Examination of Witnesses (Questions 61
- 79)
WEDNESDAY 14 JULY 2004
LORD SAINSBURY
OF TURVILLE
Q61 Chairman: Thank you very much
for coming. We are having a session or two this week. This is
a half hour session which we are very grateful for. Could we start
off by asking you: what is really new with this Investment Framework
that we have not heard before that was not going to happen anyway?
Excite me.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I
think the very fundamental thing is we have set a very clear target
for what we want to do over the next ten years, which I think
is a very ambitious target. As you know, there is a strong disinclination,
usually, to set targets for what we should be trying to achieve
in terms of many things, but particularly science spending over
ten years. The fact we have put down a very clear target for where
we want to be, we have calculated what rate of growth we have
to get to get to that and that this settlement is in line with
that. It does not have, clearly, a commitment necessarily to follow
through all that, but there is a clear steer that that is what
we should be doing. I think that shows how committed the Government
is.
Q62 Chairman: Specifically, what
is new in it all that was not there before, other than you have
laid it down in hard and fast black and white now perhaps? All
those things were there before, the ideas of looking at this and
looking at that, and so on, and science and all that?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: There
is one major chunk of it which is new, which is all the stuff
on teachers, giving a very clear steer to the fact that we are
going to take action to make sure that we do have a proper supply
of teachers. That was probably one of the things of most concern
to the scientific community. I think what we have been saying
on science in society is much clearer the way forward on that.
That, I think, is different. Then in other parts of it what we
are making clear is how the money that we have allocated under
the Spending Review is going to be used in achieving our objectives.
Q63 Chairman: That does not sound
very new to me. I have heard all these things before. You are
talking about Horizon Scanning centres now. That is new. That
is really a different phase. It is Foresight in a new clause is
it not? The Foresight programme was the great white hope, I seem
to remember, compliant recently and now it is re-emerging as this
Horizon Scanning centre. Is that not the case?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: No.
I think there are different ways of doing these things. The Foresight
programme was very much about taking major areas of almost the
whole economy and looking at what was going to happen in these.
I think this is very much it may be what Foresight was originally
intended to be, which is technological forecasting in the different
areas which can then feed into things like the technology strategy,
the coordination of science across Government and, indeed, also
work of Research Councils.
Q64 Chairman: How is private industry
going to help in all that kind of thing? What is new there then?
How are you going to induce and seduce them to play a major part
in that?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: In
the Horizon Scanning?
Q65 Chairman: Yes, the interaction.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I
guess the other thing which is very substantially new in the sense
of, we are putting sums of money into it, is the technology strategy.
This ten-year investment strategy is not only about funding of
basic research. It is also about how we transform that knowledge
into wealth creation and jobs. The main focus of that is the technology
strategy. Of course, the whole point of that is: we will be working
very closely with industry as to where are the areas which we
can get competitive advantage from that.
Q66 Chairman: So you would like to
share all that information with industry?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: It
is more than sharing it. We want to get a lot of it from industry.
Q67 Chairman: They control it?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: No.
We have already done some very good work I think with the aerospace
industry in which we have been talking through with them and getting
them to assemble the case for the areas of technological development
which would really be important to them in terms of competitive
advantage in the future. It is on these areas that we want to
work with industry.
Q68 Dr Harris: You mentioned in your
response to the Chairman's first question the importance of teaching
and increasing science teacher capacity. Do you think a good starting
point is to accept that seven years into your administration there
has been a failure to tackle this problem so far?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: No.
I think, in fact, it has been moving in the right direction in
terms of additional recruitment of science teachers, but I do
not think it is nearly fast enough. I think we are becoming increasingly
aware that it is not just a pure numbers game; it relates very
much to the qualifications of the teachers. The thing that worries
me most is that we have so many people teaching physics at the
14 to 16 age group who not only may not have a physics degree,
but also may not have physics A level.
Q69 Dr Harris: We understand that
problem and, clearly, Government does, based on what is here.
It is very welcome that you mention that you are going to do research
now to find out why people are leaving; that is an extremely welcome
recognition that we need to know the answer to. Do you think if
you had those answers already we would not be in the situation
where, every couple of years, the training bursar in the golden
hellos have bumped up another 1,000 in what appears to be a desperate
attempt chasing the tale of what the private sector can offer
to retain and keep these teachers? Do you think we should have
had that research earlier in order to inform policy?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I
think always in these situations you would have liked to have
done everything to get things right on day one of becoming the
Government, but that is not how it works. It is not always immediately
clear where the major problems are. I think we have already made
some progress in terms of getting the number of new teachers up,
but I think this issue about quality has come to the fore, which
we were not aware of and there was no evidence about, particularly.
Q70 Dr Harris: My final question
is: what about retaining the science graduates? Is there any mechanism
where you can measure whether by measuring the number of tenure
posts, the proportion of tenure posts, whether the aims we all
want to see, which is an end to short-term contracts, is moving
in the right direction? I cannot see much in here that will show
how that can be helped by Government policy in this framework.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I
think there is very little in here, except probably the major
issue. The major issue I have always thought why we had a problem
on short-term contracts was that the fact there was great instability
on the flow of money to universities. In that context, vice chancellors
wanted, above all else, to keep flexibility. That is why they
put people on short-term contracts. The fact that we are now giving
proper long-term funding to universities and the very welcome
feature of this particular settlement, which is that we have quite
substantially additional money coming from HEFCE, in fact 6% per
annum in real terms, means that gives considerable room for manoeuvring
for vice chancellors and the scope to make more people in permanent
posts.
