Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-87)
Q80 Chairman: We will not have any of
this unless we actually get more young people staying in science,
men and women, boys and girls, particularly girls, studying some
of the stem subjects post 16.
Professor Mason: Absolutely.
Chairman: There is still a culture which
is against that. I am going to leave that area, thank you very
much indeed for that. The final round of questioning is on national
and international co-ordination.
Q81 Bob Spink: Could I ask you first
of all about the subscriptions that are currently paid to various
bodies like ESA, ESO and CERN, are these going to continue indefinitely,
are there any plans to change those?
Professor Mason: Do you mean to
modify the level?
Q82 Bob Spink: Or in fact whether you
continue to subscribe to those bodies.
Professor Mason: This is always
something that we maintain a view on and if it were to transpire
that one of these international organisations did not continue
to fulfil our needs, then we would seriously look at withdrawing.
Q83 Bob Spink: Do you think it would
be better if the subscription was paid direct from Treasury funds
rather than through PPARC because as it fluctuates it can make
a dramatic impact on PPARC's other operations.
Professor Mason: There is certainly
an argument for that and, as I have said, these subscriptions
are GDP-related and one of the problems that we have had in recent
years is that the UK economy has been doing rather well compared
to our European counterparts and therefore the value of our subscriptions
has gone up, but at the same time as we are doing economically
very well we are less able to exploit it because the rest of our
programme has been squeezed by the fact that the subscription
is increasing, so we do need to look at that. The advantage of
having the subscription within the organisation of course is that
you do stare at it and consider its value for money, and you see
in countries where the money does come directly from Treasury
they take it for granted and they do not really stare at it and
stare at the organisation as hard as they might do. That is one
of the issues that we have to fight against within these organisations.
It could be taken over by the Treasury and that is fine, but we
need to continue to consider it in terms of the value for money
that we are getting from the programme, and perhaps a better way
would be to continue to pay for it through the PPARC programme,
but to recognise that these external pressures need to be compensated
in some way.
Q84 Bob Spink: Ring fenced in some way.
Professor Mason: Yes.
Q85 Bob Spink: How do you actually achieve
co-ordination with a body like NASA for instance when it comes
to the timing of financial decisions? How do you do that?
Professor Mason: It depends on
what sort of scale we do it. This is a problem in the sense that
first of all most of these meshing issues in a major way with
NASA are between ESA and NASA as opposed to between the UK and
NASA because we do have bilateral programmes with NASA but they
are relatively more easy to deal with because they are smaller
amounts of money. The problem is that ESA actually has, as you
know, a five year financial cycle—there is a ministerial
on average every three years and then there is a five year allocation
-whereas with the NASA system there are yearly appropriations
and approval processes. The trick is to make those two mesh, and
it has caused problems in the past when these two things get out
of kilter. The best way to deal with it is communication and there
is a constant backwards and forwards of traffic across the Atlantic
of ESA people and ESO people, discussing these various things
for specific programmes. On the Aurora programme we have NASA
involvement and we have very close contacts between PPARC and
NASA, for example, to understand the pressures on their budget
so that we are not taken by surprise. I think the worst situation
is when something happens that completely takes you by surprise
and you do not have any contingency plan for dealing with it,
whereas at least if you can see a problem coming on the horizon
you can adapt to it more effectively.
Q86 Bob Spink: Moving on from that, how
do you get on with the Office of Science and Technology?
Professor Mason: Very well. My
experience is of course relatively limited so far, but I am very
impressed with Keith O'Nions, I think his heart is in the right
place, he has the right sort of focus, and I personally get on
very well with him. His staff also have a very difficult job to
do. One of the things I have identified that I would like to try
and improve is the interchange, the communication between the
OST staff and my Research Council staff. They are physically separated,
they have different problems to deal with, but they need to work
in concert, so I am encouraging contacts at levels below Sir Keith.
Q87 Bob Spink: Talking about Research
Councils, has RCUK improved the co-ordination between the Research
Councils, do you think that is working well?
Professor Mason: To be honest
I have been very impressed with RCUK. When I came into this job
I was rather suspicious of it as a concept, but clearly the Research
Councils do need to speak with a collective voice on many issues.
The thing that has really impressed me is the important diversity
between the Research Councils because they deal with very different
subjects, very different communities and one of the things I have
come to value is the value of that diversity, so when I have a
problem within PPARC I can look and see how it might be solved
in a very different situation, get ideas as to how to move things
forwards and be able to discuss things at RCUK Executive Groups
with my counterparts and get their input. There is a collective
wisdom there which is very useful.
Professor Mason: A synergy. We
have to look for synergies.
Chairman: That is a good note on which
to end. You are supportive of Keith O'Nions and OST and you are
supportive of RCUK, we will not go any further. Keith, thank you
very much indeed for the time you have spent with us this morning
and for the large range of questions you have answered. We very
much appreciate it.
Professor Mason: It has been my
pleasure.
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