Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1060-1079)
PROFESSOR SIR
GORDON CONWAY
KCMG, PROFESSOR PAUL
WILES AND
PROFESSOR FRANK
KELLY
7 JUNE 2006
Q1060 Chairman: You feel you are
on top and not on tap.
Professor Kelly: I would not put
it either way round. It is a sort of working relationship and
sometimes it is going to be difficult and you hope to make it
easy lots of the time so that when it is difficult people carry
on with the relationship.
Q1061 Chairman: Paul, in terms of
your secretary of state and permanent secretary?
Professor Wiles: As far as the
permanent secretary is concerned, first of all I report direct
to the permanent secretary so I see him fairly regularly both
with bi-laterals to discuss work that is going on but also in
terms of my own performance. I see him quite regularly. I have
been in the Home Office now six and a half years so this is the
fourth secretary of state that I have worked for in that time
and it has varied from secretary of state to secretary of state.
I think the important thing for me is not so much how often I
see the secretary of state but am I happy that my colleagues in
the science and research group in the Home Office are at meetings
that the secretary of state is holding where they ought to be
there to give advice. Whether it is me there doing it or one of
my colleagues is of secondary interest to me as long as I am convinced
that the right person is there. The current secretary of state
I am sure you will not be surprised to learn I have not had an
opportunity to meet at all. He has had some other things to deal
with, but I look forward to meeting him for the first time. I
did meet Charles Clarke and I was working with him on a number
of projects before he unfortunately resigned.
Q1062 Chairman: Gordon, how often
do you meet the permanent secretary or the secretary of state?
Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I
formally report to the permanent secretary. I see him in one guise
or another I suppose once a week. I have a relationship with him
and the three director generals in the sense that people go in
and out of each other's offices and talk. I reckon I see the secretary
of state or the minister, Gareth Thomas, every week in one context
or another. I see the secretary of state on a formal basis for
a kind of review of what is going on every three months. That
is a set, formal kind of meeting with the secretary of state where
we go over things. Hardly a week goes by that we are not in a
group discussing a particular issue or problem with the ministers.
Q1063 Chairman: One of the points
of this inquiry is really looking at the Government's policy of
evidence based policy making. It seems to the Committee that fundamental
to that is having a chief scientific adviser who is at the heart
of policy making, who is the custodian of evidence based policy
making and we get the impression that the chief scientific advisers—certainly
the Home Office—are not at the heart of that policy making,
actually bringing evidence to bear in terms of policy. Is that
a fair comment?
Professor Wiles: No, I do not
think it is.
Q1064 Chairman: Do you feel excluded?
Professor Wiles: No, I do not
feel excluded. Can I explain my role in the Home Office and how
that relates to the different members of the science and research
group because I think that would answer your question? I am responsible
for all science, both physical and social science, to some extent
across the Home Office—I will explain the qualification
in a moment—and also for economic analysis, operational
research and national statistics. As far as the social science
is concerned and the national statistics are concerned those teams
are embedded in the four main business areas of the Home Office.
They are line managed by the senior policy person in those four
business areas but, very importantly, they have a dotted line
to me in terms of the quality of the work they do, in terms of
their recruitment, training, development, standards, promotion
and so on. We have a deliberate matrix relationship where I have
a link to all those teams but they are embedded in the policy
areas. It was for that reason I answered your initial question
the way I did. For example, as you can imagine, the secretary
of state recently has been spending some time looking at issues
in the National Offender Management Service—as he has in
all areas of the Home Office—and what I am concerned with
is that my Assistant Director in that area, Dr Chloe Chitty, is
at those meetings and she has been at those meetings. Whether
I am there as well is a secondary issue, as long as the right
person is there who is responsible for the research and statistics
in that area.
Q1065 Chairman: With the greatest
respect, Paul, there is a difference between being at a meeting
and having what you have to say actually listened to and acted
upon.
Professor Wiles: I can assure
you that what was being said was being listened to and has been
acted upon. I was not just saying they were at meetings for the
sake of it; I am saying that one of the reasons we embedded those
teams into those policy areas was precisely for the reason you
are trying to address which is: Are they influencing policy? The
answer is, yes, they are working directly alongside policy colleagues
as policy gets developed. That is why they are embedded.
Q1066 Chairman: Is that the case
with you, Gordon? Do you feel that, because that was not the case
within your Department?
Professor Sir Gordon Conway: We
have a policy department, a division within DFID that produces
papers and I get involved in the production of those papers and
then we have a development committee which is the central policy
making committee of DFID which meets every few weeks for a two
hour meeting. I take part in those at the table and I comment
on everything. I do not just comment on things that are narrowly
meant to be scientific because science gets into everything. We
had a discussion about corruption recently and I talked about
ways in which you can use technology to minimise corruption. It
comes out all the time.
Q1067 Chairman: I am grateful for
that. I wonder if I could just move on to you, Frank. In terms
of your relationship with Sir David King, the Government's Chief
Scientific Adviser, do you regard him as your boss or as your
advocate?
