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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1307-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE
Wednesday 1 November 2006 PROFESSOR MARTIN SHIRLEY, PROFESSOR IAN CRUTE and RT HON LORD ROOKER and PROFESSOR HOWARD DALTON Evidence heard in Public Questions 113 - 236
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Science and Technology Committee on Wednesday 1 November 2006 Members present Mr Phil Willis, in the Chair Adam Afriyie Dr Evan Harris Dr Brian Iddon Mr Brooks Newmark Bob Spink Dr Desmond Turner ________________ Memorandum submitted by Research Councils UK (BBSRC)
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Professor Martin Shirley, Director, Institute for Animal Health; Professor Ian Crute, Director, Rothamsted Research; and Professor Chris Pollock, Director, IGER (Institute for Grassland and Environmental Research), gave evidence. Q113 Chairman: Good morning. Welcome to our special guests, our witnesses this morning, Professor Martin Shirley, Director of the Institute for Animal Health; Professor Chris Pollock, Director of the Institute for Grasslands and Environmental Research, and Professor Ian Crute, Director of Rothamsted Research. Welcome to you and to the members of the public and indeed to the Minister as well. This is the second of our oral evidence sessions in terms of our work looking at the Research Council Institutes, their place within British science, the way in which we maintain them, and, indeed, the way in which they interrelate with the universities and government departments in terms of research. We are concentrating this morning on BBSRC and its links with the research institutes and also, of course, the relationship between BBSRC and research institutes and Defra. That is the broad territory we are in. I wonder if we could ask you, Professor Shirley, to chair your panel. If you feel it is important to have another view, you will turn to one of your colleagues. You are the boss! Could I start by asking each one of you to sum up, in a couple of sentences, what is unique about your institute. Professor Shirley: In the case of the Institute for Animal Health what is unique is really quite obvious: we are working with important pathogens of livestock and we are studying those pathogens in the natural hosts. We are therefore committed to working with large animals in containment and we are also committed to working with poultry in containment. The high level of containment, with specific focus on pathogens in the natural host, makes the IAH approach unique. Q114 Chairman: What would British science lose if you did not exist? Professor Shirley: If we did not exist, you would lose that whole capability effectively to look at the fundamental strategic area of biology of these important pathogens, which range from foot and mouth disease through to bacterial foodborne infections, through to some of the parasites. The biology of those organisms in proper context has not been done anywhere else, and so we bring to the table a uniqueness and relevance which is not being addressed anywhere else. If we did not do it, it would have to be done elsewhere. It would have to be done. Professor Pollock: The institute covers the grassland base for the United Kingdom, which is 50 per cent of the land area. It provides the underpinning support for the 4 billion livestock industry. It also provides most of our clean water, our clean air, a large proportion of our eco-system services and a huge slab of UK biodiversity. The UK is interested in developing sustainable systems to exploit this in a way which maximises economic benefit whilst sustaining rural employment and delivering eco-system services and environmental benefits. What is unique about the institute is that it does go all the way from molecules. It covers the strand by which humans manage landscape (that is, by optimising the management of that land) and also by using genetic improvement to modify the plants and animals that use that land. What would you lose? You would lose the joining up, the systems approach, the added-value, the integration, the sense of mission and continuity. Our longest contract is with a plant breeding company. It is a 15‑year rolling contract. That is the sort of timescale you need to work on to make a difference. Professor Crute: Rothamsted Research, as I am sure the Committee is aware, is the longest established agricultural institute in the world. It was founded in 1843, so we have a long history. But at this particular moment in time, we are unique in the sense that, certainly within the UK, possibly in the world, we are the one place where the mathematical, biological and physical sciences are integrated in support of, you might say, farmed land, as distinct from the grassland sector that Chris was talking about, so, essentially, the major crops of the UK which occupy about 25 per cent of the land area: wheat, oil seed rape, sugar beet, potatoes, and essentially the science that underpins that, which goes through from molecular biology and the things which impact on crop improvement, the genetic improvement of crops, all the way through to pests and disease, interactions with soil processes and the recycling of carbon. Obviously bio-energy crops is a big issue we are right in the thick of this morning. In fact, we recently introduced seven new high yielding willow varieties into production for bio-energy. What would the country and the science base lose? I think the first thing to say is that probably in the context of making a complementarity with the higher education sector and the university sector, really the agricultural sciences and the sciences which underpin production have been eroded in that sector. We are one of the few places where people can get firm postgraduate training: field-based integrated into laboratory-based training in the postgraduate context. That is the one area I think is important. We have of course a unique legacy of 160 years of experimentation through our past experience. We have an archive of samples of vegetation and soil data which allows us to address all of the pressing issues of today which relate to climate change, which relate to nuclear fallout, which we can log through these sort of things, a whole range of environmental issues which the institute deals with. Ultimately it would be an inconceivable gap or context that you could think about not having an institute which covered that sort of territory. Q115 Chairman: Are you saying that you offer additional opportunities for scientific research that, for instance, the universities cannot offer? Professor Crute: The facility, capability and human resource expertise that we have, in probably all of the BBSRC institutes, but certainly the three that you see represented in front of you, are certainly not duplicated anywhere in the UK, even possibly in Europe or globally. Q116 Chairman: Could they be advanced? Professor Shirley: They could be with unlimited resources. One could replicate all of this elsewhere, but, to reinforce the point made by Ian, it exists and we have this unique resource. In the case of IAH, we can go from the molecule through to the cell, through to the whole animal, through to populations. This is a unique resource, underpinned by a lot of investment in the past, particularly in domestic lines of livestock, whether they be cattle or poultry. It is a unique resource and to establish this from day novo would be hugely expensive and it would take years to reach the state where it is functioning. Currently this is all embedded within the institute and it is a huge national resource. Q117 Chairman: Is there anything, in terms of your institute, in terms of scientific research that is carried on that could not be carried on given enough resourcing in a university setting? Professor Shirley: No. You could create it in a university setting but you would end up with an institute. If you want the sense of mission and the sense of continuity, if you want the targeting or if you want the facilities and the ability to maintain them over long periods of time, you need to set in place funding management structures that differ from the three-year responsive mode graph. If that is something that is worth doing, you could do it in a university but you would end up with something that was exactly like you already had. Q118 Chairman: But it would be embedded in the university. Professor Pollock: And, indeed, if there are management models for institutes that look very closely at links between universities. Welsh Farm Breeding Centre started off as part of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in 1919. That is the precursor of IGER. I have worked at the institute since 1974 and my contract has changed three times in that period. Initially it was with the university. But it is still IGER, is still has the sense of mission, it still has the continuity, it still has the long-term resources. I am more interested in ends than means, Mr Chairman. Chairman: That is a good point to pass on to my colleague. Q119 Bob Spink: I am interested in how you control your work, how flexible you are. The public interest is served by your long-term commitment to research projects that go on for years - and you mentioned the 16-year contract - yet the public interest is also served by you responding very rapidly to developing situations - and we have seen a few of those over the last decade, have we not, with potentially others coming along that we know about? How do you get the balance between these? Are you flexible enough to respond? Does it set back your long-term strategies? Professor Crute: The way to respond to that is perhaps to give one or two examples. You can be very responsive to requirements if you have a reservoir of capability and expertise and you have a reservoir of facility. For example, something Chris and I were much involved with was the farm scale evaluations of GM crops. That was something that came quite quickly politically. There was a requirement to get significant amounts of data. Because we had expertise in place in wheat biology, in invertebrate biology and knowledge of the sort of mathematical processes of sampling, we were able, literally overnight, to put together very substantial teams of people to address that. Q120 Bob Spink: Did you divert those people from a longer term thing to deal with this and then shove them back? Professor Crute: That is a very good question. It was a combination of taking proportions of people's time to divert them on the basis of priority plus some additional recruitment and training of staff in order to meet those objectives. Q121 Bob Spink: Who decides the priority? Who says, "We are going to slow this down and we are going to divert you on to this one because the "red tops" are running it on their front pages this week"? Professor Shirley: One of the great things about the institute is that we can take a long-term view and certainly there are opportunities as a consequence of funding streams coming in which are new. I can give you an example with Avian flu. The Institute of Animal Health has had a long-term programme on avian immunology and avian immunology serves many studies on many pathogens. It is now very timely to have that programme embedded within the Institute of Animal Health with the types of poultry binds that we have, so we are in a position then to bid for new money to reinforce our programmes on avian flu. That is one way in which we can move because we have the underpinning capability in place. It has been there for some time. As an institute we evaluate our science programmes on a regular basis. We constantly look at the fit for purpose of our programmes. We have the ability to close programmes down if we think they are not going in the right direction or are not productive, but we can also start programmes up if we so wish by using our core strategic grant. We can make those changes. Q122 Bob Spink: Do you step back and look at value for money, and fundamentally reassess what you are doing long term? Do you say, "Is there a better outcome we could get for that resource?" Professor Pollock: Absolutely. All the time. There is an external assessment through BBSRC, the institute assessment exercise - which used to be every four years and it is now