Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
WEDNESDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2003
PROFESSOR MIKE
BEVERIDGE, PROFESSOR
GERRY GILMORE,
PROFESSOR JOHN
TURNER AND
DR DOUGLAS
ROBERTSON
40. Looking at the research assessment exercise,
people who did multi-disciplinary research of the sort you are
mentioning, tend to do rather badly compared to the straight specialists.
Do you think that what can emerge from this is a top-slicing of
the current Research Council allocations, that going into Europe,
and then Plymouth would get a much bigger share of that pot than
it gets from a culture that is rather opposed to multi-disciplinary
research of the sort that you have mentioned?
(Professor Beveridge) I would want to guard against
institutions being seen to only be capable of arguing from their
own point of view.
41. Of course.
(Professor Beveridge) There is quite a lot of that
in the various debates about university funding at this point
in time. I genuinely believe that there are certain types of science
that some institutions are getting quite good at, and which fit
into the European model because of the economies of scale that
that would allow—what is small-scale research on the UK
front, but large-scale if you look at it from a European and even
global perspective. It is not about which institution, it is what
kind of work you do. We need to sustain that kind of work, and
we need it just as much as the rest of Europe does. Whether you
do it by top slice, or whether you do it by earmarking a sector
of activity, is a second question. I think I would prefer something
more like the latter, a policy decision to say that we need in
Europe certain kinds of research because it is going to generally
benefit Europe; and see how we can spend it.
42. Ultra specialisation can be a curse anyway,
can it not? It is not just in your interests that the sort of
research you are working on is given greater impetus, but in addition
it is good for science and for the fact that science increasingly
is seen as networked to industry.
(Professor Beveridge) For that particular type of
work—and there are many kinds of examples—it is particularly
helpful to have people who have a lot of local experience, for
example of marine environments in the North Sea, in the Mediterranean
environments, the Black Sea, or whatever. It is helpful to have
these cross-ecological studies. It may not be necessary because
you are working in laboratories which essentially can exist in
any country in the world.
Dr Iddon
43. Professor Beveridge, applying for European
funding is tremendously complex with lots of forms and administration,
and lots of contacts to make. I have been through it, so I appreciate
the difficulties. I should like to each of the universities in
turn whether they have any special administrative expertise in
the university that you can direct at academics to help them out
in this?
(Professor Beveridge) We do, yes. It is not a lot
of people, it is about one and a half staff, plus administrative
support. We spend a great deal of time in contact with Brussels,
briefing staff, going to the many, many briefing sessions that
operate in the UK and elsewhere. It is quite a small team, and
we are not an asset-rich university. We do not have a vast array
from other sources to divert into it, as other universities might
have. We would like to have more. It is a fact across the UK that
the UK has a number of people in most universities who are very,
very good at it. That is how we survive as a university.
The Committee suspended from 16.58 to 17.08
for a division in the House.
Dr Turner
44. Save British Science raised the issue of
negative leverage. What was the outcome of discussions on the
UK's observatories in which the possibility of EU funds being
removed from the national organisation's budget by the UK Government
was raised? This arises particularly in the context of the fact
that there is insufficient money for overheads in EU funding.
(Professor Gilmore) It is more complicated than that.
Let me say first of all, that I thought that previous presentations
were very much on the Jeremiah side of the fence. My experience,
and our experience with the EU is very much more positive. This
particular point, however, is still under discussion, and it seems
that there is this proposal coming out of somewhere—probably
the Treasury, and possibly the OST—that a research council
or government agency that is funded to do what is defined here
as a core programme, cannot be double-funded. So they would agree
to do a programme, the Treasury would take away the EU money and
they would be stuck to commit themselves to a prog with no new
money for it. Discussions are still underway and I do not know
the outcome.
45. This is a three-way conflict.
(Professor Gilmore) Yes, but it is not related to
the overheads. It is a government treasury policy about taxing
government agencies obtaining funding for what they call their
core programmes. It is nothing to do with overheads.
46. If you get EU funding and you are already
getting treasury funding—
(Professor Gilmore) Somebody somewhere has defined
this to be double-funding and therefore removed it, whereas it
is not. Somewhere in the Treasury, someone has been promoted above
their competence level.
Mr Key
47. It is good to hear that you are positive
about EU enlargement, and I wonder if you can expand on your experience
particularly in assisting Spain and Portugal, which you mention
in your memorandum.
(Professor Gilmore) That has been one of the complementary
aspects to the basic research funding. We heard earlier on that
maybe the EU funding is not necessarily judged purely on absolute
peer review. That is certainly true, and it is deliberate, and
it actively forces us to build collaborations with developing
communities, where people are talented but they do not have the
resources. Our experience, particularly in Spain, when Professor
Pounds was running the research agency was that we put in a little
money building up Spanish astronomy, and it was enormously successful.
There is enormous goodwill to the UK in it, and we now have a
major European strength in Spain, and the same is now happening
in Portugal. That is an entirely desirable goal. The same will
happen, particularly in Portugal, where basic physics is extremely
strong; but they need help to be dragged up to our standards.
I can say this, since I come from where I do: the problem with
just pure peer review is that it instantly becomes a big boys'
club and it is impossible for anyone else to get in. That is a
thoroughly bad way to do science and it is thoroughly destructive.
I could give the example of our own institute. Ten years ago,
we had one European—we were about 30% US, but we had one
guy from Norway—from a hundred people who do research in
our institute—and it is now about one-third. We are better
for that and Europe is better for that. It does not happen overnight
and it does not happen by rejecting people's peer-reviewed proposals.
