Select Committee on Science and Technology Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 924-939)

DR RICHARD PIKE, PROFESSOR MARTIN TAYLOR, DR CAROLINE WALLACE AND DR PETER COTGREAVE

24 MAY 2006

  Chairman: Good morning, everyone. Can I apologise to our learned and distinguished visitors for a slight delay this morning. We were trying to agree the heads of our report on MRI scanners and the European Directive before you came in. Could we welcome Dr Richard Pike, the Chief Executive from the Royal Society of Chemistry; nice to see you again Richard, Professor Martin Taylor, the Physical Secretary and Vice-President of the Royal Society, Royal Society of Chemistry; good morning to you, Dr Caroline Wallace, the Science Policy Advisor for Biosciences Federation; good morning to you, and Dr Peter Cotgreave, the Director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering; nice to see you again, Peter. As you are the neutral on this panel, though you are never neutral on anything, could we invite you to chair your panel if you want to direct questions. The purpose of this first part of the session is to try and explore the role of the learned societies and the way in which the campaigning organisations give evidence to governments and the way in which government uses scientific evidence in policy making. This is part of our broad sweep programme which is looking at this whole issue of evidence-based policy.

  Dr Iddon: Chairman, before we begin can I declare an interest in that I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

  Q924  Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Martin, perhaps I could start with you by saying it is clearly important that in order for the Government to be an intelligent customer of scientific information it has to have sufficient capacity to become an intelligent customer. Do you agree, and do you think it is?

  Professor Taylor: I think it is developing capacity. It needs to learn to interact with all the learned societies, and the Royal Society in particular, a little bit more. If I may speak for the Royal Society for a minute, I think we are a very great resource. We have not just got our fellowship that covers expertise in all science but also all our various contacts, networks, including networks overseas. This is something superb for the Government to be able to draw from and I do not think, to be honest, they draw from us quite enough.

  Q925  Chairman: I will come back to that point but what I am really asking the panel here is, do you feel—

  Professor Taylor: Do you mean within Government?

  Q926  Chairman: I think you have huge expertise in terms of the learned societies and in terms of Peter's organisation as a campaigning group for science and engineering, but do you feel that in order to be an intelligent customer the Government has sufficient capacity within it to be able to be an intelligent customer?

  Professor Taylor: Can I be absolutely sure I understand the question, having gone off slightly on the way I saw the question in the first instance? Do you mean the scientific expertise within Government?

  Q927  Chairman: I think in order to go to Marks and Spencer's to get the appropriate clothes for your children first of all you have to have some ability to know their size and what it is that you want. Does the Government itself have within it the capacity to know what sort of scientific information it needs and to be able to judge that?

  Professor Taylor: The first part of my first answer was spot on in that regard. This is an increasing entity. We welcome greatly the fact that there are now Chief Scientific Advisers, I think, in the majority of the departments, if not all, and this has helped bring scientific understanding into the departments, but that in itself also needs building up. I do not know all the departments' cases but I am thinking in particular of Defra and the MoD where I am aware of Scientific Advisory Councils in addition to the CSAs and this has certainly helped build up the capacity. It is something we welcome. I can pick on Defra because we know Defra very well. We have done some reviews for them and we are quite impressed at the way they are starting to use their Scientific Advisory Council.

  Q928  Chairman: So it is sort of five out of ten?

  Professor Taylor: Actually I would go a little higher.

  Q929  Chairman: Six then.

  Professor Taylor: I would say six plus because it is on the way up.

  Q930  Chairman: Caroline and then Peter?

  Dr Wallace: Defra is one of the Government departments that we deal with a lot and we gave evidence on that. I would agree with Martin that it is work in progress. We were concerned that funding cuts have resulted in scientists being employed on short-term contracts within Defra. Also, merit promotion has been taken out of career progression within core Defra and there is a perception now that to progress in your career you move policy area every 18 months or so, so no-one is in one policy area for more than two years which makes it difficult for people to horizon scan. Yes, Defra have got their Scientific Advisory Council. They have also started a series of seminars where they have external speakers and they are putting into place a continuing professional development scheme which the Institute of Biology have advised them on but as yet they are not using the values for career progression.

  Q931  Chairman: So, Peter, Defra is okay but the rest is not so good?

  Dr Cotgreave: As Professor Taylor has said, the situation is getting better and members of this committee in the last Parliament will remember the International Development Department, for example, not having a Chief Scientific Adviser. This committee pressed very hard for that to happen and now they have one and I think he is doing good work, but it is not true that all departments yet have one. Only yesterday Mr Lamy and Lord Sainsbury appeared before a House of Lords committee talking about Culture, Media and Sport and conceded that that department probably should get itself a Chief Scientific Adviser because it deals with a lot of scientific issues. It has the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the British Library but it is also responsible for the Olympics and sports science is going to be important if we are going to win any medals in 2012, so they conceded that there was a case for having one there. However, I think one needs to look not just at the top level of Chief Scientific Advisers and Advisory Councils but also at the lower level, the daily grind of making policy on a daily basis. I would make a distinction between high profile issues where everyone is in a panic and the press are all up in arms and we are all going to die tomorrow, like BSE or bird flu where I think there has been a lot of progress. People see Dave King on the television talking about bird flu and they feel, "He is a man who knows what he is talking about and I trust him and he is being honest with me", and on the other hand there are the rather more boring day-to-day things that are not going to catch the headlines but where good policy, in order for taxpayers to get good value for the money they are spending on policy, is informed by science and by evidence. Just today on the front page of the Financial Times there is a piece about a National Audit Office report on the Small Business Service and it says that policy planning is difficult because the way the Small Business Service operates it is impossible to know what measures are effective because they are not doing what a scientist would do and measuring the effects of different interventions and comparing them. At the top level things are getting better although there is still a way to go, but lower down there is still, I think, a very long way to go.

