Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
BARONESS WARWICK
OF UNDERCLIFFE
AND MR
CHRIS HALE
22 FEBRUARY 2007
Q1Chairman: Welcome to our meeting today
and thank you very much for coming and thank you for bringing
Mr Hale with you. I am sure you will both be able to make a good
contribution. When we first saw the Commission's proposals about
the EIT as a physical entity, as a kind of MIT for Europe, we
were concerned about the implications for the UK universities
and research institutes. I vividly remember the debate that was
held in the House on that very subject, as I think a lot of us
do. That is why we wanted to explore the issues as they stand
at the present moment, and that is why we have asked you to come
and tell us how Universities UK are looking at it all. We have
scheduled an hour. The session is open to the public and will
be recorded for possible broadcasting or webcasting. A verbatim
transcript will also be taken of your evidence and it will be
put on public record in printed form and on the Parliamentary
website. We will probably write one of our very brief reports
on this matter following your evidence session. A few days after
the session, you will be sent a copy of the transcript so that
you can check it for accuracy. That is your opportunity to change
it if you think you have been misrepresented in some way or if
a mistake has been made, or even if there is some small thing
you meant to say and did not say, that is your opportunity to
make minor corrections, but please advise us of those as soon
as possible. If you want to formally submit supplementary evidence,
you can do so and that will be useful to us. I used to have to
tell everybody that the acoustics in the room in which we took
evidence were so awful that everyone had to speak at the top of
their voices but, as you can hear, it is not like that in this
room but obviously, for recording purposes, clarity is a good
thing. You may wish to make a statement to begin with—I
do not know how you are thinking of handling that—just to
give us the general view of how Universities UK is approaching
this matter at the present time. Before you start, could you for
the record state your names and official titles.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Thank you very
much for giving us this opportunity. I am Diana Warwick, Chief
Executive of Universities UK.
Mr Hale: I am Christopher Hale, Policy Adviser
at Universities UK, looking after research policy issues.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: We have submitted
a memorandum and I thought possibly the best way that we could
help would be to answer your questions based on that, but I think
it might be useful if I said a few words. Like you, we had very
considerable initial concerns when this proposal was first mooted.
There have now been developments which give us some reassurance
that some of those concerns have been met but we remain anxious,
particularly about three things. One is the funding, the sustainability
of the funding and the adequacy of the funding. The second is
that the proposal is still very unclear about the nature of degree
awarding powers for this particular body. Third and perhaps most
important, because in the end this is what this is all about,
whether there are going to be sufficient incentives for business,
for the industrial and commercial sectors to become engaged, because
the whole purpose of the EIT was to try to improve knowledge transfer
within Europe. We remain concerned in those three areas because
we do not think there is any greater clarity now, despite the
discussions that have taken place, than there was when we first
looked at this proposal. I think there is real scope for a Committee
like this to seek to develop that clarity.
Q2 Chairman: That really leads me
to our first question, which is directed in a way to some of the
concerns which you have raised. Obviously, the Commission thinks
there is a weakness in European Union technological innovation,
particularly in the transfer from, as it were, the academic to
the practical and business sector. The aim of the EIT was to address
this weakness and to get a global reputation by integrating education,
research and innovation and support for the Lisbon agenda of promoting
growth and employment. At this moment perhaps you can tell us
what your view is of the nature and the seriousness of the problem
faced by the EU Member States in converting education and research
results into commercial opportunities. I think that will lead
us into the rest of the discussion quite well.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I think the
problem has been analysed well and we would concur with the diagnosis.
Europe's future depends on our successful exploitation of what
is itself a hugely successful knowledge base. If I can use one
statistic, all the main regions in the world showed an increase
in R&D investment in 2004 compared with 2003—they are
the latest data that we have—but EU companies performed
worse than non-EU companies in terms of R&D investment growth.
It is quite clear there is a problem to be addressed. There is
a real need to encourage business investment in research and development.
The issue is whether this is the appropriate mechanism to ensure
that that happens but we certainly think that there are processes
that need to be put in place to address the problem.
