Tag: the forum

Neighbours’ houses burning: how to fund climate change adaptation

An interview with Raffaele Della Croce, Co-Director of the Singapore Green Finance Centre and Advanced Research Fellow at the Centre for Climate Finance and Investment – Imperial College Business School

On 7th January 2025, the first day of Southern California’s devastating wildfires, a Los Angeles-based real estate investor took to X. ‘Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades?’ he asked his thousands of followers; ‘Need to act fast here. All neighbors houses burning. Will pay any amount.’

He wasn’t the only one willing to pay. As the LAFD struggled to cope with the rapidly multiplying blazes and crews from neighbouring states rushed to help them, insurers dispatched scores of private fire brigades to the aid of California’s wealthiest homes and businesses. For Raffaele Della Croce, Advanced Research Fellow at the Centre for Climate Finance and Investment, it was ‘appalling’ but not surprising. ‘Where is this going to lead us?’ he asks, after the 14 fires were finally distinguished. As the effects of the climate crisis become more acute and more widespread, ‘people with money will be able to preserve their own wealth’. ‘Those without means’, meanwhile, ‘will be the first impacted and the least able to act.’

Still, not even the priciest private fire brigades were a match for the scale of the California wildfires, which killed 29 people and destroyed 18,000 homes over the course of three weeks, including mansions worth tens of millions of dollars. Raffaele hopes it will be a ‘brutal wake-up call’ about the urgency of climate adaptation measures in vulnerable cities like LA and London. When extreme weather events hit, people are willing to ‘pay any amount’. But to be blunt, by the time the fire’s burning, it’s already too late.

We need to be willing to pay for ways ‘to endure these extreme events’ at the same time as reducing our carbon emissions, says Raffaele. Our ‘main attention’ has, until now, been on the latter, ‘for good reasons’. But the potential costs of climate-induced extreme events to our global cities’ economies and infrastructures threatens not only our lives, our livelihoods and our basic social contracts, but also the progress we’re making on decarbonisation. The world’s transition to a green economy must be fast and it must be resilient. High-GDP cities like New York, Tokyo, LA, Paris and London will be major engines of that transition. But they are also among climate change’s most vulnerable targets. We cannot afford to lose them to wildfires, floods, droughts, heatwaves or storms.

Raffaele points out that none of this is news. The increasing likelihood of extreme weather events is ‘something scientists have for a very long time been talking about.’ But that conversation ‘has not been translated into action.’ Raffaele is devoting his career to trying to change that. An economist by trade, he has worked at the OECD on the nexus between finance and the real economy. He launched the “Institutional Investors and Long-Term Investment” project, for instance, to explore how the largest pension funds, insurance companies, and sovereign wealth funds worldwide can invest more in infrastructure. In his native Italy, Raffaele was a cabinet member and special adviser to Mario Draghi’s Minister for Infrastructure and Sustainable Transport, coordinating the national plan for resilience and adaptation after Covid-19.

Throughout his career, his doctorate, and now in his work at Imperial, Raffaele’s focus has always been on the ‘practical implementation’ of academic research. Working for the Italian government showed him ‘firsthand’ the ‘reasons why things are not working [and] things do not happen’. Financing and implementing climate adaptation will take a coordinated effort from the public and private sector. But the ‘private-sector point of view’, says Raffaele, is often that it’s the responsibility of the state ‘to bail people out.’ On the other side, there is often mistrust of private capital.

But this public-financed approach is not working, as Raffaele’s recent report ‘Financing Adaptation and Resilience in London and the UK: Moving from Aspiration to Reality’ reveals. Despite being the green finance hub of the UK and Europe, London’s adaptation financing approach is predominantly based on public finance, and particularly the Environment Agency and London municipalities. Despite recent progress, London still lags behind other cities in its adaptation and financing effort. The UK’s Climate Change Committee suggests that £10 billion more will need to be spent yearly to make the UK climate-ready. These sums cannot be raised without involving private capital partners in financing adaptation infrastructure.

