Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
WEDNESDAY 20 OCTOBER 2004
PROFESSOR IAN
DIAMOND, MR
GLYN DAVIES,
MR ADRIAN
ALSOP AND
PROFESSOR PATRICIA
BROADFOOT
Q1 Chairman: Thank you all very much
for coming along to help us in what is really our last inquiry
into research councils. We are very pleased to see you here. We
will allow you to carve up the answers in whatever way you want,
but it would help if one person and not four people tried to answer
every question or we will not get through all the issues. I think
this is the first time you have really been scrutinised.
Professor Diamond: This is the
first scrutiny we have had, so we are looking forward to it very
much.
Q2 Chairman: Would you like to introduce
your back four?
Professor Diamond: Sure. To my
left is Glyn Davies who is our Director of Policy and Resources,
on my far right is Adrian Alsop who is our Director for Research,
Training and Development, and next to me is Patricia Broadfoot
who is Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Bristol and a
member of our council.
Q3 Chairman: We are very pleased
you managed to find the time to come together. Based on a lot
of the evidence that we have seen we had hoped to get flooded
with comments, that is what usually happens, but it does seem
to me that not a lot of people have written in on this. Departments
do not seem to be turned on by it. What do you say to the suggestion
that you are just a Division 3 south and about to be relegated
council? I get the feeling sometimes that there is not a lot of
back-up support and unanswered questions and so on. Is that a
fair comment?
Professor Diamond: I think that
is deeply unfair. I could give you fairly quantitative evidence
that the quality of social science in this country is equal to
that of any in the world. While in quantity terms we would not
claim to churn out as much as our colleagues in the United States
of America, we can demonstrate that in quality terms, as judged
by some of the bibliometry which is appropriate for the social
sciences, we have some of the very best social scientists in the
world. What I might suggest, if I may be so bold, has happened
is that during the last five to six months we have undergone the
biggest consultation across the entire social science community
that there has ever been as to where the social sciences should
be going in the next five years and what role the ESRC should
play in that. We have had over 130 responses to that from 80 or
so higher education institutions, from a large number of learned
societies, from business and from government. Chairman, you are
very welcome to read the papers that I have brought with me. What
they demonstrate is the strength of the social sciences in this
country and the engagement the community has had in working with
the ESRC.
Q4 Chairman: Is it going to make
a change of emphasis?
Professor Diamond: Yes, exactly
so.
Q5 Chairman: We will come back to
this point.
Professor Diamond: Since I last
met with you we have already changed the way in which we plan
strategically and this consultation will be what goes in to that
strategic plan which will be released early next year.
Q6 Dr Harris: The Government commissions
research from the ESRC and from a number of departments. That
is correct, is it not?
Professor Diamond: The Government
does not commission research from us. We have concordats with
13 government departments and we work with them to identify priorities.
We would not expect work to go on funded by the research arm of
the Home Office which duplicated any future work which the ESRC
was funding. What we do not do is contract research for government
departments.
Q7 Dr Harris: How is that concordat
worked out? Are there some areas where Government, who are essentially
politicians, do not want too much research being done? Is there
not a danger that constraining the concordat would prevent research
being done to create an evidence base around a particular area?
Professor Diamond: Absolutely
not. The concordat is not a statement which says we are going
to be bound to research. Just before I took on this role I attended
a number of these concordats and, broadly speaking, they were
delightful conversations, we had excellent cups of tea and not
bad Rich Tea biscuits, but they were not actually an agenda for
action. I think we are all far too busy to have those kinds of
pleasant conversations. So what we have done—and I have
to say that government departments have all been very much on
board in this—is to regenerate these concordats. These are
simply meetings which take place once a year and they are taking
stock of where research in the department is going, where research
in the ESRC is going, it identifies agendas for action over the
next year and takes stock of what has happened in the past year
and sometimes that may end up in jointly commissioned activity.
I will give you two very quick examples if I may. We met with
the Scottish Executive last November and a key issue in Scotland,
as you will be aware, is Scotland's population, the Scots have
forgotten how to make babies and those that are there are migrating
out rather than in.
Q8 Chairman: So that should be a
headline in The Scotsman tomorrow.
Professor Diamond: I hope so.
The Scottish media is right on board. The population is a key
issue. Some of these questions, particularly that of a falling
birth rate, are basic social science questions which have relevance
in the rest of the UK and in Europe. We were very pleased to get
together with the Scottish Executive to put in money for a programme
on Scotland's population which was commissioned a couple of weeks
ago. Secondly, when we met with the Welsh Assembly we identified
the real need to develop a new generation of researchers with
knowledge of working on Welsh issues. Jointly with the Welsh Assembly
we have advertised and commissioned a number of PhD studentships
which are starting around now into issues central to the Welsh,
and I am sure you caught our first ever full page advertisement
in Welsh in the press. That is the way in which the concordats
work.
Q9 Dr Harris: The Government claims
that it engages in evidence based policy making. To what extent,
based on your knowledge of the research it commissions and the
research that you have done at its sites when it comes out with
policy, do you think it has truly adopted evidence based policy
making?