Q3 Chairman: Can I pursue that just
for a moment? Do you have an idea in your own mind, or does the
institution have a way of looking at it, of what would be a better
way of going forward? Is there something which the Commission
in its proposals is missing?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: There is one
very big gap in the proposals, and it is partly to do with funding
but it is also to do with incentives. Better fiscal and regulatory
incentives would be required, as we have found in this country
too, to entice industry and business to play a part. At present
they are not there and I think it is that area where we are most
concerned.
Mr Hale: I would agree with that. Our initial
concerns were around having a bureaucratic solution to a problem
which is perhaps more of a strategic problem for Europe as a whole
around having the right fiscal and regulatory incentives in place,
as Diana suggested. The EIT can only be seen as part of an ongoing
process of reform. Further reform, ensuring that appropriate tax
incentives, for example, are in place are equally as important.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: One of the
ways that we approached this in the UK was through the Lambert
Inquiry, the Richard Lambert Report, which looked at precisely
this problem, because we share the problem in the UK, and we have,
I think, benefited enormously from the recommendations that the
Lambert Committee produced. One of the things that we were inclined
to suggest—and this may be something the Committee might
want to pick up—is perhaps a Lambert-style review across
Europe to try to identify better the nature of the problem. The
initial proposal for the EIT was a really quite complex and over-bureaucratic
solution to the problem, but the problem itself has still not
really been properly clarified or well defined. So having a review
might well be one way of ensuring that, if we are going to put
in Europe a large amount of euros into this project, at least
it would be better focused.
Mr Hale: There is an issue about understanding
what actions might be required at a national level and at a regional
level and also what added value might be achieved at an EU level
through something like an EIT and then how that money can best
be focused, as Diana suggested.
Chairman: I come from
Surrey, where they have a university which is plugged in at every
level into all sorts of research and also the business sector
as well. So I hear what you say with some familiarity. I am going
to pass on to Lord Moser for the next question.
Q4 Lord Moser: The second question
really is about how this project evolved, and your paper goes
through that. Taking the main purpose of the whole exercise as
being not to create universities for their own purpose but to
improve the passing on of information for research and education
for commercial purposes—that is the point of the whole operation;
that is where the gap is—so accepting the gap, the first
model was a sort of MIT, was very grand and was opposed from many
quarters—rightly so, and certainly in this Committee. Then
whoever it is in Brussels moved to a second sort of scheme, which
seemed more of a research institute, was very scaled down and
financially more attractive but still with all the basic weaknesses
that we all expressed on the first model. Now we are on the third
model, which is, as you yourself say in your paper, a virtual/networking
operation, and I have to confess that I see very little merit
in that at all and I would like to hear from you on it. The reason
why I am doubtful is because, if the purpose is to pass on the
best of research and education for commercial purposes, which,
as you say, Richard Lambert did in his review, that is not going
to happen from a virtual institution. That could happen from a
very good university, as it does in many German universities already.
I certainly know Bonn and Berlin are very strong. By moving to
this virtual and networking model, as far as I can see, they have
in a sense killed the initial purpose, which was the commercial
exploitation. I would like to hear you on that. Really, the basic
point is whether it would be better to find ways, perhaps through
a kind of Lambert review, of strengthening other European universities
in the Lambert direction rather than this slightly mistaken project.