The trick, says Raffaele, is to reframe climate adaptation as an attractive investment opportunity as opposed to a costly and inconvenient necessity. For governments, this means showing them how they can reduce costs by avoiding disaster damages and increase revenues from ‘transformed industries’ geared towards ‘the economy we need in the future’. For the private sector, it means highlighting the huge commercial opportunities that climate adaptation presents: from ‘physical infrastructure like dams’ to ‘technological development’ like early warning systems based on big data and the use of artificial intelligence.

That’s what Raffaele’s work at Imperial is doing: reframing climate adaptation as an opportunity, not a burden. As London positions itself as a global leader in green finance, it has the potential to spearhead the mobilisation of private capital for climate change adaptation. To unlock that potential, the government must draw up policies that both grow the market for climate adaptation solutions and stimulate investment into those solutions, protecting the most vulnerable.

At the Centre for Climate Finance and Investment and in his work with Imperial Policy Forum, Raffaele and his colleagues are drawing up practical solutions for policymakers to use: from new cost-benefit measures to specialised investment vehicles for investors to crowdfunding mechanisms at local level. Ever the advocate of ‘practical implementation’, he’s confident his work here is having a real impact.

‘I think there is recognition now of the gaps and the limits of the way research has been carried out in the past,’ he says. Academia is embracing more ‘non-traditional academics’ like him. Policymakers are listening more to academics. And the private sector is asking what more it can do. The biggest barrier to investment in climate adaptation has always been ‘the acceptability to people of whatever you’re proposing’. And people are finally realising, thinks Raffaele, that ‘there is a common interest here.’ Our neighbours’ houses are burning. It’s time to work together to fund climate adaptation.

 

Where the wind blows: using data to support the energy transition

An interview with Professor Pierre Pinson, Chair of Data-Centric Design Engineering at Imperial’s Dyson School of Design Engineering

Pierre Pinson has always been interested in the wind. As a child, he wanted to be a weather forecaster. He was fascinated by boating: how does a sail catch an invisible current, and turn it into forward motion? He would go on to study in the Netherlands and in Denmark, drawn to the wind turbines of the North Sea. ‘At the time, Denmark was the most exciting country to do research with wind energy,’ Pierre explains. ‘They had some of the first offshore wind farms’.

His career has led him to some of the biggest challenges of our time, blending engineering and policy: climate change, the energy transition, artificial intelligence, and forecasting. But above all, Pierre talks about helping people. ‘The big issue with the energy transition is that we’ve been so focused on technology,’ he says. ‘But if people aren’t on board, it’s not happening’. He emphasises the need to bring people and technology together. ‘That’s why I’m here at Imperial’s Dyson School of Design Engineering, where we aim to be more multidisciplinary – to think of humanity and technology hand in hand’. Imperial’s new Schools of Convergence Science have been designed for exactly that purpose: to unite practitioners, policymakers, and academics from a wide range of disciplines.

Pierre’s current focus is the future of the electricity market. ‘The UK system has changed completely,’ he explains. We used to get our electricity from a small number of power stations, run by an even smaller number of companies. Today the market is much more decentralised. In principle, anyone can install their own heat pump or solar panel, and generate their own electricity. ‘Think about it,’ Pierre says, ‘if nearly all of our power comes from wind and solar, then energy can be seen as a public good, right? It comes from the weather. Nobody owns it.’

For policymakers, this poses a challenge. How do you make the system fair for people who can’t afford to install solar panels, or who don’t have a suitable roof? How do you stop the grid being overloaded at peak times? And what’s a fair price for electricity, when supply and demand suddenly become much more difficult to predict? Decentralisation, after all, is a shift from the known to the unknown – a transition from easily-monitored control panels displaying exactly how much electricity we have available, to a market governed by two of the least predictable things in life: human behaviour, and the weather.

This is where data analytics and forecasting come in. ‘In the future, the most valuable thing will be data,’ he explains. This is a change some parts of the UK market have yet to grapple with. ‘Most energy companies will have to completely reinvent themselves and their business models,’ he says. ‘When people think about stakeholders in the future power system, they should think about data and tech companies like Google and Microsoft, not necessarily Shell and BP. People say, that’s ridiculous – you can’t tell me that the information I collect from my smart meter will be more valuable than the power I am consuming. But when anyone can produce and trade their own electricity, the whole market becomes a complex game of prediction.’

