Select Committee on Public Administration Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witness (Questions 220-239)

5 FEBRUARY 2004

PROFESSOR SIR DAVID KING FRS

  Q220 Annette Brooke: So how would Professor Blakemore have even known that he was being considered?

  Professor Sir David King: I do not know. I simply do not know the answer to that. If he knew he was being considered, I suspect that that means that somebody who sent a nomination in to the Cabinet Office must have told him.

  Q221 Annette Brooke: Do leaks concern you? You seem to be comfortable with a secret system. Therefore, surely, you must be worried about leaks?

  Professor Sir David King: I am comfortable with the opaque system. If I was showing comfort with a secret system, that is the wrong word. I would not like to use that.

  Q222 Annette Brooke: Right, well, opaque, and very hard for outsiders to actually see in and how it is working. Even with your definitions of how it is working, what improvements would you want to see?

  Professor Sir David King: Let me first of all dwell on the distinction I make between opaque and secret. I would like the process to be well-understood. I do not think there should be any question about the process that occurs. At the same time I would not like the deliberations on Fellowship of the Royal Society, Nobel Prize or National Honours System to be anything but discreet and opaque. So the discussions should be in camera—not in the view of cameras—so that people can express their views amongst each other privately when the decisions are being made. Equally, if you are appointing a person to a lectureship, or chief executive of a major industry, I would hope that the discussion on the appointment would be kept between those making it, but the knowledge should be there of those who make it and the process. You are asking me how would I like to see it improved. Well, I think I have now learnt how the listing from K to M operates—K, C, O, M, is what I am referring to—but I am also aware that it goes way beyond that. There are Knights of the Garter, which is amusing, but I am not quite sure what these various distinctions are. I am a Knight Bachelor, which is quite interesting for a married person. So, if you ask me what should we do here, there is an interesting point. We have a wonderful historic tradition in this country and, I think rightly, you ought to be deliberating on the extent to which we maintain that unique historical tradition and yet show that we are a modern high-tech society as we move through the 21st century, and getting that balance right. I think you have the opportunity here. I think it is odd that people should be given the Order of the British Empire. It is natural to ask: which British Empire? If you had wanted to, you could call it, say, the Order of the British Commonwealth, and that would keep it open to Members of the Commonwealth and I know what the Commonwealth is. Let us move on with the times and adjust titles, but do not throw the whole thing out, is what I am saying. Let us keep some of our unique historical traditions, but, at the same time, let us also demonstrate that we are in the 21st century.

  Q223 Chairman: On the same thing, what is your view of titles, you know, name changing titles? We are the only country that has an honours system that involves people changing their names. Is that part of our great history to hang on to?

  Professor Sir David King: I did find when I was in Austria and Germany, before I was knighted, I was addressed as Herr Professor Doctor Doctor, because people were aware that I had two doctorates, and you keep all of them in Germany. So we are not the only society that has some status quality to titles. My preference, as everyone knows, is to be called Dave and not to have all these titles hung on to everything, but, at the same time, I think this is part of that unique British tradition and so I would not simply throw it out. I think, hang on, there is something rather neat, something unique; and so I do not think I would throw out—but I would say this, would I not—the title Sir.

  Q224 Mrs Campbell: Okay, Dave, perhaps I can ask you about dissenting scientists.

  Professor Sir David King: Sorry; about?

  Q225 Mrs Campbell: Dissenting scientists, scientists who challenge the conventional scientific wisdom. I am thinking about people like Professor Richard Lacey, who questioned the scrapey origin theory for BSE, and some other people, whose names I am not totally sure of—Dr Pusztai, was it, who had some fairly controversial theories about GM potatoes and the effect of those, and the man who started the whole MMR jab scare, saying that it was linked to autism. Have any of these dissenting scientists ever been nominated for awards and can you think of any dissenting scientists who have been given awards?

  Professor Sir David King: Amongst the group you mentioned, I am not going to particularly name names here, but if we take the MMR vaccine and its relationship to autism, I think the scientific procedure is absolutely clear. A scientist comes out with an idea: there is a possible relationship between vaccination and autism. We then have a scientific procedure which comes into play, and, Anne, as you probably know, there has been, as a result of that, a very detailed study in Denmark of every child born in Denmark over a long period of time. The study includes 543,000 children of whom 15% in one category did not receive the MMR vaccine and the rest received it, and the incidence of autism was percentage-wise within noise in the two samples. For me, that produces closure on that particular item; and I wish the media would deliver that message. Therefore, closure means: good idea that we investigated it; we have now investigated it; it was a wrong idea. So now when we evaluate that scientist's contribution, it is often the case that scientists whose contributions have been negated by subsequent science are not seen to be amongst the more distinguished—their colleagues do not highly rate people who stick their necks out and are then proved to be wrong—and Dr Pusztai, who you mentioned by name, is another example of that.

