Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
Q40 Mr Newmark: Professor, a lot of your
answers have come down to money and obviously money drives a lot
of what your decision-making is about. My first question is as
to the impact of the 2004 Spending Review upon PPARC's budget
allocations. To give a lead into this, you previously wrote to
us that you have had to "scale down ambitions in the short-term";
what has this meant in practice?
Professor Mason: Let me articulate
perhaps what the problem is much more clearly. Like I said, the
new money that went into science—which we benefited from
too and I am very happy with—went into infrastructure. Apart
from the Aurora money there was no new money for our core domestic
programme and one of the features of the PPARC budget is that
half of the PPARC budget goes on international subscriptions to
CERN, ESO, ESA and these are NNI related, so effectively they
are protected against inflation, whereas the rest of the PPARC
budget is effectively flat cash and received no increases in 2004.
The net effect is that the spending power of the rest of our programme,
the domestic part of our programme, is shrinking by twice inflation
per year in round numbers. That is the essence of the problem
and that is why we have had to scale back our ambitions to start
some of these new activities and why we are having to take an
even harder look at the things we are currently doing in order
to free up space within the shrinking resource in order to do
these new things.
Q41 Mr Newmark: Are you concerned then
that the next Spending Review has been delayed until 2007. What
impact has this had on your planning and spending?
Professor Mason: The fact that
it is delayed is not as important, because the money would not
have flowed until that time anyway, but if there is not an increase
in volume in our core programme at the next Spending Review then
we are going to have to take very painful decisions, we are going
to have to limit our ambitions, possibly limit the breadth of
the activity that we are engaged in.
Q42 Mr Newmark: Is there anything in
particular that you are concerned with that is going to hamper
effectively your area plc, the UK, in terms of us being a centre
of excellence?
Professor Mason: Indeed, you are
having to fight with two hands tied behind your back. Unless you
put these investments in, you cannot hope to have a future. The
only way to free up money is to stop doing things that we are
currently doing, and most of the things that we are currently
doing involve international partnerships as well, so not only
are you stopping something in the UK, you are also stopping something
abroad. That creates a very bad atmosphere; it undermines the
UK as a credible partner in these organisations, so it is a very
thin line that one has to walk in order to manage a situation
like this.
Q43 Mr Newmark: What is happening with
regard to restructuring and staffing reductions at your three
institutes, and are these changes directly due to these funding
restrictions that you have talked about?
Professor Mason: The three institutes
that we have are the ATC in Edinburgh and the two small island
sites that are run, La Palma and Hawaii. In terms of the island
sites, when we joined ESO in 2002 the plan was there to move from
essentially a UK provision of ground-based astronomy to work within
ESO, so the plan has always been that we would divest ourselves
of those facilities as soon as it was financially practicable
to do that; essentially that is 2009. In terms of PPARC's spend,
PPARC's responsibility for our staff on those islands will diminish
over time. That either means that we close the thing entirely
and they get laid off or we find some other organisation that
might like to take them over—and we are presently looking
at such possibilities—so that the centres themselves continue
but not under PPARC control.
Q44 Chairman: Can you give us an indication
of how much we spend on those centres, just to give the Committee
a feel for it? Just to be clear, those are the Joint Astronomy
Centre, the Isaac Newton Group and the Astronomy Technology Centre,
is that right?
Professor Mason: That is correct.
It is mostly manpower so the total PPARC staff is about 320, of
which 83 are in these overseas centres and 117 are in Edinburgh,
so it is a sizeable fraction of the total staff.
Q45 Chairman: If you could let us have
a note after on the costing of that.
Professor Mason: Absolutely, no
problem.[1]
Q46 Mr Newmark: You have to play Solomon
a bit between astronomy and particle physics; therefore, how do
you try to balance the funding that is allocated between those
two areas and to what extent are consultations with stakeholder
communities of any help?
