Red tape warning for research projects over national security law

A new national security law could entangle UK universities’ research and innovation activities in more red tape while potentially overloading a small new government team advising on security-related issues, a report warns.

The paper from the Higher Education Policy Institute, published on 17 February, explores the potential implications for universities from the National Security and Investment Act (NSIA), which came into force on 4 January but has been given little attention by universities.

The act gives the Westminster government the power to block or impose conditions on the acquisition by foreign entities of intellectual property in 17 sensitive areas of the economy, such as advanced robotics and artificial intelligence.

Sir Anthony Finkelstein, the president of City, University of London and a former UK government chief scientific adviser for national security, says in a foreword to the report that research is a “highly dynamic business” and an “important UK soft and hard power asset”.

“Seemingly small regulatory requirements readily spawn large bureaucratic responses,” he warns.

Government guidance has attempted to set out when universities and other research institutions will be required to notify the government of a potential acquisition and where ministers have the power to call in such a transaction, covering areas including energy, artificial intelligence and data infrastructure. The guidance indicates that the government’s approach will be guided by the level of control that a foreign party would gain over material relating to national security.

But the Hepi report says there is little clarity in the legislation to define “national security”, or the circumstances in which universities and other bodies ought to make a voluntary notification to the government.

The report features interviews with a number of senior managers in universities, one of whom raises the question of whether “a university with a biosciences project studying insect behaviour” would need to “report a spin-out company because its computer scientist has done modelling with possible relevance for military swarm devices”.

For universities, the act will bring them into contact with the new Research Collaboration Advice Team (RCAT) in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which aims to “promote government advice on security-related topics, such as export controls, cyber security and protection of intellectual property”.

Alexis Brown, director of policy and advocacy at Hepi and the report’s author, said “resourcing” for the small RCAT team “could be a serious issue, given that it is very difficult to predict what kind of volume of notifications might emerge from the new regime”.

If there is an “influx of notifications”, that could create lengthy waiting times leading to investors pulling out of deals, while some of those interviewed for the report suggested that it could also mean “missing those transactions that represent a genuine risk”.

Recommendations in the report include that BEIS “should introduce a list of targeted exemptions from the scheme, such as for trusted domestic investors and closely allied states, as countries such as the USA do for similar legislation”, and that RCAT “be properly resourced” to ensure that it can “flexibly respond to an as-yet untested demand”.

john.morgan@timeshighereducation.com