Mr Hale: As Diana said earlier, we were very
concerned about the initial proposal for a physical entity or
a legal entity and we were glad that the debate has evolved and
that the Commission has at least been listening. We are also very
grateful to the UK Government for reflecting a lot of our concerns
in the discussions that they have had in Brussels. What happens
is, however, as you move away from the physical entity towards
a more networked, virtual approach, you stray into territory which
is already very well-populated. You have the R&D framework
programme, which has all sorts of instruments within it such as
integrated projects and networks of excellence, which try to do
similar things by bringing in industry. You also have joint technology
initiatives, which build on the work of the European technology
platforms, and are trying to bring business in as well. The key
issue—and I think you are right—is this issue around
the clarity of purpose of the EIT once it is within this environment
with all these European initiatives. The key issue is focusing
on knowledge transfer. Initially we had suggested that the EIT
may provide a mechanism which could fit usefully with the European
Research Council. The European Research Council would generate
the knowledge and basic research, and then you could have an EIT-type
mechanism which could focus on encouraging exploitation and getting
a focus on the Lambert-type issues. That is very much the direction
the EIT needs to go in because that is where a lot of the problems
lie, but it needs to be clear that that is what it is meant to
be doing. At the moment I do not think it is clear. It is trying
to do a lot of things and it is probably going to duplicate a
lot of things that are already going on through the European Technology
Platforms, through the Joint Technology Initiatives and other
aspects of the Framework Programme.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Part of the
problem is that it was very ambitious but nebulous and, as they
tried to put greater clarity on the concept, although the ambition
was a little bit contained, the purpose became even less clear,
so whether the mechanism that is now being developed is actually
fit for purpose, I think the jury is still out on that.
Q5 Lord Moser: Your view would be
a query?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Definitely.
On the other hand, I think there is a lot of political clout behind
this proposal.
Chairman: We all feel
that. That has become clear as the months have gone by and various
efforts were made to put it in place.
Q6 Earl of Dundee: How do you think
the Knowledge and Innovation Communities as proposed will actually
assist the commercial application of new technology?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: In a way, this
goes back to Lord Moser's point about the networks. Theoretically,
yes, the development of high-level contacts between universities
on the one hand and research centres and businesses or networks
of businesses on the other ought to be productive. The difficulty
is, of course, that we are producing something here which is a
supply-side answer to an unknown demand-side problem. We do not
have the mechanisms that will either identify just how much of
a demand there is out there for this kind of process, nor, if
the demand is there, do we know precisely what the right incentives
will be to encourage that demand. From the point of view of the
universities, they are very accustomed to bidding for projects,
for ensuring that they maximise the efficiency of the work that
they are doing so that they can put in a very good project proposal,
and they have become a great deal better over the years at working
with the commercial sector, working with business and industry.
But what we still do not know is whether even if we offer much
greater opportunities for business to engage—and when I
say "we" I mean the universities across Europe—whether
or not business will indeed engage, and I cannot think at the
moment of why they should, because there is not anything in place
that would encourage them to do so.
Q7 Earl of Dundee: To pick up your
point of the supply and demand being an unknown quantity, we do
not want something which is too solid, which seems to predict
a supply and demand which is not known. We want something which
is flexible. If you think of these KICs in their own right, could
they perhaps be deployed as something which could give that flexibility?
Perhaps it could be argued that, even when yoked to the EIT, they
might be able to provide that flexibility, but a lot of us believe
that they probably would not. If disassociated from the EIT, could
they perhaps, in your view, be used as a useful model to give
the very flexibility that you are talking about?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I think that
is a good point. Again, one would need incentives but there is
no doubt that there needs to be a mechanism to encourage greater
bottom-up ideas coming forward. I can't offer any thought on this.
Mr Hale: I think part of it comes back to what
we were saying earlier about the absorptive capacity within the
system. You can have all these supply-side initiatives but until
you actually make sure that the environment is right for business
to engage, then they may not succeed. Coming on to the governance
structure of the EIT, if it were to go ahead, I think you would
need a very flexible approach because the innovation process is
very complex and it would need the freedom to respond to demand.
I think you are alluding towards a more autonomous model for the
KICs and that would be vitally important. The bureaucracy would
need to be very light touch because you could set the research
priorities for four or five years for the EIT and then they changed.
There are some good examples of how, for example, the Foresight
Programme did not pick up the development of the internet and
that kind of thing, so I think it needs to be very responsive.
