CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1307-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY committee

 

RESEARCH COUNCIL INSTITUTES

 

WEDNESDAY 28 JUNE 2006

PROFESSOR JULIA GOODFELLOW CBE, PROFESOR COLIN BLAKEMORE and PROFESSOR ALAN THORPE

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 112

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

 

1. This is a corrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.

 

2. The transcript is an approved formal record of these proceedings. It will be printed in due course.

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Science and Technology Committee

on Wednesday 28 June 2006

Members present

Mr Phil Willis, in the Chair

Adam Afriyie

Mr Robert Flello

Dr Evan Harris

Dr Brian Iddon

Margaret Moran

Mr Brooks Newmark

Dr Desmond Turner

________________

Witnesses: Professor Julia Goodfellow CBE, Chief Executive, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Professor Colin Blakemore, Chief Executive, Medical Research Council and Professor Alan Thorpe, Chief Executive, Natural Environment Research Council, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Good morning everyone and could I particularly welcome our three witnesses this morning, Professor Julia Goodfellow (we hope that you might be the chair of the panel if, in fact, it needs chairing this morning in order to feed out the questions); Professor Colin Blakemore, welcome again, Colin, to the Select Committee; Professor Alan Thorpe, the Chief Executive of the National Environment Research Council, welcome to you again, Alan. Can I say that this is the second of what are called thematic reviews so far as the Research Councils are concerned. The Committee made the decision that rather than looking at Research Councils as individual entities we would try to pick themes which in fact enable us to look right across the Research Council. The first was knowledge transfer and this one is really quite a key inquiry looking at the Research Council Institutes. It arose not because I think the Committee should be interfering in the way in which the Research Councils actually manage the institutes; that is not the job of this Committee. The job of this Committee is in fact to try to protect strategic science and particularly long term strategic science. The question we are asking is: are the Institutes the best way of achieving that? Are they the siren calls - if they are siren calls - that the work should all go back into universities? Should they be heeded? Have we got it right? That is the background to this rather than trying to pre-judge whether an institute should close or whether it should remain open. I wonder if I could start by saying that the Quinquennial Review in 2001 concluded that there were nine good reasons why we should have Research Council Institutes. What are the reasons you would put forward briefly, Julia, for retaining Research Council Institutes in your particular area?

Professor Goodfellow: I think many of the reasons you said and we would say - I think we said in our submission - that our institutes meet some (or in some cases all) of those criteria, certainly the long term, the sort of areas in fact that universities cannot or do not wish to do. We would say that plant science and crop science, although we have a few good science departments in universities, they are not a large base, there are not a lot of undergraduates wanting to do plant and crop science in the universities and therefore the universities really are the main reservoir of expertise in the UK.

Q2 Chairman: Colin, in addition to the Quinquennial Review recommendations or reasons for keeping institutes, is there anything else you would put into that pot or should we take that as read?

Professor Blakemore: I think if you are looking for a single word to sum up the reason for having institutes then it is "strategy". Research Councils of course develop their own strategies for supporting an area of science and institutes can play a critical role in delivering that strategy, particularly in providing high-quality environments with sustained investment and a critical mass to serve a strategic need.

Q3 Chairman: Alan?

Professor Thorpe: I do not think I have anything to add to that. For us all nine[1] are touchstones of why we have institutes to deliver environmental science.

Q4 Chairman: In that case could I ask you whether in fact the mission for the institute should be at the behest of the Research Councils or the Government?

Professor Thorpe: I think the mission is for the Research Councils and, as Colin says, it is certainly true in our case as well that we see our institutes as a major player in delivering our science strategy so the council very much regards the institutes as a vital bit of that and therefore wants to have a strong say in the decision making process on how they go forward.

Q5 Chairman: Yours or the Government's, Julia?

Professor Goodfellow: Definitely the Research Council, but as you will be aware the BBSRC institutes are very different from the MRC institutes. They are companies limited by guarantee with charitable status so they have their own non-executive directors and trustees of the charity. They also have multi-funders so as well as being within the remit of BBSRC they have to be aware of other funders' needs as well. They are even further away from government, if you like, than the ones that are totally within a Research Council.

Q6 Chairman: Your direction or the Government's, Colin?

Professor Blakemore: MRC institutes are a little different in that they are wholly owned by the council so the needs are entirely specified by the council. As with all MRC scientific priorities consideration is of course given to policy needs and one role that institutes can play - and some of ours do - is to provide the potential to respond to those needs. I give a particular example; the Toxicology Unit in Leicester. There is certainly a national need to have a centre of excellence in toxicology, but it is unlikely that any university could provide the critical mass to sustain that and we feel there is a responsibility to do so in the case of a particular national need.

Q7 Chairman: I am just trying to ascertain at this moment in time to what extent does the Government influence the research direction of the institutes or whether, in fact, the Research Council could actually ignore an instruction or a request from government if you did not feel it was appropriate.

Professor Goodfellow: I think our Councils make the final decisions on what they want to fund, so it is a council decision, but it would not be sensible for the institutes not to think about what we want and what other funders like Defra or the EU want because they are getting funds from a lot of places. Although our institutes come out with their own five year strategies which are agreed by their governing board, reflected in that is their knowledge of what some government departments - Department of Health or Defra - might want from them.

Q8 Dr Turner: I would like to ask a broad, almost cultural question about the place of research institutes in British science and innovation. I think to a certain extent the two go together and if you look back to the halcyon days of British science after the war there were more research institutes and they were much more prominent and played a much more central role. If you look at Germany you have the Max Planck and the Fraunhofer and the Helmholtz networks which do enormous amounts of work. America has the NIH which is a huge institution. All these things - certainly in the American and German examples - are productive and they go with a successful innovation economy as well which is where we are weak. What is your view about the true place that research institutes put and should have in British science and the economy?

Professor Blakemore: It is interesting that you choose the examples of Germany; there is France as well, and the United States. Although the investment of NIH is enormous it is actually a much smaller fraction of the total NIH expenditure than the MRC's investments in its intra-mural programmes. We spend about 50 per cent of our money on institutes and units; NIH about 10 per cent. The size is simply due to the fact that the overall budget of NIH is so enormous. I think one could say that in France and Germany the quality and scale of science in the university sector has not developed as rapidly as it has in this country. One could argue that the need to sustain an investment in high-quality science through institutes has been higher there. You are quite right, after the war the best science in this country was certainly delivered through Research Councils Institutes but what we have seen is a gradual increase in the strength and power of universities and the strategic thinking of universities. There are many areas now where the universities are perfectly capable of delivering what institutes and units used to do.

Professor Thorpe: The NERC certainly recognise this because we have introduced in relatively recent years - maybe five to eight years - what we call collaborative centres which are actually places where there are university staff working alongside NERC staff in terms of delivering a centre mission. We again see a kind of sliding scale between the collaboration that needs to happen between our institutes and the university sector.

Dr Turner: It is, however, a sad fact of life - as has been demonstrated to this Committee - that university departments are at the risk of campus politics so there is a sustainability issue surrounding university departments and work going in them whereas research institutes by their very nature should be more sustainable and longer term.

Q9 Chairman: We will actually come onto that; there is a whole section that we are going to do on the relationship with universities. Could I just finish this first section which is really about trying to ascertain the influence of government in terms of research institute funds? That is really what I am trying to get at. You have clearly stated, all three of you, that in fact it is your agenda but you will respond if there is a government imperative. Do you have capacity to respond like that?

Professor Blakemore: Again I must emphasise the difference between MRC institutes and those of the other Councils in that there is not such a direct investment from government departments in our institutes. I think that the response would be a matter of negotiation between government departments, the MRC council and the institute director, and it might be necessary in some cases to reinforce, for instance, the funding of an institute to commission research directly with initial money. To give an example, the Institute of Hearing Research at Nottingham which sustains a wide range of research is determined by the MRC itself has taken on a major project over the last several years to develop neo-natal hearing screening based on a discovery made by MRC scientists in London. That work was done by Dr Adrian Davies who has now moved from the Institute to Manchester. That work was supported by major investment into the Institute of Hearing Research by the Department of Health. The Institute was very happy to accommodate that work; it fitted very well with the strategic interests of the Institute as a whole and was accommodated there with additional funding from the Department of Health.

Professor Goodfellow: Our institutes get core grants which go to the director so the director can direct. Obviously he cannot move money around immediately but in response perhaps to a Defra call for a certain area he could certainly look - if he had extra money coming in from that area - to move perhaps technical staff around, make facilities available and maintain the facilities and things like that. I think institute directors do have some flexibility to do that.

Q10 Chairman: Both of you have mentioned that if there were an additional requirement from government you would expect government to fund that. Do you feel that government should be funding more of its own research or do you think the balance is right?

Professor Goodfellow: I think you will see from our figures that Defra's funding in the whole area of sustainable agriculture and land use is decreasing; it has also been decreasing a little bit in the animal health area. That is causing major problems for us but I am more worried about the longer term problems that we are losing the skills base and obviously infrastructure if they continue not to fund these areas.

Q11 Chairman: That brings me, Alan, to a crucial question that if, in fact, the resources from other government departments coming into the institutes are going down, does that imply it will really put them at risk?