In this field, Pierre has a small taste of his childhood dream – only instead of forecasting tomorrow’s weather, he’s predicting its effects. ‘For some time, we’ve been looking at this idea of community-based and peer-to-peer energy markets,’ he says. ‘Imagine a marketplace where, instead of buying energy from EDF or Octopus or any other big retailer, you can produce your own electricity and trade it directly with your friends and neighbours.’ Someone generating solar energy in the UK currently has few options to do this. Depending on where they live, they might be able to sell their excess energy to a community microgrid through an intermediary, or perhaps their local council.

Other countries are more experimental. Australia, where solar power is abundant, has platforms where people can trade electricity directly with each other. You simply log onto a website, where your transaction is processed via blockchain – recorded on a decentralised, virtual ledger – so the seller gets paid instantly without a middleman. A mix of schemes are currently being tested. Some models are purely altruistic, for sharing electricity among neighbours. Others are for profit.

The UK is slowly catching up to this idea. In 2018, Centrica announced it would be trialling a peer-to-peer energy market in Cornwall. Last year, Ofgem granted a supply licence to UrbanChain, a Manchester-based start-up which encourages users to ‘build your own energy market’. And a government consultation – the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements, or REMA – might soon prompt further change as policymakers consider how the system can support Labour’s net zero objectives.

‘One of the biggest issues we have is there’s a lot of cool ideas,’ says Pierre, ‘but it’s difficult to take the next step’. Often the blocking point is regulation. One solution is to have more exploratory sandboxes, where researchers and entrepreneurs can test an idea in a safe, confined environment – perhaps a pilot scheme in a city, or a single region – without the level of oversight you would typically need to launch a consumer product. Pierre points to artificial intelligence and tax policy, in particular, as fields in which future sandbox experiments could prove useful. AI will not be adopted if it is not proven to be trustworthy and explainable. And on tax, no one would want to completely change tax and network charges for the whole UK at once, without having a clear view of the effects of such an experiment. ‘If we want to make a change for real, we’ll have to try these things in the real world’.

Speed is also a big factor. ‘We need to find ways to shorten the amount of time it takes to turn an idea into a practical trial,’ he urges. ‘Especially an idea that looks a bit crazy or disruptive.’ If you look at the R&D cycle today, Pierre explains, ‘it takes time to get research funding, then to get an innovation off the ground, then to scale it up, then to try to convince people that it works,’ Pierre says. ‘All told it may take up to 10 to 15 years to get an idea into the real world.’ He notes that this is another strength of Imperial: ‘as a university, we are extremely ambitious. We want to make an impact on the world.  The ideal scenario would be to tweak our regulatory framework to allow things to go faster, while upholding ethical standards, and ensuring all stakeholders are on board.’

Will all this get us closer to net zero? Pierre is hopeful, but realistic: ‘for a few countries, I would say yes – for instance, there’s a lot going on in the UK, Denmark, Portugal… you can make a small list of places. The problem is that, even if these countries reach net zero, they still represent only four or five percent of emissions globally. At Imperial we want to work with a lot of countries – in Africa, in Southeast Asia, with India and China. We have to collaborate with the rest of the world. They are not at the same starting point, and have different challenges and views on how to reach net zero.’

Are politicians paying attention? ‘I think it’s a matter of trust, and understanding each other,’ says Pierre. ‘Every government has a finite budget and finite resources to allocate. They receive so many requests from all parts of society, and they are forced to find compromises. In general, I think it’s difficult to foresee the scale of investment in the grid and energy infrastructure that have to be made, as well as the related social changes.’

The future is always uncertain. But one thing is clear: the only way we’re going to find a way through is by bringing people together. Policymakers, practitioners, researchers. This is Imperial’s mission. The new Schools of Convergence Science are truly multidisciplinary – Pierre’s work spans engineering, applied mathematics, economics, and the social sciences. Working as one, we can at last predict which way the wind will blow.

