Science Secretary of State to be quizzed by Lords Science and Technology Committee

The session, in Committee Room 4 at 2.15pm, will be Peter Kyle’s first appearance before a Select Committee as Secretary of State for DSIT, and will cover a wide range of topics on science policy under the new Government.

It comes amid the Committee’s ongoing inquiry into engineering biology, and follows recent evidence sessions with Lord Vallance, Minister of State for Science, Research, and Innovation, and Professor Dame Angela McLean, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser.

Among the questions likely to be raised are:

• What are the Government’s science and technology priorities?
• What are the Government’s ambitions for the digital transformation of public services?
• How will DSIT help to prioritise key technologies and sectors in support of the industrial strategy?
• What opportunities are there for AI to be used in Government and more widely, and how will DSIT approach regulation for the sector?
• What is the impact of announcements at the Budget on R&D in the UK, and what is the plan for sustained funding of R&D in universities?
• The session, which is open to the public, will be streamed live and on demand on Parliament TV.

More about the Science and Technology Committee:

The Science and Technology Committee has a broad remit “to consider science and technology”. It scrutinises Government policy by undertaking cross-departmental inquiries into a range of different activities. These include: public policy areas which ought to be informed by scientific research (for example, health effects of air travel), technological challenges and opportunities (for example, genomic medicine) and public policy towards science itself (for example, setting priorities for publicly funded research).

The committee is chaired by Baroness Brown. Its full membership is here.

The committee’s work can be followed on its website.