Q8 Chairman: Within the university
sector in this country, where, as we know, there has been some
very successful interaction between industry, commerce and business
and the university sector, how does that work? Who makes the initial
contact? Does somebody go to the right university, Aston or whatever
it might be, or the right bit of Oxford or Cambridge—I do
not know where they are looking for their research—and say
"We have a problem which we can't solve. Can you assist us
with that?" Does it work like that, or does it work the other
way around, where you have people working in a fairly non-commercial
atmosphere who come up with something and then try and sell it,
or does it work both ways?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I will ask
Chris to say something about this but it works both ways, because
universities have become much more commercially minded and have
already made contacts with the commercial sector. They are also
very anxious to ensure that they retain some control over intellectual
property, of course. There is a lot of interplay between business
and universities, and not just in science areas: in the cultural
industries, in a whole range of areas, in social science. So there
is quite a lot of penetration; the walls are now quite permeable,
I would say, between universities and commerce. Similarly, the
universities themselves have ensured that they have staff in place
whose specific job it is to encourage links with industry and
to ensure that industry, who, after all, often do not understand
how a university works, and indeed need not necessarily have to
understand how a university works, can get to the people that
they need to get to. There is now in every university at least
one member of staff whose job it is to undertake that task. So
it works both ways.
Mr Hale: I would agree. It happens in all sorts
of different ways, and a lot of good work that has been done off
the back of the HEIF funding, the Higher Education Innovation
Fund, which has been very useful and supported the infrastructure
which Diana has been talking about, which is about allowing universities
to become more focused on not only exploiting their activities
but also bringing business in. There are a lot of long-standing
partnerships between universities and business. If you look at
the example of Rolls Royce University Technology Centres, partners
will develop their research priorities jointly and take those
forward.
Q9 Chairman: The question is really
how will a new institution, however virtual it is, fit into relationships
which have already been established? Do you think that within
other countries in Europe the situation we are in does not obtain
or do you think that it does generally obtain, that there is the
same kind of permeability between business and the university
sector in general?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I certainly
get the impression in my discussions on the European scene with
other European universities that here in the UK we are somewhat
ahead of the game. I think there is a different perception about
the role of universities, but Europe is moving in this direction.
Certainly, talking to my German, Dutch and French colleagues,
they appear to be moving in that direction but there is a sense
that somehow the Anglo-Saxons have become a little more hard-nosed
and have done rather more on this front, but equally a growing
realisation that universities have a huge contribution to make
to economic development and that we need to do better collectively
across Europe in linking with the commercial world.
Q10 Lord Moser: Just on this point,
taking the two universities with which I retain a connection,
LSE and Oxford, it is part of the job, as you well know, Diana,
of any academic nowadays to focus considerably on knowledge transfer
into the commercial sector. It is part of the job for the researchers
and the teachers and, conversely, as you both well put it, that
means that the world of commerce looks to the universities to
play that role. This animal that is being created here will not
have, as far as I can see because it is all virtual, those excellent
people with whom business will want to do business.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I guess it
depends really on how the virtual process works because in a sense,
academics are in virtual contact with each other regularly now
where you build partnerships across national boundaries. Often
academics collaborating with other academics do it through the
internet or through papers or through conferences and so on. It
is possible to envisage that some sort of virtual mechanism that
might work. It is not clear quite how the innovation side, the
commercial contact will be developed. That I think we have no
real information on that as yet.
Mr Hale: No.
Q11 Baroness Howarth of Breckland:
I wanted to ask a question about that. To me, it is the interest
in the drivers, what makes people want to engage. Universities
are usually trying to get contracts because it pays them and keeps
the research that they want to do going for the contractor. I
know that with the Food Standards Agency and other places where
we have a lot of contracts on research, it is because you want
a task undertaken. That seems to me very much between the parties,
and I just do not see how this EIT has any of those drivers whatsoever,
but there may be another way of looking at how we can get more
European or global in terms of working these things out across
countries. This seems to be a totally inappropriate mechanism
to do it.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I agree with
this. I think the difficulty is, if you think about the concept
as it started, it was a physical entity; it was MIT—a bizarre
concept but nonetheless, it was MIT for Europe. Once you get away
from that concept where you drew in the best researchers, you
had contact with the CEOs of multinational companies or pan-European
companies and somehow they all came together and fizzed, once
you get away from that, you then get into the detail which was
precisely the point that the Earl of Dundee raised, of what they
will actually physically do and how it will operate. This is where
we ourselves are struggling to try to understand and to put a
little bit more flesh on those bones. It is perfectly feasible,
I think, to develop, with the right kind of financial support
and financial stability, groups of researchers focused on particular
activities where industry and commerce have been engaged in the
process and together identify the nature of the problem which
those researchers might try to solve, and then identify the nature
of the commercial opportunities that are available. So all those
things are feasible. It is knowing quite how to put the mechanism
in place to do that. That, I think, is the big gap at the moment.
