Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
WEDNESDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2003
PROFESSOR MIKE
BEVERIDGE, PROFESSOR
GERRY GILMORE,
PROFESSOR JOHN
TURNER AND
DR DOUGLAS
ROBERTSON
Chairman
60. You said you were startled about something.
What was it you were startled about?
(Professor Turner) One of my colleagues tried to get
some help from the DTI, but the response was the DTI is not here
to assist universities.
61. How do you get on to the DTI, do you pick
up a phone and when they say this is the central desk in the DTI
do you ask to be put through to somebody? Do you have any contacts
there?
(Professor Turner) It was not me that did this. The
DTI do have an office that helps particularly SMEs get involved
with European research funding and we thought they might help
us as well, but they did not feel they would.
62. Were they helpful in directing you somewhere
else?
(Professor Turner) They suggested we talk to UKRO.
63. Just like that?
(Professor Turner) Yes.
64. They gave you no advice on how to talk to
UKRO, whether to be polite, impolite or whatever?
(Professor Turner) They were very polite, but they
were very clear that it was not their role to assist universities
in applying for European research funding.
65. And you were startled that there was not
a system after all this time?
(Professor Turner) Yes, we were rather.
Geraldine Smith
66. In your memorandum you mention the selection
of priority areas and you do not appear very keen on some of those
priority areas, you seem to think that there are some constraints
such as SMEs, large industries and partners from the newer Member
States. Why do you see that as negative? Is it not an opportunity
to work with partners from new Member States?
(Professor Turner) Yes.
67. And is it not wise to have partners from
large industries involved?
(Professor Turner) Yes. The reason underlying that
particular response was that it can mitigate against the longer-term
blue skies research. The need to involve an SME very often means
that you cannot propose a project which is very long term blue
skies high risk.
68. But what is wrong with applied research?
(Professor Turner) There is nothing wrong with applied
research, but you do not really need to do both.
69. So you think that must lead to a real bias
against blue skies research?
(Professor Turner) Yes. At the moment we get funded
by the UK Research Councils. Applied research funding we will
look to Europe for.
70. And how will this affect research projects
at Surrey that you are currently undertaking?
(Professor Turner) Framework 6?
71. Yes.
(Professor Turner) We wait with interest to see how
we get on. We do not know yet. We have a number of applications
in, none of them is out.
72. Is this selection of priority areas a big
problem for you or are you just not too clear about how it is
going to work?
(Professor Turner) In some subjects. I am told it
varies from subject area to subject area. You will see in the
memorandum a collation of responses from right across the whole
university. The deepest reservations on the priority areas came
from the electronics/IT end of the university; the biotech health
care people were happiest.
73. So it has been a mixed reception?
(Professor Turner) Yes.
Chairman: Let us move on to Newcastle and then
we might try one or two questions on you as a whole.
Mr McWalter
74. I want to ask you about the European Research
Council. You said that with the Framework 6 Programme the need
for a Joint Research Council is in doubt. Why did you say that?
(Dr Robertson) I do not think I said it was in doubt,
I just indicated that I felt the way that things were heading
was in favour of a European Research Council but the connectivity
to national use needed to be more avert than was present in Framework
5 and probably more overt than appears to be the case in Framework
6. Although there are now far more meetings between heads of the
relevant parts of government agencies involved in research which
is a positive thing and I am concerned about getting a discontinuity.
We have had questions relating to strategic, basic and applied
and I think you have to look across the landscape as to where
you are putting public funding and make formal decisions as to
where you deploy resource. That requires an integrated approach
between national and European decision making and I am not sure
that we have got there. I suppose I see the European Research
Council as being the opportunity to create that connectivity.
75. Are you like Surrey in that you would apply
through the European funding mechanism for more applied research
or research that has an interface with industry and that you would
look at our own Research Council system in the UK for support
for the more blue skies and theoretical work?
(Dr Robertson) No. I have only been at Newcastle for
a month. The request for evidence came to me at Nottingham. The
landscape at Newcastle covers all aspects of research ranging
from what you might class as near term work with an obvious end
point in view with industrial collaborators through to capacity
building on the ground as we heard from my colleague from Cambridge,
to areas which are strategic in the sense that there is a definite
need for thinking about the issues but you cannot quite see what
the end product or development might be if it got to the market.
When you look at some of the analyses of the European programmes
you do get the feeling that the outcomes are more intangible,
in the sense of building interaction and co-operation, but actually
when you try and find the matrix to test the outputs some of the
things do not appear to be happening that one might hope would
happen. For example, the number of patents submitted by European
organisations to the US Patent Office, you might expect that to
have risen significantly in the past decade and it has not, that
is a concern. The positive side is that the number of internationally
co-authored publications from Europeans is higher than for any
other Continental bloc, that must be a positive. Therefore, you
may come to an area that may talk about being applied research
but a lot of it is much more strategic research and a lot is capacity
building rather than strictly applied in form.
76. I am slightly reluctant to ask you this
next question given as you have only been there a month. Do you
feel that Newcastle could do well in terms of the priority areas
that have been identified for Framework 6 or do you think they
have completely ignored X where X is a particular programme that
you were very keen on pushing through?
(Dr Robertson) When you look at where we have expressed
interest, it is right across the spectrum so I do not think we
would feel there were any particular areas that we were concerned
were missing. The concern is that you have to put a large amount
of effort in across the spectrum and you do not know whether the
success will or will not come. Therefore it is difficult to plan
for the outcome because of the attrition rate from application
through expression of interest through to full award, and the
big concern with Framework 6 is its sheer scale because managing
some of those programmes and projects will be the equivalent of
managing a medium-sized company with a significant amount of resource
and a large number of people employed through the project and
it is that scale that is causing some concern in the UK research
base.
Chairman
77. You say that the EU undoubtedly gets value
for money from the UK research base. How come?
(Dr Robertson) Because of the match funding arrangement.
As with other governments, the UK puts cash into the EU programme,
but if you get more than your juste retour out you are
also putting more of your national base in on top of your contribution
to EU funding.
78. And your view about that?
(Dr Robertson) My view is it is a rather daft way
to run a business in the sense that the outcome is one that cannot
be planned for, so the impact on a science community is one that
is dependent on third party judgment.
79. So your message to Commissioner Busquin
is?
(Dr Robertson) My message to the Commission and the
UK Government is we have to be overt in the decision making and
I would prefer to see a rate of indirect cost recovery which is
equivalent at least to the Research Councils in the UK such that
you felt that one's success was not one which one was going to
be worried about if one was too successful.
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