Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-130)
DEPARTMENT OF
TRADE AND
INDUSTRY, BRITISH
NATIONAL SPACE
CENTRE, THE
PARTICLE PHYSICS
AND ASTRONOMY
RESEARCH COUNCIL
AND THE
OPEN UNIVERSITY
24 NOVEMBER 2004
Q120 Mr Bacon: Can I just be clear: the
£42.5 million is the global, as it were, total for the expenditure.
Is it possible that you could send us a note of the breakdown
of all the costs and where the contributions came from?
Dr Hicks: Indeed.[3]
Q121 Mr Curry: Professor Halliday and
Sir Robin, you both say, "If we did not have a juste retour,
we would not do very well in the programme." What is wrong
with our industry—
Professor Halliday: Hold on, I
did not say that. I said that if you do away with juste retour,
there is a risk of getting extra or less.
Q122 Mr Curry: Sir Robin did say. The
record, I am sure, will show that he said that we would not do
very well if we did not have juste retour.
Sir Robin Young: I do not know
what I said but I did not mean to say that. If the CERN precedent,
about which I know nothing I should say, is taken into account,
then we do not do very well. CERN has no juste retour ingredient
and apparently we do not very well.
Q123 Mr Curry: I will put my question
another way. Are you satisfied that British business is competitive,
is well founded scientifically and in terms of engineering and
management skills to be a real competitive force in this marketplace?
Professor Halliday: My reading
is, yes, to win contracts elsewhere. It is hard to prove in an
absolute sense.
Q124 Mr Curry: Sir Robin I think made
the remark which I have attributed to him and it just caught my
attention.
Professor Halliday: May I just
make one off-the-cuff remark? Let me give you a feeling for—
Q125 Chairman: No remarks in this Committee
are off-the-cuff! Everything is noted down.
Professor Halliday: Well, not
quite focused. I was astonished to discover—and this is
what makes it unquantifiable—that Logica is the result of
investment by the European Space Agency something like 30 years
ago. It is a company that is drawn out of this background out
of nurturing from ESA. How much of Logica's success value do you
put into ESA's value added and how much is their own efforts?
I have no idea how to do that, but there is no question about
it, that is the origins of a very substantial British company.
Mr Curry: Let us hope that ESA can help
us with identity cards then!
Q126 Mr Jenkins: The Commission inquiry
into the Beagle and I read this extract for you and I want you
just to then think for a moment. It says that the scope of the
inquiry covered a wide range of important issues of concern to
the UK, ESA and other Member States in ESA. Some of these matters
are necessarily confidential between governments and the Agency
and cannot be released. Professor Pillinger said that he had not
seen a copy of the Report. Do you recognise the disquiet if we
are not in a position to learn from our mistakes on our reports
and all the information is not free, open and available to all
participants? This is after all public money and I for one would
deem it undesirable to have reports that may be missing information
to be held back out of the area of public domain.
Sir Robin Young: I certainly recognise
that issue. It is currently being reconsidered by Lord Sainsbury,
the Minister, in response to a recommendation from the Science
and Technology Committee whose report perhaps I should mention
anyway. They reported on 2 November. Incidentally, in response
to Mr Bacon, they said, "We commend the Government for being
enthusiastic about the Beagle 2 project. It was an exciting scientific
opportunity with the potential to put the UK at the forefront
of space exploration. The Government should not be shy about taking
risks in science if potential benefits are there. In our view,
this was a risk well worth taking." So, in addition to that
report, they then said at least can we see this secret inquiry
and we put that to Lord Sainsbury and that is where it lies. As
you rightly said, the authors of the inquiry report said that
some of it was confidential. So, that is the issue which went
to ministers and is now with the Minister in response to the Select
Committee's report.
Professor Pillinger: The Beagle
team conducted their own inquiry which ran to 268 pages and 270
recommendations and I can lodge a copy of those with the Committee.
It is on the web if you want to read them.
Mr Jenkins: I am not concerned about
the technical aspect, what I am concerned about is the openness
of Government and making sure that if the Government or Agency
bring the shutter down and say that this is confidential, they
have to have very, very good reasons for not telling us why and
how they spent public money and I know that we will be mentioning
that in our report.
Q127 Chairman: Sir Robin, we have had
reference to the commercial delegates and they are set out, as
we have heard, in Appendix 3 at page 36. If you look at paragraph
2.18 which you find on page 19, there is some argument there and
some discussion there about how you summarise the scientific evidence
arising from space activities. I am just wondering whether you
have adequate systems to summarise, assess and come to conclusions
on the scientific and commercial benefits and what you do.
Sir Robin Young: They are not
good enough and that is why, in answer to Mr Jenkins, I hope I
have made that clear. What we have is good performance indicators
for the ingredients of what the partners do in their space work.
What we do not have—and that is why the Report is right
about this—is a way of looking at the overall performance
of the whole space strategy, in other words the totality, the
sum of the parts. The consultants who work with the NAO gave us
lots of good suggestions about how we should track these critical
performance areas in that box on table 12 on page 18 and they
have given us a framework of 39 potential measures to track our
performance, the performance of the totality in these performance
areas. We are actually piloting that now. I should say that, as
paragraph 2.19 which you referred to says, it is not easy to work
out how space activity leads through into productivity and competitiveness
but it is an exam question which we are on the case in answering.
Q128 Chairman: Dr Hicks, I think I remember
you were kind enough to refer to the brief and glorious period
when I had ministerial responsibility for your organisation.
Dr Hicks: I well remember it.
Q129 Chairman: I was quite enthusiastic
about working towards an International Space Agency. Whatever
happed to that idea? Was it quietly dropped after I left?
Dr Hicks: I think what we should
say is that, just as with the partnership approach within the
BNSC, we are trying to generate that partnership approach for
international space activity. So, I think you can be proud at
the idea that we should be working together, but it is not being
pursued by a single agency but by strong cooperation between agencies.
Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very much.
It has been a very interesting hearing. Mr Sheridan said that
it was an anorak's Report but it is very important.
Jim Sheridan: I take that back.
Q130 Chairman: Professor, thank you for
all you have done to enthuse the British public about your work—we
are very grateful—even though it has cost £42 million.
Professor Pillinger: That works
out at about four minutes each per year at the minimum wage that
a person can earn.
Chairman: That is obviously a line you
were determined to get out, so I have given you that opportunity.
Thank you very much, gentlemen.
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