Professor Kelly: I think one aspect
of getting academics in from outside is that they are not very
used to having bosses. Maybe I should, but I have not and I hope
he does not mind.
Q1068 Chairman: Surely he runs all
the chief scientific advisers. Does he tell you what to do?
Professor Kelly: He has been a
great help; I have found him a great help over all sorts of aspects
of getting assistance here or there or with other departments.
Q1069 Chairman: Do you react to his
orders rather than orders from the secretaries of state?
Professor Kelly: I think one of
the features government has to get used to if it brings in independent
scientists from outside is that we are not used to that sort of
question; they do not think like that.
Q1070 Chairman: What about you, Gordon?
Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I
see the Chief Scientist probably every week or 10 days. I had
dinner with him last night. We meet informally and we meet formally.
He does not tell me what to do. He makes suggestions; he makes
strong and vigorous suggestions and I may agree with them or not
agree with them and that is how we work.
Q1071 Chairman: Is there a tension
there between what your secretary of state and the permanent secretary
want and what Sir David King wants as Chief Scientific Adviser?
Professor Sir Gordon Conway: There
may be tensions over emphasis.
Q1072 Chairman: Do you welcome that
tension?
Professor Sir Gordon Conway: Sure.
I think government should be about argument and dialogue and tension,
and we play a role in that in providing scientific evidence in
those debates.
Q1073 Chairman: Sir David is such
an advocate for having chief scientific advisers in every department.
The question really is, is that part of his empire or is your
real responsibility to your secretary of state?
Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I
do not even think he thinks of it as an empire. I think that is
a word you are using.
Q1074 Chairman: I am just using it
provocatively.
Professor Sir Gordon Conway: He
is Chair of the Chief Scientific Advisers Committee which we all
go to; he is Chair of the Global Science and Innovation Forum
which we tend to all go to. There is a range of other committees
and meetings that he chairs which we go to and we have lively
dialogues at those meetings. I think that is the way it should
be and that is the way it goes.
Q1075 Chairman: Paul, how do you
feel?
Professor Wiles: Two things, first
of all to repeat what my two colleagues have said as it were but
also two other things. Sir David does have regular meetings with
my permanent secretary and I think he does with other permanent
secretaries as well. He is not directly managing the science in
the Home Office; I am accountable through the permanent secretary
to the home secretary, but that does not mean to say that he has
no routes to exercise some influence both via me and directly
himself to the permanent secretary. There are mechanisms for that.
The other thing I would add is that Sir David is also the Head
of Profession for Science and of course through that route (and
you have been to some extent exploring that in relation to economics)
he also exercises influence across Whitehall and it is quite right
that he should do so.
Q1076 Bob Spink: We have already
established that the ethos, structure, culture and working methods
of civil services are different from academia and different from
the real world, if I can put it non-pejoratively. Do you think
it is always right to have the DCSAs as an external appointment,
someone from outwith the Civil Service or do you think sometimes
the DCSAs might come from within? Frank, you deal with random
processes at Cambridge so perhaps you are the right man to start
with.
Professor Kelly: I can speak from
my experience in Transport but I am not sure how far it generalises.
I feel that some of the big wins from having a chief scientific
adviser in the department is the challenge function and the opening
up of the relationships between science and technology within
the department and in the science base as a whole. I think that
if you come from outside of government you perhaps find that a
little bit easier because you have strong connections with that
science base outside government and then you can use your position
within government and the very effective and strong support you
get from the Civil Service in the role. You can then make that
bridge more easily. I think that is where there is a big win from
transparency, from peer review, from engaging the broader science
base with the scientists and technologists within the departments.
For that reason I have found it is certainly helpful in my position
in Transport to have come from outside.
Q1077 Chairman: Gordon?
Professor Sir Gordon Conway: Yes,
I think that is right. I think it does help having people from
outside, particularly senior people from outside. You have three
professors sat here; we all spend some part of our time in an
institution—I spend a day a week at Imperial College—and
it helps. When we speak it carries a bit of weight. I was recently
evaluated on my performance and one of the members of staff said,
"He did not turn out to be as intimidating as I thought he
might be"; I think I would like to be a bit more intimidating.
If you come from an academic institution in this country and you
have established a reputation there you carry with it a weight
that goes behind the evidence you are trying to get across.
Q1078 Bob Spink: Do you find there
is a difference by which civil servants and politicians/ministers
actually are proactive or reactive in dealing with you? Do some
of them come to you seeking help and advice and involving you
early and with other people do you have to go in there ferreting
around trying to encourage staff? Do you find there is that difference?
Professor Wiles: Yes, there is
that difference. I think probably all three of us have had a common
experience here—Frank has already alluded to it earlier
on—in that you have to learn how to do that subtly. Where
there are situations where there are issues being discussed or
decisions being made or plans being implemented where you feel
there has not been sufficient notice taken of the scientific advice
or there has not been proper scientific advice then we have an
obligation to get in there and change that situation.
Q1079 Bob Spink: Do you think that
if you were there full time instead of part time . . .
Professor Wiles: I am there full
time.
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