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Jonathan Shaw (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab): Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the HEFCE will provide a capacity fund of £20 million to support research in emerging subject areas in which the research base is not strong and established? Does not that answer some of his concerns about the need to pump-prime areas that we want to progress? Mr. Thomas: Yes, it does. I am aware of the initiative. My amendment is simply a probing amendment to elicit an explanation of how this pans out. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that that is exactly what he said it was; pump-priming. In principle, my amendment is an ongoing mechanism, Column Number: 25 which, over time, could change the funding system. The system the hon. Gentleman describes attempts to get people on to a springboard so that they can attain that research council funding. There is no principle at stake here about whether we go down this or that route, but it is important that we recognise the current lack of equity in research council funding.
10.30 amThat lack of equity is due to the fact that some institutions started from a lower base. They received less funding than the more established institutions. They have always struggled to attract lecturers, teachers, staff and students to hit those gradings of five and more within the research evaluation exercise. The hon. Gentleman will know what institutions I am talking about because they have featured in other parts of our discussion on the Bill. The more historic institutions also find it easier to attract private money to match-fund. It is much harder for a tiny university such as Lampeter to attract private funding. It is interesting to look at a university like that because its research into ethics precisely reflects what the Minister was saying earlier about biotechnology, genetic engineering, human fertilisation and so on. In conclusion, I should like to look at a couple of the research councils, but as I said earlier, I do not want to criticise them per se. My amendment recognises that they will give money to the best research. I am concerned that that is a bit of self-perpetuating mechanism that can go against what we are trying to achieve, at least in the better parts of the Bill. The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council has managed to fund eight postgraduates at the university of Wales, the lowest figure for any university. The university of Wales is a collegiate university, made up of five or six different colleges. In other universities such as York the figure is 83, in Cambridge it is 210 and in Oxford it is 86. I do not want to continue with those numbers. There is a discrepancy; I say no more than that. The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council is supporting only 19 grants in Wales. That brings to mind the history of the Diamond synchrotron. Many of us hoped for sentimental reasons that it would come to Aberystwyth as the theory of synchrotron radiation was developed by George Schott in Aberystwyth itself. But it did not go to Aberystwyth, which is an objective 1 area, and neither did it go to Liverpool and the Wirral, which was also in the running as an objective 1 area. It went to an area that is already quite well off with such institutions. Finally, the Medical Research Council does not support any major centres in Wales. We have a well-advanced school of medicine in Cardiff and developments in Bangor and Swansea, too. There is obviously a need to get those developments up and give them a boost so that they can compete for medical research council money. I hope that the amendments will spark a response from the Minister and perhaps a debate about the purpose of the research councils.
Column Number: 26 This Bill replaces the Arts and Humanities Research Board with an arts and humanities research council. We must ask a wider question about the research councils' purpose and ensure that research money does not go to the same institutions time and time again. All institutions should have fair access, just as the Bill tries to ensure that students have the same level of access. We should think of innovative ways—either pump-priming or within the funding system—to ensure that. Research councils can and will enrich an even wider range of institutions. In doing so, we shall ensure that neither the other measures in the Bill nor this narrow aspect of it will help to create a two-tier level of education. There should always be the potential for every institution in England and Wales to undertake serious and highly regarded research. We all want to see that; I hope that the Minister does too, and that he will talk about how the research council can achieve that.Chris Grayling: I followed the hon. Gentleman's remarks with interest, but I disagree. I understand where he is coming from; I understand smaller and regional institutions' concerns about the direction and support of research funding. However, I do not believe that his amendments would provide an adequate solution to those concerns, and I shall explain why. There is no doubt that the Government are consciously channelling funding in to a smaller number of institutions. The structure of the research assessment exercise, the focus on five-star departments and the gradual erosion of resources for departments that have a lower level of achievement have significant implications for the education system in the regions. There is no question that that will cause significant problems for many universities and other higher education institutions. The provisions that create an arts and humanities research council are a counterbalance to that. They will channel funds to smaller institutions so as to maintain their research capability. The strong message coming from the smaller institutions is that they are concerned that without a research dimension to what they do, they may find it much more difficult to maintain the quality and substance of teaching staff. The Government must consider that carefully. The Minister, in making changes to the four-star institutions, clearly has the issue on his mind. I recently visited Coventry university, which described its research support work for the motor industry in the midlands as extremely important both to the institution and to industry in that area. There is no doubt that many regional universities have strong links in research and teaching with key local industries. If the Government's approach to research finding makes it more difficult to carry out such research, that has implications for our regional economies, industries and the institutions themselves. The Government's balanced approach to the distribution of funding to research centres is important; we must ensure that we have strong international centres of research excellence at the forefront of their field on the global stage.
Column Number: 27 There are also areas where focus on the smaller number of research centres has a direct, adverse effect on services. A specific example is the health service. The research assessment exercise has concentrated medical research in individual disciplines in a smaller number of departments. The problem is that if a medical school loses a department researching a specific clinical area, the potential consequence is that if the area disappears, so do the consultants, who spread their time between research work, teaching and providing clinical care in the adjoining NHS hospital. The patients may suffer if that happens, so it is important to find a balance.The amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas) takes us in the wrong direction. It takes away the ability of the research councils to channel their funding to those projects they deem the best and most effective. The peer review system that says—regardless of the institution or where it is situated in the country—that funding for a research project will be provided based on merit, on the assessment of peers and on their judgement of the quality of the work, has to be the right way to go. For us, effectively, to bottom-slice part of the funding allocation and say where it must go—regardless of whether those institutions have projects of merit or departments with the critical mass to carry out those projects—would be the wrong way to sort out this problem. The councils are doing a good job of channelling funding. I am not sure I agree with the assessment of the hon. Member for Ceredigion. For example, the Arts and Humanities Research Board has provided grants for work done by the university of Wales in Aberystwyth, or in Cardiff. More particularly, it is providing funding across a wide range of institutions. There are projects for Anglia polytechnic university and the university of Central Lancashire, as well as for the Russell group of universities, our most successful universities. Mr. Thomas: I hope the hon. Gentleman recognises that I was trying to raise the debate rather than put an argument one way or another. Nevertheless, he has raised an important point. I think one thing we need to bear in mind is that although research in arts and humanities is labour-intensive—the best staff and students and so forth need to be attracted—science research is also capital-intensive, in a different way from much arts and humanities research. We need to bear in mind not only what the Arts and Humanities Research Board has been achieving, but also the concentration of science-based research in specific institutions. He acknowledged that at the start of his remarks. Chris Grayling: I accept that situation and would anticipate, in the current climate, individual institutions focusing their research efforts more on specific areas where they have a unique selling point, a particular local or regional need or an industry into which that research can feed. It is important that those Column Number: 28 regional centres remain, and it is excellent that they deliver high-quality research to meet the needs of their area.I would not wish to see an engineering by politicians in the allocation of grants. Ultimately, if we move away from a system of peer review and from a system that says that if a university is excellent in an area, it will be funded—if funding, instead, is by formula—we risk, given the trends in funding council channels, having an engineered system through the research council funding channels as well. We are well served by letting the academic world take decisions about the best projects to fund. I hope the Minister will have some comments about the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised, but I do not think that these amendments do the job that he hoped they would.
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