Professor Thorpe: It is certainly a major factor. As you know, with our Centre for Ecology and Hydrology one of the factors in determining our plan for sustainability was to look at the recent history of its commissioned research income. As Julia has suggested, and it is certainly true for CEH as well, that income has been declining in recent years, not in that case particularly catastrophically but nevertheless that is the trend. So we have to plan the sustainability in the light of that. I think the other thing I would add is that we see an important role for us to discuss with government departments such as Defra in terms of their long term thinking on strategy as we develop our science strategy. I am increasingly trying to maintain and enhance dialogue in terms of the forward look of what might be needed in the near future. We know there is a lot of the legislation, for example, that is coming from Europe et cetera in the environmental sciences and that is something we need to be ready for. I would like to see us having a good collaborative way forward in terms of devising those strategies.

Q12 Chairman: We are going to come back to this a little later; I do not want to steal the thunder of my colleagues. Could we move on because we are conscious, Colin, that you have to go at half past ten.

Professor Blakemore: I can actually stay until quarter to eleven; it is such a pleasure to be here again.

Q13 Dr Turner: I am glad you are glad to be here, Colin. We did have an encounter during 2005 over the question of the future of Mill Hill. Can you tell us what has happened since then? What progress has been made?

Professor Blakemore: Considerable progress. I think we are on track to achieve what we intended to, which is to create Europe's most exciting major institute for translational medical research in central London in association with University College. The council, following the plans that were outlined in your inquiry a year and half ago, has assessed bids, chosen University College as the preferred partner, purchased the site for the new institute which is very close to University College Hospital. We are in the process of appointing a new director to replace Sir John Skehel on his retirement in September this year. We have secured in principle the funding for the project through major contributions from the MRC, University College and the Large Facilities Fund; we are now entering the Gateway Process in the hope of obtaining OSI and Treasury approval for the release of the funds from the Large Facilities Capital Fund so the project can go ahead.

Q14 Dr Turner: Your original bid to the Large Facilities Capital Fund was unsuccessful. What have you been able to do to correct the situation since then?

Professor Blakemore: The bid was successful. The bid was ranked equal first by all the chief executives in RCUK. I am not quite sure where you obtained that information from. The bid was successful and the funding has, in principle, been approved. The funding has been profiled in the commitments of the Large Facilities Capital Fund to draw that funding down to have the secure commitment we need to pass through the Gateway Process.

Q15 Dr Turner: What sorts of levels of investment are actually involved? How much of this is the cost of relocation?

Professor Blakemore: The current estimate for the project is £320 million of which the MRC itself has already committed nearly £140 million (including the estimated value of the Mill Hill site), University College I think about £45 million and the rest in the working plans will come from the Large Facilities Capital Fund. There are also possibilities - in fact high probabilities - of contributions from other sources. For instance, GSK made an unsolicited donation of a million pounds as a gesture of its support for the vision. That will cover the estimated costs of the entire new building, more than 40 thousand square metres of laboratories and facilities.

Q16 Dr Turner: Will you move lock, stock and barrel from Mill Hill.

Professor Blakemore: Yes, that is the plan.

Q17 Dr Iddon: All of you have been involved in re-structuring with respect to your research institutes. I think, Colin, one of the driving forces - if not the driving force in your case - was the translational research argument. Perhaps Julia now could tell us what were the driving force in your respective organisations.

Professor Goodfellow: We have done several although perhaps not on the scale of the Mill Hill one. Certainly Long Ashton which was linked with Rothamsted Research)[2] - which was the original apple and pear association research place a hundred years old - we decided in the end that we could not have the institute on two sites. We closed Long Ashton down. The majority of staff moved to Rothamsted in Harpenden and we were able to put in a brand new state of the art lab which you are welcome to visit if you have not done already. I think all the staff that wanted to move did move into that new build. We then felt we could really focus our investment on one site. We withdrew funding from the Silsoe Research Institute a couple of years ago and it formally closed in March this year. The area of science was not high priority for us or the UK; it was agricultural engineering and there is not really any agricultural engineering in the UK and the quality of the science had been assessed two or three times over an eight year period and was not at the level we were happy with.

Q18 Dr Iddon: Can I just follow that up and ask you who triggers these re-organisations? Is it your board or does it come from the researchers themselves who feel they are in inadequate premises or what? Or is there a bit of everything?

Professor Goodfellow: It normally comes from our board looking at the broad at the picture, trying to get the balance between what we are doing in institutes and what we are doing in universities then looking at the institutes and asking how we can make them fit for purpose. Are we spending our money too thinly? Are we getting the quality of science we want? We do this on a regular basis. It normally comes out of long term planning.

Q19 Dr Iddon: Alan?

Professor Thorpe: With our Centre for Ecology and Hydrology there are three driving forces for that. The first one was as a result of our assessments roughly every five years of the future science programme of each of our centres. We assess those via peer review et cetera for the science quality and also the strategic fit to priority. That was a major one of the three. The second one was to try to focus CEH to bring teams together. Currently it is on nine sites and costing substantial amounts in infrastructure costs to maintain those sites. In order to bring scientists together the new plans are for four sites. The third reason, as we have already commented on, the recent trends of external income which for CEH amounts overall to about 40 per cent of its total income. It was not one of those three, it was all three together, very much driven by our council and driven by the agenda of putting CEH into a long term sustainable position; it is very much the sustainability agenda.

Q20 Dr Iddon: During these re-organisations that you have all been involved in have any of you learned anything about the time for consultation versus the period of uncertainty that this brings?

Professor Goodfellow: You can never win. If you tell people early on, which you want to do, then you give them a much bigger time for uncertainty because they perfectly reasonably say, "What is going to happen to me?" If you keep it secret for a while then of course you are rightly accused of not putting it in the public domain.

Q21 Dr Iddon: Which do you favour?

Professor Goodfellow: I think we are going to much more open consultation rather than hiding it away. We are going much more towards that but there is a real burden on staff who may for a year or two years not know what their fate is and you have to recognise and put support in for that.

Professor Thorpe: It was certainly the case with CEH that much of this was in the public domain so there has been quite a protracted period of uncertainty for staff which I regret but I think, particularly with CEH, this is such a major change that we need to get this right. I feel that to have rushed it would have been the wrong thing to do but I think it is tough because of the period of uncertainty.

Q22 Dr Harris: It is not a question of rushing, is it? If you have a process that is going on unbeknown to the staff concerned then although you say if they know about that going on they have more uncertainty, I think most people would rather have the knowledge and decide how uncertain and how miserable and worried they want to be than to find out that this had gone on behind their backs without any ability to question or possibly even improve the basis upon which the decision was being made. I think the arguments for not moving in the direction that Julia just mentioned are poor, are they not?

Professor Thorpe: I would say so.

Professor Goodfellow: I must admit, when I went to see staff and spoke to them some of them said, "I almost do not mind what decision you make, I want you to make it". There are people who really do suffer through that uncertainty and really want a decision to be made quickly even though you are taking longer to try to make it right for a bigger group.

Q23 Dr Harris: I think the question we take is not what the overall timescale of the decision is, whether people should be aware that a review is going on from the outset. I am not arguing that there should be a lengthening of the process; it should be more transparent because to save their poor souls from uncertainty by keeping half of the timetable secret is a little paternalistic.

Professor Goodfellow: I agree.

Q24 Chairman: Colin, can you respond to Brian's point?

Professor Blakemore: I recognise the problems that are generated by uncertainty and delays in the decision-making process. Surely the key to success is mutual trust and confidence in the nature of the process and that must involve engagement between the council and the staff of the institute at the earliest possible stage. That engagement must be on the basis of the recognition of the nature of the process. If I could refer to NIMR one thing that has been difficult to achieve is recognition that fundamentally the decision-making has to be in the hands of the council during the radical re-organisation of an institute. It is not in the end for institute staff to make decisions about the future. Of course they must be completely involved; they must be confident in the quality of the decision-making and the advice that is feeding into that, but they should not actually run the process themselves.

Q25 Dr Iddon: Everybody recognises of course that Research Councils are run by our top scientists but that does not mean to say that they are all good managers. Do you feel that you have the management structures in place to manage these rather considerable re-organisations? If not, do you appoint consultants? Do you feel that the Office of Science and Innovation could play a role in these re-organisations (maybe they do)?

Professor Blakemore: It depends at what level you think expertise is needed. In relation to the expertise in making the fundamental strategic and scientific decisions about the future of an institute I think the Research Councils have adequate access to that knowledge and those skills, not only through its own boards and advisers internally but external advisers too. Certainly in the case of institute reviews - quinquennial reviews, strategic reviews and the kind of reviews that lead to re-organisation - we involve external experts. To manage the project of re-organisation - a major project such as that of NIMR - of course we have to engage external expertise and we are using consultants to draw the details of the project plan in that case.

Professor Goodfellow: I agree with Colin that in terms of making the decision and realising how much effort is going into the implementation, in the Research Councils - I think over the years with the re-organisation of the BBSRC previously, AFRC and previously ARC, with institutes in the agricultural areas - there is quite a lot of knowledge on consolidation as that whole area of agricultural research has declined in the UK. We also have quite strong institute administrations. There is normally a senior person there; but that does not mean we do not have to bring in a consultant to handle a specific area but they are not normally making decisions; they are bringing information together, handling the consultation for example.