Empowering civil service leaders to harness AI’s potential

In January, the UK government set out an ambitious vision for how artificial intelligence can revolutionise public services. Recognising AI’s potential to drive efficiencies, fuel economic growth, and introduce innovative new services, the Blueprint for Digital Government lays the groundwork for a smarter, more responsive state.

But to make this vision a reality, civil service leaders must be equipped to oversee AI adoption confidently and responsibly. That’s why the Imperial Policy Forum is thrilled to welcome twenty senior civil servants into its AI Policy Fellowship Programme, a unique initiative designed to bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI research and public sector leadership.

Now in its third year, the Fellowship pairs participants with academic mentors who will guide them in designing bespoke research projects. Over the next nine months, Fellows will have access to Imperial’s world-leading AI experts and domain specialists already harnessing AI to tackle major societal challenges.

AI opportunities across government

The 2025 cohort represents a diverse mix of senior leaders from sixteen departments, including the Cabinet Office, Ministry of Defence, Department for Education, Home Office and Department of Science, Innovation and Technology.A classroom of AI Policy Fellows at Imperial College London Among them are technical leaders driving technology adoption and data analysis, as well as senior policy and strategy officials tackling some of the country’s most pressing policy challenges. 

Some of this year’s projects will explore how AI can enhance government capabilities in areas such as energy resilience, cybersecurity, and environmental protection. Others will focus on shaping the governance and regulatory frameworks needed to ensure the UK government’s adoption of AI is secure, ethical, and trusted. 

Looking ahead

As well as their project work, the Programme will also feature four in-person sessions at Imperial College campuses, giving Fellows the opportunity to connect, share challenges, and identify opportunities for collaboration. These sessions will include academic-led lectures and workshops to enrich their research and shape meaningful outputs to be shared at the Fellowship’s conclusion. 

As the UK government develops its AI policy from ambition to action, this year’s programme couldn’t be timelier. The Fellows will come together for the first time in early-March. Follow this blog for insights and learnings from their journeys in the months ahead.  

Misinformation and social media in the US election: comparing 2016 and 2020

Written by Dr Julio Amador Diaz Lopez, Research Fellow at Imperial College Business School

Part of the narrative used to explain the Trump presidency has been foreign misinformation in the 2016 election. A lot of research — investigative such as the Mueller report as well as academic such as ours at Imperial — has been centred around foreign influence operations. The FBI has concluded that the Internet Research Agency (IRA) conducted active measures to influence public opinion well before the election but constantly in the days leading to Election Day. These measures included well-coordinated efforts to imitate Americans and passing forward information to polarise the public, the objective being to de-incentivise the public from engaging in healthy democratic practices ranging from maintaining civil discussions to voting. In fact, our own research has shown these measures included pushing disinformation related to the latter. In particular, we identified these agents tried to cast doubt about the number of people voting, suggesting a lot of people that were not allowed to vote, were doing so. This may sound familiar.

Voting rights — who can vote, requirements to cast a vote, and, now, in the times of coronavirus, which absentee ballots will be valid — have been on the mainstream political debate ever since the Bush administration. The rationale — or at least a blunt assessment of it — being: minorities in the US have increasingly become a political force. Hence, making it harder for them to vote will benefit the Republicans as these groups often associate with Democrats. Or, if we follow the GOP’s rationale: Democrats are recruiting people that are not allowed to vote to cast ballots for them.

In our 2016 data, we found that many social media posts pushed forward by the IRA indeed used this narrative. However, as this information was being posted by foreigners (remember, the IRA was pushing forward some of these messages), we were able to exploit misspellings and semantics to identify which message came from a foreign influence campaign and which came from within the US. (Remember, regardless of your point of view, it is not illegal to post these messages. It is harmful, however, if a foreigner wants to influence US domestic politics).