Professor Diamond: I could point
to some examples of policy which have reflected some research.
I would have to say that we see our role to be in painting the
research landscape. Let me give you another example. We lag behind
many of our industrial competitors on productivity. You do not
have one small research project which looks at productivity. Over
the last few years at the ESRC we have had a really major portfolio
of work on this. We put all that together recently in a short
paper which highlighted what we know about productivity in this
country, the sectors where the UK is good, the role that the levers
of Government could play in order to improve productivity in the
sectors where we are not so good, and we presented that in a seminar
at the Treasury which was heavily attended and I think it was
a very positive occasion. What then happens is up to the politicians,
but our job is to make sure that the evidence is on the table.
Q10 Dr Harris: Was that evidence
published before the Treasury got to see it?
Professor Diamond: The evidence
was available before the Treasury got to see it. It was not put
together in one single piece. We gave it to the Treasury and published
it on the same day.
Q11 Chairman: Did you give any evidence
to the Tomlinson committee?
Professor Diamond: I do not think
we were formally invited as the ESRC to give evidence to the Tomlinson
inquiry. However, we run a Teaching and Learning Research Programme,
which is the single biggest piece of research on education and
that has much to say on this area. The director himself, Professor
Andrew Pollard, has had an ESRC grant which says an awful lot
about 14-19 education.
Q12 Chairman: Do you not find it
surprising that the Tomlinson committee made radical changes to
the British education system with 14-19 ramifications elsewhere
and you were not consulted?
Professor Diamond: Adrian may
be able to tell us whether we did send a formal submission. The
TLRP (Teaching and Learning Research Programme) were consulted,
which is the right place. [1]
Q13 Chairman: But not your organisation
as such?
Professor Diamond: Exactly so.
Q14 Chairman: I seem to remember
the minister and I spoke at one of your meetings.
Professor Diamond: Very much so.
Professor Broadfoot: I just wanted
to follow up the point about evidence based policy because in
addition to the examples that Ian has cited, the board that I
chair, the Research Resources Board, has actually been funding
over a number of years a centre on evidence based policy which
is looking at both disseminating policy for policy but also looking
at how to do it better.
Q15 Dr Harris: Do you mean disseminating
evidence?
Professor Broadfoot: Yes, trying
to encourage a dialogue between the research and policy communities,
but it is also looking at how to do that better because, as you
will appreciate, there are lots and lots of problems in the act
of communication between policy and research.
Q16 Dr Harris: On this question of
publishing evidence in a peer reviewed way at the same time or
before it is used or ignored by policy makers, I have had some
representations about the fact that with research done within
their research departments the politicians have control about
when or even whether that research is published, whereas I imagine
the ESRC has very strong provisions for ensuring that anything
it funds is going to be published. Do you allow the people who
commission the research, your collaborators, to have rules about
whether or when to publish?
Professor Diamond: Our view is
that the research we fund is in the public domain, not only the
written results of that, but we require any data that are collected
on any ESRC grants to be deposited at our data archive so that
it is freely available for secondary analysis and that is something
that is unique to the social sciences.
Q17 Dr Harris: Do you have a policy
of ensuring that research that does not show what it was hoped
it would show is published, not just deposited, avoiding this
issue of negative result bias?
Professor Diamond: Clearly the
ESRC cannot ensure that the peer review process will publish everything.
However, we require that every project that we fund submits a
report of its findings within three months of the end of the funding.
That project is peer reviewed so that we can say whether the research,
which could have resulted in a negative finding as well as a positive
finding, has been undertaken properly and effectively. We then
place that report on an electronic means which is widely available
and easily accessible so that negative findings are as easily
accessible to the community within six months of the project ending
as well as positive findings.
Q18 Dr Harris: Do you see a role
for the ESRC, which is the leading research council and effectively
a funder of research in these areas, to have an active programme
of checking Government policy against the evidence and then informing
the wider community and the public as a public duty as to how
much Government policy is based on evidence, or where there is
not evidence, or where it goes against the evidence? Is that something
you would consider as a strategy?
Professor Diamond: That is a very
interesting idea and one that I have to be absolutely honest about
and say we have not considered. However, it is one that I guarantee
we will consider. It is not something that I would rule out of
court.
Q19 Chairman: Is there any inhibition
in publishing in journals in any way by giving data and so on
to departments or somewhere else? Is your primary aim to get data
published in an academic sense?
Professor Diamond: We have two
aims. The first is to generate knowledge and the second is to
have an impact. Some of that impact will be through publishing
in academic journals of the highest standard; other parts of it
must be in communicating the results of those data to all stakeholders.
1 Note by the witness: ESRC did not make a
formal submission. However, one of the members of the TLRP Programme's
Steering Committee and an academic working on one of the Programme's
projects were members of the Tomlinson Committee. Other members
of the TLRP Steering Committee were on the HE subgroup of the
Committee. Two other academics running projects under TLRP were
on other sub-groups. Back
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