Professor Thorpe: I would pick up on the directors' roles and skills which you mentioned about management. I think in our case the recruitment of the directors of our big institutes is definitely on the grounds that they are managing a big operation. The British Antarctic Survey for example is a £40 million a year major logistics exercise and we need not only scientific credibility and leadership from our directors but also some serious management skills. We would and have recruited for those skills. You are looking for some special individuals, I agree with that. We certainly look for management skills in recruitment. I would also say that in NERC we have an executive board which is composed of myself and quite a large number of the major institute directors which meets very regularly to have an extended management of NERC as a whole so there is a lot of sharing of practice between our institutes in terms of management.

Q26 Dr Iddon: How much does increasing the bringing in of grants to these institutes from the Research Councils drive this re-organisation? Is it a major player?

Professor Blakemore: If I could answer for MRC, in general institutes do not apply for grant support through the normal extramural process from the MRC itself. They can be eligible to apply for special calls, for instance our recent call for work in the area of pandemic potential NIMR which has a great strength in that area certainly made bids for funding. Members of staff in our institutes can apply and are encouraged to apply for funding elsewhere if it is within their capacity to take on additional work. Through a very valuable agreement between BBSRC, MRC, Wellcome Trust, the British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK we have now agreed that institute staff, supported by those organisations, can be eligible to apply for research support from any of the other funders.

Q27 Dr Iddon: Is that a major consideration, Julia, or not really?

Professor Goodfellow: No, it is not a major consideration. We do run a different system in that before I started a decision was made by council to take some of the money away from the institutes and put it into the responsive mode competitive pot and they have to compete along with the universities. They are capped; there is a limit on how much the institutes can apply for each year but it does enable them to tension themselves against the universities. I would say it can help them to see where their science is in relation to the university base but it is not a major driver in any re-organisation. Funding from other areas like Defra which historically has put a lot of money in is a driver, but not the responsive mode from the Research Councils and again I welcome the agreement we have with MRC and Wellcome in our reciprocal funding mechanisms.

Professor Thorpe: We have a similar situation to the BBSRC except we do not have a cap. Some of our institutes are rather successful at bidding for other NERC grants and funding. It becomes a relevant part of their commissioned research portfolio in some cases. We have quite a mixture in terms of the proportion that that accounts for in institutes. It is not part of the specific drivers for restructuring; it is part of the general equation of their financial sustainability. They have to be successful in that component, in winning that commissioned research income. As I say, a number of them are very successful at it.

Q28 Chairman: Just before we leave this question can I ask whether in fact the OSI has a strategic involvement in a restructuring? Does it offer you additional capacity or do you just basically get on with it?

Professor Goodfellow: We get on with it.

Q29 Chairman: Is that by choice or would you like them to have more?

Professor Goodfellow: More money for science would always be welcome.

Q30 Chairman: But you do not see them as a sort of great re-organisational expertise.

Professor Blakemore: No.

Q31 Mr Newmark: Lord Sainsbury has told us that RCIs may be disadvantaged because they are too specialised. Could you tell us what comments you have on this?

Professor Blakemore: The balance between specialisation and focus of research so as to generate the internationally competitive quality in a narrow area and the desire to produce an inter-disciplinary environment for wide ranging research and training is a tension with intramural programmes. It is not simply a matter of size. One might argue that large institutes are more likely to have the capacity for inter-disciplinary research; that is certainly true in the case of MRC's three institutes (LMB, Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Cambridge; NIMR and the Clinical Sciences Centre). However, even in some of the smaller institutes it is possible to create inter-disciplinary environments. There is the example of the Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit in Oxford which, although it one of the smallest - perhaps the smallest - MRC unit has work in biophysics, in pharmacology and molecular biology, in anatomy and computing all within a single institute. I think one has to question whether even very large isolated research institutes can continue to provide sufficient inter-disciplinarity into the future because the demands of the biological sciences in terms of interaction with other scientific disciplines is growing all the time. It is that argument that has driven MRC strategic thinking - and I think it is shared by the other Councils - that where possible intramural support ought to be embedded in a university environment, giving several advantages, one of which is the possibility to extend the range of inter-disciplinary collaboration. The other great advantage is that is brings the special qualities and strengths of the intramural programme to support work in the universities; special facilities, skills and training environments if embedded in the university are accessible to that university more easily than if the institute is isolated.

Q32 Dr Harris: That means that no standalone institute basically can be sure that it is going to stay that way. That is a generaliseable point; none of them are safe.

Professor Blakemore: It depends what you mean by safe. If you think that embedding in a university environment is unsafe I am the wrong person to ask; you should be asking the directors of units that are in that position. Many of them would say that they gain a great deal.

Q33 Dr Harris: No standalone institute can be confident that it will remain in its current state and will not be embedded in a university if the argument you have just made is as strong as you say it is.

Professor Blakemore: As far as MRC is concerned that is the case. Why I mentioned the desire to increase translational work being the principal driver for the move of NIMR, in addition it was the wish to place NIMR in an environment where it could increase its inter-disciplinary range of interactions, particularly the physical sciences, mathematics and so on. When that move is complete virtually every MRC unit will be so embedded. We do have units on the Harwell Campus but they are closely associated with Oxford.

Q34 Mr Newmark: There is a belief that more multi-disciplinary research takes place in RCIs than universities but it sounds to me like your answer to the last question is that that is not necessarily the case.

Professor Blakemore: I think that is right; it is not necessarily the case. Large institutes with 500 or more staff - that is true for three of the MRC institutes as I said - certainly are in a stronger position to provide inter-disciplinary interactions in-house as it were.

Q35 Mr Newmark: Inter- or multi- or both?

Professor Blakemore: Both.

Q36 Mr Newmark: Those are two different things.

Professor Blakemore: I would be grateful if you would explain the subtleties of the difference. Inter-disciplinary to me means interaction between several different disciplines; multi-disciplinary simply means have those available in a single place. It is easy to say that universities must be capable of providing inter-disciplinary interaction because they are by definition multi-disciplinary. It does not always happen; it depends very much on the structure of the university, on the ease with which researchers can communicate with their colleagues. Even the geography of university campuses can often be a deterrent to a disciplinary interaction. Simply having more disciplines on one campus or in one university does not guarantee those interactions.

Q37 Mr Newmark: How can you best promote multi-disciplinary research?

Professor Blakemore: I think by the combination of providing the resources where necessary to the scientific mission of the institute in-house, within the institute or unit.

Q38 Mr Newmark: That sounds to me like it is a top-down approach rather than trying to create a culture of a multi-disciplinary approach to this whole issue.

Professor Blakemore: Scientists will always seek the collaboration that they need to pursue their scientific ideas. The vast majority of scientists working in MRC institutes and units have an extensive network of collaborations with colleagues not only in this country but overseas.

Professor Goodfellow: I think the institutes, because there is usually a strategic objective for them, can bring any discipline they want to bear, and they can appoint what staff they want unlike a university department where if you are in a specific discipline you need to be able to teach that discipline. On the other hand, universities are changing and have changed a lot already. We have, for instance, put in more money in biology to specifically bring maths and engineers in with the biologists within the university to make sure that these inter-disciplinary interactions go forward, and that is together with EPSRC.

Q39 Mr Newmark: Are there many social scientists getting involved?

Professor Goodfellow: In some areas yes. Rural economy and land use is a specific initiative after the Spending Review 2002 I think and that was a joint process with NERC, BBSRC and the Economic and Social Research Councils specifically bringing those communities together.

Professor Thorpe: In the case of NERC I would say that we have a mixture and we would defend this. Some of our institutes are embedded in universities; some are standalone. I think we may be a little different in that I think all our institutes have actually quite a mixture of disciplines because of their mission and strategic nature of environmental science, so nearly all of them will have physicists, chemists, biologists, mathematicians within each institute. I think they are actually hotbeds of multi-disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity. As Colin says, to deliver their mission they need to be so. I would not go quite as far as Colin in that we feel that where it is appropriate we are happy to embed within a university but we also think that some of our standalone institutes, because they have in-house the disciplines they need, are definitely leaders in that.

Q40 Mr Newmark: Are there any resource implications to what you have just said or not? Given the amount of resources available is it better to have them embedded in universities because of greater benefit of resources?

Professor Thorpe: I would say that the facilities that institutes provide for the university sector, which is an important aspect, they provide to all universities that can use those facilities. Although there may be a special relationship with their local university, for example our Antarctic facilities are used by many UK university groups not just local to Cambridge.

Q41 Dr Turner: Research institutes have a value and give a service to the whole wider research community as well as just to their specific area particularly in providing support facilities and maintaining databases and this kind of thing. A real example of that is the Sanger Institute. Clearly this is very important to the wider sciences community. What measures do you take to ensure that when you are shifting the pieces around you maintain these important facilities?

Professor Thorpe: In the case of environmental science this is a critical factor because one of the major roles of our institutes is long term monitoring of environmental change. For example, in our CEH restructuring it was the number one issue for us to be able to maintain the integrity of long term records that are used about environmental change. We spend a significant amount of funding on data centres. For example NERC has seven or eight designated data centres in specific areas particularly to deal with the issue that you are referring to. In terms of our mission this is a really critical factor.

Q42 Dr Turner: Do you think the Research Councils are the best place to carry out research that is done in response to government policy?

