Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 26)
MONDAY 9 FEBRUARY 2004
LORD SAINSBURY
OF TURVILLE
Q20 Dr Harris: But you would consider
it.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: We
will always consider the particular circumstances but to make
a general rule, when you look at the number of pharmaceuticals
companies, biotech companies, university departments, I think
one has to do this very carefully with the police rather than
saying we will make a general rule about this.
Q21 Mr Key: Minister, do you agree
that even if the Government were to facilitate this sort of work
using animals in a secure military establishment, that it would
not be sufficient because it is not just the place that is under
attack from these people, it is the scientists themselves, their
families, their suppliers, their insurers, their bankers and this
is something which is quite a new phenomenon and at the moment
some of these government establishments, for example, is met by
the military defence and yet the Home Office will not pick up
the bill for security and a lot of scientists are still having—even
though they have retired—to pay out of their own pocket
and pension for their own security. I do hope that you would support
any moves to revisit this area.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: It
seems to me that the fundamental question there is about two things:
one is to make certain we have the proper legislative framework
to deal with this. As I said, we are looking at things like the
legislation about home visits and so on. The second thing is to
make certain that the police have the resources and the organisation
to really target the rather small number of people who are involved
in this kind of violent behaviour. I think those are the two things
we need to concentrate on and we are totally committed to doing
that.
Chairman: I would like people to follow
up on some of the things now as we have about five minutes. Does
anybody want to follow up on anything?
Q22 Dr Iddon: I would like to follow
up on the closures of chemistry departments, Minister. Certainly
the falling numbers of students wanting to read chemistry at university
is a factor, as you rightly said. However, if I could focus on
Swansea that is not the case. The applications by students to
attend Swansea University to read chemistry are excellent. They
are also cloying their way very successfully up the old RAE exercise.
They have won awards recently in green chemistry; they are the
only department doing green chemistry in the country. They are
a centre of excellence for mass spectrometry. Could I put it to
you that the ratio of 1.7 compared with one for arts and four
for medicine is now wrong for the modern age and we need to look
at this ratio very seriously if we are going to prevent the closure
of further science departments, not just chemistry departments?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I
will certainly look at whether that is the issue, the issue being
on the teaching side, is it? Or on the research side?
Q23 Dr Iddon: It is the HEFCW ratio
I am talking about.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I
will certainly look at that. Where there have been moves to change
it, one needs to look very carefully that it is right and I will
certainly look at whether that ratio is correct. My own impression
is that the biggest problems as cross-science has come from the
question of people doing research where the money, if you take
it from the project funding and you put it together with the HEFCW
money we know does not cover the full cost of running a department.
We have begun, with the last spending review, to try to get it
on a more sustainable basis and I hope we are going to do something
more in this next spending review. We know this is a problem and
we know that universities are having to find money from other
activities to cover it.
Q24 Dr Turner: Lord Sainsbury, it
has been pt to us that there is a caveat to the apparently excellent
principle in REACH of one chemical and one registration, that
caveat being that you cannot ignore the process by which the chemical
is produced because there may be various processes to produce
given chemicals and different processes may produce different
trace contaminants, some of which can potentially be exceedingly
toxic. Would you agree that that possibility has to be guarded
against in the protocol?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: It
is not a point I have heard raised before so I would need to think
about that. I think we will have this problem anyway because it
is not only about chemicals but it is the use of chemicals. We
will have to deal with this issue anyway, that a chemical may
be tested for one use but may be used for something else. However,
I do not think that distracts from the basic principle of one
chemical one registration, as opposed to having five different
groups doing the same testing across Europe for exactly the same
purpose which strikes me as expensive and unhelpful and will lead
to a lot of genuine confusion and games playing because people
will say they want to have a group with other people and another
person will say that it does not suit them to do that and he wants
to do it on his own. We want to avoid all that and just say that
there is one registration for each chemical and one lot of testing.
Q25 Mr McWalter: Why is it that in
the House of Commons, when we ask a question about arts, we can
get the whole scenario to be considered whereas when I asked you
a question about science education it was somebody else's business
really? Do you not think it would be a sensible thing if we had
a ministry for science which actually integrated the educational
requirements and the research requirements and looked at the industrial
consequences and so on in such a way that we actually had a sort
of single tier of supportive mechanism and would that not in part
mean that the recent HEFCE ratios which lost science £22
million because of slight changes in those ratios which prejudiced
science, that would not happen if you had an united science ministry
rather than one lot of people looking at the industrial side and
another lot of people looking at the educational side.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My
own view is that you can always move the building blocks around
and say that we will take all science into one ministry of science,
but when you do that you immediately open up another set of interfaces
so that someone asks the question why are you not having a proper
integration between the Ministry of Science and its courses and
the Ministry of Arts in terms of running schools, and is it not
ridiculous that at this school you have one ministry looking after
half the school and another ministry looking after the other half
of the school. I do not think people will ever find any arrangement
of ministries which can be done in such a way that you do not
have interfaces. The important thing is not to spend time re-arranging
the building blocks but to actually make certain that you have
good joined up government and a good relationship between departments.
Q26 Chairman: The Chief Scientific
Advisor to the Government recently said that the global warming
climate change was a bigger threat to mankind than terrorism.
Do you agree with that?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I
do not think it is a matter of scientific decision making. I think
it also depends on what timeframe you use. Long term, I do not
think there can be any doubt that if what we think will happen
on global warming happens, that is a much more serious threat
to mankind than terrorism. In the short term clearly that is not
the case.
Chairman: Minister, thank you very much
indeed for this first session. We will advance it and we hope
to see you again.
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