every five - which I believe Professor Goodfellow described in her evidence and you would not want me to repeat that. That provides external validation of both quality and relevance and that is extremely important to us. We must stress that all of us work to a mixed economy. The majority of funding in IGER does not come from BBSRC. It is a question of providing the service that the customer wants, to a significant degree, and that provides another set of external validations. Within the institute there are regular meetings with our governing body and the external evaluation committees that we set up to look at the strength of programmes. I would echo Martin's point that one of the values that you get out of the institute system is a level of resilience to cope with new procedures that come up. We have had a long-standing programme in genetics that goes back to Stapleton in 1919. It is currently being manifested through work funded by Defra to look at gene flow between adjacent crops which forms part of the regulatory framework for potential introduction to GM. It is a combination of capability and opportunity and the job of the director and senior management of the institute is to keep that balance optimum. Q123 Bob Spink: On your data sets you mentioned Rothamsted have a 160-year archive of data sets. Do you jealousy guard this or make it available to the research community? Is that in this country or worldwide? Do you see that as part of your mission? Professor Crute: The first thing to say is, yes, it is publicly available. People can both access samples, which they often do, and they can also access data. Obviously with a data set you have to use it in an informed way, so we try to maintain contact with anybody who is using it. We have an electronic archive which people can access and if anybody wants anything extra they just have to talk to us. Q124 Bob Spink: I see your colleagues nodding, so we will leave it there. Finally, RCIs versus universities. Do you think that research programmes in RCIs are more tightly financially controlled than they would be in the university environment? Professor Pollock: They are more responsive to the external modalities of where the money comes from and what the customer wants. They are also more tightly integrated within the institute management because they are driven by the sense of mission. Professor Shirley: I would agree. Professor Crute: I think so. Q125 Chairman: The accusation, then, which universities often make, that you are feather-bedded in terms of your research programmes, is not true. Professor Crute: I have not heard the accusation quite put like that. Q126 Chairman: I do not expect you to agree with it. Professor Crute: Probably the way to look at this is the fact that we all have slightly different versions of core funding. Rothamsted is about 50:50. We get a grant from BBSRC, which essentially is an underpinning grant which allows us to have the continuity that we have been talking about, and we get 50 per cent of our funding in an open, competitive market exactly like the universities do. To some extent, the analogy with the universities is that our core grant from BBSRC is analogous to the HEFCE grant that would come into universities, you might say, to pay for academic salaries and such like. It is the same thing. Chairman: So we can put that one to bed. Q127 Bob Spink: Universities have different objectives from you as well. Professor Pollock: Exactly. Q128 Bob Spink: They are teaching institutions. Do you think research conducted in RCIs is more cost-effective than research conducted in universities? Professor Shirley: I think that is becoming clearer with the impact of FEC. We will have clear views on that in due course. It is probably too early to tell. I think the institutes are very much driven to deliver cost-effective science. To pick up on a point that was made by Ian, the IAH has a core grant which accounts for £10 million of our current income and we raise £20 million from outside sources, whether that be Defra, other research councils, industry, whatever, so that is not featherbedding an institute; that is going out and hard graft. The quality of the science that we do and of the people we employ winning grants is a major factor. We stack up, as you probably know, extraordinarily well in the hierarchy of grant-winning income in the UK to BBSRC. Chairman: I wanted to give you the opportunity to counter the accusation. Q129 Dr Harris: The universities say that for 100 per cent of their research work they have to compete for these grants, sometimes big grants, and that therefore the featherbedding - and it is an expression I have heard used - refers to the fact that you get 20-50 per cent infrastructure costs from your parent institute, whereas the vast majority of all their research has to be funded from grants, which can come and go if they do not win them, and the RAE, which is continual assessment effectively. Professor Crute: Again, you have to make sure you are comparing like with like. If you are talking about the university situation, all the academic salaries are essentially paid for. We have to compete essentially for our salaries. Our core grant is analogous, as I say, to the HEFCE funding which would be paying for academic salaries. A huge amount of the infrastructure of universities is paid for through, essentially, income through teaching and other such things, so, if you compare like with like, I think we are now, as a consequence of the FEC arrangement, competing on an absolutely level playing field. Q130 Mr Newmark: How do you respond to the comments by some academics that training in RCIs is isolated and substandard to that given within universities? Professor Pollock: With amusement. We cannot do training unless we are linked to universities. Q131 Mr Newmark: What value-added are you providing in RCIs? Professor Pollock: We provide training and facilities that really cannot be done within universities. There is no university that can train plant breeders because they do not have either the long-term availability of experimental material and plots or, in many cases, the quantitative genetics. If you want plant breeding - and the Stern report yesterday made it abundantly clear that plant breeding is a major skill gap - then it has to be delivered through training at Research Council institutes - in collaboration with universities. They are all registered in universities. Professor Crute: At Rothamsted, we have at any one time 50 PhD students. A significant proportion of those come from overseas, because they recognise that this would be the place where they would get the sort of training they are looking for. Q132 Mr Newmark: You are saying that in certain situations they are centres of excellence. Professor Crute: Absolutely. Q133 Mr Newmark: They cannot be replicated within a more generic university environment. Professor Crute: Absolutely. On the quality assurance side of things, these students are all registered through universities and are not only quality assured through the universities but also through BBSRC's assessment. Certainly as far as my own institute is concerned, the BBSRC assessment, through the institute assessment exercise, rated Rothamsted at the highest possible marks in all the four criteria that were assessed. Wherever the criticism has come from, as Chris says, it has to be treated with some derision. Professor Shirley: I would endorse the comments made by both colleagues. We have 40 PhD students. We invest a lot of time in these students through training and we offer them access to facilities and opportunities to study diseases that are not available elsewhere and they are attracted to the IAH for that reason. Q134 Mr Newmark: What help have you received from the BBSRC in terms of management training? Professor Shirley: As a new appointee to the institute - as director from July and as acting director from November 2004 - I was offered and I took advantage of mentoring with an ex-director of the BBSRC institute. Since then BBSRC have introduced management training. The scheme is now beginning to kick off. IAH have been involved in that - both myself and senior colleagues. I have also been offered opportunities to have outside management consultancy input. Q135 Mr Newmark: Was it particularly helpful or not? Professor Shirley: It was. Q136 Mr Newmark: I know you went on it but was it helpful to you? Professor Shirley: Yes. I think mentoring is particularly helpful because it addresses fit for purpose. It is considering opportunity to work with somebody who knows the issues you are facing, so there is less abstract about a mentoring scheme than there is if you perhaps go on a more generic open training course. Professor Crute: I have been on two-week courses at Brunel for management research - a good many years ago now but it was essentially through previous employment in AFRC rather than BBSRC - and BBSRC are continually up-skilling its senior management team through, for example, recently, diversity training and things like interview training, so there are some modules of training which are brought to our attention on a regular basis. Professor Pollock: I have very little to add. Training is an obligatory subject for discussion in our new appraisal all the way through the institute system, from the lowest grade right through to directors. Q137 Mr Newmark: It may be obligatory, but is it important? Professor Pollock: Of course it is important. Research management is now infinitely more complex than it was. I have been a director for 13 years, so I have seen a huge number of changes. It is more important now than it has ever been. Q138 Mr Newmark: Do you think the Research Councils should be doing more to support training? Professor Pollock: I think the investment BBSRC is putting into training development schemes for a third-party provider is both timely and proportionate. Q139 Dr Harris: One of the purposes of Research Council institutes is to develop scientific careers and career opportunities. How do you see yourselves doing that at the moment? That is an approach that cannot be taken at universities. What do you add to the scientific career path, in general? Obviously at the moment it is redundancy, but ---- Professor Pollock: Over the sort of time we have been involved, it comes down on to two lines. First, it comes down on to health and disciplines. There are areas of science that you have already heard about for which the Research Council institutes provide career development opportunities for scientists. Certainly in the whole area of understanding the ecological consequences of novel crops and novel cropping systems, which is going to be extremely important in Europe over the next 20 years, most of the scientific driving forces for that have come out of institute-based research both in England and Wales and North of the Border. So there is a health and disciplines argument and there is also an argument that says there are opportunities that you get within institutes to develop programmes over sustained periods of time and acquire skills and skill mixes that are unique, which is particularly appropriate for the study of whole system processes in agriculture and land use. I would argue that we deliver opportunities that are distinctive from and complementary with that offered by HEIs. Professor Crute: May I take a slightly different direction in response to your question. I personally - and I think it is true in terms of the three institutes that you can see represented here - have taken a view very early on, when the employment regulations changed, with regard to short-term employment. Effectively, when I came to the institute between 60 per cent and 70 per cent of the scientific staff were on short-term contracts. Now, something like 95 per cent of our staff are employed on indefinite contracts. It does not mean to say that when funding terminates those people will leave the institute, but, essentially, we are giving very clear signals to our people now, which is certainly a major change, that, provided the funding environment is secure, we have a training environment and, you might say, a long-term perspective that gives people the opportunity to develop worthwhile and far-reaching scientific careers. Q140 Dr Harris: When people leave your institutes, as