Professor Blakemore: I think it is horses for courses. If the question that is being asked requires the expertise which is present in an institute and only in an institute or access to facilities or sources of data or to populations that are available only to an institute then the answer is obvious. It is certainly - potentially anyway - easier to imagine focussing a request for a policy driven need within the institute system because it is more easily accessible, questions can be asked directly, the details of the facilities and staff available are more directly known to the Research Council than for its wide investment in the university sector. It simply depends on what the question is and what expertise or facilities are needed to answer it.

Q43 Dr Turner: They do have an important role then.

Professor Blakemore: I think they do and actually one of the areas of discussion and consultation we are now carrying out in the context of the proposals for a single fund for health research is around the issue of how the intramural programme might be more responsive to policy needs and questions within the health service.

Professor Goodfellow: I agree with that.

Q44 Adam Afriyie: There is competition between universities and research institutes. The MRC aside, the evidence we have received seems to indicate that in some areas universities carry out better research than the Research Council institutes. Alan and Julia, do you think that is a fair statement?

Professor Goodfellow: No. I think if you look at the areas of animal health and welfare and sustainable agriculture and land use which are the predominant areas that our institutes do, they are areas in which universities are not the major player. The institutes tend to be the major players in these areas. We do review the quality of the science there and we have just, for instance, reviewed the Institute for Animal Health and they have got absolutely excellent scores for the science that they do this year, as they did four years ago in line with that which would happen in a university. We have also got this tension when it comes to grant income as well; we can measure how well they do. I think at the BBSRC we only have one institute that is really doing cell biology when the majority of cell biology is out in the university sector or in MRC institutes. There that is actually very, very high quality but it is very small, a drop in the ocean of the cell biology that is done in the UK.

Q45 Adam Afriyie: We have been to the British Geological Survey and we are very impressed with the on-going monitoring that goes on. Alan, do you think that my previous statement was a fair statement?

Professor Thorpe: I think I would distinguish between the two parts of the institute's role. One I would classify as the capability to do research so that the long term monitoring, the data sets, the infrastructure of facilities and I think we look to our institutes to be absolutely cutting edge at that in providing that. I suspect it would be rather difficult for universities to do as well by the nature of the structure. The individual research programmes we certainly test for quality in our research institutes by their reviews every five years both in terms of what they have produced but also in terms of their forward programme by them going through the same peer review system that university research grants go through and, as we have said also, in many cases for their commissioned research income which BGS is particularly successful with. Then you have a direct measure of scientific quality because they are competing with universities on some occasions. I think the strengths reside where they reside and I would like to think we certainly drive to get our institutes to be the highest quality in their fields, but universities are also strong in other fields as well.

Q46 Adam Afriyie: Alan has mentioned peer group review and five year reviews. Does the same apply to the BBSRC?

Professor Goodfellow: Absolutely. We have been doing four-yearly reviews - I do not know whether that is better or worse - for many, many years and we are about to move to five years; the next one will be in five years. We do that and we have peer review panels and we get international referees; the panels visit the institutes for three or four days; we also look at knowledge transfer and innovation; we look at training and we have looked for the first time this year at Science in Society, what they are doing on public dialogue. So we do a complete review. We also look at quality in two ways. We recognise that papers in Nature and Science may not be what other policy funders want. If you look at work on the agricultural side they actually may want a bit of paper that can go out to a farmer and that might be the right output so you have to look at quality fit for purpose. We actually gave them two scores this year, we gave them the score for the BBSRC science on the same rating as we would for any university coming in. We also gave them ratings on their knowledge transfer, on the output for other stakeholders and was that what they wanted? Was it fit for purpose, better than they thought it was going to be or less than expected? This is all in the public domain.

Q47 Adam Afriyie: I think we have to face the fact that there is definitely competition between universities and Research Council Institutes in some areas. If a university begins to conduct research in an area which a Research Council Institute is already conducting a research in competition will arise. What is the general policy? Will the RCI withdraw from that area or will they compete more vigorously? How do you resolve that sort of conflict?

Professor Thorpe: In our case it would be increasingly competitive I would say. As part of the CEH restructuring we have actually provided, associated with that, a £2 million a year funding initiative which is open to universities and CEH to bid into. Increasingly we see this as collaborative research between the institutes and the universities but clearly there will be more proposals than we can fund so there will be a competitive element as well. I think it is managing the balance between competition on quality and also driving the collaboration agenda which I think is very important for our institutes and the university sector. I want to see them collaborating together to deliver the outcomes we want.

Professor Goodfellow: I would certainly agree about the collaboration. We have just removed the cap for the institutes when they come in for competitive funding with universities. As long as there is a university partner with them then it will not be part of their limit under their cap; this is to encourage that sort of collaboration. If you look at our institutes like John Innes I would say they are pre-eminent in plant science in the UK. They are, together with a couple of others, leading the UK in plant science. If an institute was in an area and we reviewed it in four years' time and it was not up to the university sector then there would certainly be strong recommendations to the director to consider what was going to happen to that area.

Q48 Adam Afriyie: Colin, when you are making those funding decisions between a university bid and a Research Council Institute bid, clearly in MRC most of your bodies are pre-eminent in their area and there is very little research carried on in those areas in the universities, but when you are looking at these competitive bids do you bear in mind the effect or impact the decision may have if you award a bid to a university research department rather than one of the bodies that you control?

Professor Blakemore: The comparison is not quite as direct as you portray it. Can I say that it is not quite correct to say that the research which is representative of MRC institutes is not representative of the universities; there is excellent work in all the areas of science that are covered by institutes also in universities. It is simply the concentration of critical mass in the institutes which distinguishes them from the university sector. We, like NERC and BBSRC, have tried to devise mechanisms for tensioning the bids from institutes and the bids from universities for grants directly so that it is a transparent process of comparing quality. When proposals come to boards for renewal, the quinquennial review of institutes or units, their quality is expressing precisely the same terms, the same ranking mechanisms, peer review and so on as the grant applications that the same board is looking at in the same session. I think this transparency is very important to convince the university sector that continuing investment in institutes is worthwhile, the quality of the science is exceptionally high and therefore in the long run it is in their interests that that investment should be continued.

Q49 Adam Afriyie: What is the general difference between the research carried out in the Research Council Institutes and the research carried out in universities? In your own areas can you define a key difference between those types of research?

Professor Blakemore: I do not think there is a key difference; there are a variety of usually quantitative rather than qualitative differences but a significant one I think is the capacity for risk taking. In the institute or unit environment, the expectation of long term funding - usually ten or fifteen years - encourages scientists very explicitly to think about taking more risk in their research. To give a particular example, between the work that Fred Sanger did on the sequencing of insulin - the first sequencing of a protein for which he won one Nobel prize - and his work on sequencing of DNA - for which he won another Nobel prize at LMB several years apart - he published very little. One could say that he might not have survived in the university sector; he might not have been able to attract grants and obviously that would have been ludicrous. I think the capacity to take risk is important.

Q50 Dr Iddon: Is it more cost effective to carry out research in a university or a research institute?

Professor Blakemore: That is very difficult to answer but we will be able to do so very soon when we see the full analysis of FEC (Full Economic Costs). Perhaps it would be easier for MRC than the other councils because our institutes are wholly owned so we are effectively paying the full economic costs for institute support in the past. Our impression is that there probably will not be much in it. When we see the full costing from universities it will not be that different in terms of value for money compared with the institute sector. Of course that analysis depends very much on what you mean by value.

Q51 Chairman: That is not the impression of the universities is it?

Professor Goodfellow: We will also be able to look at this as they come in for responsive mode grants because obviously institutes have to put FEC on their grants just like a university. We are in the first year of that but after a year we will be looking and comparing so we will be able to see. I think it is a bit mixed. I do think that some of the institutes, once they go below a certain size, will find the infrastructure costs are going to be too high for the amount of science you are getting. We were very aware of that with the Silsoe Research Institute where we withdrew funding and we have a rule of thumb that by the time you get to below about two hundred people the way our institutes configure we worry very much about sustainability and that is why in Edinburgh we are going for this new Easterbush Research Centre which will bring the Roslin Institute and the neuropathogenesis unit which is part of the Institute for Animal Health in with the university. Both BBSRC and the governing body of Roslin see that it is not sustainable in the long term with the number of people there are at the moment.

Professor Thorpe: I would agree with my colleagues. My impression is that there will not be a substantial difference in terms of the cost.

Q52 Dr Iddon: On 22 March this year Research Fortnight produced a table which I hope you have seen. It ranks all institutes - including higher education institutes and yours - according to their success in grant applications on the responsive mode. I am pleased to tell you that Plymouth Marine Lab comes top with a 53 per cent success rate. We have the Babraham Institute, the BBRSC John Innes Institute, the Proudman Ocean Lab and so on. The success rate of your research institutes seems to be above higher education institutes in many cases. Do you have an explanation for that?

Professor Goodfellow: Yes, we have. Our institutes are capped with the amount of money they can come in for in responsive mode, so they are limited. Each year they have an amount they can apply for. We have seen on average eight to ten per cent above the average success rate for the institutions funded by BBSRC as a whole, so our institutes on average have a higher success rate than the university sector. We think this is because they do a lot of internal work on their grant applications. We think this is quite important and I have been going round universities talking to senior management about their own internal procedures before they sign off a grant to come into the system for peer review. That is why we think the institutes get a higher success rate.