Professor Mason: One of the things
that my predecessor did and I was heavily involved in also was
to set up our present science committee. PPARC, as you know, was
formed by splitting off SCRC and it had particle physics and astronomy
in it, which were two separate activities within SCRC. They continued
as separate activities by and large within PPARC for a number
of years, but one of the things we have done over the last three
to four years is to invent this thing called science committee,
which has representation from both particle physics and astronomy
and looks at the whole programme and essentially provides advice
on this sort of balance. This actually works very well. I was
very anxious in setting this up that we did not get to a situation
where this committee was polarised and you had advocates from
one side and the other just fighting each other; it has not worked
out that way at all, we have managed to get a very good working
relationship where people are seeing the science across the patch.
The other benefit of that as an aside is that it has also brought
out the synergy between the two sides. You might think that particle
physics and astronomy are poles apart, but in actual fact they
are not, there is a lot of synergy between them, both in terms
of technical capability and also scientific interest, and so we
have been able to develop a consensus across the whole community,
at least at the science committee level, as to the directions
that we are taking; we need to continue to do that. Inevitably,
it is taking longer to achieve that merger of interests amongst
the community than it is at the top level, but we are getting
there and we are pushing that agenda forward. As a total aside,
one of the things I did in my old institution before taking up
this job was to convince the vice-chancellor there to set up a
laboratory that was joint between the particle physics and astronomy
and space science efforts in University College, London. That
sort of thing is happening on the ground and it means that people
are buying into the other programme, so the astronomers understand
now why the LHC is important and the particle physics people,
hopefully, are beginning to understand why space science is important.
Q47 Mr Newmark: Am I to deduce from that
that funding for the two different areas through one Research
Council is not problematic in terms of administration?
Professor Mason: It is something
we are dealing with.
Q48 Mr Newmark: How will the forthcoming
international review inform your future funding priorities? For
example, will you seek to build on the strengths and try and bolster
weak areas and what are those? Is there sufficient funding to
retain strength right across the board?
Professor Mason: There is in the
short term. As I said, unless we get more investment into this
area then the long term is less certain, but certainly in the
short term it is okay. Projects are always cheap at the beginning
and that is where you need to put the investment in actually to
keep them as cheap as possible. We are now in those study phases
so we are able to afford to participate in those studies. If too
many of those programmes move to a big spending capital phase
too soon for our budget, then we will not be able to participate
in all of them.
Chairman: Do you mind if we move on?
That is a classic line; projects are always cheap at the beginning,
like children.
Q49 Dr Iddon: Now for something completely
different: I want to look at full economic costing which is quite
controversial in academia at the moment, I gather. Do you think
that all your academics have woken up to the fact that they are
going to be operating under this new regime of full economic costing?
Professor Mason: I think they
are stretching and rubbing their eyes, so they are getting there,
but it is a big change and I am sure that we will not see the
full effects or even the full consequences as far as the sociological
behaviour of the community is concerned for a number of years
yet.
Q50 Dr Iddon: What has your organisation
done to communicate with your academic community and has it been
effective?
Professor Mason: We have tried
to be totally upfront about what the implications are. We have
issued very clear guidelines to academics as to how the full economic
cost regime will work. One of the consequences, just to give you
an example, is that now we will be paying for researchers' time
directly, and one of the things I have been very clear to people
about is that if we are paying for somebody's time directly, we
will expect them to put that time in, so we are not going to be
paying for people to do other things. That is one of the consequences,
people are going to have to change the way they think about stuff
and that is a very beneficial thing because one of the ironies
about our university system is that our brightest researchers
are engaged in administration or teaching or whatever, when they
should be doing research—
Q51 Dr Iddon: Or going out into the community.
Professor Mason: Or going out
into the community. One of the consequences of full economic costs
will be that universities will be forced to recognise the value
of their academics' time, to think about how it is being deployed
and not fritter it away on things that are unnecessary.
Q52 Dr Iddon: What is going to be the
impact on the work that you fund? Do you think that it is going
to reduce the number of applications you are going to receive
from your academic community?