Q12 Lord Wade of Chorlton: The discussion
is developing very interestingly. I should explain that I have
been involved in this business for the last 10 years or more.
I started the Commercialisation Unit at Manchester University,
Campus Ventures, in 1995. I chaired it for six years, and it was
the first major one that we had started. It was purely for the
purpose of commercialising technology coming out of Manchester
University. We based the idea very much on what I had seen in
California, which no doubt you have seen, which is the commercialisation
unit that was set up there by all the universities of California.
They created a central place, not staffed with academics but staffed
with business people, who understood the need and how you can
develop the company. That is the key to it, and what surprises
me is that nobody has talked about this, particularly in this
place. You need money to start businesses, and you cannot create
a commercialisation unit unless alongside it you have a venture
capital fund of some kind. I have started two venture capital
funds now in the north of England, one called the Rising Stars
Growth Fund, which we started some five years ago, which covers
the North West of England, and I have just started one that covers
the eight new research universities across the whole of the North,
which is Rising Stars II. The first one was for £19 million
and the second one will be for something like £15 million
or £20 million when we have finished. This is all coming
from financial institutions; it is not European money. It is a
commercial operation. This is what this is all about. It is a
local entity that can provide the finance, the mentoring, the
financial support of business, experience, knowledge and the technology
developers in one unit on a relatively local basis. It seems to
me that the concept of this being run by some people in odd places
all over Europe, would not work. But there is a tremendous need
to encourage proper local formations, that could be done on a
regional basis, on a university basis. We are involved now in
doing something in Liverpool University, which will be a similar
concept. There is work taking place there already and I can see
that. As you say, at Suffolk you have an opportunity there to
build something around the university, bring in local money, and
then you can actually create a driving force that will do something.
Somehow or other, that is completely missed in all this. I know
I was going to ask the strategic question but I just thought I
would make the point now that, somehow or other, unless we can
get back to a practical proposal that we know is going to bring
people together who know how to make the thing work, it never
will work. Do you agree with what I am saying?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Yes.
Q13 Lord Wade of Chorlton: How can
we actually get people off this idea and get them on to an idea
that is going to work?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I will ask
Chris to say something about the practicalities but perhaps one
of the ways of doing it is going back to one of the suggestions
I made earlier about the way in which the Lambert Inquiry helped
us here in the UK to focus on some of the key drivers. There are
problems on both sides of lack of understanding lack of awareness
of possibilities and lack of capacity, so if we could get to a
point where we understood better the nature of the problems—because
they vary between different European countries—I think we
might have a clearer view about the kind of initiatives which
might be needed rather than one big overarching initiative, which
is a very European solution to a problem. I agree with you entirely;
the commercial sector has to have some degree of engagement in
this process, and you certainly have to have a degree of sustainable
financial backing to allow these initiatives to fly. If they take
root, that is marvellous, and they will build on their strengths,
but at the moment that is not there and there is no indication
that anybody in the business sector has even yet been engaged
in this debate. It has all been at European level through the
presidential discussions. The Parliament, as I understand it,
will now be involved, which I think is helpful because it means
there will be more voices, hopefully making these points, but
there has not been the involvement of the commercial sector in
this process at all, as far as I understand.