  Q226 Mrs Campbell: Could I come back to Professor Richard Lacey, because he gave evidence to the House of Commons Agricultural Committee in 1990 with Dr Steven Bemo, who was then in the Public Health Laboratory Service in Leeds. They suggested that the evidence that BSE is due to sheep scrapie is non-existent and therefore concluded, "We cannot be confident that the BSE agent from bovines will still not been infectious for man." That is going back to 1990. So it was well before the time that it became conventional scientific wisdom that BSE could be infectious for man. Do you think there is a case for people like that, who were perhaps in advance of their time, receiving some recognition?

  Professor Sir David King: Yes. Let me use this as an opportunity to say that, as a result of that BSE crisis—and it was a crisis not only of agricultural practice but also, I would say, a crisis of the political system—the public's view of scientists was damaged, and badly damaged, I think incorrectly. You have just stated that it was the scientists who pointed out this potential connection. This was a new disease. It was scientists—and I am pleased to see John Collinge is honoured in this year's list—who made this decision clear, that variant CJD could follow through from consumption of BSE cattle. So science got it, I think, right, but the political system, for various reasons, wanted to sit on the science and we are desperately now in the process of trying to recover the confidence of the public by being as open and honest about all of these issues as we can. That is certainly my position. I hope you are aware of that. My advice to the Government is also put in the public domain as a part of that process.

  Q227 Mrs Campbell: Yes, but is not the danger that somebody who does go against the conventional scientific wisdom in that way would not be offered, would not be awarded an honour because of the rather controversial views that they had?

  Professor Sir David King: What I am saying is that we have completely turned our system around, and we are now in the process of honouring scientists without any look at whether they are ruffling political feathers or not.

  Q228 Chairman: Has Lacey had an honour?

  Professor Sir David King: I am going to have to pass on that. Perhaps I could let you know. I mean, I literally do not know.

  Q229 Chairman: No, but Anne asked a very testing question. If you have got cabinet ministers force-feeding their children with hamburgers to prove that there is no danger here and you have got scientists saying, "Hang on, there is", in the honours system as we have it now, is it likely that that scientist is going to be honoured? Of course not. And he was not, was he?

  Professor Sir David King: No, no. I am saying, yes, that scientist is quite likely to be honoured now, but was not likely then. I think that those lessons are being learned.

  Q230 Mrs Campbell: But has anything changed in the structure, or are you telling us that it is an attitude that has changed?

  Professor Sir David King: It is not just an attitude that has changed. There is a booklet called "Chief Scientific Advisers' Guidelines", and those guidelines spell out very clearly to all departments how to operate openly and honestly with scientific advice to government.

  Q231 Mrs Campbell: That was your predecessor, Sir Robert May?

  Professor Sir David King: The "Chief Scientific Advisers' Guidelines" were published in 2000. I arrived late in that year.

  Q232 Chairman: If government got it wrong on the instance we were talking about, why did civil servants at MAFF still get their quota of honours?

  Professor Sir David King: I would just like to remind you that MAFF no longer exists.

  Q233 Chairman: No, we are talking about a period and an episode, are we not?

  Professor Sir David King: Sorry?

  Q234 Chairman: We are talking about a period and an episode—

  Professor Sir David King: Oh, I see.

  Q235 Chairman: —which tests the system. I do not think there is any indication that the people at MAFF were denied their honours because they misread the evidence about BSE, and yet the leading scientist who was warning of it went unhonoured.

  Professor Sir David King: You are talking about a situation prior to 2000. What I am discussing is what has happened subsequent to that. I think the Phillips Commission Report has been the real turning point on that issue, and I have been working very hard with government departments to see that that report is properly followed through.

  Q236 Chairman: Could I ask one or two questions, and then we are done, if my colleagues are finished. You said that you thought that there was a question about civil servants—that was the only bit of the honours system that you felt warranted some further attention—but someone might say, "If scientists can choose scientists, why cannot civil servants chose civil servants"?

  Professor Sir David King: I anticipated that question. I think that the distinction is that the scientific community, for example, through their worldwide academies and through their normal operation of science, are exceptionally challenging and critical in their operation. The people who bubble up to the top of various disciplines are therefore people who have been through that detailed process. The Civil Service is a very different sort of body. May I remind you that I have a great deal of respect for the operation of the Civil Service—so this is not a criticism—but I do think that the wish to be whiter than white means that the decision on these processes should be taken finally outside the Civil Service Commission, just so that they cannot be accused of—

  Q237 Chairman: Do you have any sense of how it might be done?

  Professor Sir David King: I think inevitably it would need to be informed by some kind of sifting committee procedure within the Civil Service but that it might end up with a group of people who would be widely considered to be of high-standing in society. I am not thinking of political figures who are of high-standing, but of non-political.

  Q238 Chairman: Some sort of independent commission?

  Professor Sir David King: Yes.

  Q239 Chairman: Again, so we do not lose the chance to ask you: your own sifting committee, who appoints that?

  Professor Sir David King: It evolved.

  Mr Trend: That is a science for you.


 
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