Abolishing the research councils and creating UK Research and Innovation was the government’s condition for agreeing to an extra £2 billion in funding for science and research, according to former universities minister David Willetts.
Speaking to Research Fortnight ahead of today’s second reading of the higher education and research bill in the House of Lords, Willetts said that while he had started as a sceptic on UKRI, the “fantastic spending settlement” had changed his mind.
“I know from my contacts that the Treasury only had the confidence to make an investment on that scale because of the prospect of UKRI,” he said. “They undoubtedly like the way UKRI brings together in a single coherent governing body the research and innovation budgets.”
Willetts said he agreed with the government that a Brexit-scale upheaval needs a stronger voice for research inside Whitehall. UKRI, he said, would need to be big enough to manage major projects such as a UK model that sits alongside Horizon 2020 and its successors.
But he acknowledged that making sure different disciplines are heard in the new structure remained a challenge.
Willetts was expected to voice his views during the second reading, which would see more than 50 peers allowed some five minutes each to discuss the principles underpinning the bill, but not the detail. He was expected to tell peers that the proposed regulatory framework under the Office for Students is the natural heir to his own reforms as universities and science minister.
“With most funding coming from the Student Loans Company, not the Higher Education Funding Council for England, and a wider range of providers, you need an explicit rules-based regulatory system,” he said.
“I concluded that during my time as minister and tried to persuade colleagues to go forward with legislation in the last parliament. I’m pleased we’re finally getting that in place.”
However, Willetts said he was prepared to look at how the bill could be improved when it moves into detailed clause-by-clause scrutiny in January as part of the Lords committee stage.
He said that he thought, for example, that more could be done to protect university autonomy and the Haldane principle. He also agreed with the call for more safeguards to ensure that the university title is not devalued.
Many opposition and cross-bench peers have, however, said that they are not prepared to accept that extra research funding is a price worth paying for the bill.
Alison Wolf (pictured right), a cross-bench peer and professor of public sector management at King’s College London, said she would use her five minutes to warn that the bill “is going to really change the dynamics of the relationship between government and universities”, by granting more ministerial powers, altering how degree awarding powers are granted, allowing the OfS to revoke royal charters, and concentrating “a huge range of powers” in the OfS.
“It’s not a tidying up around the edges, it’s a huge change.”
Tessa Blackstone, a Labour peer and former vice-chancellor of the University of Greenwich, said she planned to talk about the Teaching Excellence Framework metrics and also to urge greater safeguards around private providers.
Former Royal Society president Martin Rees said he would warn that UKRI’s “supremo” had too much power. He suggests restoring the Whitehall-based director-general of the research councils post.
Cross-bencher Narendra Patel, chancellor of the University of Dundee, said that he planned to focus his time on how the devolved nations are treated within UKRI. Meanwhile another cross-bencher Ruth Deech (pictured left) said she would call the bill “unnecessary” given the present “overregulation” of universities. “I haven’t heard from anyone that they like the bill,” she said.
Despite the depth of unease in the Lords, both Wolf and Blackstone said that most peers hadn’t developed a coordinated approach yet, with collaboration on amendments likely at the committee stage.