Mr Hale: I think that is developing. A number
of working groups have been set up in Brussels and industry people
and university people have been invited. I suppose, at a practical
level, the proposal is still on the table in Brussels and one
of the key objectives will be to try to iron out some of these
problems and help shape the EIT into a more—not robust,
but more fit-for-purpose model that will actually have the right
incentives in place, have the sustainable funding and may actually
be helpful. To me, it looks like the proposal is here to stay,
so I think the key issue will be about knocking it into shape.
Q14 Chairman: If we were to follow
Lord Wade's thinking, which I must say sounds pretty solid and
grounded on experience, which is always important, we would be
rather suspicious of something which said everybody had to come
to Brussels to talk about things and then somehow that would stimulate
a process whereby a company would immediately know where to go
to establish a relationship with an intellectual organisation,
a university or whatever, so that they could supply each other's
needs. That does not seem to me a very realistic view of how these
things happen. They happen because, either on the one side or
on the other, or sometimes both at the same time, people actually
need to get things done at a practical level. Is that right?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I am sure that
is right, and it reinforces a point that we have made also. It
is one way of approaching this, given that we are all aware of
some of the politics that are behind this, and since it does seem
likely that in some form this proposal will go ahead. Therefore,
I think one of the ways that we might approach this is to suggest
that it is done on a much more modest basis, that if some form
of this proposal is eventually what emerges, then let us try and
test it and see whether it delivers the outcomes that are hoped.
If instead of having say six KICs, we have possibly two, better
thought through, with much greater focus of engagement with the
commercial sector and more realistic budgets, we could actually
see whether it delivers. There are all sorts of structural problems
associated with the links between knowledge and the transfer of
knowledge, and we need to unpack those and try and understand
them better. Doing it with a much more modest proposal will also
help us on the funding front, because nobody is yet clear where
the money is going to come from. We have been told it is going
to come out of the margins of the Community budget, in other words
from a contingency, but if you take money at this early stage
in the budget process out of your contingency fund, that means
there might be all sorts of exciting developments that you are
not able to fund subsequently, and I think that is really quite
dangerous. Also, it means that the EIT, whatever its final form,
will be in competition with all the other well-established organisations
for funding streams and the likelihood of it succeeding without
much greater care is remote because it will be a new body, it
will not be tested, and the other bodies that Chris referred to
earlier are all well-established and effective, or building upon
or strengthening current initiatives. I just think a more modest
proposal might be something we could aim at.
Chairman: We did have
some concerns about the governing body and how that works. In
a sense, you are saying you do not really want to go straight
into that sort of an organisation; you want to go into something
more modest, which is like a test programme. Is that right?
Q15 Baroness Neuberger: To some extent
you have made it very clear that your view is it should go much
smaller, and before you came in there was a certain amount of
eyebrows being raised at the idea of a huge independent governing
board, 60 people supporting it, and being rather unclear what
this board was actually going to do, set the strategic direction,
and the subtext, reading your own paper, was that you are not
too keen on that either. Could you tell us a little bit about
what you feel about this proposed structure of the governing body
and support staff?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Our aim would
be for it to be unbureaucratic, with as little bureaucracy as
possible. Clearly, a governing body would have to set the strategic
direction but again, it really ought to be those who are involved
in the knowledge development and in the knowledge transfer who
are engaged at the running of the organisation level, and I suspect
that having 60 people, they will have to find something to do,
and that, I think, is a recipe for yet another European regulatory
body, which will have a rather dead-hand approach. So I fear that
that itself could be a problem.
Mr Hale: The Marimon report, which was the report
that reviewed progress on Framework VI, actually showed that European
bureaucracy was a disincentive particularly to business participation
in the Framework Programme, so I cannot see that that would be
any different for a body like this. A light-touch bureaucracy
is essential. I would just like to reiterate the point I made
earlier about having freedom within the KICs to respond to strategic
change and changes in direction. Business will need to be able
to respond to changes in the market and if they have too much
of a rigid contractual relationship with the EIT governing body,
whatever that may be, without the flexibility for them to be able
to respond and change, that could be dangerous. No, I do not think
people would partake in it if they felt that they were going to
be straitjacketed in that way. If the Commission were sensible,
they would set up a light-touch body which had that kind of inbuilt
flexibility otherwise it will not be attractive.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: I think
it is just worth saying something about what we mean by "light
touch" because as soon as you have a governing body—and
I sit on several—you have the need for what that strategic
direction is going to be, you want your business plan, you want
your various documents that back up your work because that is
what everybody likes to be able to see. My worry is that you are
getting to the whole process that actually sets boundaries rather
than breaks boundaries, and I think it is a very different kind
of body that would have to be created and I have not seen Europe
do that yet. It really does concern me that if we were going to
be saying something about this, and my question is what could
make it better if we were going to do it at all, and you answered
some of that about restricting the size but I do think we will
have to say something very firm about the governing body in any
short report.