Professor Mason: As you know,
in this first stage the aim is to pay 80% of the full economic
costs. That was a number that was derived by modelling of the
grant portfolio across the Research Councils and, given the amount
of money that was available, that is what we thought we could
fund. Unfortunately, that is a modelling exercise. The reality,
certainly in the PPARC area, is that it is going to cost more
than we had anticipated from that modelling to actually get us
up to the 80% level. That is still a provisional statement, because
we have not had very many grants yet going through at full economic
cost so we cannot validate this modelling very precisely. We will
have a much better idea in six months time when we get some of
the big grants through. My guess right now is that we are going
to be looking at a 10% reduction in volume as a consequence.
Q53 Dr Iddon: It is going to affect all
those projects that we have been talking about, obviously.
Professor Mason: Yes, another
pressure in the system.
Q54 Chairman: Ten per cent is pretty
savage, given the comments you made earlier about the reducing
inputs into various programmes.
Professor Mason: Absolutely.
Q55 Dr Iddon: We were worried about the
charitable funding, we thought that it was going to be very difficult
for the charities but they would not pay full economic cost. Of
course, the Government has made £90 million available now
through its agencies to support charity work on top of what the
charities can afford themselves. Is that going to be enough in
your area, do you think?
Professor Mason: We have very
little work sponsored by charities in the PPARC area so I have
no direct experience of that. I am not really qualified to answer;
my only knowledge comes from my previous life in the university.
Q56 Dr Iddon: Perhaps more importantly
the Committee were also worried about the framework programmes.
Could you tell us something about the impact of full economic
costing on the money that your academics receive from framework
funding?
Professor Mason: Clearly, there
has always been an assumption underlying framework funding that
there is matching funding from the country or institute that is
being supported, and inevitably that is going to put another strain
on full economic costs. We might well see—I do not know
that this is going to happen—that universities essentially
have built in the lack of compensation on either charity or framework
funding into their full economic cost bids to Research Councils,
so it might well end up that we are subsidising that, but I do
not know that for a fact.
Q57 Dr Iddon: I would expect the framework
funding in your area of activity is quite high; is that assumption
correct?
Professor Mason: It is reasonably
high, I do not think it is as high as it perhaps could be—it
is certainly not as high as in some areas. One of the reasons
is that framework funding is good at promoting international collaboration
and we already do a lot of stuff by international collaboration,
so it is kind of hard to make the case if you already have a working
international collaboration going, that you need money from the
framework programme to start one up or whatever. There have been
very good examples of where framework funding has been won; one
recent one is one of these big projects that I mentioned to you,
the Square Kilometre Array, the very large radio array, where
we in PPARC had put in funding for a design study alongside the
Netherlands and we have had some framework funding to bolster
that, to add to that.
Q58 Chairman: Could I pop in on this
question just to say that as a Committee we are concerned about
the whole business about framework funding and particularly we
hope that ultimately we can have it as additionality European
funding rather than replacement funding which appears to be in
some institutions and some programmes. We recently wrote to HM
Treasury following the pre-Budget Statement where in fact the
Chancellor did appear to say that he was going to relax or change
the rules. What is your understanding of what he said in the Budget?
Professor Mason: I am not really
in a position to comment on that, I do not think I can add to
your knowledge.
Q59 Dr Iddon: Has the academic community
in general welcomed full economic costs or is it rather suspicious?
Professor Mason: The academic
community is always going to be suspicious of change and there
is no difference here. Seriously, it is unwelcome in the sense
that in the short term at least it is a big distraction from getting
on with the job because there have been new university systems
in place, people are having to do a lot of extra work to gear
up for full economic costs, but I think the overall impression
among the people I have talked to in the academic community is
that once it is in place it will be a better system. I have outlined
some of the benefits, but you see directly what you are getting,
there is no double-counting, there is no double jeopardy, which
is even more important. We had got ourselves into a situation
where our capability for doing research within universities had
been severely eroded by lack of investment. If you are paying
for it upfront then it is much clearer and much easier to track
to make sure it happens.
Dr Iddon: Thank you very much indeed.
1 Note by the witness: Allocations for the
2005-06 financial year are: Astronomy Technology Centre (ATC),
Edinburgh-£11.601 million; Joint Astronomy Centre (JAC),
Hawaii-£4.185 million; Isaac Newton Group (ING), La Palma-£2.366
million. Total allocation is £18.152 million. Back
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