APPENDIX 75
Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the Royal Society of Edinburgh
INTRODUCTION
1. The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE)
is pleased to respond to the Select Committee's request for comments
on the new Science and Innovation White Paper, Excellence and
Opportunity (Cm 4814) and the recently announced Science Budget.
The RSE is Scotland's National Academy of Science and Letters,
comprising Fellows elected on the basis of their distinction,
from the full range of academic disciplines, and from industry,
commerce and the professions. This response has been compiled
by the General Secretary with the assistance of a wide cross section
of Fellows.
SUMMARY
2. The RSE welcomes the strategic direction
described in the White Paper and its emphasis on scientific excellence,
the creation of the right climate for innovation, and the importance
of high quality curiosity-driven research. The key points identified
by the RSE include:
— The emphasis on having to gain public
support for science and technology is particularly relevant at
the present time with both science and engineering coming under
the spotlight. (paragraph 5).
— In the key area of science policy,
a good and close working relationship between ministers and officials
at the UK level and in the devolved administrators is important.
(paragraph 7).
— The RSE shares the concern about
the appeal of science and engineering in schools, raised in the
White Paper, and about the pay and conditions of school teachers
and school laboratories. A recent review of teacher's conditions
of service (the McCrone Report) had lead to major pay proposals,
to be funded by the Scottish Executive, and this should help
with the recruitment of science teachers in Scotland. (paragraph
9).
— The £1 billion programme in
partnership with the Wellcome Trust to renew the science infrastructure
is of great importance. (paragraph 12).
— The RSE believes that the RAE system
should be monitored to ensure that proper weight is given to both
basic and strategic research, and welcomes the increasing emphasis
on cross-research council programmes and the dual support system.
(paragraph 16).
— While the Society welcomes the £4
million available to assist in recruitment of leading researchers,
measures need to be taken to address the crucial issues of academic
salaries and retention of the bulk of our talent and particularly
how to deal with the problems that arise from the increase in
the use of short term contracts. (paragraph 19).
— The recognition of the problem of
immigration and work permit barriers to the recruitment and retention
of overseas research workers and students is to be welcomed and
a step towards improving UK competitiveness. (paragraph 21).
— Efforts to commercialise the research
base need to continue and businesses, particularly the small and
medium sized enterprises (SMEs), should be encouraged to use higher
education institutions to greater effect. (paragraph 25).
— There is perhaps an insufficient
recognition within the White Paper that in some regions the industrial
base simply does not exist to exploit the scope for collaboration
with academia. This means that benefits flowing to the local area
are indirect and therefore limited. There is a need to establish
more technical research and development facilities to support
SME communities. (paragraph 28).
— It would have been helpful to have
a wider "Knowledge Transfer" theme within the paper
which could have impacted on all government departments, for example
into the creative industries, which would be of interest to the
Department of Culture, Media and Sport. More emphasis could also
have been given to the need for government departments to have
a responsibility for maintaining a science base appropriate to
their particular science advice and policy needs. (paragraph 31).
— An educated and informed electorate
will respond to science-based policy decisions within the national
political arena provided that government and the industry concerned
are prepared to adopt an "open information" approach.
(paragraph 33).
— The receipt by the Medical Research
Council (MRC) of £53 million for its role in the cross-council
genomics collaboration comes at just the right time to give a
significant boost to the large-scale population studies that are
investigating the interaction between genetics and environment/lifestyle
factors. (paragraph 36).
GENERAL
3. The White Paper and the Science Budget
are very welcome and will help to strengthen the UK science base.
The broad approach embodies a real recognition of the importance
of science and technology to the UK in the 21st century and the
detailed proposals seem well directed to achieving improvement
in key areas such as research infrastructure, support for young
researchers, developing the business/academic interface and giving
weight in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) to business-related
research and development.