Chairman: I think that
is quite right.
Baroness Greengross:.
Perhaps I could ask you something else. You said you feel this
is going to go ahead. Why? Is this majority voting? Everybody
has such reservations. Looking through the rest of the questions,
many of which have been answered, why not have this as an add-on
to what goes on anyway? We are going to ask about degrees but
instead of degrees—and that is a different question, I know—why
not have this brand as being something absolutely brilliant that
somebody at Manchester can also take as an additional qualification?
Why not have a European seal of approval on all sorts of excellent
things that go on? I do not understand why we accept that this
is going to happen, because what was suggested is not going to
happen.
Q16 Baroness Morgan of Huyton: Can
I add a supplementary to that? Where are university colleagues
on this? In a sense, there is one set which is the central politics
of the Commission and so on, but where are other universities
in the EU or other university bodies like your own?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: The politics
revolve around the presidency and the fact that this is an idea
that has come out of the presidency and, because at a strategic
level we have all acknowledged that there is a problem and that
that problem needs to be addressed, here is one way, as yet, even
after a lot of discussion, rather unformed, but nonetheless one
way of doing it. I cannot answer for the way in which governments
negotiate at a European level around the budget process and who
trades what for what, because I suspect there is an element of
trading on this issue but there is no doubt that if the President
is determined to press this through, there will be those who will
support it for a variety of reasons, and the question then is
just how much other governments, however sceptical, want to invest
political capital in opposing it, I suspect. I think there is
a lot of that kind of high-level politics behind it. Where the
universities across Europe stand, again, has developed. When this
was first proposed, it was perceived as a possible way of transferring
resource from investment in excellence in research in universities
and research institutes towards those countries and institutions
in those countries where, because of lack of investment previously,
they really needed to build their infrastructure. So it became
almost a new Member State issue. I think that has gone somewhat
because the question really now is how on earth you engage with
industry and with the commercial sector and whether we should
be focusing on excellence in this approach as well. I think there
is now a general view that we ought to be focusing on those institutions
or companies or people who can deliver that excellence. Most of
the members of the European Universities Association are very
concerned about this proposal but the ones who are most enthusiastic
about it are those in new Member States, where they believe that
this will give them an opportunity to develop their own infrastructure.
So there are differing views but, talking to colleagues—I
think you had a discussion with our colleagues in Germany quite
recently, Chris. Perhaps you would say something about that.
Mr Hale: Our colleagues in Germany have a very
similar line to Universities UK. It is HRK but I cannot pronounce
in German what that actually stands for, but I can pass you a
link. They have very similar views. They are concerned around
the education elements, around clarity in relation to the budget,
clarity of purpose, those kinds of issues. Just adding to what
Diana said, on the clarity of purpose issue I think there is also
an issue about how different parts of Europe are seeing this in
a slightly different way. A lot of the Commission rhetoric is
about focusing on excellence but some people are seeing it as
more capacity building, infrastructure building. Another area
where there is a need for real clarity relates to the question
of whether this is about building infrastructure in new Member
States or about focusing on excellence wherever it is found, such
as can be seen with the European Research Council? There is a
need for further clarity on that as well.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: That would,
I think, emerge in any review of need and of capacity which was
undertaken because there may be an element of both needed, because
in order to get to the point where one could find the sort of
structure that Lord Wade is talking about, you would have to have
some degree of capacity building, if you wanted to develop in
a particular country, to get the research levels up to a competitive
level. So there may be an element of both but, again, that just
is not yet clear.
