Select Committee on Science and Technology Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1057-1059)

PROFESSOR SIR GORDON CONWAY KCMG, PROFESSOR PAUL WILES AND PROFESSOR FRANK KELLY

7 JUNE 2006

  Q1057 Chairman: Could we very much welcome Professor Sir Gordon Conway, Chief Scientific Adviser, at the Department for International Development, Professor Frank Kelly, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Transport and Professor Paul Wiles, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Home Office. I would like to start questions with you, Professor Kelly. How often do you meet your secretary of state or the permanent secretary?

  Professor Kelly: I have had an hour and a half's meeting with the secretary of state in the time that he has been in the job so far, the current one. Looking back over the three years that I have been the Department's Chief Scientific Adviser I suppose I have seen the secretary of state in one role or another maybe every three weeks, something like that. I attend each of the board meetings once a month; I spend maybe three or four hours with the permanent secretary and the DGs and I probably meet the permanent secretary once a month outside of that.

  Q1058  Chairman: When Norman Glass came before us a couple of weeks ago, what he said to us was the old Civil Service phrase that eggheads and boffins should be on tap and not on top is very much alive and well. What I am trying to get at with all three of you really is how embedded are you actually in the policy making of your departments or are you there simple to give advice when it is called upon?

  Professor Kelly: I think that is a very interesting question. I can describe my own experience. I have been Chief Scientific Adviser for three years, 50%. So that is not a long time and you can make your own judgment about how much confidence to put in my experience. My experience was that at the beginning, the first six months or so, it was pretty important for me to be at the meetings in order to establish a relationship with the ministers. After that it was just a lot easier. The private office had got the idea that they should let me know this or that, I could contact them and so it became a lot easier after that first six months.

  Q1059  Chairman: You feel you are embedded into that system.

  Professor Kelly: There are always issues concerned with information, concerned with who knows what, but I did not feel in any sense excluded, no.


 
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