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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady is getting rather repetitive and she is straying from the subject of the debate.
Mrs. Gorman: I accept your advice, Mr. Deputy Speaker--the advice being that I should shut up fairly soon.
The Government often turn to special scientific advisers for assistance. Those advisers are attached to all Ministries and the Government obviously rely heavily on
their judgment in reaching their conclusions. I put it to the Government that those advisers must be vetted very carefully in order to confirm their independence.
I draw the attention of the House to the special adviser in the Department of the Environment, Mr. Tom Burke--who I am sure is an honourable man and all the rest of it. He was formerly associated with the Greenpeace organisation and I believe that he has a tainted or biased view about the way in which the Government should handle environmental issues. As a consequence, the Ministry may not receive an independent view.
Therefore, I return to my thesis that the Government could refer to basic science in universities as a source of advice. That might be better than seeking the views of special scientific advisers within Ministries.
Mr. Nigel Jones (Cheltenham):
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman), as her remarks are always controversial and well worth listening to--even if one does not agree with them.
Mr. Deputy Speaker, I may have tested your patience during the sports debate last Friday, when I got rather carried away and spoke for 22 minutes. I know that several hon. Members wish to speak in this debate, so I shall be brief.
The prior options review reminds me of the reorganisation of local government--the Government set up the review, obtain a reply, they do not like that reply, so they conduct another review. That is what has happened with the scientific research councils.
I welcome the debate, and I am grateful to the Labour party for finding time to raise the subject on an Opposition day. We have not debated scientific issues for some time and on the last occasion hon. Members complained that, as it was a Friday, few hon. Members were present. Few hon. Members are present for tonight's debate--hon. Members may be attending the 60th birthday celebrations of Lord Holme of Cheltenham, but I suspect that their absence has more to do with the annual dinner of the parliamentary beer club.
The challenges facing science today are legion. Appalling levels of pollution mean that solutions to environmental problems are vital for the survival of the planet. In the past 200 years, scientific breakthroughs have led to enormous improvements in health care. This year marks the bicentenary of the discovery of the smallpox vaccine by Edward Jenner, who spent much of his life in my constituency. That was an important breakthrough, and there have been many others since then.
I shall refer tonight to the Medical Research Council units that form part of the prior options review. The MRC is funded mainly by Government grant in aid through the Office of Science and Technology and the Department of Trade and Industry. The grant in aid for 1994-95 was
£270 million, which was supplemented by £26 million from external sources, including industry, the national health service and the European Union.
Five MRC units are included in the third tranche of the prior options review from July to December 1996, although there are implications for all 40 MRC units. The units currently included are the toxicology unit at the university of Leicester, the Dunn nutrition unit at the university of Cambridge, the reproductive biology unit at the university of Edinburgh, the radiobiology unit at Harwell and the virology unit at Glasgow. The people who work in those five units do not know how the units were selected for inclusion in the original scrutiny of public sector research establishments, or for the current round of the review. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us.
The MRC's mission is to support high-quality research with the aim of improving and maintaining human health. Most MRC units and institutes are integrated within universities; most staff are employed by the MRC, and the director is accountable to the MRC chief executive. Units provide a special research environment that gives the MRC director and staff freedom to commit themselves to full-time research on a long-term basis.
Health-related research develops as a continuum to basic strategic and applied research. Units are required to--and do--exploit the fruits of their research for the benefit of national health and wealth, but their primary purpose is to carry out the highest-quality basic research that the 1993 White Paper "Realising our Potential" acknowledged should be supported by Government.
Given the inclusion of those private units in the current round, the MRC is now required to devote resources to prior options reviews and to consider other models for ownership and management of its units. The recent announcement in the House about the first tranche of prior options reviews suggests that decisions are being made on the basis that the establishments reviewed so far would benefit from the greater freedom they would have if they were fully in the private sector, whether managed by companies limited by guarantee or by universities that would, for the purposes of the exercise, be seen as being in the private sector.
The primary purpose of most of the public sector research establishments involved in the exercise is to deliver services to Government. The primary function of MRC units is to carry out research relevant to health. If MRC units were turned into companies limited by guarantee, their mission to provide an infrastructure for research into areas relevant to health would change dramatically, as the objective of raising income would become paramount. Similarly, transfer to university ownership where management has other objectives related to teaching, student numbers and income generation would create difficulties in the maintaining of the necessary stability and focus.
The freedom of units to pursue basic research does not mean that they become uncompetitive or ossified. Each programme in their portfolio must compete for support from the council against other claims on its funds, such as grants to universities. If unit programmes fail to win support at peer review level, there are procedures for terminating work, and closing units where necessary. For example, 15 units have been closed in the past 10 years. That has led to staff redundancies where skills cannot be accommodated elsewhere in the council's service.
In the last round of reviews of the five units carried out in the original scrutiny exercise in 1994, many of the units' non-academic customers--for example, industry and the national health service--expressed concern that any change of ownership to the private sector would alter the nature of the well informed and independent policy advice that the units are able to provide: for example, the consultancy service to the food industry offered by the Dunn nutrition unit. The views of those customers will be sought again in the coming round of reviews, but there is no evidence that their position will have changed.
MRC units provide essential freedom for the conduct of long-term basic research that benefits national health and wealth. Unlike that of most PSREs included in prior options reviews, their primary purpose is not to provide Government with services.
"Realising our Potential" confirmed Government's role in funding basic research; it has never been clear why MRC units--which are already rigorously reviewed through independent peer review involving user input--were included in the exercise. Transfer to universities, or to other private sector management, could threaten their freedom rather than increasing it, and would require them to focus attention on activities that would divert them from their mission to improve and maintain human health.
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