Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
PROFESSOR GORDON
CONWAY AND
MR DYLAN
WINDER
23 MARCH 2005
Q1 Chairman: Thank you very much for
coming. We feel you are partly a creature of this Committee's
deliberations. I believe this is your first time in front of a
Select Committee. It is much more fearsome than committees of
Congress, I hope! We are going to ask you some questions. We know
you have only just started the job and we do not suspect you have
got all the answers yet, but you have identified some of the problems.
What attracted you to this job? Were you headhunted?
Professor Conway: Thank you for
the invitation to appear and for you being indirectly responsible
for me having gainful employment. What really attracted me was
that at the Rockefeller Foundation, where I had been for the last
seven years, we were primarily a research organisation trying
to develop technologies in particular for addressing the Millennium
Development Goals. The great attraction of working for DFID is
the scale is much larger. You can actually begin to put these
into practice and really make a difference. That was what attracted
me as much as anything. I applied and I was interviewed. I believe
there was then a short-list, several people were interviewed and
I got the post.
Q2 Chairman: I am fed up with trivia.
Before I go back canvassing assiduously to get back here just
give me the vision.
Professor Conway: My objective
is to demonstrate over the next three years that having a Chief
Scientific Adviser really adds value to what DFID does in the
sense of raising the level of expertise and the stature of scientists
within DFID and making sure that science and technology is taken
into account in policy making. I am a great believer in evidence-based
policy, but some other parts of the world do not think so highly
of that. I think my vision is to help to create a department in
which the natural and social sciences come together in a complimentary
and integrated fashion to help countries achieve the Millennium
Development Goals.
Q3 Chairman: And you feel that never
happened before, do you?
Professor Conway: The standing
of science and technology has not been as high as I personally
would have liked to have seen in recent years.
Q4 Chairman: What was top of your list
when you started? When you were shaving that morning when you
got the job, what did you think? We know that one person makes
very little difference to the world. What would it be for you
specifically?
Professor Conway: What happened
that first morning was that the Permanent Secretary came in with
the terms of reference and went through them with me.
Q5 Chairman: Did anyone say to you, "You
may think that, sonny, but don't try it"?
Professor Conway: No, I do not
recall that being said.
Q6 Chairman: It was probably put in much
more delicate terms.
Professor Conway: I do not even
recall that. The first issue was the Tsunami. I think the next
day I was helping the Permanent Under-Secretary of State to prepare
for the Kobe meeting and what we needed to do at DFID and what
the UK needed to do. It was a very interesting example of the
way in which a chief scientist can work. I can elaborate on that
now or later.
Q7 Chairman: We will come back to that.
So you decide your own priorities in general, do you?
Professor Conway: Yes.
Q8 Chairman: And you do not feel inhibited?
Professor Conway: I do decide
my priorities, but every now and again somebody says, "This
is something you should do". Last week the Secretary of State
wanted me to go with him to the Derbyshire G8 meeting and the
day before he said, "I really want you to be there as head
of the delegation for this event". Quite often things simply
happen a couple of days beforehand and I comply.
Q9 Chairman: So you are very excited
by the position, I guess.
Professor Conway: Yes.
Q10 Dr Turner: It is a great personal
pleasure to see you sitting in that chair and equally a pleasure
that we may have had some hand in it. How long is the appointment
for? Given that we were very critical of the handling of S&T
in DFID and your job has got a very wide remit, it is a very challenging
post, are you happy that three days a week is going to be enough
to address the demands properly or are DFID simply exploiting
you and getting five days work out of you for the cost of three?
Professor Conway: The appointment
is for three years, which I think is a reasonable length for a
contract.
Q11 Dr Turner: Renewable, I hope.
Professor Conway: It does not
say renewable but it could be. I am three days a week. I guess
on average I am working about three and a half at the moment.
I suspect that we will have a conversation about this at some
point. There is no doubt that a job of this kind takes a great
deal of time, not just when you are in the office doing something,
but you do lie awake at night thinking about some of the issues.
I am not sure I can charge for lying awake at night. It is a very
demanding job. I went to South Africa just three weeks ago and
that was a full week in South Africa, Saturday night to Friday
night. My guess is that the amount of time I will be spending
eventually is something of the order of four days a week. As you
may know, I am Professor of International Development at Imperial
College and so I have one day as an academic and I think that
is important.