they would do normally and particularly with this wave of redundancies, do you have any idea where they go? Do you set up any monitoring system to find out whether they are even still in science? That might be useful to the country. Professor Pollock: We know those numbers of staff who have been prepared to tell us. It works out that roughly 50 per cent get jobs within science elsewhere and 50 per cent of people, mainly the older staff, effectively have taken this as an opportunity for early retirement. Q141 Dr Harris: You have a rigorous system for checking where they go. Professor Pollock: We have a system. Q142 Chairman: Should you have a rigorous system? Professor Pollock: It would be very difficult to have a rigorous system because I do not think the staff are obligated to tell. If they take a three-month gap and then get a job - which has happened in at least two cases - they are not obliged to tell us. It would be information that would be extremely useful to have on a corporate scale, but I am not sure that we have the tools to guarantee to acquire it. Q143 Dr Harris: You would agree that there is no formal oversight - for the reasons you have given, you would say - of the scientific skills lost and, indeed, those retained in public sector research as a result of Research Council cuts and closures. Professor Pollock: I would say that is true for turnover throughout science. Q144 Dr Harris: Do you think it would be a good idea if we could capture this, because it could be argued they are a very expensive resource. Professor Pollock: Yes, in principle, I would. Professor Shirley: We did not necessarily put a lot of resource into monitoring where people were going. We put more resource into making sure that those who left during the restructuring had every support from the institute to have another career in science if we could facilitate it. We really did work very hard to make sure that all the scientists who were leaving the system could, if they wanted to, find jobs elsewhere. We facilitated that through transfer of equipment to a new host centre or the transfer of grants with them as well. Q145 Dr Harris: You are responsible for your own staffing plans. Is there any way you can incorporate within your proposals to when you have cut-backs the long-term needs of the country in terms of the skills base in certain areas? In other words, there are certain things that the country might need and, if you make redundant two-thirds of the people in that area, people cannot switch at a later date, at senior level, into that expertise that has gone. Might that ever be a factor, or do you have to look at how you can look at the bottom line? Professor Shirley: I think we are very mindful of the long-term needs of the UK science base. When you are forced to make cuts and lose posts, it is very difficult to do. You have referred to the bottom line. I think that during the course of the restructuring of the institute we took a much longer strategic view on what the UK needs and what competencies were required and we tried to work through that as perhaps the core to the decision-making process. Q146 Dr Harris: If Defra cuts a big research contract, does not re-commission it, then they are not considering whether it is sensible in the medium to long term to lose those people to this country or to that field. There is nothing you can do about that because you rely on that funding to employ those people doing those jobs. Professor Shirley: I think there is something we can do about it, because, if we think that this is an area of science which is critical and it maybe does not fit, for whatever reason, Defra's portfolio of interest, we can - and we have done in the past - use our core strategic grant to make sure that we can retain the skills of particular individuals. We can transfer them from perhaps a Defra-funded grant through to our core grant. We do that and have done that. Q147 Dr Harris: Can you give us examples of that later? Professor Shirley: Yes. I can do that. This, of course, then puts tension on the core strategic grant. It means that we then have to accommodate those individuals in the course of our portfolio, so there is a knock-on potential where a Defra action then leads to something else happening within the system, where we have made judgments about the longer-term needs of the UK science. Professor Crute: I think you raise an important point. Sometimes you might say that a gap can open up between the sort of science the BBSRC is very keen to support and the science that gets supported by other funders, such as Defra. Under those circumstances, there is no doubt that the skills can be lost, because essentially there is no home for them from the perspective. Obviously we try to bridge those issues as best we can. I will not take up the Committee's time now but I can certainly come forward with three or four areas at Rothamsted where you could say that the national capability has been eroded as a consequence of that gap opening up. Q148 Chairman: I have been looking up the statistics from BBSRC, and, between you, from 2005 onwards, you are likely to lose 200 science posts. That is a very significant loss of science capability. It does worry the Committee that we do not know where those people are going. There is no system to retrain them into other areas of science and to retain them in the science base. I am putting the question to all of you, hopefully with a nod, that that is something we should be doing, either yourselves, BBSRC or the Government, or all three. Professor Crute: It is certainly true that there is no mechanism in place which will allow us to collate and integrate a body of data which would put, you might say, a magnitude of concern on those figures. Chairman: You accept that. Q149 Dr Turner: Can you describe the relationship with the BBSRC. Do they take any close interest in the day to day management of all institutes or do they leave you at arm's length to get on with it? Professor Shirley: The working relationship I have had as director and as acting director of BBSRC has been incredibly positive and very supportive. They are there to facilitate, they are there to work with us, but a lot of the running of the institute is left very much to us to develop a science structure which is consistent with the BBSRC's mission. They have the post of director of science and technology, so there is a very nice interface between that position and the institute's. That works particularly well because there is now a conduit of information exchange both ways. BBSRC has been very supportive of its funding for this whole area of science that we are in and that has been unequivocal. They really have stepped in and made sure that the funding and the quality of the science has been maintained. My answer is that it is a very positive relationship with BBSRC. Q150 Dr Turner: Probably because of the nature of your institutes and the fact that they have to be on the land, as it were, you presumably have been fairly immune from the pressure of other Research Councils to break up institutes or to co-locate them with other academic institutions. Professor Shirley: I am sure the Committee is aware of the Pollock Review of Governance which is now being played through, so all institutes are now looking at their governance relationships vis-à-vis BBSRC. This is a process that is near completion towards the end of this year, with changes being introduced from 1 April 2008. We are not immune to change and we are working with BBSRC to look at these issues of governance. Q151 Dr Turner: You agree that we have a strong element of freestanding-ness in your institutes. What is the feedback into BBSRC from yourselves? Do you have representation from the institutes on BBSRC strategy boards? Professor Crute: I am a member of the BBSRC Strategy Board, so the answer to that is yes. I also sit on the BBSRC Estates and Equipment Board so I have an input into that side of things as well. All directors have a role, you might say, within the operation side of BBSRC. The only thing I would add to what Martin said in terms of the relationship with the BBSRC is that at the level of running a business, obviously, on a day-to-day basis, we are chief executives of our organisations and we have responsibility for that. We have six-monthly meetings with BBSRC in the context of business planning. Essentially, we develop a business plan and that is something which is reviewed, as I say, on a regular basis. From the point of view of control, we are independent organisations, but at the same time BBSRC is our sponsored body. They employ the staff, they provide us with a very large amount of money and it would be surprising if there was not a very close relationship. Barely a week goes by when I am not in contact with somebody at BBSRC about something. Q152 Chairman: Would you accept that, Professor Pollock? Professor Pollock: I have nothing further to add. Q153 Dr Turner: Could you tell us something about BBSRC's review process, which presumably you are subject to at periodic intervals. Is it particularly disruptive? Do you feel it is fair? Is the peer review element appropriate, in the sense that your conditions are very different from those of a short-term response grant and operation in a university. What is your feeling about it? Professor Pollock: I would first of all point out that I am also Chairman of one of the RAE sub-panels, so I am very well aware of the detailed research assessment exercise process as it impinges on universities. I think I am in a reasonable position to comment on this. All the institute directors are very strongly supportive of the institute assessment exercise because it has been set up in a way that acknowledges the breadth of mission of individual institutes and because it involves a personal visit from the panel to look at the work in totality. The feedback that you get from the institute assessment exercise is incredibly valuable. It does offer us a chance to benchmark our work against international standards in a period of review that is both comprehensive and detailed and hard-hitting but generally fair. I think most of us would be extremely reluctant to give up the institute assessment exercise. The only gripe I have ever had with it - and I had my first institute assessment exercise two weeks after I joined the Welsh Farm Breeding Centre in 1974 - is that they do tend to come around a bit often. We have now moved it to a five-year cycle, which I think is entirely appropriate. It is a very important and extremely valuable tool in benchmarking institute outputs as a whole against relevant international standards. Professor Crute: The only rider that I would add to Chris's point is that the panels or the visiting groups are composed of a mix of academics and other people who represent industry or secular interests and inevitably there will not be representatives of other institutes there because, essentially, that would be, you might say, too inward looking. That can sometimes bring about problems because most people are not used to the institute environment, so you can get some stochastic variation in the way in which they look at things, simply because they are looking at things either from the industry perspective or an academic perspective and not perhaps benchmarking us even for the specific areas in which we operate. I would say I have had the odd grumble about that sort of thing in the past. Q154 Dr Turner: Is there any fine-tuning you would like to see in the review process? Professor Shirley: As Ian was saying, one likes to have probably the right spectrum of individuals. We also have a review of our work for Defra as well and I think that is an area where perhaps a little bit more representation might be helpful to make sure we have covered the right skill base that we have in the institute. In terms of process, I think it works very well. Q155 Adam Afriyie: Professor Pollock, you have mentioned benchmarking against international standards as being one of the benefits of reviews. What efforts do you think are being made to share best practice domestically and between Research Council institutes? Is there benchmarking between Research Council institutes? Is there communication? Professor Pollock: At a scientific level there is increasing and effective communication. We