Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-32)
WEDNESDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2003
DR PETER
COTGREAVE AND
PROFESSOR MICHAEL
TREVAN
Mr Key
20. That leads nicely on to the question of
attribution, which you address in your memorandum. You say in
paragraph 25 that the policy appears to go against the EU's own
rules. Can you explain what you meant by that?
(Dr Cotgreave) We quote somewhere else in our memorandum
the evidence of a former EU Commissioner for research, Antonio
Roberti, who said that it was intended that EU research should
not lead automatically to a matching cut in Member States, and
that he found this was causing negotiating problems because, as
he understood the rules of how the Framework Programme was supposed
to work, this was not supposed to happen.
21. Do you think competition for funding is
fair?
(Dr Cotgreave) Do you mean competition within Europe?
22. Within the EU, yes, for EU budget money.
(Dr Cotgreave) We suspect that it may not be as fair
as it should be. Whether it is true or not, in a sense does not
matter, but it is certainly perceived by many people that if your
network includes one of the countries in Europe that is relatively
poor—I know there is no such thing as a poor European country,
but one that is relatively poor—you are more likely to succeed
in getting your grant.
23. So the funding mechanism is seen by some
to be more of a method of regional development than a scientific
benefit.
(Dr Cotgreave) Yes, it is seen by some in that way.
When the high-level committee evaluated the Framework Programme
three years ago, it said that the Framework Programme "had
originally been constituted as a simple instrument designed to
enhance competitiveness by support for collaborative R&D.
It has come to comprise a much richer set of policy instruments
aimed not only at improving competitiveness but also attaining
a range of other EU policy goals".
24. How would you assess the current unrest
and suspicion in the United Kingdom scientific community towards
the new Framework?
(Professor Trevan) It is a major step-change that
seems to be as much about funding the social, cultural integration
of Europe as it is about funding scientific research. The thing
that is worrying to many of the colleagues that I have spoken
to is that that may be laudable, but if you are really interested
in scientific research, it is not the best way of going about
it.
25. So enlargement, bringing in 75 million more
people to the Community, would, in your view, lower the quality
of research across the European Union.
(Professor Trevan) It has the potential to do so.
I do not say that it necessarily would.
26. Why does it have this potential?
(Professor Trevan) It has the potential because the
larger you make any system, the more difficult it is to know what
all of it is doing. The second thing is that there will be a natural
tendency, I suspect, as has happened in the past with countries
like Greece and Portugal, to have somebody from the network out
in Budapest—there are some excellent scientists out there,
but the facilities they have for doing science are not necessarily
excellent. Whilst it would be a good thing for science in general
in Europe to bring them on board and be able to provide them with
better facilities, that may not be the best thing for UK science.
There is a compromise there that has to be reached somehow.
27. So what does UK science want from Framework
7?
(Professor Trevan) To find out whether or not Framework
6 is going to work first.
Chairman
28. What is your bet?
(Professor Trevan) My bet is that there are things
in Framework 6 that will not work particularly well. The networks
of excellence, which will be reasonably well funded over a period
of up to seven years, until the money runs out, may well stay
as interesting networks until the money runs out. My suspicion
is that then, like every other network: when you take away the
support for it, it disappears.
Mr Key
29. How should the quality be evaluated, and
indeed measured?
(Professor Trevan) This is one of the things I have
a problem with in relation to the network of excellence; I am
not entirely sure what it is meant to do, and therefore I do not
know how to measure it.
Mr McWalter
30. Is one of the things that worries you about
Framework 6 the fact that 17% of the budget is allocated to setting
up a European research area, designed presumably to ensure that
there is greater co-ordination, or to see that unnecessary activity
is not duplicated, or whatever? That seems like an awfully large
proportion of the budget to me. Does it seem like that to you?
(Dr Cotgreave) Seventeen per cent of a very large
number is still a very large number. If you read in the 2001 annual
report on the Framework Programme the outline of what the European
research area is supposed to be, I think that the word "vague"
would sum it up. It is very difficult to know how we will judge
whether or not what is intended with those large hundreds of millions
of pounds has been achieved, when it is not at all clear what
the end picture is supposed to look like.
31. So the answer is that it is a waste of money.
(Dr Cotgreave) I would not necessarily go quite that
far. We would want to see a clearer definition of what it is supposed
to achieve in order to know at the end of it whether or not it
has been a waste of money.
Chairman
32. On Monday we will be seeing Mnsr Busquin
and talking about this programme with him. What question do you
think we should ask in relation to your ambitions for the Framework
Programme would be?
(Dr Cotgreave) In the 2001 annual report the framework
people say that in future the accent must be placed on scientific
and technological excellence. The previous five-year report found
that, for example, on one of the programmes, the health programme,
one-third of the projects did not produce publications in high-impact
international peer-reviewed journals, and they judged that, therefore,
to be not particularly high quality. They said that it is "not
possible to provide an adequate evidence-based assessment of the
impact of the work" of the Framework Programme. We would
like to know how Mnsr Busquin is going to assess that. The principal
reason for the existence of the Framework Programme is to stimulate
the technological base of industry in the EU—and we certainly
think that that is an entirely proper and appropriate thing to
want to achieve. The communication that came out after the Lisbon
conference, out of which came Mnsr Busquin's expressed intention
of getting up to 3% of R&D across Europe, mostly stimulated
from private industry, compares the European Union with the US
and says that the US government devotes a third of its R&D
to direct support for business R&D and spends its money in
businesses. The paper says: "The leverage effect of the substantial
and sustained government support in the US is one of the factors
that has contributed to the high and rising businesses' own funding
of R&D". It is nevertheless a fact that during the 1990s
the US government has substantially reduced its investment in
business R&D and business has at the same time vastly increased,
and increased the rate at which it is increasing its spending
on R&D. So it is not true that putting money directly into
business R&D stimulates more business R&D; you need to
stimulate a broad base in universities and research labs to produce
enough trained people that industry can use. How is he going to
achieve that and how will he measure it?
Chairman: Peter, Michael, that was short but
pungent. It has got us off to a good start. There are many questions
there, which we will be examining over the next few weeks. Thank
you very much for your guidance, the answers you have given us
and the advice in terms of the questions we might ask. No doubt
we will be in touch again, as issues develop during our inquiry.
Thank you both very much indeed.
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