Q12 Dr Turner: Looking at your departmental
structure, you report directly to the Permanent Under-Secretary
rather than to the Secretary of State. I want to probe your relationship
with the Secretary of State. How often do you meet directly with
the Secretary of State? Do you feel that the Permanent Secretary
of the Department is fully signed up to the importance of science
in DFID?
Professor Conway: I report to
the Permanent Secretary, that is Mr Suma Chakrabarti, and I have
direct access both to the Secretary of State and the Permanent
Under-Secretary of State who you met last week. I meet with either
the Secretary of State or the Permanent Under-Secretary of State
every week on average. I met with the Secretary of State either
on my own or in a group at least twice last week and once already
this week, so it is quite frequent. The Permanent Secretary is
very supportive of my being there. We have frequent conversations
about what we are doing. As evidence of his commitment and the
commitment of the senior team at DFID they have appointed a head
of cabinet for me who has had 20 years of experience in DFID and
is very knowledgeable about the ways of the Civil Service and
I think is proving to be invaluable to me. I think if the Permanent
Secretary had not wanted me to be a success he would not have
appointed somebody like that to help me.
Q13 Dr Turner: What resources do you
have at your command? You have a budget of £1 million for
horizon scanning, but is that enough? Do you have any funds at
your call that you can use to commission research in your direction
to underpin the work of the Department?
Professor Conway: The £1
million would cover research studies of various kinds. The view
is that I have a remit right across DFID and that I have an influence
on how funding is provided for particular things that I think
are important. There is an example at the moment where I have
talked to the Central Research Department about putting some of
their money into a particular activity. We will see how that works
into the future. The Director Generals of each of the three divisions
and the Permanent Secretary are quite insistent that if I want
to have something done then there will be funds for it within
reasonable limits. You will have to come back to me on that at
another date.
Q14 Dr Turner: One of the traditional
problems of the British Government, as I am sure you are well
aware, is the tendency of departments not to join up properly.
An awful lot of DFID's work obviously relates closely to that
other department, principally the DTI. Two examples come to mind.
One example is the question of developing world agriculture and
trade conditions and the other is energy in the developing world.
If the developing world develops using carbon fuels we are in
grave difficulty. Both of these relate very closely to the DTI.
What scope do you think you will have for advancing development
interests in those two areas?
Professor Conway: Let me say,
first of all, that I have been building relationships with the
chief scientists across government, some of them I have known
before anyway and that includes the DTI, of course, Defra and
the Ministry of Defence, all of whom are people I either knew
before or have got to know. That cross-linkage at the level of
chief scientist is happening. In terms of the specific issues
you have raised, I have not got very far into those yet but I
would expect to do so. When I went to South Africa we got together
the various British interested parties, if that is the right phrase.
The British Consul, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the DTI
and I all sat and talked about the various things we were doing.
We actually all wear rather different hats so we go at the issues
rather differently. In some areas there is a great deal of potential
overlap that we need to work on and one, of course, is climate
change. For example, the person from DTI who was there in South
Africa was talking about various kinds of energy systems that
are being developed in the United Kingdom that could be of value
in South Africa but also pointing out there are a number of South
African energy devices that could be of use in the United Kingdom.
On the agriculture and trade point, I have not got into that,
but you are quite right, it is a crucial issue. It affects, in
particular, of course, African countries that are exporting horticultural
goods, cut flowers and so on to the UK. I have had a discussion
with some scientists who are working on these issues. I have not
talked to the DTI about this yet but I will do so.
Q15 Dr Iddon: Professor Conway, when
we carried out our investigation into your Department we felt
that there was a weakness in applying science throughout the Department;
"a weak scientific culture" is the way we described
it in the report. Could you just tell us what you feel ought to
be done about that and how you would personally try to permeate
science throughout the Department so that it is taken into account
in future?
Professor Conway: One of the first
things I have been doing has been to spend a lot of time going
to the different parts of DFID. I have spent many hours going
from one unit to another getting to know people and talking to
them and I am trying to extend that now to the Country Offices.
I have done South Africa. I am expecting to go to Rwanda and the
Democratic Republic of Congo in June and then to India and China.