Different from the 2016 election, this time most of the misinformation related to voting rights (from slanted opinions to outright lies) is being pushed by the president of the United States. As such, much of the disinformation being discussed in the US is now created and propagated from actors within the US. Therefore, we cannot effectively follow the same strategy to identify misinformation. Most important, within the context of free speech in the United States, this misinformation — the one created and pushed by American citizens — is allowed and, some argue, even in the public interest (not because of the content itself, but —the argument goes — because citizens would be able to identify who is engaging in bad behaviour and be able to electorally punish them). Hence, attention from policymakers has shifted from identifying and banning misinformation to contextualising it; for example, Twitter has opted not for tracking and erasing all posts but putting them behind a warning and precluded its diffusion.

This seems a very reasonable, promising approach. As of now, our understanding of misinformation — from providing a unified definition to characterising it — is limited; even more so our ability to catch all pieces of misinformation in the web. Therefore, identifying prominent influencers capable of affecting political discourse and concentrating efforts in contextualising every time they push blatant lies may be reasonable. But this opens another can of worms: do we want social media firms doing this? Do we want governments to do so?

Evidence and safety must be central to the UK’s space strategy

Dr Jonathan Eastwood is a senior lecturer at Imperial’s Department of Physics.

Access to and use of Space is of increasing national significance, identified as a key technological, research and strategic priority for the UK. In part this is due to the growing dependence on space services and systems as an integral part of the national infrastructure for communication, finance, transport, navigation and more, affecting every aspect of our economy, wellbeing and security. Rapidly developing technology and private investment in space will add to this significance.

Earth in space

A strong evidence-based space policy and law is therefore crucial to navigating the fluid and dynamic challenges posed by these developments. The anticipated dramatic expansion of space activities and reliance on them in the next decade brings environmental and social impact, shining new light on the critical issue of space safety.

Alongside colleagues at Imperial’s Space Lab Network of Excellence and the London Institute of Space Policy and Law, we have published a report which outlines that although there is a large amount of research interest in the topic, space safety is receiving inadequate attention in national space policy.

The report examined:

  • The current state of UK Space Safety Policy
  • The capabilities and expertise of Imperial in Space Safety
  • The potential for Imperial to contribute to the evidence-based development of UK Space Safety Policy

We found that “although Space Safety is an area of growing international importance and fundamental to the UK’s aspirations in space generally, there is no dedicated reference to Space Safety in current UK Space Policy documents. However, the UK has been active in different degrees in the following five Space Safety subject areas: Terrestrial Environmental Impacts of Space Activities; Space Debris; Planetary Defence; Space Weather; and Space Traffic Management (STM).”

The examination of Imperial’s capabilities in these areas shows that Imperial has considerable technical capabilities to inform policy challenges in all five areas, in alignment with the college’s new Academic Strategy.

To deliver this policy impact, we believe that the Space Lab Network of Excellence is very well placed to coordinate and streamline efforts to bring together relevant departments and researchers, and the fruitful collaboration between ISPL and Space Lab provides excellent further opportunities for Imperial to achieve impact in the area of UK Space Safety Policy development.

It’s time to take on Big Tech over Online Harms

Dr Nejra Van Zalk is Head of the Design Psychology Lab at Imperial’s Dyson School of Design Engineering.

The link between social media and online harms for young people has been much debated, and the current pandemic has underlined the particular threat of online harms for vulnerable users. In contribution to a report on the COVID-19 ‘infodemic’ by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, I have provided evidence of the addictive features of social platforms being of concern regarding the spread of misinformation to children.

AlarminglyChild using phone, exploiting vulnerabilities in the human psyche is a common feature of the design process for many digital innovations. For example, addictive features such as harmful or factually inaccurate content is often added by design rather than accident so as to increase usage.

Information generated by clicks or smart device commands is now used as a proxy for understanding how an individual is feeling, thus making them the perfect target for advertising and misinformation, akin to emotional manipulation.

To make such innovation easier, tech companies have adopted a user experience research method called A/B testing, similar to Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT’s), as a way to deliver continuous interventions that change the experience of platforms and increase use time. Unlike RCT’s, however, these tests are conducted behind the scenes and without consent, and without the rigorous ethical considerations that form the cornerstone of research.