4. The specific details of the Science and
Innovation White Paper and the Science Budget are addressed below:
SCIENCE AND
INNOVATION WHITE
PAPER "EXCELLENCE
AND OPPORTUNITY"
5. The RSE welcomes the strategic direction
described in the White Paper and its emphasis on scientific excellence,
the creation of the right climate for innovation and the importance
of excellent curiosity-driven research. The Society also supports
the emphasis on knowledge transfer, the need to restore public
confidence in science and the drive to attracting science students
by improving science teaching in schools. In many respects the
thrust of the White Paper is fully consonant with the RSE's own
mission, goals and objectives as set out in the Society's new
corporate plan.
6. The emphasis on having to gain public
support for science and technology is particularly relevant at
the present time with both science and engineering coming under
the spotlight, for example, BSE, mobile phones and Railtrack.
The public must feel in the long term that they are getting a
commensurate return to their quality of life for the tax revenue
invested by government.
Chapter 1: A Science Policy for the 21st Century
Devolution
7. The drafting of the White Paper highlights
the difficulty of taking account adequately in such a document
of the post-devolution situation. It is sometimes unclear whether
a particular proposal applies UK wide or only to England and,
in some cases, Wales. This underlines the importance of the key
areas of science policy a good and close working relationship
between Ministers and officials at the UK level and in the devolved
administration. It is not clear that mechanisms exist to ensure
that this essential collaboration is facilitated and more action
should be taken by government to allow this to happen, for example
in sensitising research council's agendas to national and regional
priorities.
8. At the UK level, the Scottish science,
engineering and technology (SET) base should remain an integral
part of the UK system of basic research. Its scale benefits Scotland
and the other regions of the UK by stimulating international competitiveness,
through the inherent flexibility of a large system to adapt to
change whilst focusing major efforts in areas of current need
and the capacity to attract and retain scientists of international
calibre. It must also not be disadvantaged when it comes to competing
for UK funds such as those identified in this White Paper.
Excellence in science
Better science in schools
9. The RSE shares the concern about the
need for greater appeal of science and engineering in schools,
raised in the White Paper, and about the pay and conditions of
school teachers and school laboratories. This responsibility is
devolved to the Scottish Executive in Scotland, and a recent review
of teacher's conditions of service (the McCrone Report) has lead
to major pay proposals, to be funded by the Scottish Executive,
and this should help with the recruitment of science teachers
in Scotland.
10. Scientists and engineers involved in
areas such as biotechnology and IT are becoming the bed-rock of
a growing Scottish and UK economy. There is, however, a fall-off
in interest and attainment at upper primary and lower secondary
school levels but the underlying reasons are open to debate. The
remedy certainly depends on good and enthusiastic teaching of
science in primary and secondary schools. Part of the problem
arises from the need to improve science teaching in secondary
schools (although there are some notable exceptions). This in
turn is a situation which has arisen through science teaching
in schools having, over a good many years, appeared as an unattractive
job option compared with other openings for newly qualified graduates
in science.
11. To address these concerns the RSE will
be seeking, as an expansion of its well-established and popular
Young People's Programme, to foster a Teaching Fellowship Scheme
for mid-career school teachers to enhance their professional and
personal development. The RSE will also be seeking to introduce
prizes and competitions that will extend participation of schools,
teachers and pupils.
World-class infrastructure
12. The £1 billion programme in partnership
with the Wellcome Trust to renew the science infrastructure is
of great importance. Researchers in Scotland will be waiting eagerly
to see how the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC)
will translate the Science Research Investment Fund into action
in Scotland as a result of its review of research funding and
policy.
13. The Society also welcomes the £150
million being made available by the Wellcome Trust for top-rated,
but unfunded, Joint Infrastructure Fund (JIF) bids and the £75
million of Wellcome Trust funding for equipment and refurbishment
for biomedical science, together with the £100 million being
provided by the OST for modernisation of research council institutes
and development of large national science facilities.