Interestingly, a lot of people come up to me and say, "I
don't know if you knew that, but I'm a scientist". There
are more scientists in DFID than you had perceived when you wrote
your report. We have started to do what you asked us to do and
that is to identify who the scientists are. We have done it so
far for one group, which is the livelihoods group, which is a
total of about 110 people. Of the people who have undergraduate
degrees, half of them have got science; of those who have got
Masters degrees, it is about a third, and of those who have got
PhDs, it is about half. So the proportion of scientists is relatively
high. I think one of the issues is that the people who come into
DFID tend to find themselves by and large managing programmes
and managing projects. They tend not to have a lot of time for
sitting and thinking about an area of substance in terms of their
science and what needs to be done about it. One way to move forward—and
this is pure hypothesis at this point—is to identify some
people who are a bit like myself, in other words who are scientists
in a particular field and who have more time to think about the
substance of the subject and to make recommendations on the substance.
That is not to say there are not scientists in DFID who could
do that, it is just that they are very pressed to make sure that
contracts are let, that projects are undertaken and that programmes
are brought forward. I think it is still too early for me to come
up with a concrete answer to that. I do think that the standing
of scientists and technologists need to be raised within DFID
and their voice needs to be better heard.
Q16 Dr Iddon: You mentioned that you
are beginning to tour the Country Offices. Do you detect that
there is a culture of scientific achievement in the projects that
the Country Offices are running, or does it need stimulating?
Professor Conway: I have only
been to the South Africa office and one of the staff there is
primarily concerned with the environment, but she has science
and technology within her remit. I went at the invitation of the
Minister of Science, but she had organised an extremely valuable
set of meetings. We worked from morning to night meeting with
scientists, engineers and technologists. She clearly had no difficulty
in accessing those individuals and she was greatly respected by
the scientists who we met. I think there is a distinction we have
to draw between science specifically in relation to the Millennium
Development Goals, in other words medical science in relation
to infant mortality, maternal mortality or HIV Aids or agricultural
science in relation to agricultural development. I think the DFID
staff are fully aware of the role of science and its importance
in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. If you take science
and technology as a whole then I do not think there is that understanding
and that is something we are going to have to work on if we are
going to focus rather more on capacity building in science and
technology. That is where there is a business gap at the moment.
Q17 Dr Iddon: How will you maintain the
link between the office in London and all the Country Offices,
of which there are quite a few?
Professor Conway: I do not have
an answer to that yet. Obviously in theory I could spend the next
few years travelling round to every office. The South Africa trip
was extremely successful. If I did that with every office we would
then have the links. I think as people get to know me I will find
that I am being asked about issues. For example, the offices in
south-east Asia at the moment, Vietnam, Cambodia and so on are
asking me about avian flu. They know I am there now and so they
will say, "I've got this problem. What can you say?"
In terms of the more formal linkages, I will have to decide on
that, I am not sure.
Q18 Dr Iddon: Are people from the Country
Offices ever brought here to a conference or a seminar to get
the feeling of the culture in the Department?
Professor Conway: They certainly
come back quite frequently. I think what you are suggesting is
probably a good idea. I think what you are implying is that it
might be useful if, from time to time, we had a session on science
and technology in relation to the Millennium Development Goals
and the goals of the Department as a whole to which field staff
were invited. That is one of the things I have been half thinking
about. I think it is a good idea.
Q19 Dr Iddon: In the terms of reference
for your position it says, ". . . maintain an appropriate
system of peer review for and evaluation of DFID scientific activities".
Could you perhaps tell us whether you have detected that that
has occurred in the past and perhaps tell us whether it is a good
idea and whether it will occur in the future?
Professor Conway: I do not think
it has occurred in the past in the way that you are describing
it. I think in principle it is a good idea. I would hope to encourage
that. I have not thought again yet about how that will happen.
One has to balance the amount of time that is spent on evaluation
and peer review with the amount of time that is spent getting
programmes off the ground. Two big programmes are being evaluated
at the moment, one on natural resources and the other on engineering
and I am looking forward to reading those and to getting a sense
of where the programmes maybe could have been improved if there
had been more peer review. I think out of that I will get a better
sense as to what one might do practically to ensure that that
happens without overburdening the system.
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