Through recommendations 4 (Paragraph 57), 5 (Paragraph 60), 7 (Paragraph 72), 8 (Paragraph 73) and 9 (Paragraph 74), the Committee articulate a clear stance that ARIA ought to have explicitly defined ‘missions’ or ‘challenges’, focused on particular priorities like Net Zero or Industrial Strategy, and these priorities should be set by central Government on ARIA’s behalf. ARIA’s portfolio will comprise a set of programmes, each comprising a set of projects. We agree that it is vital that ARIA has a clear research focus at a Programme level. Intrinsic to the ARIA model is the recruitment of talented Programme Managers, who are empowered with significant funds to commission research projects in pursuit of their coherent, singular vision. We do not intend for ARIA to fund a mixed selection of individual projects which provide no contribution to a wider programmatic aim. However, at the organisation level, it is by design that we wish to give ARIA an open mission: to benefit society and the economy through transformative technological change. We want to leave the door open to ARIA to forge links with multiple government department customers, unlocking new technological concepts which might apply to a range of societal problems, and boosting UK industry in a range of sectors. In this regard, ARIA will depart from the DARPA model, which is tied to the US Department of Defense, but align with other ARPA-inspired bodies around the world with broader remits, such as Germany’s SPRIN-D, Finland’s SITRA, and Japan’s Moonshot R&D. It is also important to note that there are many UK public-funded programmes and institutions for which Ministers set the strategic direction. One such programme is the Strategic Priorities Fund, covering 34 interdisciplinary Government priorities with an £830m investment. Meanwhile, the Faraday Institution is a research body set up solely to look at the future of battery technologies. With a budget spanning to the end of this parliament of £800m, ARIA is less than 2% of the total UK public R&D portfolio upon which we aim to experiment with a less prescriptive approach. We are grateful for the Committee’s analysis around usage of the ‘Haldane Principle’, which has gained multiple interpretations across stakeholders. The Haldane Principle was discussed extensively during the passage of the Higher Education and Research Act. The principle is sometimes used to invoke the idea of scientific freedom and independence, though, the concept also can entail that proposals should be assessed by peer review. It should now be clear from the above that ARIA will offer scientific independence at organisation and programme level. With regard to peer review, standard processes may not always be appropriate for ARIA, as the body aims to empower exceptional scientists to start and stop projects very quickly.