48. Has the Commission taken on board the positive
lessons you have learned in Spain and Portugal, do you think?
(Professor Gilmore) Yes. That is the whole point about
these infrastructure networks, one of which I chair. It is the
whole point, to bring the other communities in at a sustainable
rate so that in ten years' time we will all be stronger.
49. Will you be able to transfer that expertise
to looking east to the new members of the European Union?
(Professor Gilmore) The experience, looking south,
is that we can, yes. Looking east is going to be harder because
it is bigger.
50. Can we look north for a moment because I
feel that we get obsessed in this country with looking south and
possibly east, but we tend to forget the whole Scandinavian dimension.
There are some very fine scientists in Scandinavia. You have just
mentioned Norway, and I wonder if you could expand a little on
your experience there.
(Professor Gilmore) The Scandinavian countries have
the same problem as our treasury problem, in that their government
policy is to tax them 100% for involvement in our programmes,
which is really bad news. On behalf of the European Southern Observatory,
where I am a UK council member, I am currently negotiating with
the government of Finland to put Finland into the European programme.
Everyone agrees that they have technological expertise that is
desirable, and they are all part of Europe. If we are going to
have Europe, we have got to work together. We cannot set up artificial
barriers. I thought you were going to talk about Scotland, actually!
Chairman
51. If somebody was going for money, what is
the secret? You obviously get in because you are Cambridge, with
five-star units and so on, and I understand that; but are there
some defining things you have to do to move from there to there,
in this game of getting into that?
(Professor Gilmore) There are two parts to that. Several
people have mentioned the money. The total amount of money in
the EU is a few percent of the research budgets. We are not talking
about a lot of money; we are talking about 5% on what we do now;
so spreading that thinly is a weakness. My clear impression from
working with the people in the EU is that they genuinely want
Europe to be good at what it does, and there are two ways of doing
that. One is to say they will tax the excellent and spend the
money on the average, and hope the average comes up; the other
way is to go along and say, "hey, guys, why do you not just
collaborate with people and they can see from you how to do it,"
and that is the process that works. Personally, I believe very
strongly—you can tell from my accent I came from the south—that
it is in everybody's interest to do that and so I am prepared
to pay the overhead on my time and spend my Saturdays working
for this integration of Europe and I am not making any money out
of it.
52. So you think there is a personal factor
in there, the individual really has to want to get stuck in to
it?
(Professor Gilmore) Absolutely. As several people
have mentioned and it is certainly true, the learning curve is
very long. There is so little stability inside the EU. We are
dead lucky in the Framework 6 Programme that the people running
the basic science part of the European research area are people
who used to be practising scientists and they know what they are
doing and they are intelligent and they make sensible decisions,
but every now and again you have some professional lawyer or something
and it is much less satisfactory.
Dr Iddon
53. Can I repeat my question to a previous witness
about professional administrative help for your academic staff.
(Professor Gilmore) You probably saw in the newspapers
the success of Cambridge's attempt to set up a professional academic
support structure and there is not one really. We have a central
office that looks after this sort of stuff but all they do is
check the legalities of things. It is devolved entirely to the
principal investigators which in practice means, to people like
myself, heads of department and so on who have the financial authority
to commit things and there is no central review of that as far
as the science part of things is concerned. The industrial link
is totally different and you will hear from my colleague Richard
Friend in a few days and he can tell you more about that than
I can.
Mr Dhanda
54. Professor Turner, on page 2 of your memorandum
you say that opinion is divided at Surrey over whether sufficient
information on the Framework Programmes was available to universities.
Can you explain why opinion is divided?
(Professor Turner) We prepared our memorandum by talking
to the people who have had the most European research funding
at Surrey. Some had had very good experiences with Brussels, some
had not. Everybody agreed that UKRO was very helpful but they
were very thin on the ground. It is not a very large organisation.
55. Did some disciplines do better than other
disciplines?
(Professor Turner) I tried to test for that myself
and it did not seem to be so, no. Some of the more applied research
had approached the DTI for help and one of my colleagues was told
by the DTI that it was not their job to assist universities and
was somewhat startled by this.
56. Do you actually have in-house employees
or advisers that can actually help you?
(Professor Turner) Since last October we do. In anticipation
of Framework 6 we appointed someone to act as our European Liaison
Officer.
57. I was half hoping you would be sat where
Dr Robertson is because then you could have been sandwiched between
Plymouth and Surrey because Plymouth have said that they have
had some difficulty accessing helpful information with regard
to the Framework Programmes. Do you think there is something of
an old boys' network at work here in that Cambridge tends to do
better than the others?
(Professor Turner) I could not comment on Cambridge.
58. Let me help you out a little bit. Plymouth
have said that they have difficulty accessing helpful information
whereas Cambridge have had good support from PPARC and UKRO.
(Professor Turner) UKRO is very good. With CORDIS
the information is there but you really have to dig for it, it
is a labyrinth, it really is. It is a bit of an old boys' club
in the sense that it would be very difficult for somebody who
had never had any involvement with the European research project
to start absolutely cold. If you have had Framework 3, 4, 5 it
is not too difficult to go on and get something out of Framework
6, but if you started from nothing I do not think you could get
there.
59. So would you say there is a slight bias
towards the more elite universities?
(Professor Turner) No, I do not think it is that.
I think it is simply a learning curve, it is experience in how
to apply, it is knowing what buttons to hit when you write the
proposal and it is a skill that you can learn and the more you
do it the better you get.
Mr Dhanda: That would suggest to me that some
have a slightly built-in advantage.
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