Q53 Dr Iddon: Is that reflected in the MRC and NERC?

Professor Thorpe: I would be careful about statistics; remember that is just one year. The best of our institutes compete very well with some of the best departments who are competing for NERC funding. Those tables, if you look at them department by department you will find departments with those sorts of success rates in terms of NERC funding. I am pleased that we have institutes that compete at the same level as the best university departments but there is a range and I would caution against looking at just one year because there is a lot of variability from year to year.

Q54 Dr Turner: How much of that is the quality of the science and because they know how to put good applications together?

Professor Thorpe: I think those that win, whether they are in universities or research institutes are able to put in good proposals. As Julia says, the variation between university departments is substantial. Those that perhaps have a mechanism to help colleagues to write good proposals get good success rates so I think one's skills in writing proposals is important.

Professor Goodfellow: We think internal mentoring, especially of junior staff coming through the system, is very important. We all know that whenever we write something it is always good to show it to somebody else and get a second opinion or even a third opinion on what you are doing. If universities have mechanisms they can not only improve the science but also improve the way they are explaining what they are trying to do as well.

Q55 Dr Iddon: Colin, I guess it is the same with the MRC but I will not prolong that answer, but what happens to the people who get left behind in this process, who are not regularly putting grant applications in perhaps because they are doing long range research? What happens to those people, do they survive in your system?

Professor Blakemore: The situation is a little different in MRC institutes as I explained before because they are not eligible to apply for response-mode funding through the normal mechanism to the MRC itself. The situation might change with the new arrangements that now allow them to apply to the BBSRC and Wellcome and so on. They have high success rates in applications, for instance the European Union and other international funding agencies where they can at the moment apply. In general we expect core support for the institute to be providing the wherewithal for the basic work of all the scientists in the institute. It is not an issue; scientists do not depend on external grants in order for them to continue their work. They can be sustained by the central core funding that is provided for the institute.

Professor Goodfellow: The BBSRC is a mixed model. The directors get a core strategic grant so those people within the BBSRC remit - the high quality science - can be funded from that. They may also apply for this limited amount of money in competition with universities but that will not define whether they succeed or not; it will depend on their outputs, the papers they publish and then the four or five yearly review. However, because of the history of the institutes several of them have a history of almost half their funding coming from Defra. If they do not have the Defra funding coming in then we have a redundancy situation.

Q56 Dr Iddon: Alan, when we looked at your proposed closure some months ago we expressed concern to you about projects falling by the wayside, projects which were measuring changes in bio-diversity for example.

Professor Thorpe: As part of the consultation for CEH the council recognised that they wanted to strengthen those areas so the actual decision included an extra £1.3 million a year specifically to make sure that that danger which was identified by a number of consultees was not realised. The only point I would make that I think is relevant here for NERC is that NERC made a change a few years ago to categorising its funding into ten categories. That sounds a large number but a number of them are specifically focussed on the long term monitoring and capabilities of research institutes and other categories on more basic research. For each of those ten categories we have specific criteria when we are assessing the research proposals. I think I would be worried about people falling by the wayside but as long as we are applying the right criteria in the areas we want our institutes to work in then that drives the quality in the direction that we want.

Q57 Dr Iddon: All your institutes do research which can drive government policy, but my concern is that government also has other laboratories: Forensic Science, although that has changed recently; the Laboratory of the Government Chemists was privatised; Home Office still have a laboratory which we visited recently at St Albans. What is the difference between your research institutes and government laboratories? Why do we not review the situation and rationalise it?

Professor Goodfellow: Could I answer that by way of example which is the Veterinary Labs Agency which is very close to the Pirbright lab which is part of our Institute for Animal Health. They tend to focus on monitoring and surveillance with a very much smaller part of basic research; that is their reason to be there and that is why they are primarily funded. However, we do recognise there is overlap and in fact the new build at Pirbright - the £121 million for a new infectious disease centre - is joint with Defra recognising that the VLA and BBSRC employees will be working in the same building.

Professor Thorpe: Another example for NERC which is quite similar is that we work closely with the Hadley Centre which is part of the Met Office and funded under contract to Defra. They have a rather specific and distinctive mission to predict scenarios for future climate change or for Defra policy making. Our institutes work very closely with the Hadley Centre in terms of translating the science that is done in our institutes so that it is incorporated within those predictions for climate change. Where possible we certainly try really hard to link with other laboratories funded from elsewhere. I think that would be the major example for us in our case.

Professor Blakemore: I would agree with Julia that the basic difference is the way in which the scientific questions are framed and conceived. Perhaps a caricature of this situation is that in institutes and units the scientists themselves are generating scientific ideas and pursuing their own questions whereas I presume in most government institutes the questions are being delivered to the scientists in the form of commissioning.

Q58 Chairman: Before we finish this section could I ask you one question that I would like to put on the record. Is there any pressure from OSI or other government departments to move more resources to competitive bidding to allow universities greater access to funds from each of your Research Councils?

Professor Blakemore: I certainly do not feel that in MRC. The Quinquennial Review of the Research Councils reaffirmed the freedom of Research Councils to fund in whatever way they decided was appropriate to support the science. The Review did, however, require the Research Councils, if they choose support through institutes, to conduct strategic reviews of those institutes always asking, "Is this the best way of delivering the science? Could this work be done equally well or better in the university sector?" If the answer to that question is "Yes" then it should be and we do ask those questions of our units at every strategic review.

Q59 Chairman: There is no pressure from OSI to do that?

Professor Blakemore: Not that I have felt.

Q60 Chairman: Julia?

Professor Goodfellow: No pressure from OSI. Certainly government departments like Defra are doing much less commissioned work; they are not supporting the long term work and they are going for short term contracts across the whole system.

Q61 Chairman: Colin, we see the time; thank you very much for your contribution.

Professor Blakemore: Thank you.

Q62 Margaret Moran: Any organisation that has a research element in it has difficulty in maintaining its research base in the face of re-organisation and closure. I declare an interest in that my brother is an environmental economist at SAC (Scottish Agricultural College) going through this process at the moment. How do you specifically protect research base and do you monitor or do you keep any data as to what happens to your researchers if they have to be made redundant?

Professor Goodfellow: It is quite difficult to get the data for that, for what happens to people. We have been monitoring the process as formally as we can - which is really very informally - about the Silsoe Research Institute. We did make considerable efforts to provide resource for them and consultation to help them get jobs elsewhere. We did move some people on, so areas that we certainly saw as important we found homes for in the system (one was within a vet school and another within an institute). We do know informally that a lot of them have got jobs in the system; quite a large percentage of the scientists have actually gone on to other jobs.

Professor Thorpe: It is similar with NERC. In CEH for example we know of a few instances where scientists are not able to move in terms of the relocation and restructuring of CEH and we are trying to work with universities that have positions that they might be interested in to try to help with that transition. In our case we think that the position at the moment is that scientists who do not want to stay with CEH are staying within the UK and within the field. Clearly in the future if they move to universities they will not only be in the field but also bidding for funding from NERC.

Q63 Margaret Moran: Obviously it is essential that we maintain a skill base within the UK particularly to deal with emerging issues. Is that a role for the Research Councils or should government play a role? Do you think the Government should take the responsibility for maintaining the health of the UK science base and what more could it do?

Professor Thorpe: I think the health of disciplines is important; I think it is recognised by government in OSI, but it is also recognised by NERC. Clearly environmental science is, by its nature, multi-disciplinary. We need physicists, chemists, biologists, mathematicians and so it is definitely a concern to my council the supply and training of those basic disciplines leading into environmental science. We look carefully at times when, for example, we have recently done a review of our masters courses which is a major source of training to look at the overall portfolio to see where there are skills shortages. We talk to learned societies that have opinions about particularly shortages of trained staff and try to link that to the training that is done in the MSc courses. I think we do take a role in looking at this but of course we have to do this in relation to other partners. Universities have a role themselves in maintaining the health of some of the basic scientific disciplines. It is definitely within our training programmes - PhD and MSc - a factor that we take into account.

Professor Goodfellow: I would give exactly the same answer. We do it mainly through MSc and PhD programmes. We also work with specific communities if they feel there is a problem. We try to work with vet schools because not many vets go into large animal work. We try to have links between vet schools and our large animal work in our institutes.

Q64 Dr Turner: We have heard criticism that training in Research Council Institutes is isolated and it is not as good as provided in university departments. Do you think the Research Council Institutes can actually give added value to trainee researchers that they cannot get in universities and how do you respond to the criticisms?

Professor Thorpe: Speaking to a number of students and researchers who are doing at least part or maybe even the majority of their studies in our institutes they find them really great places to work. I have recently been to Antarctica for example and via our funding initiatives there are students who are working in Antarctica on their research projects using facilities that would be very difficult to obtain in a university. Similarly in a number of our institutes there are a number of unique facilities they are able to use and are able to work in an environment where there is a strong number of people working in the same research area. My experience of talking to students who are in those environments is that they find them pretty rewarding.

Q65 Dr Turner: Research Councils do not spend much of their budgets on training within the institutes so how do you decide where you put your training budget, in institutes or universities?