have already joint programmes of work in key areas of science that stretch between ourselves, Rothamsted, John Innes and Scottish Crops Research Institute, so there are, I think, plenty of opportunities to ensure that good science is being carried out in a cost-effective manner. The BBSRC institute directors meet regularly, informally among themselves, to discuss issues of improved best practice in both science and governance and increasingly those discussions are beginning to involve colleagues north of the Border as well. Q156 Adam Afriyie: Which I guess is to be welcomed. There have been some calls for Research Councils UK to take a more active lead in the sharing of information and best practice. Perhaps, Professor Shirley, you have a comment. Do you think they are effectively taking the lead at the moment? If so, could they do more? If not, what should they do? Professor Shirley: Probably at the moment it is a sort of bottom-up approach of sharing best practice. That is the way that science tends to work. It is a very effective way of operating. This would happen throughout the Research Council from the active scientists through to people like ourselves who are interacting with one another. I hope we are sharing best practice but there is no formal requirement for us to do that in the context. Professor Crute: Certainly when RCUK was assembled there was a sense that, for example, in the peer review process and the application for research proposal there should be some sort of standardisation of process. It has been put in place. It is too early to say yet how beneficial that has been but there is a process now. We are looking to this shared service centre, which, again, is nothing much to do with the day-to-day delivery of science but is very much to do with best practice from the point of view of efficiency, and time will tell whether that is going to be a positive or a negative thing. Certainly, from an institute perspective, we are remote from the headquarters in Swindon and we would therefore argue that perhaps it will not have the same sort of benefit for us, but I could well imagine that between Research Councils, in a sort of administrative sense, in the best practice of how you administer science and how you get best value out of science there are some gains to be made there. Q157 Dr Iddon: Obviously you do policy-driven research for government, namely for Defra. Do you think you get the policy changes within government soon enough to alter your research programmes? Professor Shirley: This is a difficult one particularly for the context of Defra. It is partly because we are not always aware of the strategy behind the changes, and currently we are facing a number of issues with Defra funding that relate to particular areas of science for which we are not receiving clear guidance and we are not receiving indications of whether areas will be funded or not. As an institute I think we do suffer from a lack of clear decision from a department like Defra, whereby we have programmes that are coming to an end, we have indications that Defra wish to continue with those programmes in the future, but, because they are not clear of their funding abilities, they are not able to take a decision on the continuation of those programmes and we are in a position where we are asking for bridging monies to take us from where we are now, with the grant coming to an end, to the potential start of the new grant in six months. We are neither able to get a decision on whether they will continue in six months time nor a decision on whether they are able to provide their bridging money in between times, so we are left, if you like, high and dry, with individuals who are working on Defra-funded projects, and the money has come to an end, with no clear indication of whether Defra will continue in the future or not. It does make planning of some areas of science, increasingly greater areas of science, very difficult to plan, and we are having to absorb these positions back on to our core until we have clarity from the Government department. Q158 Dr Iddon: Do you think the bulk of your funding should come directly from BBSRC rather than from the Government? Professor Crute: In the period when Defra was MAFF, MAFF had a very clear policy, that it was acting as a proxy customer in the context of research on behalf of an industry. Their relationship was a very much clearer one, in the sense that the policy was clear and there was a dialogue which was able to be developed. In the creation, Defra has a different agenda from the agenda that MAFF had, and we understand that, but that has created a hiatus of what I will call the dialogue. The sort of things Martin was referring to are an inevitability about Defra finding its way. One of the things I have been somewhat critical of is the fact that Defra evidence and innovation approach was a very inward looking approach. Rather than drawing on expertise from the outside, to think about priorities and future directions, and the things that would impact on policy from a science perspective, it was an inward looking activity on which there was own consultation and for which we have yet to see the outcome of that translated into things that they might want us to take forward. It seems to me that we really have to establish a much better dialogue, which is a regular meeting dialogue between Research Councils and between government departments - not just Defra but other departments as well - that rely upon Research Councils and their institutes to deliver things which are of policy importance, so that we can vision the future and make sure we do not have these gaps opening up where we can lose expertise or we have to bridge for long periods - and I have several examples, which I will not take the Committee's time on going through. Essentially, we are to all intents and purposes taking the risk of holding on to human resource and expertise pending decisions about future directions government departments. Q159 Dr Iddon: Are we in danger of losing some research which is vital for the national interest as a result of the declining Defra funding in what you call this hiatus with government? Professor Shirley: I would say yes. The reason I say yes is that it is clear that Defra has priorities, and quite rightly so, but even areas such as those on exotic viruses at Pirbright, where we are in receipt of a surveillance grant, that has been frozen at the same value year on year for the past few years, so, in effect, we are taking a cut on that area of work with the prospect that it will be kept at the same level into the future as well. Year on year, we are able to do less science or we are able to employ less people, and this is an area of work that spans from foot and mouth through to blue tongue virus, which we have become acutely aware of more recently, to African swine fever, to exotic pathogens which pose a threat to the UK. We are forced to look at this whole area of activity to see where we can juggle the research, so there is a risk that we will lose critical expertise. Professor Crute: Another point is one which is not just to do with national expertise but is the way in which the United Kingdom is appearing to the international science community, where effectively we all operate as part of international networks and when these things happen it raises eyebrows in, you might say, the scientific world about what is the United Kingdom doing. This area of activity which we looked to as being world leading has all of a sudden evaporated. Professor Pollock: I am very happy to echo those comments. If you want to sloganise this, I think the institutes are well adapted to cope with gradual change in direction from policy customers; they find it difficult to maintain resilience when the rate of change is very abrupt. Professor Shirley: I think there is a danger, with cuts in these areas of science, that we end up by losing some of the more traditional expertise and we in turn have to rely on the expertise being generated by PhD students, for example, to come in and to maintain capability in some areas. To me that is a real worry, that we are putting huge expectations on a cohort of youngsters being trained by more experienced colleagues, when in fact we should have those skills embedded within mainstream and Defra-funded staff. That is one of the more subtle changes that is happening in the Institute of Animal Health: we are losing some of the key staff and relying more heavily on PhD students to fulfil that research function. Q160 Chairman: Could I try to pin you down on this question of government-sponsored research; in other words, research it wants to support its policy or indeed to inform its policy, whichever way you want to look at it. Clearly there is a difficulty for the institutes in terms of being able to respond to that agenda and at the same time respond to its own agenda which is generated either through BBSRC or indeed through its own research programmes. How best do you think we could preserve economic capacity to be able to respond to government demands without having these sudden cuts of resources to which you alluded earlier? What is your solution for that? Professor Shirley: We need to have long-term guaranteed funding. That is critical. Q161 Chairman: Who should provide it? Professor Shirley: If we are going to have a capability for the UK as a whole then it does not really matter whether it comes through BBSRC or BBSRC plus the government department. The model works well in theory but the practice is that if one of those government departments comes under funding pressures then we lose that money. Q162 Chairman: That is the question I am asking you. Defra came under real pressure because of the farm payments and suddenly there was a pressure on your budget. That is the reality of what we are talking about. What is your solution to that? Professor Crute: My solution is something I have talked about in times past and that is that within government departments capital budgets are ring-fenced. You cannot raid capital budgets to look after recurrent problems. I see no reason at all why research budgets cannot be ring-fenced in exactly the same way. That was the original concept when the Rothschild transfer from the Science Budget to the Department of Health. At the time the concept was that that was a ring-fenced activity. The transfer was made essentially to put what you might call customer and market requirements into the equation in terms of how that money was used, not that the money should be used for other things. Q163 Chairman: Should that money come directly from the government department or should it continue to come ring-fenced, as you have said, through BBSRC? Professor Crute: I personally see advantage in the government department involvement because they have different perspectives on science. The Research Councils are there with a particular agenda for looking after the quality of science in an international perspective with, you might say, very much a quasi-academic role. The government department has, as you have said, a policy direction. It also has an industry to which it is, in some senses, attempting to deliver science information. I think that perspective is important but I think what has really happened, nut just in recent times but over a long period of time, is the erosion of that and essentially, you might say, the downgrading of that as being an important component of the UK science activity. It has been taken as very much a departmental priority rather than a national priority for the science. Professor Pollock: The Office of Science and Innovation set up a study some years ago into the sustainability of public sector research institutes which addressed this very issue. It made recommendations about the relationship between sponsoring government departments which paid more than a certain percentage of institute turnover and those institutes and it put forward some recommendations about how that process should be managed. Unfortunately, that agreement has not been implemented. If it was, I think many of the things that we are concerned about today would be addressed. Chairman: We will ask Defra about that in a moment. Q164 Dr Iddon: Obviously you have undergone reorganisations in the past. It what is expected of you currently