Examination of Witness (Questions 120-139)
5 FEBRUARY 2004
PROFESSOR SIR
DAVID KING
FRS
Q120 Mrs Campbell: I would like to pursue
with you too a line of questioning I took with Professor Blakemore
about awards to chief executives of research councils. It seems
that it is very common for anybody who reaches the position of
chief executive of a research council to be given some kind of
award, a K or another gong anyway. Is it your committee that considers
that? If so, how does that work? That goes straight to the Cabinet
Office, does it?
Professor Sir David King: Our
committee would not consider anyone who is on the committee. We
would specifically not be looking at chief executives, DG RC or
CSA.
Mrs Campbell: Thank you.
Q121 Chairman: As we begin to put our
structure together, it is not the case that all the science and
technology names that appear on honours lists come through your
initial committee, the pre-S&T committee. They do not all
come through you at that point. You are not the only gatekeeper
to that system, are you?
Professor Sir David King: There
is a specific sub-group of names that would not come through my
committee, which is the sub-group I have just mentioned, which
is the membership of that committee. We would not self-nominate
any one of our committee.
Q122 Chairman: But apart from that.
Professor Sir David King: If I
look at the current listing of people who received honours in
science and technology—and I know that Colin Blakemore described
it as a very good year for science and technology, and I think
it was: Mike Brady, John Enderby, John Taylor for knighthoods;
Keith Burnett, Frances Cairncross, John Collinge, Keith Gull,
Philip Rees, Martin Turner all got Cs; and there were three Os
and five Ms. All except John Taylor, who is DG RC, did come through
my committee.
Q123 Chairman: So you are the crucial
gatekeeper in the science and technology field.
Professor Sir David King: It looks
like it.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q124 Mr Heyes: You said that you thought
there were good reasons why membership of your committee was not
divulged.
Professor Sir David King: Yes.
Q125 Mr Heyes: What are those good reasons?
Professor Sir David King: I think
the good reason is because we would otherwise be subject to lobbying,
and, of course, as always here, there are pros and cons, and the
con is that the committee membership is not open and therefore
it is subject to suspicion that the wrong people might be serving
on it. I think this is why I am saying that, although the membership
of the science and technology committee is not known, I believe
it should be known that six of the members of a nine-person committee
are people who are outstanding scientists and technologists. But
the reason is to avoid individuals or learned societies spending
a lot of time trying to nobble those individuals. The Nobel prize
committees have, I believe the same practice.
Q126 Mr Heyes: Is the lobbying process
not formalised through your nominations committee? What you are
saying really is you are content with the existing formalised
lobbying process but you would not want to enhance and broaden
it. Is that a fair comment?
Professor Sir David King: I think
that is a fair summary.
Q127 Mr Heyes: Tell me about your nominations
group. Do you have any procedures—
Professor Sir David King: Could
I just interrupt a moment. We are not a nominations group, we
are a group that does a first sift of nominations.
Q128 Mr Heyes: Right. What criteria do
you use? For example, is any thought given to the gender mix or
ethnic mix of the nominations that come forward? Do you do anything
to try to influence that?
Professor Sir David King: I think
the first thing you ask is what criteria do we use. Could I come
to the gender mix as a separate question? My belief is that for
each award we have to look very seriously at whether the individual
adds lustre to the award as much as to whether the individual
is honoured by the award. In other words, I think we have to be
jealous guardians of the standard and quality of the awards, so
that each individual understands the status and quality of the
awards. In any award system, I would suggest, that is an important
factor. That would be the overriding fact. If we then look at
the question, as to what I mean by "add lustre", I would
say: Is this individual a national attribute; somebody whom we
should honour because of their contributions to health, wealth,
general cultural wellbeing of the country? And this can be done
in science and technology through their outstanding contributions
to science. At K level, I would be looking to get in before the
Nobel prize committee. I would hope that we would give a K before
the Nobel prize committee had quite picked up on this person,
but, once the Nobel prize committee had picked up on somebody,
it is quite likely we would follow through with a K. So we are
talking about very, very high standards of contribution, tensioned
against international standards. In addition, I would say we would
be looking for a quality I would describe as good citizenship,
so the individual who has made contributions to public life over
and above the adornment of themselves through their own career.
Q129 Mr Heyes: You said that you have
been proactive in trying to increase the volume of nominations.
Professor Sir David King: Yes.
Q130 Mr Heyes: You have not answered
the point about how proactive, if at all, you have been in trying
to influence the ethnic or gender mix of the nominations.
Professor Sir David King: I wanted
to treat that as a separate—
Q131 Mr Heyes: The list of names you
read out before I think was exclusively male.
Professor Sir David King: Frances
Cairncross would be quite upset if you—
Q132 Mr Heyes: I apologise, but you take
my point.
Professor Sir David King: I take
your point, absolutely. If we look at this issue, I certainly
think that throughout my career I have tried to see that we get
proper mixes in terms of gender and race.
Q133 Mr Heyes: It is how you go about
that.
Professor Sir David King: And
it is a question of how you go about it. For example, at Cambridge,
when I was head of chemistry, I tried to insist that for every
short-list for a lectureship there should be at least one woman.
Beyond that, we then would appoint simply the best person to the
job. Different people adopt different procedures. That was mine.
I think in terms of the honours list it is fair to say that I
am very careful to scrutinise the list and see whether we have
been utterly fair on this basis; in other words, whether or not
we have overlooked individuals who are in these categories you
have described.
Q134 Mr Heyes: On the membership of the
science and technology committee itself, obviously you have warned
us that you need to be cautious about revealing the membership
of it in terms of the names, but can you give us a clue on the
mix of that committee in terms of agenda and ethnicity? You said
there were six members.
Professor Sir David King: I would
like to suggest that you do interview the chairman.
Q135 Mr Heyes: Yes, I think we will follow
up on that recommendation, but you sit regularly with these people.
Professor Sir David King: If you
are asking about the Office of Science and Technology Committee
that I chair, then we have several chief executives who are women
but we are all white people.
Q136 Chairman: If we may pause for a
second, we are talking about Sir Richard Mottram here, are we
not?
Professor Sir David King: Yes.
His name has been leaked, I know.
Q137 Chairman: Yes. I just wanted to
be sure we were talking about the same person.
Professor Sir David King: Yes.
Chairman: He has been able to help us
with what we once called "these unfortunate events"
previously—and it may be that he will be able to help us
with these unfortunate events, it is true, so that is very helpful.
Q138 Mr Heyes: Does Sir Richard have
any scientific qualifications of which you are aware? I guess
he has not, so why is he chairing this committee?
Professor Sir David King: He is
one of those three civil servants who I think absolutely rightly
are there to see that the process is followed through properly.
First and foremost, I would say it is right to have a chairman
who understands the system and the process. You will recall I
said that when I came into this system I really had no idea which
was the biggest honour. It is exceptionally helpful, I would say
critical, to have an experienced civil servant such as Sir Richard
chairing it. I think that is perfectly justifiable as long as
the membership of the committee carries the quality and weight
which I believe this committee does. Could I just say one further
thing about Sir Richard: his ability to comment on social science
I have always found valuable.
Q139 Mr Heyes: As a social scientist,
I find myself warming to that idea. This is a closing comment
really, Chairman: this process does not seem in the least bit
scientific. Are you comfortable with that?
Professor Sir David King: Which
bit of the process? I would like you to be a bit more explicit,
because I am going to get a little angry about that question.
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