Professor Goodfellow: Can I just come back to the first point because where our institutes are close to universities we often have joint training programmes anyway so there is not much difference for example between the John Innes Centre, the Institute of Food Research and the University of East Anglia; they all run a graduate training programme that is shared. I think they get the access to resources they would not normally get through the different infrastructure. I think there is a problem for some of those institutes which are isolated. I do not know what the social life is like in Antarctica but some of them perhaps find themselves in the middle of the country where they need to have a car et cetera and we have to find accommodation for them because they can be in a completely isolated village. I think socially it can be difficult for them but they all have strong connections with universities, they all have a university supervisor. In terms of how we give out our training budget, everybody applies in so the institutes apply just the same as everybody else. There is a studentships and fellowships panel which sets up every three years to renew our training grants for PhDs; institutes are treated competitively exactly the same as everybody else.

Q66 Dr Turner: So there is no deliberate act of policy.

Professor Goodfellow: There is no protective policy whatsoever.

Professor Thorpe: It is the same for NERC. In fact we have an algorithm for determining our PhD studentship allocation and that is based on a number of factors including research grant income et cetera and some of our institutes have quite strong allocations from that algorithm.

Q67 Mr Flello: Julia, in a diplomatic answer to an earlier question, you said that more money for science is always welcome. In terms of actual strategies in place to cater for a reduction in government funding what strategies do you have for any reduction in government funding for RCIs?

Professor Goodfellow: Basically we always have a contingency budget within our budgeting to take account of issues that can come up. For instance we were able to start an avian flu initiative very quickly. If we are aware of potential liabilities - and at the moment the changing Defra funding is actually a business critical project for BBSRC, it is being monitored by our audit board - we plan what we could do. We do twice yearly business planning meetings with every institute so we do look forward and we do try to be proactive. Clearly if we can move staff onto other posts, the institutes very actively do move staff around. Really I think we are as proactive as we can be with business planning and we also have contingencies and monitoring at the audit board level.

Professor Thorpe: Similarly for NERC. We are currently involved in a project to look at our processes, particularly for this reason, to be able to respond flexibly to changes in the outside world whether they come from our overall allocation from OSI or whether it comes to the institute from commissioned research income. We have a project on funding allocation and budgeting specifically to see if we can build in a better responsiveness and a more flexible responsiveness to those sorts of changes. We are looking at a number of processes there but we recognise it as a critical risk both for our overall allocation but also in terms of commissioned research.

Q68 Mr Flello: You mentioned about working with Defra on the Pirbright new labs, what efforts could be made more widely to develop joint working strategies between the Research Councils and government for the RCIs?

Professor Goodfellow: I think we have a number of forums in which we can discuss things. The Chief Science Adviser at Defra is on my council and I believe he is on your council so is privy to all the discussions. We have basically interactions at all levels within government departments.

Professor Thorpe: We have a thing called the Environment Research Funders' Forum which was instigated about four or five years ago which brings together all the major funders of environmental research whether they be government departments, Research Councils et cetera. That actually provides us with an element of strategic long term thinking about trends such as the ones we have been talking about. That is an important mechanism for us.

Q69 Mr Flello: Have those efforts been successful and what more could be done in those areas?

Professor Thorpe: I think the ERFF for Environment has been helpful in this regard but I think we need better and improved dialogue between key government departments. In our case it is a number, but let us talk about Defra in particular. I think at a time, as at the moment, when both Defra and NERC are devising their new five year strategies it is a very critical time when we need to have very good and effective dialogue. We are certainly engaged in that dialogue and trying to look at what collectively and in partnership we can deliver together. It is also at the moment timely for this because of course the spending review is coming up as well. Trying to look at the overall national needs with contributions from the basic science through to the policy is where those discussions are at at the moment.

Q70 Mr Flello: You say there is the need for good dialogue; do you think that is happening?

Professor Thorpe: We can improve that dialogue. I have been in this post for a year so it is hard for me to give you a long term perspective on that. Julia has mentioned mechanisms of membership on both sides of management and strategy panels but we are engaged also in bilateral discussions to try to improve the situation. I am not going to say that it is as good as it could be but we are working hard to make it better.

Professor Goodfellow: I have tried for four years to make it better. You have the evidence; you can see the financial figures. It varies very much between different areas. On the animal health side we seem to have better dialogue. We certainly have the joint thing with Pirbright. We are actually doing a joint review of the veterinary labs and the IAH at the science level to look at what science is being done. I feel we have a very good dialogue going on there. On the land use side which is where the cuts are we do not see a strategic change going on. We see random change going on and we see a major drop in income. The Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research based in Aberystwyth and North Devon has had a 33 per cent cut in its Defra funding over two years. Rothamsted Research has had a 50 per cent cut in its Defra funding over two years despite a large level of consultation at all levels from the scientists doing the work down to myself and the chief science adviser, and we are just not getting anywhere. I am not saying they should not change direction, of course a government department can choose the direction it wants to go in, but they have to recognise that they are losing skills and they are going to lose infrastructure as well because they are withdrawing resource very rapidly, so it is not a strategic withdrawal.

Q71 Mr Flello: Do you feel that your representations are being at least listened to?

Professor Goodfellow: We are making representations at many levels. I think they are listening to them but I do not know whether they have the ability to respond in a strategic way. The chair of the science advisory committee for Defra - which we are both on as members - has actually said that there is clearly a gap in the long term planning and their evidence and innovation strategy has been delayed a bit more while they actually think about some of the longer term issues. There is some hope there but we have already taken very large cuts and there are areas which I think will be difficult to recover.

Q72 Mr Flello: Julia, what percentage of your staff are on contract rather than full-time employment?

Professor Goodfellow: You mean in non time limited contracts?

Q73 Chairman: Yes, in the institutes.

Professor Goodfellow: We have changed very rapidly; I do not actually have the figures but we have put nearly everybody onto non time limited contracts. The only people who are on fixed term contracts are people at the early stage in their career where they are gaining extra training and experience and they are mainly at John Innes and Babraham. The old idea of somebody in their forties still on contract does not exist, we have changed it. We can certainly get the numbers for you.

Q74 Dr Iddon: Is that reflected at NERC, Alan?

Professor Thorpe: At NERC the vast majority - perhaps close to a hundred per cent - are full time open-ended contract.[3]

Q75 Dr Iddon: That is good to hear because this Committee is very critical of short term contracts, as you know. I mentioned earlier long term strategic research. How do you balance the needs of that with an emerging crisis? We have avian flu, we have had BSE in the past and we do not know what crisis is round the corner. Presumably when there is a crisis your institutes are called on. How do you cope with that?

Professor Goodfellow: Foot and mouth was obviously an example where everybody at Pirbright just stopped all their long term research and went immediately into crisis mode. It is obviously very hard to do that and we gave money to make sure PhD students were not disadvantaged. They may well have used the core strategic grant because they can direct and do as they want with this, but we obviously recognised that, and would recognise that in any review, if they have spent six months or more of their lives responding to a crisis.

Professor Thorpe: It is a critical advantage of Research Council Institutes it seems to me that we can respond very quickly to discoveries. The Antarctic ozone hole would be a good example for NERC where the discovery led to substantial amounts of extra unforeseen activity to be needed. Because NERC has a very major part of its budget committed to council institutes we have the ability to be flexible. I see them as an answer to being flexible.

Q76 Dr Iddon: How do you both answer the criticism that comes from some quarters that there is a lack of coordination within government in terms of provision of research to drive their policies? Do you think that could be better or is it as good as it gets?

Professor Goodfellow: The government department I deal mostly with is Defra and I would say they have been trying very hard to get coordination of their policies. I would say their chief science adviser has been working very hard to get a strategy through and do that and to change a culture. I think they are trying.

Q77 Dr Iddon: Is it working?

Professor Goodfellow: I think we need a bit longer to see that.

Professor Thorpe: I think it has been very important that the scientific advisers in government departments have had a key role and provide not least a point of contact and dialogue with us. Another department that we attempt to interact with is DfID and as you known Gordon Conway is their chief scientific adviser and we are therefore involved in better dialogue about how to take agendas forward. As to whether things can be improved, I am sure they can be improved but I think the existence of those chief scientific advisers is incredibly helpful.

Dr Iddon: I think this Committee can take credit for some of that.

Q78 Dr Harris: Does the approach of Defra threaten the viability or the sustainability of some research institutes and, therefore, by extension, some of the research that government itself needs to revise on policy?

Professor Goodfellow: Yes.

Professor Thorpe: It is inevitably the case that in our institutes they actually have a portfolio of customers who are funding research programmes and as they change - as I have mentioned with CEH - there has been a slow decline in recent years and that has caused us to restructure. It definitely has a role.

Q79 Dr Harris: It is not just the decline; it is the lack of clarity about the future funding streams.

Professor Thorpe: That is always difficult to cope with.