Despite these gloomy facts, there are positive developments. Recently, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) released their Age-Appropriate Design Code aimed at companies whose content is likely to be accessed by children and young people. It includes 15 standards aimed at increasing children’s online privacy, such as a ban on disclosing data to third parties, high privacy settings by default, and refraining from nudging techniques for increased usage.

Dr Nejra Van Zalk
Dr Nejra Van Zalk

Together with Ali Shah, ICO Head of Technology, I road-tested this code in my “Design Psychology” module at the Dyson School of Design Engineering. Third- and fourth-year design engineering students created browser add-ons that filtered out inappropriate material when accessed by children, as well as digital interventions focused on teaching digital privacy to parents and children built into phone apps. This exercise demonstrated that the oft-repeated maxim by tech companies that such regulations would inhibit growth or creativity does not hold true.

Policymakers must urgently address these issues, including:

  • Holding companies accountable to the code
  • An increased emphasis on industry to work closely with behavioural scientists
  • Treating technological applications as planned behavioural interventions.

Moving forward, I plan to conduct further road-tests of the new design code together with the ICO and my Master as well as undergraduate students. This exercise, besides for providing an investigation opportunity, helps to enforce in students the importance of considering children and young people in technological innovation. I am also conducting research in my lab on emotional privacy together with colleagues from Design Engineering, which will help further understanding about perceived privacy transgressions in people’s emotional lives.

Learning how to effectively engage with policy-makers as a researcher

Rebecca Clube is a PhD researcher, studying the circular economy and sustainable development at Imperial’s Centre for Environmental Policy

The important and diverse research which goes on at Imperial needs to be communicated effectively beyond the academic community. Engaging and influencing policy is an essential part of making change. It is not always easy when academia and policy may have competing and differing aims, resources and, even, language. Organised by The Forum, the non-partisan think tank Institute for Government ran an intensive workshop to help Imperial researchers understand how to effectively engage their ideas and research agendas with policy-makers.

The online workshop began with a deep dive into the structures of the UK Government, highlighting the organisational complexities which need to be accounted for when engaging with the policy community. From discussions with presentations by the Institute for Government training team, it became obvious very early on that engaging with policy-makers is not a straightforward task. It involves persistence and dedication, as well as strategy in terms of targeting the most appropriate civil servants, politicians, select committees and influential non-profit organisations to listen to your findings.

ParliamentA particular challenge and essential skill for academics is to learn how to effectively communicate research to a non-academic audience. Academic researchers are famously well-versed in technical terms, jargon and recounting complex niches in their respective academic disciplines. Learning to communicate complex ideas and theories in an accessible and compelling manner to policy-makers is therefore invaluable. During the final stage of the workshop, we had the opportunity to practice succinctly pitching our research to our peers, taking care to utilise lay terms and persuasive language to highlight the value of our research. We then gained valuable feedback from Institute for Government experts, with tips on how to develop this skill further.

The workshop was highly insightful and well-organised. I would thoroughly recommend this training to other Imperial academics, as well as encouraging them to get involved in The Forum’s wider programme of events and workshops: engaging with policy is a key skill for any academic.

For more information about The Forum, including future events, training and more, please get in touch or sign up to our bulletin.

 

How to effectively engage with All-Party Parliamentary Groups

In this blog post, we will look at:

  • What All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) are and do
  • How you can engage with APPGs
  • How The Forum can help

Parliament

What are APPGs?

APPGs are informal groups which meet to discuss an issue of concern. They have no official status in Parliament, are cross-party and usually contain members from both the House of Commons and House of Lords.

APPGs focus on a very specific issue – either a country or a subject. As a result, MPs and Lords usually form or join groups whose focus they are very passionate about. This also allows charities, campaign groups and other non-governmental organisations to become more involved in the policy-making process. They often provide a secretariat to run the APPG’s administration.

Unlike House of Commons Select Committees, APPGs do not directly shadow the work of government departments. They will generally be considered effective when they influence debate and change government policy, which due to their informal nature, varies hugely. It can depend on how regularly they meet, who they engage with, the quality of any inquiries and reports they produce and whether their focus is of interest to the Government of the day.