quite different? In other words, have you any experience to handle the present situation from the past reorganisation? Professor Pollock: Yes, this looks very like the near-market cuts of the eighties. What IGER is going to have to do is to respond in a similar way to the way in which it responded after the Thatcher near-market research cuts. Q165 Dr Iddon: So we are seeing an ad hoc reorganisation rather than a planned strategy. Professor Pollock: Absolutely. We have been reactive not proactive. Q166 Chairman: What help have you had from the Research Councils in developing and implementing these restructuring plans? Professor Pollock: From my standpoint, the BBSRC have been extremely supportive. They have worked out short-term financial measures to keep the institute solvent. They have helped us to negotiate through sale of fixed assets a way forward which gives us the aspiration to a stable business over the next five years. I could not have asked for a more positive relationship with BBSRC over the last 12 months. Q167 Chairman: Does that apply across the board? Professor Shirley: In our case they also provided their own in-house support, which was very high quality, and they also brought in external support, which was very high quality. They provided resource by competency that we absolutely depended on. Professor Pollock: I would echo those comments. We should not underestimate the fact that BBSRC has had to find very significant amounts of cash unscheduled to pay large amounts or redundancy compensation. Q168 Chairman: The first line of questioning was really about institutes versus universities in simple terms. I understand that your preferred solution in terms of the changes you are having to make - and I understand that - is to merge your facilities with Aberystwyth and Bangor. Professor Pollock: Could I clarify the position of the institute. The institute has been charged by its governing body with looking at three options, one of which is the option that you describe. It is my view at the moment that it is possible, in theory, that all three options could be made credible in terms of sustaining a science base, but the discussions on the option you provide have been positive. There is a strong sense of engagement with the university sector and there is no reason to stop pursuing that avenue as being one of active potential value. Chairman: Professor Martin Shirley, Professor Chris Pollock and Professor Ian Crute, thank you very much indeed. You have been excellent witnesses this morning. We thank you. Memorandum submitted by Defra Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Rt Hon Lord Rooker, Minister of State for Sustainable Farming and Food, and Professor Howard Dalton, Chief Scientific Adviser, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, gave evidence. Q169 Chairman: A quick changeover and we welcome on our second panel the Rt Hon Lord Rooker and the Department's Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Howard Dalton, and you are very, very welcome indeed. Thank you for listening through the first session because I think it helps to put this session into context. I wonder if I could start with you, Minister, by asking how important to Defra are the research council institutes in terms of your science strategy? Lord Rooker: I would just say that Defra is very much a science-based Department. All of our policies are influenced by science, whether it is the environment, food, whether it is animal welfare, disease production or animals. We are very heavily dependent on a research base, so we have a fairly large area of activity where we fund research in a variety of institutions and the research council institutions account for, in rough figures, about £20 million out of our budget of about £150 million. We have our own agencies of course, the Central Science Laboratory, the Veterinary Laboratories Agency and CEFAS, and they account for some £36 million. We fund £30 million worth of research in the UK universities as well, so our base is a very, very wide base and there are other contractors as well. I personally count out £20 million to Kew as part of the research, although it does not appear in the budget as research, but essentially Kew is very much a research-based organisation and it is not just for looking at flowers or trees, but what goes on in the laboratories there is enormously important. From our point of view, our policies are influenced by research, not by the history of what we did in the past, and they are influenced by our needs and priorities as of today and of the future. If I can just make one point, as you know, I was at MAFF for just over two years in 1997 and research was part of my bailiwick there and at that time of course we had not got the Food Standards Agency, for example, so the research budget was even greater. Obviously changes have occurred and we quite clearly now look, and in the years intervening have looked, at techniques of research in terms of risk assessment in changes of the techniques and, and I make no apology for this, our budget and research for policy formation is based on, if you like, the priorities that we have to consider now, not what the history of the pattern of spending in the past was, and I cannot put that any clearer. Our three bodies that --- Q170 Chairman: So you are saying that a lot of the work that they have been doing is not relevant to modern science? Lord Rooker: It is relevant to modern science, but we have to look at our policy needs, as we are at the moment. There is no question about it, there is a shift in terms of the climate and environment. We are not discounting all that we have done in animal health, it is absolutely crucial that we continue in that area, but we do not, for example, core-fund our own three research bodies, but they have to compete for funding, so they are major bodies and they are dealing with multi-million pound contracts. From our point of view, we are a customer for research to help formulate our policy. Q171 Chairman: But it is very difficult to reconcile that with the need to have a science facility on tap for when you, as a government, need it when there is an outbreak of foot and mouth or bird flu arrives or whatever. How do you reconcile those two things of maintaining the institute base or, if it is not going to be the institute base, what will it be - the universities? Lord Rooker: No, I might say the two examples you give are bird flu and foot and mouth and we make sure that our procedures are in place to account for that. We have to account ---- Q172 Chairman: But you do not know what you are going to account in the future. Lord Rooker: No, but that is why we spend money preparing for emergencies. That is an investment from our point of view in the Department, both in research and in the way the Department is structured so that we can switch on emergency control rooms at a second's notice, as indeed we did last week, so we are not in any way saying, "Because we are not doing the work today, we are not funding things". We are funding for the future, but the fact is, and I am not working in a silo here, so please do not misunderstand me, we do not, as Defra, see it as our role to support the core funding of other bodies because that would influence our policy priorities. We are responsible for our policy priorities and we are responsible to this House obviously, but the fact of the matter is that the spending patterns have changed and are going to change. We have made no cuts in any of our programmes to the research institutes, contrary to what you have just heard, no cuts, and none of their activities which they have told you about this morning is in any way related to the difficulties with the Rural Payments Agency. Not one penny can be transferred across and it is part of the myth now that people all over the place are saying, "Because of rural payments, all these things are happening". It is simply not true. Q173 Chairman: So Defra has not cut any of its budget to BBSRC? Lord Rooker: No, no, we have not cut a single contract that we have got out there, and Professor Dalton has got a lot more detail than I have. We have not cut a single contract and we have not cut short a single contract either with any of those research institutes. Q174 Chairman: Do you see Defra, Lord Rooker, as a customer or a partner with the research council institutes? Lord Rooker: If I was asked a black-and-white question, basically we are the customer, and I could be corrected on that and there will be a tonne of bricks on me, but essentially we are the customer. If you like, we need them there and if one of them was not there, we would find someone else to do the work we want to do, it is true. Q175 Chairman: But they tell us that they are the only people doing this work in Britain, if not in Europe and the world. How do you turn on that capacity? Lord Rooker: Well, the implication of that is that nothing changes, that if you start a programme to set up any institute and whatever your circumstances are that might change your priorities in the future, you are bound to continue with what you have been doing. I do not think that is living in the real world. Q176 Chairman: Professor Dalton? Professor Dalton: I would actually very much endorse what Lord Rooker has said. I think it is very important to recognise what the research councils do for us and what we need from the research councils. There is no doubt at all that the quality of the science which the research councils produce is first-class. Their own assessment exercise says that, we know that and we need them very much if we are to continue doing the sorts of things we are trying to do, but you have to recognise that the sort of science which is undertaken in the research councils is at a very fundamental level and does in many respects answer specific questions that we have need to answer. We also have our own agencies and of course they deal very much more with much of the more policy-relevant issues that we have, but certain research councils fulfil a very important role in doing that. We are conscious of the long-term sustainability of what the research councils are and what they stand for and we have no intention whatsoever of trying to destroy that. We try to work very closely with the research councils in order to ensure that there is a long-term stability for them, as indeed there is for our own agencies, but what they do is very much in many cases cutting-edge science, very highly important science, but not always necessarily what we want, so we do not fund them to a very great extent. We put around, I think as Lord Rooker said, just over £20 million a year into the research councils and that includes not only BBSRC, but also NERC and ESRC as we fund both of those as well, and they do important work for us which helps to address many of the issues that we have. We have got a lot of policy-relevant questions which they are not able to do and they carry on doing their own fundamental science, but, as far as we are concerned, they do a very important job in that sense. Q177 Chairman: But without some security of funding, what you are saying is that at the end of a particular contract, you could just simply say, "Well, we're not funding that anymore", and I do not know how we maintain the capacity of the institutes if they are important without that element of funding. Are you suggesting, as indeed others have suggested, that it would be better if you were not part of this equation at all, that all the core funding actually came from BBSRC? Professor Dalton: I would not say that is necessarily the right approach to have all their core funding from BBSRC. It is very important to recognise the way in which funding is done in these circumstances. BBSRC themselves fund universities, as indeed do we, and they fund universities on very many short-term contracts, as do we, and universities have learnt to adapt to that environment. They have learnt to say, "Okay, we have a three-year research contract, so we plan for that and we work towards it", as indeed do the research institutes, as indeed also do our own agencies in some cases. Very often you have to realise the vicissitudes of what is going on in the policy arena as well. Things are changing all the time, as Lord Rooker says, and we cannot keep funding