Professor Goodfellow: I tried to summarise the situation. In 2000/2001 MAFF was contributing 22 per cent of the total funding to BBSRC institutes. In 2005/2206 it is down to 14 per cent of the budget. In 2001 MAFF were basically putting in 50 per cent of the money compared with what BBSRC put in; they are now down to 25 per cent of what BBSRC puts in. It is a massive drop in a short period and there does not seem to be a strategic driver other than it is dropping and we have not been able to have the high level strategic framework which says, "Okay, if it is dropping, how are we going to deal with it between us?" We really need to find a way out for the UK; are we sure we really want to lose this resource? The last person who works on diseases of bees has been made redundant from Rothamsted. She had been on long term funding from Defra; there is now nobody in the UK working on viral diseases of bees, for example. I have just given the one example but I do think there are strategic things where we could be doing better in this area.

Q80 Dr Harris: In your research institutes you have a captive population of people that you can survey for whether they are happy or not as PhD students. Have you got good survey data asking them what they think about their lot in life?

Professor Goodfellow: Most of them have university partners and they may well spend a lot of time in the university as well; they may not spend all their time in the institute.

Professor Thorpe: Are you talking about students?

Professor Goodfellow: PhD students.

Q81 Dr Harris: When you were asked earlier about staff and where they went you gave us some reassuring anecdotes, a few people had found jobs. I just thought there was a big opportunity with your staff to ask them where they are going when they go. We cannot base recommendations on you saying that you know of a few people who have got university places.

Professor Goodfellow: When people start you can survey them but even then people do not always get a hundred per cent response to surveys as you are aware. When people leave it is then very hard to get responses and some of them may well take redundancy and not do anything for three months or so while they think about what they are doing. It can be hard to follow them afterwards.

Q82 Dr Harris: Are there published surveys? Are you attempting to follow up?

Professor Goodfellow: Yes.

Q83 Dr Harris: There are published surveys.

Professor Thorpe: In some of our institutes we do staff surveys on a number of things including their views on working in institutes et cetera and also we do attempt to collate statistics on where our staff go to.

Q84 Dr Harris: Would you be willing to send us those surveys.

Professor Thorpe: I would.

Professor Goodfellow: Yes, we will send information to you.

Q85 Dr Harris: One other thing on an earlier question, Colin Blakemore made the point about multi-disciplinary research and he was speaking very much from an MRC perspective where his view was very clearly that there is a good argument that these things are best done in universities. It did not strike me that that was necessarily your view. Is it your view? Do you agree with Lord Sainsbury basically and I will quote what he said because I think it is a key question, indeed I think it was what prompted us to do this inquiry. He said, "There is a well considered view internationally that separate research institutes have the disadvantage that they become obviously specialised science institutions and in today's multi-disciplinary world basic research increasingly should be done in a multi-disciplinary environment like universities." Do your institutes agree?

Professor Goodfellow: I agree that research should be done in a multi-disciplinary environment with inter-disciplinary research, ie real connections between them. However, that can be done in an institute and has been done in an institute. If you look at Rothamsted research you have John Pickett FRS Chemist who is working there and who has given evidence to this Committee before, and you have statistics. They generated GenStat which is a major statistical package for the UK, because they needed it for their research. I think there are strengths in the institutes where it can be said, "I do need somebody like this to do the research I want to do," but there are equally strengths in the universities as well.

Q86 Dr Harris: He said universities; you are saying universities and large institutes.

Professor Goodfellow: Absolutely, yes.

Q87 Dr Harris: Turning to the management of RCIs, do you think that RCIs themselves have enough representation on Research Council management structures?

Professor Thorpe: I have mentioned that NERC has an executive board which actually draws together the directors that are in head office and also our major research institute directors in an executive board role to manage NERC as a whole. In terms of our science advisory panels then there are a significant number of research institute scientists who are on there but they are on those panels by virtue of their scientific disciplines and knowledge. In terms of council, we do not have our institute directors on council because our council members are there to be independent and obviously our research centre directors have particular strong vested interest in their particular areas.

Q88 Dr Harris: No-one is independent. University people - present company excepted - will be interested in universities.

Professor Goodfellow: But Councils do not set a budget for Oxford University or London University or any other universities whereas they do set the budgets for the institutes.

Q89 Chairman: Could I ask you this, Julia, as a rider to Evan's question, where you have members of your board who also have influential positions on university boards and the question comes up about where do you allocate funding, either through direct competition or in fact protected budgets for research institutes, is there not a bias towards actually putting the money into universities in terms of competition?

Professor Goodfellow: At council level there is a vigorous debate - as there should be - on the balance of funding between institutes and universities and that debate goes on. Of course people have views. There are a number of academic members of council but I think there are an equal number of non-university people on councils from other government departments from industry.

Q90 Dr Harris: The data here says that the committee members of BBSRC show that overall only a little over eight per cent of strategy panels and committees are made up with RCIs representatives.

Professor Goodfellow: At council we, like NERC, do not have anybody on it from a member of an institute because we are making formal decisions about how much funding they are going to get.

Q91 Chairman: You do have members from the universities.

Professor Goodfellow: Yes, we have members from the universities but the council is not making a decision about how much money goes to an individual university. They are making decisions about how much core money - core strategic grant - goes to a specific institute.

Q92 Dr Harris: You do understand our point that we are making here that if the split is 60/40 and the 40 is universities, I have not yet met a single university academic who does not want more responsive funding available from research councils.

Professor Goodfellow: You can see the balance, you have the figures which show how much core strategic grant has gone up, they had a big increase last time and you can look at the responsive mode. A balance has to be reached. The eight per cent is on the committees that are giving out money in specific projects and that is done through an appointments board and I think that would be one institute person per committee.

Professor Thorpe: I think you have to look at the evidence and talk to some council members from universities. I find that a lot of them are very strong advocates - in NERC anyway - of our research centre institutes. Look at the amount of expenditure that NERC makes on its institutes relative to what it spends in universities. I think we spend more in our institutes.

Q93 Dr Harris: That is not the right metric. The point I am making - I am very keen to make this point - is that whatever the actual funding is (which is historic and might change) it is either the case that there is pressure within that decision making body for more money to be biddable for by universities as well as research institutes or it is seen to be the case from within the research institutes that they have no voice even if they do not have a vote - plenty of people with direct financial interests do not have a vote but can actually participate in the debate - so you either have pressure to move one way or perception of pressure to move one way and you know (or do you know?) that many university people think that research institutes are feather bedded and therefore believe that they should compete equally with universities and vice versa. Do you accept that that is an argument because you have not really addressed that point?

Professor Goodfellow: I think we try and make the decision making process as transparent as we can and to limit the vested interest as best we can. I think there are university people in our council who are very positive about work that is going on in our institutes and they recognise that to deliver the strategy there are areas which the universities are not in, do not want to be in and they recognise it needs to be delivered for the UK and we put the money into institutes.

Professor Thorpe: They have a vested interest in the facilities in the institutes being in existence as I have mentioned. I think all of our institutes provide facilities and capabilities that the universities use to deliver their research so there is a strong dependency and a strong interest in having a healthy research base for the NERC group of institutes.

Q94 Dr Turner: Various comments have been made about the governance of Research Council Institutes; can you tell us what efforts you both make to ensure that best practice is shared between the institutes? How do you respond to the calls that some people make for RCUK to take a lead in this, in determining overall best practice?

Professor Thorpe: In terms of governance NERC has quite a range of governance models that we are using for our institutes ranging from so called wholly owned institutes through to centres that are under contract in universities involving companies limited by guarantee with charitable status. Over the years there have been changes made to governance where advantages have been seen. We were talking earlier about the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, which relatively recently - perhaps three or four years ago - made a transition to become a CLG in terms of its NERC governance. We actually operate a range of governance models and it is something that we visit quite regularly to examine what is best for that institute. The Costigan review of governance pointed, for example in NERC's case, to the British Geological Survey where there was the potential for other governance models to be looked at and we will certainly look at that to see if there are advantages in delivering the mission of BGS. I think NERC has shown over the years a willingness to change governance where it is seen to be advantageous.

Professor Goodfellow: The last review of BBSRC governance in the mid-nineties put them all on the same model, made them all companies limited by guarantee with charitable status. That means there is a tension between how much BBSRC can tell separate companies and charity trustees to actually do. We also have a group which meets regularly once every three months with all the institute directors and we do talk about internal governance and we have pushed changes in their own governing bodies in terms of advertising for members, nomination committees and things like that in line with modern governance. We have been pushing them on that where we can but they are separate companies and they reporting to the charity commissioners in their own right. We did recognise that this model was far from perfect and we did ask for the OSI to do a review. The Costigan report as far as we were concerned still left some questions unanswered so we have asked Brian Follett and a group of people including two chairs of our institute governing bodies to take this forward, to come up with four or five different models, the pros and cons, what it would look like. They are doing that at the moment and there is a consultation that has just gone out and they will be reporting to council in October. We are certainly going away from one size fits all models and we will be looking at the appropriate governance for the science and the relationships they may have so if they wish to move closer to the university they may well move away from BBSRC and from the current model.

Q95 Dr Turner: Is it too soon to ask if you have got any feedback from Sir Brian Follett that you can share with us?

Professor Goodfellow: He is looking at a range of models. He is looking at everything from coming right in and being like the MRC, which means they may no longer be a charity, no longer have separate money, all their finances would come through BBSRC, where they would have to pay VAT, and there would be Treasury financial controls - that is one model - all the way through to being completely independent. Again there are problems there as to whether they could employ the staff because at the moment although they are separate companies BBSRC is the employer and has all employer liability. Can these governing bodies really act as independent companies, really take on the employment liability? I would say I have serious doubts about that model being viable - we would lose the science. Above all we do not want to lose the science as a result of this review. They are looking at a range of things between those two. I think the institute governing bodies will come back to us with their preferred model and then we will have a negotiation between council and them. We may well agree in many cases on the way forward.

