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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