things day in, day out ad infinitum. That is not possible because there are changes in the policy agenda that we have to respond to and very often there will be short-term contracts and we like to work very closely with the research councils in order to try and work with them to formulate effectively where we are trying to go in the future. As I said earlier on, we are conscious of the sustainability issue and we will work with them and we are indeed working with them. I am very closely associated with the research councils and I sit on BBSRC's council and I also sit on the NERC council and the two chief executives from NERC and BBSRC sit on my advisory council as well, as indeed do the ESRC's chief executive officers as well, so there is very close interaction between them. I chair a number of government committees on which the research councils also sit and in which we plan, and try and work towards, a long-term objective, but very often there are short-term contracts which we are all engaged with and we all have to learn to manage our research activities. I also have another job in a university and I indeed apply to research councils for money as well, so I understand the issues associated with trying to keep a research group going in a university as well as ensuring that the research activities within Defra are fit for purpose. Much of that work involves long-term planning and short-term planning as strategic issues have to be planned at a managed level within those communities. Q178 Chairman: If in fact the institutes disappeared, could their work be done within the universities? As far as Defra is concerned, you would still be able to get the quality of output that you need in terms of policy? Professor Dalton: If the research institutes were to disappear and we were to retain our own agencies, our own science agencies with whom we place quite a large amount of research contracts, it may well be possible to get some of that from the universities, but it does not have, as Chris Pollock said earlier on, the long-term stability that you need in order to be able to develop research programmes and to respond to the various problems that you have in ---- Q179 Chairman: So you have a vested interest in those long-term programmes? Professor Dalton: Absolutely. Q180 Chairman: But you do not want to pay for them long-term? Professor Dalton: No, we do, do not get me wrong. We pay for long-term research where it is necessary. We have paid for long-term research at Rothamsted Research, we have paid for long-term research, as you have heard, at IGER, we have paid for long-term research at IAH in a number of areas and where it is necessary for us to keep programmes going, but very often we have to respond to the short-term policy needs and those short-term policy needs very often mean that we place short-term contracts. At the end of that contract, as we make it clear to everybody in the first instance, that research will stop at that stage. If it produces work which we need to follow up, we will follow it up, but we cannot keep going on for ever on the same projects; it would be a waste of taxpayers' money if we were to do that. Q181 Adam Afriyie: So if the British Geological Survey or CEH shut down completely, you would not be concerned about the long-term future of monitoring projects like that? Professor Dalton: Of course I would. Q182 Adam Afriyie: But you are not financing them or funding them? Professor Dalton: We are not funding the British Geological Survey, but we are funding CEH certainly, not a large amount, but the same amount that we put into, for example, BBSRC. We put around £4 million a year into the NERC activities and they work extremely well with us. Q183 Adam Afriyie: And you would consider supporting them if they looked like they were going to disappear? Professor Dalton: It would depend on what reason they were disappearing. We do not support people just for the sake of supporting them. If they do something that is necessary for us to do, it is important for us in terms of a long-term dataset or if they are doing work, for example, as CEH did very much on the farm-scale evaluations work, very important work for us indeed, yes, we would fund that and yes, we would continue funding it if it was necessary to our policy needs. Q184 Chairman: This is the bit I really need to pin you down on. You accept that there are certain long-term datasets that it is essential for the Government, for Defra to maintain. My question, and perhaps, Lord Rooker, you can respond to this, is: how do you in fact maintain the long-term financing of that? Could you ring-fence it so that in fact that was a given as far as the institutes were concerned or are you not prepared to go that far? Lord Rooker: The short answer to that has to be no. We do not do that for our own agencies, and let us be absolutely clear about this. If you take our overall research budget of roughly £150 million, £30 million goes into the universities on contracts, some short, some long ---- Q185 Chairman: This is long-term datasets that you have agreed and Professor Dalton has agreed that you have to have in terms of being able to underpin government policy in terms of long-term science. Lord Rooker: That is fine, providing it is not seen as though we are a milch cow for the infrastructure payments in terms of core funding irrelevant to the research. Now, it is true that if, for various other reasons, their income streams disappeared from other areas, because they have said they need income from elsewhere and so have our own agencies as well, and they were left only with that long-term, then we would have a real problem because what we have been asked to do from our budget is to prop up an institution which has no other work, no other income stream, but it has some narrow area vital to the Government and to the public sector and a good thing for the public to own and buy. Then you have got some major issue there, but that does not just affect these research institutes, but that affects, as you can imagine, research right across the piece. If the question is whether, if I can put it this way, the infrastructure of particular bodies and institutions, be they universities or research institutes or indeed Defra's own agencies which are subject to these fluctuations, should be maintained in perpetuity simply because of a narrow, long-term, vital piece of work ---- Q186 Chairman: I did not ask about that. I asked about preserving that element which you need, not the whole institute. Lord Rooker: Yes, but, with respect, if you take one of our own agencies, something I happen to know, the Central Science Laboratory based in York, that in effect is vital work and all of its income is related to contract and it gets work from all the place, Europe and other government departments. Effectively, around 1 January, before you open the door, it has sort of spent £10/15 million on what it costs to keep it going, but it has to get that money from its research contracts, if you see what I mean. It does not get £10/15 million, as I say, from Defra saying, "By the way, we need you, you are part of us, and here's the bit to open the door". It has to get it from its income stream and that is the way it works with the others. Now, if there is a change in that, in the way that bodies are funded in terms of infrastructure, how do you keep the door open, as it were, that is, with respect, a different issue. As I say, I am not working in a silo, this is not an issue just for Defra, but this cuts right across government; it is the way we fund the public good of science which is best done by the public sector because obviously for a lot of it we also have contracts with private institutions as well. Chairman: Thank you very much. I am sorry to have laboured the point, but it is important to get that covered. Q187 Dr Harris: As to the effects of external pressures which, therefore, force research councils to reorganise, and you have what you describe as this "small, but vital stream of work" to you, do you show an interest in ensuring that the reorganisation preserves that or do you think that is a matter just for the research council concerned with no input from your Department or from government? Lord Rooker: The answer is that if it is our work, we are funding it, so we are very interested if there are going to be different arrangements because it is in our interests because it is our work that we are paying for and we need the results of it. If there are to be mergers or adjustments in the infrastructure of the research bodies, we would be interested. We are not bystanders. As Professor Dalton said, the whole thing is interlinked. Q188 Dr Harris: So what does your interest involve? You are interested, we are all interested, but on that issue what does your interest result in in terms of interventions or actions? Professor Dalton: One of the things that is a good example of where we actually get engaged with all of this is certainly through the research councils themselves and, as I said, I sit on both of those and we have had a very interesting development over recent years with CEH, for example. CEH restructured and reorganised itself and one of the things that was quite important in terms of the way in which CEH organised itself, and this is part of the Natural Environment Research Council activities, was it said, "Well, what is important for us to be able to maintain, keep and preserve?" and it asked Defra how important it was. I was involved in all of that and it was quite important for us to recognise that certain areas of research were very important for us to maintain, so biodiversity research, climate change research, both of those were preserved to CEH. Q189 Dr Harris: What if they proposed not to do that, what would the Government then do? That is what I am asking. Professor Dalton: If they said they were not going to do it? Q190 Dr Harris: Yes, despite asking you and your giving them that answer, do you have any instruments or interest by way of action to make them think again or do you say that it is for them? Professor Dalton: Making them think again? Well, there is a certain amount of engagement that we do have. It is not as if they are sort of sitting in a different department over there and we do not talk to them. There is an incredible amount of engagement which goes on between the research councils and ourselves at all levels, so in that sense there is a pretty good dialogue going on. Q191 Dr Harris: I know there is dialogue, but I am interested to know if people go further than that, if they say that they are going to preserve other areas of international significance because they need to attract grants in that area and the work they are doing for you is a relatively narrow, as Lord Rooker says, but vital piece of work. Professor Dalton: I think it is entirely up to them as to how they organise the structure of their organisations. We are in a position of being able to provide and give them information and advice as to what is important for us. If, on the other hand, the research councils decide that it is not for them and they want to go on and do something else, then that is entirely up to them, but we would certainly be active in engaging in trying to persuade them to do otherwise, but I cannot tell them precisely what to do, I am not their master. Q192 Dr Harris: That is consistent with the government evidence regarding this which is why I was asking you about it. On this question of cuts, Lord Rooker is very clear that there were no cuts, but the impression out there is that there have been cuts in Defra funding, as you are aware, possibly because the figures reduced for funding. Last year, 2004/05, for the Institute of Animal Health it was £9.6 million from Defra and it is now £8 million in 2005/06, for IGER in 2004/05 it was £8.2 million and it is now £7.1 million and from Defra for the Rothamsted Research Institute it was £6.4 million in 2004/05 and it is now £5.1 million in 2005/06, so that is a reduction year on year in the funding from Defra for those three organisations. In what way is that reduction not a cut? Lord Rooker: Simply on the grounds that the flow of contracts has changed. To the best of my knowledge, and I have had this confirmed again, when we have issued research contracts to these bodies, there is