Q17 Lord Wade of Chorlton: What is
the view of the British Government on this? Can we work on them
to put forward a more positive approach?
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I think the
UK Government shared some of our scepticism and has been very
supportive in seeking to move this into a more practical domain.
So I do not think there is any difference in the approach of our
Government. It is seeking though within the political context,
to try to improve this process so that we will eventually end
up with something that does deliver greater knowledge transfer
on a European scale.
Q18 Lord Moser: Following Lord Wade's
question, if we here, this Committee, wants to end up positive—which
I do not, because I think this is the wrong approach but I think
probably we should and have to—would the right line be we
accept that there is a problem but the problem has not been clearly
enough enunciated or worked out, we do not think this is the right
approach, therefore we recommend A? I am very attracted by the
idea of the Lambert type of review, which is a way of understanding
what universities and the business sector can do together. That
would be the positive backing. Secondly, no doubt we can have
lots of ideas how existing universities can be helped, perhaps
on the part of the British model, to do better in this particular
sphere. Those would be two positive suggestions from us, which
you have made anyway. Where I am more worried is the idea of "This
is not the right approach; let's do it more modestly." I
am worried about that for reasons which I think have been implied.
Once you start talking about two rather than six governing bodies,
too big, funding a different way, you are on the way. I am worried
about that. I wondered whether you could make one other remark,
if we do two positive things but not this pilot approach, which
seems to go against our basic thinking.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I think your
approach to acknowledge that there is a problem is the right one.
Having said that, I think it is really quite important to make
some practical suggestions as to how that might be addressed.
I suspect we would not be coming from here at all but equally,
since we are here, the question then is how can you adapt an idea
that has been very well articulated—it has been in the public
domain for a couple of years and there has been a lot of European
time and effort put into it. One would really need, I think, to
be trying to work with the grain of that proposal, even if it
were seeking to establish where the weaknesses lay, because I
think we really do need to pick up the big weakness of the lack
of engagement of the commercial sector in all its forms, both
in terms of demand but also in terms of resources. I find it quite
difficult to identify an alternative way of doing this, but it
seems to me, if one can take the kernel of the Knowledge and Innovation
Communities and try to build on that, even if it ends up as a
very different kind of mechanism or entity, that really would
be the best way forward.
Chairman: Thank you for
that. I think that brings us to ask about how we would know if
the EIT was working well, which is your question Lady Morgan.
Q19 Baroness Morgan of Huyton: Yes,
I wanted to ask about quality assurance, but taking a slight step
back on that and just building on what you were saying then, it
seems to me that perhaps the other thing we could help them do,
in attempting to set the context of what we are trying to do here,
is that it has to be about excellence and it has to be about trying
to encourage mechanisms of sharing knowledge, in the way that
Lord Wade was talking about earlier, that are about encouraging
the EU to be able to compete in the world economy, not about some
sort of levelling up process or levelling down process within
the EU, which is in a sense what you thought there was a danger
of. I would have thought the more that we can try and set the
context in our report around that area, the better. Relating to
quality assurance—you have half-given us the answer already,
which is that at the moment there is a level of scepticism about
what the quality assurance is or would be. Do you have any suggestions
at all about what you think could be done to ensure some level
of quality assurance of the KICs, particularly at the international
level?
Mr Hale: I think there would need to be a review
period built into the process, and that may be after four or five
years, and if you did have a first, initial phase, that might
be the opportunity to review the progress as well. You would also
need review criteria that would be based on the excellence of
the research, so you would have to have some sort of peer review
mechanism to assess the outcomes. There would have to be a number
of different outcomes assessed, so capacity to win funding, the
capacity to attract researchers, the capacity to develop young
researchers, that kind of thing, and also the effectiveness of
the innovation mechanisms that have been set up within the KICs,
so that interface between business and the universities to get
the knowledge out there. There is a whole range of criteria that
this thing would need to be assessed on.
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