14. With regard to the review of the Council
for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), the
Society believes that there should be a national strategy for
the development of national and international facilities to be
hosted in the UK (and also, some strategic objectives for the
hosting of international facilities elsewhere) and that the CCLRC
could perform such a strategic role, provided that it was given
proper authority and funding to do so, and provided that it was
properly advised and informed about the national strategy.
Funding excellent research
15. The SET base must aspire to excellence
by international standards. Liberalisation of global markets requires
that successful business should internationally competitive. It
is increasingly free to locate itself where circumstances are
favourable. For knowledge-based industries, this means in locations
where there is an excellent SET base and a technically highly
skilled population, which itself is part of the output of the
SET base. Excellence, recognised by peer review judged against
international standards, is therefore a prerequisite of an effective
SET base. While the White Paper notes that the UK is second to
none when spending on public science is viewed in terms of value
for money, there are certainly no grounds for complacency given
the concerns about the falling numbers of physics, chemistry,
engineering and technology graduates.
16. The RSE believes that the RAE system
should be monitored to ensure that proper weight is given to both
basic and strategic research, and welcomes the increasing emphasis
on cross-(research) council programmes and the dual support system.
Funding priorities
17. The Society welcomes the specific initiatives
in nanotechnology, e-science and genomics.
Academic rewards
18. The RSE supports the additional monies
being made available as basic support for post-graduate research
students and the comments about young researchers and the need
to improve opportunities for women.
19. The Society welcomes the fact that £4
million will be available on a UK-wide basis to a Government/Wolfson
Foundation/Royal Society partnership to assist in retaining leading
researchers within the UK and attracting outstanding world class
researchers here. However, there is nothing within the White Paper
to address the crucial issues of academic salaries and retention
of the bulk of our talent and particularly how to deal with the
problems that arise from the increase in the use of short term
contracts. In addition, the need to consider how the UK will generate
the sort of people who will play key roles in the future to exploit
the knowledge-based economy has not been addressed. The universities
and other providers of higher education have a crucial role to
play in producing the graduates with the skills and entrepreneurial
flair essential to the creation of wealth in the 21st century.
In addition, the provision of incentives for people to take risks,
(including direct grants, low interest loans, well-serviced locations
for growing companies in attractive surroundings with strong supporting
infrastructure), are also important.
20. For its part the RSE intends to expand
its support of advanced research and postgraduate studies, especially
to promote technology transfer leading the wealth creation, improvements
in the quality of life, and other Foresight priorities.
Attracting scientists and engineering to the UK
21. The recognition of immigration and work
permit barriers to the recruitment and retention of overseas research
workers and students and the proposals to remove them, are to
be welcomed as a step towards improving UK competitiveness. There
is, however, much to be done on the ground by the Home Officer
before the ambitions of the White Paper are realised.
22. To assist this process, the RSE is also
seeking to enhance schemes for shorter or longer-term overseas
exchanges of researchers between Scotland and selected overseas
countries.
Opportunities for innovation
Foresight
23. The £15 million fund for ideas
from Foresight 2000 is welcome, While Foresight is given prominence
within the White Paper, it remains to be established how Foresight
research priorities will be interpreted by government departments
and research funders such as the research councils and higher
education funding councils.
24. The RSE will continue to organise its
series of Foresight seminars, bringing together key people from
Scotland's business, public and academic sectors, as part of the
Society's Foresight contribution. The Society will also seek to
organise workshops to identify and support selective research
areas of high potential in which it is important that Scotland
has a strategic presence.
Universities in the knowledge-driven economy
25. The White Paper correctly notes that
our scientists and technologists are of a high global standard.
For industry to benefit however, their outputs must be both relevant
and timely. Effective knowledge transfer is heavily dependent
on both mechanisms and culture and, as has been stated many times,
there is a significant challenge in commercialising the output
of our universities. Efforts to commercialise the research base
need to continue and businesses, particularly the small and medium
sized enterprises (SMEs), should be encouraged to use the institutions
to greater effect.