  Q932  Chairman: Richard, do you concur with those conclusions, that we have a long way to go but we have made a good start?

  Dr Pike: There is some way to go. I guess I come here having been in the Royal Society of Chemistry for just three months. I have seen some government operations but I have also seen a lot of activity before that, so what I would like to suggest is this. There is a definite process in the way that scientific evidence is accumulated or acquired by a government, be it this Government or other governments, and the way in which it deals with that and disseminates the outcomes. My own experience, both in the UK and abroad, is that the first step in this process is that you have staff within a government department who have reached a basic minimum level of understanding of the science associated with the activity of that department. Therefore, while it can be a very good idea to have a chief scientist in a department, be it in the UK or elsewhere, what is crucial is that there is a training programme which means that all the staff of that department are aware of the key issues, the key aspects of science and the key numbers so that when matters come in, be they questions or issues that they observe in the outside world, even at the very basic level antennae go up, as it were, and there is a process by which issues are elevated.

  Q933  Chairman: I do not think we would disagree with that. The question I am asking is on the evidence which the Royal Society of Chemistry gave to this committee was "a problem concerning the nature and adequacy of the in-house expertise in government departments".

  Dr Pike: That is really what I am addressing.

  Q934  Chairman: You feel that is the case?

  Dr Pike: That is what I am addressing.

  Q935  Chairman: I wonder if I could turn to you, Dr Wallace. The Biosciences Federation told us that good policy-making in government depends on a "strong scientific culture within departments". What do you mean by that and do we have it?

  Dr Wallace: I do not think we have it as yet, like Peter said, at the lower levels. I think that policy staff need to be encouraged to maintain their awareness of current issues and there should be a programme in place where they continue to attend seminar series, et cetera. That would be our main point, that there is not really that scientific culture at the lower levels, although they may have very good Chief Scientific Advisers and Advisory Councils.

  Q936  Chairman: Why do you think that is?

  Dr Wallace: Again, it is because of the way that career progression is within Defra—I cannot comment on the other government departments but I do not know if there is any difference—in that the policy staff move around all the time. There is no staying in one position and being recognised for being good in that position.

  Q937  Dr Iddon: If you were the responsible person in a ministry setting up an advisory committee for the first time how would you ensure that you had the right balance on that committee?

  Professor Taylor: I would consult widely in the first instance. I would say, "Go out and get a lot of independent advice". Obviously, I would say, "Go to the Royal Society". I would say, "Go to all the learned societies, get your advice and form your own opinion from that". It is really important to get the right people and possibly international experts on Science Advisory Councils where possible. The net should be cast wide.

  Dr Cotgreave: I think it depends to some extent whether you mean an advisory council on a specific subject, such as the Advisory Council on the Release of Organisms into the Environment or something like that, in which case what you need on that are the best scientists specifically knowledgeable in that field. As Martin says, they might be anywhere in the world and you need to go to the Royal Society, the Biosciences Federation, the Royal Society of Chemistry, institutes, wherever they are, and make sure that you have, in the judgment of the scientific community that needs to respect this committee, the best people. If you are looking for a more general advisory board for a department then I think you probably need to look at different people. You need people who are in some sense generalists, people who can pick up different subjects, people who have contacts in a wide range, people like Dave King, in fact, who has to do this on a daily basis and is very good at it. It would depend on the nature of the committee you were setting up but if it was going to be a scientific advisory committee it must have the respect of the scientific community. The only way you would achieve that would be by getting really high quality scientists onto it.

  Q938  Dr Iddon: With either model do you think there is a place for either a lobby group or even a lay person to sit on one of those advisory committees?

  Dr Cotgreave: Yes, I think there is, as long as it is clear that that is what they are, a lobby group or a lay person and that is where their voice is coming from. I do not have a problem with people who have other opinions or who come from a different way of thinking. I do not want to gag anyone or stop them having their say, so yes, I think there is certainly room for that as long as everyone is clear that that is what they are and that their opinion will be informed in a different way from the opinions of scientists.

  Q939  Dr Iddon: Have you any other comments, Richard?

  Dr Pike: I think with these committees it can sometimes be very useful—and maybe we are alluding to it here—to have one or two people who have the wider picture. In other words, you can imagine that, if you are not careful, if you just have a lot of specialists focusing on their own areas, there may be some tunnel vision and you need one or two generalists, I think, to try to be the glue. The other very important point I would make is that the chairman is crucial and the conduct of the meetings is also crucial. There has to be, certainly in the early stages, the more open questions—the what, the why, the how, why is this consistent with that, why is that inconsistent with this. It is a combination of structure and process. Fundamentally you need to figure out where this committee meeting features in the overall process. What is the outcome down the road? How will recommendations be implemented? When a committee is set up the process has to be thought through all the way to final delivery.


 
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