usually a time limit on them anyway and there has to be because, otherwise, the things will grow up topsy, so there has to be a time limit, but we have not chopped any of these contracts with any of these bodies earlier than was already planned. Contracts may have come to an end and the flow of new ones has been different because the priorities have changed. Now, that, with respect, is not a cut. They may say, "Oh, there's less money from Defra", that is true, but that is not because we have cut an expected flow of money. They know exactly what is coming and they can programme for it. If they then say, "Oh, we know what's coming and we know the contract's coming to an end, but we think we've got to keep this going. They don't really need this research, but we need their money to keep our infrastructure costs going", and we say, "Sorry", then they have got a cut, but the fact is that their expectations of money from us have been met in full. Therefore, when it has changed up or down, they have known in advance. With respect, you cannot claim that that is a cut. Q193 Dr Harris: It was not me using that language. I used the word "reduction", so you would accept that there has been a reduction in the overall funding in the last complete financial year to the year before. I accept what you say, that that is not cutting off supplies which were expected under the contracts, but they are dealing with a reduction in their income from you, so would you accept that? Lord Rooker: Yes, that is the ebb and flow of the change in priorities which I explained. Q194 Dr Harris: So what about a moratorium on funding because it is considered that there was a moratorium on the funding announced in July 2006? Most people do not consider a moratorium to imply an ebb and flow. It sounds a little more draconian than the ebb and flow of the waves on the shore. Lord Rooker: Well, I can assure you that there was a complete moratorium on spending on virtually anything in Defra at that time because, as I have said to my house when I am in receipt of a lot of questions on this on a daily basis, with a new team of ministers when four out of five arrived in May and in late June we were told, "By the way", and I am using round figures, "there is a £200 million hold on this year's budget", and you are dutybound to do something about it. Well, the first thing we did was put a stop on everything just while we had time to look at it and, as a result of that, we have made certain decisions relating to this year, 06/07, and we hope that by the end of, I can say, this month now because we are now into November, we will be in a position to give advance warning for the 07/08 budget because there is a knock-on effect here to all of the bodies that are involved in Defra. To that extent, the moratorium was there while we looked urgently over the summer at what we were doing in Defra as to where we could find this £200 million. I repeat, that of the work going on that we were funding, there has been no cut and no early withdrawal of the funding from any of the research institutes or cutting short any contract times. Q195 Dr Harris: So the moratorium could just be considered as an unexpected halt in the commissioning of funding of new research in those areas which they would have expected to have been commissioned? Lord Rooker: Yes. Q196 Dr Harris: I think it is fair to say that and, therefore, you would accept that there have been redundancies partly as a result of that moratorium on the commissioning of new projects which were expected to be commissioned, if I can use the term "commissioned" generally? Would you accept that at least because this is, I think, the point the Chairman was trying to get at in his original question? Lord Rooker: Well, not knowing all the detail of what was in the system, anything that we got a contract for or where the money would have been committed has carried on, so I still reject this point that you have heard this morning, that people have been made redundant as a result of Defra cuts and then that transfers over to the Rural Payments Agency and the Single Farm Payment. There is simply no connection whatsoever. We have not cut or cut short a single research contract. Q197 Chairman: If it had not been for the problems with the farm payments and you did not have to find the £200 million, is it likely that many of the contracts would have been extended or renewed as far as the institutes are concerned? Yes or no? Professor Dalton: I will try and answer that one, I think. Q198 Chairman: Yes or no? Professor Dalton: The point is that that made no difference to the sort of work we are trying to do. What has happened here is that this is a management problem for finances, nothing to do with the science we are trying to do. We were trying to continue with all the science we need in order to fulfil our policy obligations and that will continue. Q199 Chairman: One of the obligations is that 200 scientists have left or are going to leave those three institutes. Professor Dalton: That is nothing to do with Defra's organisation of its funding to those institutions at all, nothing at all. Lord Rooker: Nothing at all. Q200 Dr Harris: But I thought we had established that it was. Professor Dalton: Can I ask how you have managed to establish that BBSRC losing 200 posts is down to Defra? Could you tell me because I do not understand that? Q201 Dr Harris: Well, I will ask you the question. You accept that there was a moratorium which prevented the expected overall flows of new commissioned projects, and you have said this earlier, going to research councils, including some of the ones that we had before us previously. Is it not logical that, had that moratorium not happened, there would have been the flow of new research contracts and the renewal of others, not the cutting off of things which were cut off as I am not claiming anything was cut off which had started, and, as a result of the non-arrival of those extensions or those new contracts, there have been redundancies because you cannot pay people to do nothing? I think that is what we would like you to accept. Professor Dalton: I do not know if that is absolutely true, that redundancies have occurred as a result of Defra's moratorium exactly. Professor Crute gave a fairly important response to one of the questions you asked a bit earlier on about that, that they do tend to use their core strategic grant in order to be able to support the infrastructure that is necessary in order to continue the research ethos that they have. Now, what we are talking about here is not contracting to do a piece of work at a particular time, but to give you an indication that sooner or later we will be doing that because if a grant has been approved, the mere fact that we are not funding it on day one, but actually funding it on day 90 or something is what we are really talking about. Of course we are not happy about being able to hold a moratorium, we are not really saying that a moratorium is the best thing to do, but we do have a responsibility not to overspend in the Department and that is why the moratorium has been brought about. I do not know if it leads to redundancies. It is all to do with management within the research councils. Do not forget that it is also true, I might add, with everything we are funding, so it is not just the research councils, but it is also our own agencies as well. Q202 Dr Harris: But we are interested in the research councils today, so would it be fair to say that if the research councils tell us that, due to this moratorium and, therefore, the non-arrival of the planned budget which was published, the research budget of the Department not arriving, there have been redundancies and the people who have been made redundant say it is because of that and you say that you do not know, it is reasonable for us to conclude, on the balance of the evidence, that it is as a result of that moratorium that there have been redundancies? What evidence do we have which would lead us to another conclusion? Lord Rooker: With respect, I would like to see the evidence on which that question is based. I have seen nothing which has crossed my desk and I have met some of these bodies. It is true, I have concentrated more, in the short time I have been there, on Defra's laboratories because there is a programme of change going on in the laboratories, including closing one and a merger, so there is change going on in our own institutions which, it is true, I have spent more time on, but I would like to see that evidence. Nothing has crossed my desk which indicates in any way, shape or form that anything that is happening in those research institutes has been as a direct result of Defra reneging on any of its promises. I have seen nothing where there is a direct link at all and I would like to see the evidence. That is the only way in which I can base my answer. Q203 Chairman: Well, it is not our role as a committee, as you know better than I do as a new Chairman, to interfere or best-guess the management structures within the organisation. Lord Rooker: Sure. Q204 Chairman: Our concern is about how we preserve the science ---- Lord Rooker: Absolutely. Q205 Chairman: ---- and how we make sure that the Government has access to world-class science when it needs it rather than having to recreate it, so that is the reason for that rather than trying to score points in terms of redundancies or anything else. Lord Rooker: With respect, I am not making that point and I cast no aspersions, but there is a difference of opinion, let us get it clear, between Defra and BBSRC because this issue is raised about the research council institutes, the public sector research, the RIPSS study. If you fund more than 15 per cent of another body, there seems to be some indication in recommendation 2 that you have got a duty to carry on doing it. Now, in this case we do fund 40 per cent of the Institute of Grassland, 20 per cent of Rothamsted and roughly 20 per cent of the IAH. Our view on this is that we must be in a position of agreeing their programmes, not simply just because we pay more than 15 per cent that it is going to flow into their core. Now, there is a dispute of opinion between BBSRC and Defra on what I think is this recommendation or the interpretation of recommendation 2 and I make that absolutely clear because that is where we are coming from as we want programmes agreed because that is what we pay for, programmes. Q206 Chairman: It is fundamental to our inquiry. Lord Rooker: Of course. Q207 Dr Iddon: Defra's Deputy CSA told Research Fortnight last September that there is "an interaction between us and BBSRC headquarters which I don't think is an easy relationship. We are looking at ourselves as a policy business; their remit is to advance science. The BBSRC still tends to think of the funds that were transferred to us", and that is following the Rothschild Inquiry of 1972, "as 'their money' which we are supposed to give back to them". Now, Professor Dalton, you said you have a very close working relationship with the BBSRC, but there do, especially from that quote which I have given you, appear to be some tensions. Professor Dalton: Well, there are. There are tensions largely because of that particular perception. That is a real problem in that sense. What BBSRC's perception of what the Rothschild allocation was is entirely up to them. That does cause us from time to time a difficulty. They believe that money is theirs and, therefore, they want to get it back. What we are trying to do in a sense, post-Rothschild, is to try and do all the sort of science that is necessary in order to be able to meet our policy objectives in the customer/contractor relationship that has been developed post-Rothschild. Bear in mind that if you read the Rothschild Report carefully, it indicates there that that arrangement was supposed to be a three-year temporary arrangement and it was going to be re-evaluated thereafter, so if you go back and read it carefully, as I did the other day, that never happened; that stayed and stayed for ever. The important point, I think, we need to bear in mind is that we do have, to be honest, a very good working relationship with the research councils and the BBSRC at a whole variety of different levels and that relationship that we have is extremely important