Q71 Dr Harris: We hope.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Yes.
Unless you think the Vice Chancellors are particularly vicious
people or who want to keep everyone on short-term contracts, the
fact they have long-term funding I think makes it likely that
they will do so.
Dr Harris: We hope.
Q72 Kate Hoey: Following on from
the education part, how much, as Minister of Science, are you
involved in the numbers of schools that are becoming specialist
science and technology schools? Is your Department getting involved
with any of that? Any monitoring, any looking, any checking, any
setting targets?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: No.
We take an interest in it, and I have the figures, but it is not
something that I can particularly affect because it is about particular
sources of money which obviously come from the DfES.
Q73 Chairman: You have not even asked
about the frequency of engineering schools as against other type
of schools? Is that not a surprise when you are controlling science
teaching in this country?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: It
is driven by the schools coming forward with proposals to which
Government matches funds.
Q74 Chairman: Yes, but they do it
in a coordinated way. I know in Norwich if you have one type of
school, a sports school. A mixed school does not ask for a sports
school, they go for something else, arts or something. They are
not daft. They know that their chances are increased if they do
something different.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: No.
I have to say I interpret my job as Science Minister extremely
widely, but I do think that the actual running of schools is really—
Kate Hoey: I think there should be a
bit of joined-up Government on that.
Q75 Mr McWalter: I am pleased that
it has been very successful, Lord Sainsbury, on the matter of
resources and the profile you have given to science, but I do
feel grumpy about how you interpret your job. I do not think you
interpret it widely enough. For instance, there is a catastrophic
decline in incomes by Further Education lecturers. As a result,
it is uniquely awful for people to think about teaching maths
or science in the FE sector. Constantly, when we raise these issues,
it is like it is an SEP. It is somebody else's problem all the
time. Is there a way in which we can get some serious, and take
Kate Hoey's question, some serious joined-up Government so that
whenever we raise a problem about science why are we not giving
incentives for undergraduates to study science? Why are we not
doing something about science FE teachers, et cetera, instead
of it being always somebody else's problem? There is a Science
Ministry which says: that is a real problem and we are going to
tackle it and coordinate that problem across Government.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: There
is a question of who is responsible for which bits of it. In this
case, what I have just told you is how we are radically changing
the position on science teachers.
Q76 Mr McWalter: For those you need
science undergraduates. The Department of Education is very clear
that it really wants to have top-up fees and all the rest of the
paraphernalia. As a result, Vice Chancellors are not just people,
they are not. They know an expensive thing when they see one.
An engineering department or a chemistry department is an expensive
thing. There are not very many students coming forward and they
are not going to keep their departments open, let alone open new
ones. In the meantime, we all know this is the problem, you know
this is the problem, that somehow or other the problem is disseminated
amongst so many governmental departments nothing ever gets done.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Hang
on a moment. That is one of the things which is tackled in the
ten-year investment strategy, which again is new.
Q77 Mr McWalter: FE lecturers are
tackled?
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: No,
no. The question of departments of physics and chemistry.: there
is a quite clear commitment here that in this case, because we
have taken it along as a problem to DfES and HEFCE, and it is
agreed that money will be put aside for what are the departments
which are considered to be key to national interest in this to
make certain that we do not find ourselves where there are particular
regions or other areas where there is a lack of these particular
departments. They will make funds available to deal with that.
That is very specifically dealt with. It is quite new. It is quite
a radical change because we are saying we are not just letting
the forces work on a totally decentralised basis. If there is
a national interest here, more money will be put to it. That has
been specifically dealt with.
Q78 Chairman: Large-scale European
facilities which will not necessary be based in the UK.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Yes.
Q79 Chairman: How do you decide to
support them? What criteria do you use to give them support, I
think the ITER project, which is stalled at the minute.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: One
of the innovations we have had, of course, is the large facilities
road map going forward for 15 years. One of the reasons for doing
this is that this does enable us to plan forward for facilities
as opposed to what we had before, which is just every so often
someone says, "We ought to do something", and then produced
a plan for something and there were no priorities set in this
process. We now set very clear priorities. The objective, which
I see as being the objective or the target I should meet, is to
make available to British scientists world class facilities in
all the key areas, not necessarily in the UK, but that they should
have access to them. To do that in a sensible way means that we
have to do a few of them ourselves and make use of other facilities
from other countries for other parts of it. In a sense, there
is a kind of trading relationship, which is: we will do some,
we will make use of other people, and the ones we do we will let
other people use to some extent. I think the second criterion
of that is, of course, that you will do the facilities in the
areas where we have particular strengths or where there is a particular
national need for it. In the first case, the fact we are very
good at neutron sources means that this is something where we
will probably play a leading role and certainly are looking at
that. The diamond synchrotron is a case where I think there is
a wider need than just our scientists using it which relates to
various industries which will use this, like the pharmaceutical
industry.
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