As of January 2019, there were 692 APPGs. To give you an idea of the wide range of APPGs, listed below are just a few APPGs whose topic begins with the letter A:

Moreover, listed below are some APPGs, also just beginning with the letter A, that may be relevant to Imperial researchers:

How can you engage with APPGs?

Forum eventAPPGs are a useful way to engage with MPs, Lords and non-governmental organisations who share a passion for your specific subject area.

  • Inquiry submissions: APPGs can invite written submissions for inquiries, which provides an opportunity to present your evidence to policy-makers.
  • Policy briefing: Even if no inquiry is ongoing, you can still submit a briefing note. This summarises your research, the policy changes you recommend and why it’s relevant to these specific policy-makers.
  • Attend meetings: APPG meetings are free to attend but you may have to register in advance. Contact the secretariat to see if it may be useful for you to speak on your research findings.
  • Host visits: APPGs often organise visits to teach members about various issues. It may be worth inviting an APPG’s members to Imperial to see your research first hand. For example, the APPG on Vaccinations for All visited Imperial’s International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) Human Immunology Laboratory (HIL) in July 2019.APPG on Vaccinations for All visited Imperial‘s International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) Human Immunology Laboratory (HIL) in July 2019.

How can The Forum help?

As Imperial’s policy engagement programme, The Forum can help you engage APPGs in various ways.

How to engage with select committees effectively

This blog post is intended to compliment our resources document, Engaging with Parliamentary Select Committees.

In this blog post, we will look at:

  • What select committees are and do
  • What your written evidence submission should look like
  • How The Forum can help

What are select committees?

Select committees are the engine room of parliamentary scrutiny. They are formal bodies but their power and influence is often more informal. They choose their own programme and are cross party.

Select Committees in the House of Commons are charged with overseeing the work of a government department, examining the expenditure, administration and policy of the principal government departments.

Lords Select Committees do not shadow the work of government departments. They consider specialist subjects, taking advantage of the Lords’ expertise and the greater amount of time (compared to MPs) to examine issues. They also invite written submissions.

Select committees will generally be considered effective when they influence debate and change government policy.

A few examples of select committees that may be particularly relevant to Imperial researchers are:

Select committees scrutinise government through inquiries on selected topics. They will set the terms of reference for each inquiry and then invite written submissions from interested parties.

What should written evidence submissions look like?

  • Introduce yourself at the start – what is your background and expertise? What can you contribute to the debate? For example, why your research is particularly relevant and helpful.
  • Formatting is important! Number your paragraphs and use spacing, separating out sections using titles. Put the date at the top.
  • Emphasise your key asks – what do you want to happen? Avoid just stating all the problems – what are the solutions? Think creatively about recommendations – it shouldn’t always be asking for more money.
  • Address the questions the committee is asking. You can quote from other sources, but please cite them.
  • Perhaps the most important one: keep the evidence short, simple, to the point and free of jargon. Staff and parliamentarians looking at the written evidence will be pressed for time.
  • Frame the submission in the public interest. Opinion is useful, but only up to a point – what they really want to see is analysis.
  • The committee will likely reject anything defamatory or items published elsewhere. Do not publish it until they have accepted it as evidence (they will email you to let you know this).
  • Follow the guidance from the Parliament website.

What next?

With any submission, preparation is key, and The Forum is here to help:

  • Come along to one of The Forum’s Policy engagement seminars.
  • Consult our new Upcoming consultations and APPG meetings page on The Forum website, where you can find open consultations you could contribute to.
  • Read Imperial’s submission to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry into Life Sciences and the Industrial Strategy.
  • If you are submitting evidence, research the members of the committee and read some of their reports.
  • Contact The Forum team to get bespoke support with your draft submission and particularly if you are invited to give oral evidence. We’d be delighted to meet 1-1.

A final thought

Select committees rely entirely on evidence and without it, they can do very little. Therefore, it is in their interest to hear from you – they want the best possible evidence on an issue so they can scrutinise policy effectively.