26. It should be recognised, however, that
this will not always involve exploitation of the results of research
within the UK, though clearly that is to be preferred. The reality
is, however, that industry within Scotland, or the UK, is not
always in a position to pick up a piece of research and run with
it. Spin-outs may not be practical in all cases, though again
the spin-out route has many attractions. In some cases the international
quality and complexity of the research in our institutions means
that it can only be exploited by international companies. Collaborative
research with such companies can bring real benefits to the institutions,
and to Scotland and the UK, and improve our standing as a centre
of excellence at an international level.
27. The RSE awards Enterprise Fellowships
that equip post-doctoral researchers, or younger lecturers, with
the hands-on business knowledge to enhance the commercialisation
potential of their own research and to encourage the establishment
of new start up companies based on Scottish and UK research achievements.
In the past four years the 13 Fellows who have completed their
Fellowships have formed, or been part of, eight successful spin-out
companies. Because of this success, the Society will be seeking
to increase the number and subject coverage of the Enterprise
Fellowships in partnership with other bodies. The Society will
also be running a series of Science Base Research and Commercialisation
(SBRC) workshops, focusing on best-practice within the Scottish
Science Base, with an emphasis on spin-outs, licensing, IPR processes,
job creation, challenges in engaging the Scottish industrial base,
incubators, the impact of the RAE, and the relevance of Foresight.
Stimulating demand from business
28. Over the last few years, considerable
emphasis has been placed on encouraging commercialisation of research-generated
ideas. However, one of the major weaknesses of the Scottish economy
in this respect is the absence of locally-based businesses capable
of developing such ideas. The model currently is very much one
of higher education institutions (HEIs) "pushing" research
findings out into the community rather than industry "pulling"
such ideas and actively developing them. Scotland does not lack
"institutional push"; it does, however, lack "industry
pull". Of the top 10 publicly-quoted companies in Scotland,
five are either banks or utilities and as a country, we have too
few major directly research-dependent industries. There is, therefore,
perhaps an insufficient recognition within the White Paper that
in some regions the industrial base simply does not exist to exploit
the scope for collaboration with academia. In some cases world
class researchers cannot find any local businesses to work with
and need to collaborate with industry outside their region or
indeed outside the UK. This means that benefits flowing to the
local area are indirect and therefore limited.
29. It is not easy to see how this can be
addressed beyond encouraging such local collaboration as can take
place, promoting academic spin-outs and attracting appropriate
inward investment. A key objective must be to increase the number
of companies performing effective R&D in these regions. This
will be a long-term goal and, therefore, while efforts to attract
inward investment should continue, these should be matched with
a comparable development of Scotland's indigenous industry. It
has to be recognised that building an R&D culture and capability
is both risky and expensive for smaller companies and is, therefore,
unlikely to happen without significant public investment.
30. There is a need to establish more technical
research and development facilities to support SME communities
and, in terms of vocational skill development, the strong interfaces
being developed between HE and FE and articulation with HND qualifications
is an excellent model in Scotland. The RSE will also be seeking
to create an Industry Fellowships Scheme to bolster the links
between industry and the science base in Scotland. These Fellowships
will be awarded to industrial applicants to carry out relevant
research programmes in partnership with a Scottish university
or research institution.
Strategies for government departments
31. Innovation is about more than science
of technology transfer. It would have been helpful to have a wider
"Knowledge Transfer" theme within the paper which could
have impacted on all government departments, for example into
the creative industries, which would be of interest to the Department
of Culture, Media and Sport. More emphasise could also have been
given to the need for government departments to have a responsibility
for maintaining a science base appropriate to their particular
science advice and policy needs, and in providing proper overheads
in research grants and contracts.