Q96 Chairman: Timescale?

Professor Goodfellow: The first report to council in October. We are hoping to get some specific input from institutes on the deferred governance model by December. If we agree I think we can make decisions by December. If we have a disagreement then we have an annual meeting where the director comes to council with the chair of the governing body in February and we would have time to talk about it then. I would hope that in spring next year we would be well on the way. I think this is a case where we do need time because a lot of people do need to think about it and we need to bring the governing bodies on board with us in that.

Q97 Chairman: Alan, could we ask you what progress is being made with the re-organisation of CEH? What factors made you change your original proposal?

Professor Thorpe: Council made an original statement of intent in December last year and there was then a period of consultation. We referred earlier to the fact that we had a significant number of inputs to that consultation. The council met in early March to consider those consultation inputs. The council felt that there were a number of areas particularly ones we have referred to in terms of long term monitoring and bio-diversity where it wanted to strengthen its original proposals and so it made a decision on 8 March to allocate an increased budget relative to the original proposals to CEH and also set a higher external commissioned research income target. That has involved a change such that 40 posts that were originally at risk have been saved. There was a significant change in the decision relative to the original statement of intent but at that point the decision was taken and since then we have started our transitional integration project for the restructuring which will take something like three to four years to complete.

Q98 Chairman: When we met you informally one of the concerns of our Committee was how do you preserve strategic science. One of the criticisms, I think it is fair to say, from our Committee's point of view is that the science plan was not up front. Could you tell us now what areas of science will actually be lost as a result of the restructuring and in terms of the extra £5 million you have, how much of that will go in competitive bids rather than go to the institutes?

Professor Thorpe: As well as the £16.3 million per year in 2004/2005 prices that NERC has allocated for core budget for CEH we have also allocated this £2 million a year initiative - ecology and hydrology funding initiative - which is for collaborative projects between universities and CEH. CEH will win a proportion, perhaps 50 per cent of that money. I think that is the overall funding that has been allocated and the concern about the monitoring and bio-diversity has been addressed. You asked about the science plan.

Q99 Chairman: Yes, what is going to be lost really?

Professor Thorpe: The first comment I would make is that we are looking at a forward looking programme so there are areas of research but of course there are new priorities, and so what we looked at in this review for the restructuring is the future science that CEH is going to be delivering.

Q100 Chairman: What is going to be lost?

Professor Thorpe: There are areas that they were proposing in work on climate change and the description of the land surface in climate change models where we feel there are strengths in other parts of the NERC community to deliver that are not going to be done by CEH and that was in their original proposals. There are a number of areas like that where we feel there are capabilities elsewhere that can deliver those aspects so we have looked at not only what CEH is going to be delivering but also where the areas that are not going to be done within CEH where they will be delivered elsewhere.

Q101 Chairman: Will there be any areas that will just disappear?

Professor Thorpe: We feel that all of the key areas that are CEH's strengths that are high quality and high priority will be continued with. I think the amount of change that CEH is making is actually not as great as perhaps the headlines might portray. For example, the amount of funds which we are allocating for each scientist to do research to support their research within CEH, we have actually doubled that amount in the new plans. That has meant that the scientists are much more able to deliver high quality science from that but that had a knock-on effect in terms of the overall budget.

Q102 Chairman: You are avoiding my question. Could I ask you to write to us to say which areas of science in terms of research will be lost completely as a result of the restructuring? Julia, you mentioned earlier the issue about the bees and bee diseases. I know from the Harrogate and Ripon Bee Keepers Association where I was stung two weeks ago that they are very concerned about that particular issue. If that is lost, it is lost; we will not replace it. I think we need to know in terms of this inquiry what we are losing but also does it really matter.

Professor Thorpe: We do not know the complete plan yet because of course we are identifying which staff will be part of CEH in the future; those discussions with our staff are still on-going because there is relocation involved. We are matching the scientific expertise of our staff that remain to the areas of science we want to do. For example, there will be a number of staff who are currently working in one area who will be moved into other areas. The full picture is not yet available but I am happy to send those details which we published at the time of the decision about the areas that are going to be not as strongly figuring in the programme as previously.[4]

Q103 Chairman: Can I put a hypothetical question to you? If, in fact, NERC structures its science in the way in which it can be opened up for more competitive bidding with the universities therefore more work will go to the universities and not to the institute, which will result in further loss of science being done by the institute and therefore further reductions in the number of institutes you actually require. Is that a possibility?

Professor Thorpe: Of course it is a possibility. I have mentioned earlier that a number of our institutes are amongst the most successful in bidding for openly competitive funding from NERC and other sources. I would not want to characterise that somehow they are not actually rather effective at that. Of course they are subject to the risk that their success in that may change over the years, but NERC as a whole is looking at the sustainability agenda. It was very much at the core of the changes to CEH; it was to put CEH in a position that was sustainable into the long term. After a period when actually it was finding it extremely difficult, in fact losing resources and money relative to its budget, that sustainability agenda is there all the time but you are absolutely right that they are subject to changes in the outside world funding, also subject to changes in their ability to win openly competitive funding. It would be wrong to say that they were other than rather successful at that.

Q104 Chairman: There is no agenda there.

Professor Thorpe: There is not an agenda there at all, no.

Q105 Dr Harris: We have not had an answer to the question which is that if things go to plan and even if people slot into where you want them to go, what areas will be lost and you said you will give us that information.

Professor Thorpe: It will be emerging as we know where people are.

Q106 Dr Harris: Just reassure me, you are not going to describe this as the best ever year for the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology, are you?

Professor Thorpe: Of course this restructuring is extremely difficult but I have emphasised here that there are positive aspects to this as well as negative.

Q107 Dr Harris: I just wanted to be reassured that you were under no allusions.

Professor Thorpe: Of course for the people affected it is going to be a very serious matter and I do not take that lightly.

Q108 Dr Harris: I understand you found an extra £15 million, from £1.3 million to £16.3 million.

Professor Thorpe: It is actually an extra £1.3 million.

Q109 Dr Harris: You have also increased the target for commissioned research income.

Professor Thorpe: Yes.

Q110 Dr Harris: Was that responding to pressure? Is it based on new data or is it something you had in reserve to try to ameliorate, that you always have a reserve position where you can say to us that it is 160 redundancies and not 200?

Professor Thorpe: NERC Council looked at the input in the consultation so the change was based on the new evidence that came through in the consultation period. Council felt that the consultation highlighted two things, one was that there was a very strong desire and case made for continuing long term monitoring, particularly in the bio-diversity area. Also the consultation pointed out that there was a risk that some of those data sets and monitoring could be put at risk so council took the view that to mitigate that risk as much as possible it would add extra funding to support those areas in particular so the changes were definitely made in response to those input in the consultation.

Q111 Dr Harris: This issue of redundancies, you would like people in the areas you are going to keep and build to stay and move sometimes long distances but you cannot control that as we discussed before. How are you going to monitor which people are leaving who would not otherwise have planned to leave? It is still going to be inevitable so this is not a criticism. Are you going to monitor that? Are you going to see whether there is a particular gender bias because women may be less able to leave an isolated Scottish area?

Professor Thorpe: Absolutely. It is critical for us to monitor this issue. We are approaching this with the unions as well. We have identified a number - perhaps over 80 - of key staff straightaway with whom we have been discussing in detail their intentions to move with CEH in the future. Those detailed discussions are coming to fruition and consequently we will know more definitely which staff will move and which will not. I have also mentioned the fact that where we know staff are not going to move with CEH we are discussing with them whether NERC can help in terms of them moving more locally to continue research. You mentioned Scotland, for example, Banchory is one of the stations that is going to close. Aberdeen University is relatively close by and I have recently talked to the pro vice chancellor at Aberdeen University about these issues.

Q112 Dr Harris: You obviously know I have a constituency interest which might even be more important than the bee keepers of Harrogate. How is it going with the union? I understand that the motions of no confidence were passed in CEH's executive board. I do not know whether that is what you expected or whether things have got better since April when that happened.

Professor Thorpe: I have met recently with the local union representatives. I meet with the national representatives both formally and informally but I have also met with CEH union representatives as well. Obviously we have to win hearts and minds with our staff to come with us into CEH in the future. I think that was a very helpful meeting. That was relatively recently, about a month ago. Of course there have been difficulties and some staff have been angry about the changes that have been made. I feel we are trying to bring staff on board by identifying the key staff who are going to be part of the future so they can rally behind those areas. You are right that that will not be uniformly successful but we are very closely monitoring the situation and we have a major transition project that is managed with a new project manager and with external representatives on that to manage this as effectively as we can.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed Professor Alan Thorpe and Professor Julia Goodfellow. Thank you for an interesting launch to our inquiry.

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[1] Note by the witness: QQR Criteria.

[2] Note by the witness: As part of the Institute of Arable Crops Research.

[3] Note by the witness: Not all NERC staff are full time.

[4] Note by the witness: An update will be sent to the Committee.