Examination of Witness (Questions 1 - 9)
WEDNESDAY 17 JUNE
SIR ROBERT
MAY
Chairman
1. Order, order. Good afternoon, Sir Robert.
Thank you very much for coming along this afternoon to see us
and help us in our inquiry. We do apologise for having kept you
waiting for quarter of an hour but we had various private business
matters to discuss; we misjudged the time and did not give ourselves
long enough. We are most apologetic for having kept you waiting.
Thank you very much indeed. May I start by referring you to the
brief and concise and useful document you produced called The
Use of Scientific Advice in Policy Making and the guidelines it
contained and ask you whether there was any particular incident
or any particular reason which prompted you to publish those guidelines
at that time.
(Sir Robert May) Not really. One way
of expressing that is that in the widely consulted process which
put the guidelines together, for reasons which will be understandable,
we avoided making reference to specific incidents but tried to
focus on general principles. In so far as there was a motivating
force, it was my surprise at discovering there were no such guidelines
already in existence, and the feeling that through a variety of
mechanisms, some of which I am sure we will discuss later, it
would be a good idea if there were a more explicit statement of
things which many may think can go without saying, and more in
the way of explicit mechanisms to draw together departments so
that in a useful and creative way other people may meddle in matters
which are not only cross-departmental but even are the business
of particular departments, but where sharing problems could be
helpful.
2. You, Sir Robert, are the Chief Scientist
and there are scientific advisers in many government departments.
Do you know whether there is a similar document in other departments
of government indicating the sort of advice which could be available
and how it should be used?
(Sir Robert May) I do not really know the answer to
that question in detail but I can give you a supplementary follow
up. I know more about what happened since than what happened before.
The one thing I do know about before is that there was a much
shorter set of guidelines which my grandfather, as it were, in
the position—not Bill Stewart but his predecessor John Fairclough—had
drawn up, which gave a very sketchy outline of best practice.
Since then the Scottish Office, for example, have incorporated
the guidelines in their good practice guidance for their training
and development programmes and the Department of the Environment,
Transport and the Regions is proposing to issue detailed process
guidance which is based on them. Whether there were other such
things I rather doubt because I imagine they would have surfaced
in the wide consultation with other departments in which we engaged.
3. It is some 15 months since the document we
are talking about was first published. Have you noticed any change
in attitude of government departments to scientific advice as
a result of that helpful document?
(Sir Robert May) That is a good question. As a preamble
to that I would say the guidelines were launched under the previous
Government where they had enthusiastic and collective ministerial
endorsement and they have received reaffirmation and a relaunching
under the new Government. In that sense at least they have endorsement.
In trying to embed them we have done various things. We have created
a Whitehall group of people who are involved with them through
putting them as a routine item on the agenda of the Cabinet committee
of chief scientists and their equivalents, which we will maybe
talk about later. There is also a ministerial group of people
with interests in science from each department who get together.
This is one of the items on their agenda. Then I could give you
a catalogue of anecdotes of things which I would hope would have
happened just as well as they did happen but where the guidelines
might have helped. For example, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food
and Fisheries, in seeking advice about the spread of bovine tuberculosis
more conspicuously into Herefordshire and the putative connection
with badgers, was in my view exemplary in the way it set up a
committee of the very best people, consulted widely and produced
an open report about that. I would say that was a canonical example
of how the guidelines might operate. I would say the advice that
OST in conjunction with some other people prepared at very short
notice for the inhabitants of Montserrat, drawing together the
subtly divergent views of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
and the DfID and the advice of the scientists and the risk analysis
with some external people to have a quick overview of that, was
again an example. The putting together of the Shepherd group on
decommissioning of offshore structures, as the euphemism goes.
I can give you telling anecdotes: whether they would have happened
that way or not anyhow, who can tell?
4. My final question is perhaps by way of an
introduction of yourself to us. Would you kindly and briefly explain
to us the role of your organisation, the Office of Science and
Technology? How successful do you think it is and what improvements
could there be? A little question but a big answer.
(Sir Robert May) Yes; it is an interesting question.
Most governments have a chief scientific adviser; it tends to
date back to World War Two, in the aftermath of which it became
increasingly clear that science and technology was going to play
a more established role and indeed would require increasing public
investment in the life of industrialised nations, and mixed odysseys
for the fate of the chief scientist in different countries. The
Office of Science and Technology, which is a relatively new creation,
took the Chief Scientist, formalised some of the roles of both
giving advice in response to requests and offering advice on issues
which seemed important—both reaction and proaction—formalised
it in the sense of embedding the Chief Scientist in the budgetary
process, to offer advice across all R&D in government, formalising
that which had existed and creating a somewhat larger organisation
by giving it monetary gravitas, by putting the research council
budget, £1.3 billion, within it. It gave it an additional
mission by creating the Foresight enterprise, which aims to draw
better together business and industry with the science base through
networks which are formed by thinking about what the future might
be like and putting that under the aegis of the Chief Scientist,
together with much of our international business in science and
technology, including negotiating the European framework programmes.