Intellectual property: changing the rules
32. The interest by government in the issues
of intellectual property (IP) management is welcome, as is the
£10 million gap-bridging fund for commercialisation of IP
in public sector research establishments (PSREs). The issue is
already on the agenda of Universities UK and the Association for
University Research and Industry Links (AURIL) where tensions
are recognised between disclosure, publication and protection
as well as issues of employment conditions, rights of individuals,
and the expectation that institutions will exploit their assets.
Confident consumers
33. There is a risk that anti-science attitudes
will limit the range of options available for the commercial exploitation
of opportunities in some science-based areas. An educated and
informed electorate will respond to science-based policy decisions
within the national political arena provide that the Government
and the industry concerned are prepared to adopt an "open
information" approach. In Britain the Freedom of Information
Bill should address this issue in part. Public caution is understandable
and desirable but present attitudes to scientific advances and
their commercial exploitation are rarely based on rational appraisal
and often exhibit a failure in popular understanding of risk.
34. There are various techniques for engaging
the informed general public in debates about the future of science
and technology, and in Scotland the Consultative Steering Group
for the Scottish Parliament has recommended that such techniques
should be pursued in order to widen the base of participation
in political decisions. This degree of openness to more imaginative
approaches should be welcomed and encouraged. Events involving
senior school pupils building on the concept of consensus conferencing,
by organisations such as the British Association and the Royal
Society of Edinburgh, represent useful initiatives at developing
public awareness of science issues. The RSE is also seeking to
engage the interest of the public and the media in news-driven
public debates, in a range of piloted formats, exploring multifaceted
arguments from experts (Fellows and non-Fellows) on matters of
topical interests and current affairs.
SCIENCE BUDGET
2001-02 TO 2003-04
Main Changes for the years 2001-02 to 2003-04
35. Although the funding might appear generous,
the multiple funding streams now accessed by universities risk
making this system less effective than it could, and should, be.
In addition, the scale of funding of the "Cambridge MIT Institute"
of £65 million is larger than the total public funding into
either university or science enterprise challenges. The objective
"to collate and disseminate information on best practice
and emerging knowledge from CMI to all universities and the business
world" is also very hierarchical and unidirectional. It would
have been useful if some funds could go to helping recipients
absorb and implement this best practice.
Allocations to funded bodies
36. The receipt by the Medical Research
Council (MRC) of £53 million for its role in the cross-council
genomics collaboration is very encouraging. The funding comes
at just the right time to give a significant boost to the large-scale
population studies that are investigating the interaction between
genetics and environment/lifestyle factors. This will be of particular
significance in Scotland where we have considerable existing strength
(MRC Human Genetics Unit, Edinburgh; strong human genetics departments
in universities, Scottish Cancer Genetics Consortium, and excellent
linked data registries). The RSE also supports the identification
of mental health alongside cancer and heart disease as an area
to be boosted by the MRC. These three areas remain the stated
priorities of the Scottish Executive Department of Health and
the NHS in Scotland.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
37. Within the White Paper, the term "science"
appears to be used as an umbrella term for science, engineering
and technology (SET). The Society believes that this is unhelpful.
The three are inextricably linked, and not using the term SET
frequently leads to the exclusion of the necessarily broader thinking
which encompasses all three from the discussion. Science, engineering
and technology are all important within the educational context
and support for the engineering disciplines, in particular, is
important if knowledge transfer into technology is to remain healthy.
38. In responding to this inquiry the RSE
would like to draw attention to the following Royal Society of
Edinburgh responses which are of relevance to this subject: The
Scientific Advisory System (June 1998); Devolution and Science
(April 1999); Science and Society (June 1999); Government's Expenditure
on Research and Development: Forward Look 1999 (December 1999);
Are We Realising Our Potential (June 2000); Science Strategy for
Scotland (July 2000) and the Royal Society of Edinburgh Corporate
Plan 2001-06. Copies of the above publications are available from
the Research Officer, Dr Marc Rands (email: mrands@rse.org.uk).
29 January 2001
| 
