coming months about
how they see these things. And the context is finding examples
of good practice that can be heralded, and it is part of the issue
of productivity, the question of British productivity, the notion
being that great work is done in British universities, but that,
relative to some other countries, in the US and other parts of
Europe, we are not as great as we might be at transferring that
into commercial activity in a creative and dynamic way. So that
is what the set of issues is. Our terms of reference tell us that
we must look at the benefits of greater collaboration, both inter-institution
and across to business. We are looking at the role of RDAs and
Sector Skills Councils and regional impact. We are looking at
best practice and we will be doing some international models on
that, I hope, as well. We are asked to consider how business communicates
its skills requirements in the university sector and whether it
does a good enough job of that and whether it gets what it is
looking for. On the financial side, it is early days to look at
the R&D tax credit, but we are asked to look at the R&D
tax credit and other financial incentives, whether the form in
which public funding is delivered encourages, or not, collaboration
with business, we are asked to look at that. And we are asked
to look at governance and management questions of the university
in this context, in the context of the technology transfer, ideas
transfer, to business. So that is what we are up to. We have sent
out a lot of letters, to all the institutions and companies you
would expect us to send them to, and have asked them to send us
replies on various issues, which we can talk about, by Easter;
also we are approaching and talking to lots of universities and
businesses at the same time. We will get all this stuff back after
Easter, digest it, by early summer we will have some preliminary
ideas, which we will be discussing with all the parties, including
you, I hope, with a view to having something to hand over to the
Government I think in October. So that is what we are up to.
579. Thank you for that. Can I start by asking
you, what do you see as the trigger, why you, and why has the
Treasury suddenly asked you to do this?
(Mr Lambert) I think, me, perhaps, because I have
spent my life looking at business. I have got a lot of business
contacts.
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