That is a recitation in a sense of the formalities of the Office.
As you know, the Office was created originally in the Cabinet
Office and then in the summer of 1995 it was moved into the Department
of Trade and Industry. How well do I think OST has performed in
its varied roles? Time does not permit a detailed analysis but
I would say in the international affairs, if you just take the
negotiations of Framework Five, we have done reasonably well in
support. There are other areas where I think we could do better.
Foresight: separate topic. Coming more personally: how well do
I think I have performed, not just in reacting to requests for
advice, which in a sense is the easiest thing, but in identifying
things where advice ought to be given and most importantly perhaps
and most difficult, in trying to persuade the Cabinet and other
Ministers, to support the views I hold about the importance of
science, engineering and technology and medicine, both in our
daily lives and in the future of our country? Just to amplify
for one moment, one of the many opportunities I have to express
that advice is in the comprehensive spending review. As in the
previous annual budgetary process under the previous government
there was a Cabinet committee, which meets without officials,
with individual secretaries of state to discuss the budgets for
their departments. Oddly and uniquely, the Chief Scientist also
meets with that committee, without any other officials to offer
a view across all the £6 billion spend on R&D as to what
are our worries and thoughts and concerns. It is a different view
because I do not have a budget to discuss; all I do is offer advice.
I give that as a concrete example of the role of the position
and also its curious nature in not actually having a budget to
do things with, but having to carry out its function through trying
to be persuasive.
5. You have spanned your remarks over the end
of the last Government to the beginning of this Government so
there is no part political bias in my question I hope. You seem
to give the impression that governments, in the plural, are at
long last taking science seriously. Is that correct?
(Sir Robert May) If I look around the machinery for
advice to Government—the analogue of the OST and Chief Scientist—in
the other countries I know well, the United States, Australia,
and in other countries in Europe which I know less well, I would
say that I would rather have my job here than in most other countries.
Dr Gibson
6. I want to probe a little further some of
the things you have said. How often do you see Cabinet Ministers?
You talk about this Cabinet committee but how often do you meet
them? Just at moments of crisis like spending reviews? How scientifically
articulate do they have to be? Do they know the earth moves round
the sun or the sun round the earth? Does that matter to them?
(Sir Robert May) I will answer that question with
tactless frankness.
7. I knew you would.
(Sir Robert May) I will answer under three headings.
The Chief Scientist sits and not just as a mute official but actually
sits in a reactive capacity on many major Cabinet committees.
I sit with the Ministerial Committee on Economic Affairs, on the
Environment, which is distinct from meeting with the Ministerial
Committee on Public Expenditure which I do not sit on, I merely
meet. In the others I sit with the committees. I sit on several
of the task forces, the things which mix Ministers and people
from labour and industry like the cleaner vehicles task force
or the creative industries task force. That both provides an opportunity
indeed to bring papers to the committee, to intervene in discussion,
but also it is an opportunity to form connections with Ministers,
to nobble people in the aftermath or the precursor to meetings,
and I value that. Secondly, I have an engagement at the centre
of things with Number 10, which is not easily captured by saying
how often I meet the Prime Minister. There is a group of about
a dozen very interesting, bright young people in the Number 10
Policy Unit. I have frequent contacts with them; sometimes with
particular people who have particular responsibilities, sometimes
collectively, sometimes they come to me, sometimes I go to them.
Rarely a week would pass without such an interaction. I have had
meetings with the Prime Minister in the context, for example,
of putting together the meeting just before Kyoto which drew together
the core cabinet with industrial leaders like the heads of BP
and Shell and so on to discuss things. Then I have meetings every
couple of months with Peter Mandelson, another person in Number
10. That is another set of contacts. Then a third set of contacts,
particularly for example in the context of the comprehensive spending
review. There are departments whose plans I do not entirely agree
with, with respect to R&D spending. As an example, I have
had one on one meetings with the relevant Ministers in those departments,
generally with the blessing of the Treasury Secretary. More generally,
if I have a concern about something which I think is best pursued
with a Minister in another department then I just feel free to
do so. That is a rather existential description of a pushy person.
Mr Beard
8. To what extent can you influence the programmes
in other ministries?
(Sir Robert May) When I took on this job, there were
many who wondered why because I am associated as a person who
likes to get his own way. I realised at the beginning that if
I could achieve a 10 or 20 per cent success in an ambitious programme
I would be doing well. If I had to go back to an analysis of a
compendium of anecdotes, I could quote anecdotes where intervention
has really been successful and I could likewise quote anecdotes,
probably larger in number, where quite understandably people were
not deflected from a course by my opinion to the contrary and
that is probably as it should be.
Dr Jones
9. Would you like to quote those anecdotes?
One of each.
(Sir Robert May) I think that would be better not
for the sake of maximising the number of future such events.
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