in trying to align what the BBSRC research institutes are doing for us, what they expect from us and also, very importantly, how all of this fits in with our own Evidence and Innovation Strategy, in which they have had a very important part to play. Do not forget, that Evidence and Innovation Strategy which we have been producing, when I first joined Defra, there was no Science Innovation Strategy, but what we did within the first or second year was to produce what we called a 'Science Innovation Strategy' which engaged with the research councils and let them know precisely what we were trying to do over a three-year period. They were consulted and they had input to it. Thereafter, we changed it from 'Science Innovation' to what we call the 'Evidence and Innovation Strategy' and in that Evidence and Innovation Strategy, we have engaged very widely with all of our stakeholders, with the research councils, they have all been privy to this, we have already been talking about it to them, and they have actually come back and told us precisely what they think is good and what is bad about it. There was a pretty extensive engagement. Despite what you might have heard, there was because I have seen all the written responses from them. Now, that has been very important in helping to cement, understand and develop the relationships with us, but it is not always going to be perfect. I have to accept the fact that there are times when the research councils want to do one set of things and we want to do another. As I said earlier on, the way in which they do research is somewhat different from what goes on, for example, in our agencies. There are many overlaps, but there are many differences as well and it is just a question of trying to organise it in such a way that they do the right sort of things for us and we actually let them know precisely what we want from them and what the long-term strategy might well be. Q208 Dr Iddon: That came out very clearly from the previous group of witnesses this morning, that the problem appears to be future planning and I think you personally are working hard with the BBSRC, according to Julia Goodfellow, to get some sort of long-term strategy developed. Is that correct? Professor Dalton: Yes, that is absolutely right. Yes, the relationships are pretty good. I think everybody seems to think they are not, but they are in fact very good. We sit on each other's committees, as I mentioned earlier on. They sit on many of my committees, we have one-to-one meetings, I have a lot of meetings with the research council chief executives on a regular basis and we do discuss high-level strategy and long-term strategy. We do not always necessarily get down to the nitty-gritty detail at those meetings, that is often left to my science co-ordinators and the chief executives of the research council institutes who do meet frequently, and we are trying to draw up a memorandum of understanding with BBSRC and the research council institutes right now in order to be able to advance that. There is one little, tiny sticking point and the one which Lord Rooker referred to, this belief that the research councils and BBSRC have that we have a sort of long-term obligation to put money into their pot which they are allowed to use in any way they like. We are happy to fund them so long as we agree a research strategy and if that research strategy is agreed, we will put money into them so long as it leads to a necessary development of our own policy needs, and they are, they are very good at doing much of that. Q209 Dr Iddon: The research councils do appear to be a pull in at least two ways, one in the direction of the universities and one in the direction of the institutes of course. Professor Dalton: That is right. Q210 Dr Iddon: There is a tension there obviously. Would you like to see any changes in the way the institutes are funded? Do you think the money going through the research councils is the right route or should they be funded in another way? Professor Dalton: I think the way in which the research councils are currently funded is quite satisfactory and it does give a pretty good support for the sort of areas of research that we all need. We have different needs and the research councils do support much of what we want. The way in which they fund their own research council institutes is fine as far as I am concerned. Their core strategic grant which they give them allows them to develop their research infrastructure and to develop their research programmes and that is fine. They also have to compete with universities and with the other research institutes for money from the research councils themselves and that is fine. It has raised their game and it has made them highly competitive in a number of different areas. They also compete for money from us and we are delighted to be able to support them when they can deliver the best research and the research that we need, and I think there is no reason, as far as I can see, to want to change that dramatically at this stage. Q211 Bob Spink: I think most of my questions have actually been covered previously, but I wonder if you could put a little meat on what the difficulties actually are in reaching agreement with BBSRC and RIPSS, that is the Research Council Institute and Public Sector Research Establishment Sustainability Study, just to get it on the record. Lord Rooker: I referred to it previously, but I stopped reading it out half-way through the title! Professor Dalton: I am delighted you have raised that and I am glad you gave it rather than me in terms of trying to explain the acronym! There is no difficulty, to be absolutely honest. There is a stumbling block and the one which Lord Rooker referred to which is paragraph 2 in the interpretation of the RIPSS Report, as has been referred to by Lord Rooker and as has been referred to by my Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser's response in the Research Fortnight article. I think we have gone over it quite a few times. It is clearly and simply whether or not we should be funding and putting money in in the way the research councils put money into their own research institutes as a core strategic grant or not. We cannot do that. We do not have that flexibility. We are prepared to fund the research councils long-term so long as they deliver the sort of science that we want and, as long as they keep doing that, and in many cases they do, we will continue funding them. Q212 Bob Spink: Do you think BBSRC actually allow the RCIs to get on and do their job and give them the funding or do they try and retain a little too much ownership and control because of that funding? Professor Dalton: I think you would have to ask them that specifically as I do not think it would be fair for me to comment too much on it, but from my own perception, being on the council of the BBSRC, I think I think they are fairly good at being able to let the research councils develop their own strategies and to develop a strategy which works effectively not only with the universities, but also with government departments as well, so, as far as I can see, it works fairly well. Q213 Bob Spink: Why are they sensitive about that then? Professor Dalton: I think they are sensitive about it because of again issues of long-term sustainability. I think that is a big issue for everybody. We have issues of long-term sustainability with our research agencies and we do worry that there are not enough resources in the pot in order to keep everything going. If someone were to double my budget, I think that would be fine, I would not have a problem with any of that. We would not be talking about half of this if the money was there, so what we are trying to do is we are trying to manage structures with a budget which is not dramatically increasing. However, having said all that, look at the research councils' budgets from BBSRC. Have you seen the figures between 2002 and 2006? Their budgets have increased dramatically and, as Lord Rooker said, ours have actually stayed fairly static over that period of time, so we do not have the same sort of flexibility that the research councils have in terms of being able to develop a research base, but they are trying very hard to restructure and reorganise themselves to be much more streamlined and to deliver value for money, which I think is really what they are trying to do, and they are doing that right now. I think it was also mentioned that the Follett Report was going to look very closely at the way in which the research councils are using their research institutions effectively. Q214 Dr Turner: This question of sustainable funding has been worried to death and I will shake it a little more, if you will bear with me. Clearly the research institutes are of great value to Defra, so you must feel some element of responsibility even if you cannot back it up with money. Would I be right in interpreting the current situation as being that the institutes have a cashflow problem which they have clearly spelt out to us this morning and from you, Jeff, it is quite clear that a part of that cashflow problem is because of your moratorium. Does that mean that over the coming financial year when you plod your way through a moratorium further income streams will be coming through new contracts to the research institutes, so this is a passing glitch? Lord Rooker: At the risk of repeating myself, our priorities are not what they were ten years ago. Q215 Dr Turner: I appreciate that. Lord Rooker: Therefore, because our research is all going out to contract, including to our own agencies, priorities have changed. They have changed in terms that even our agricultural research now is more tuned in to the climate and environmental aspects of food production than the techniques of production, which is old MAFF in a way, so the issues of the natural environment, water quality, sustainable consumption and production and energy and climate change are priority areas that were nothing remotely like that a few years ago. Therefore, we have to work, as Howard says, mainly within our budget and also looking at what our policy priorities are. Our policy priorities cannot be shaped just by the history of what we did in the past and that is what it comes down to. Q216 Dr Turner: Absolutely, I quite agree. Lord Rooker: We are not the bankers for the research councils, we have to make that absolutely clear. Q217 Dr Turner: We are talking about at least two institutes here, IGER and Rothamsted, which are ideally placed to respond to the kind of research which I assume you do want to commission on adaptation to climate change. Am I right? Professor Dalton: Absolutely. Hopefully once the moratorium is lifted, the research activities will continue. I do not enjoy having a moratorium, I do not enjoy having to talk to the research council chief executives and saying, "I'm terribly sorry, but we are not going to fund you for a couple of months and that is going to cause some problems". It is an issue for us. I do not like to do it. As a scientist, I want to make sure that there is continuity and that the research teams stay in place. Once the moratorium is lifted, yes, that might all be going back into the research council institutes as soon as possible, I hope, so the simple answer is yes, it will continue once the moratorium is lifted. Q218 Dr Turner: Can I just ask out of curiosity, if you contract with a university department a piece of research, the university department will be insisting on full economic costs, yes? Professor Dalton: Yes. Well, it depends. As far as Defra is concerned, Defra historically has always paid full economic costs. Even when the BBSRC and the research councils were not, Defra was and still is. Q219 Dr Turner: And you would do the same with the research council institutes? Professor Dalton: We do the same for the research council institutes. Q220 Dr Turner: That is interesting. Professor Dalton: There is a big difference between the level of funding that Defra puts into the system and the level of funding that the research councils have historically, and currently, put into the system. At the moment the BBSRC and other research councils are funding to the tune of 80 per cent of full economic costs and Defra fund 100 per cent. Q221 Dr Turner: There are currently plans to redevelop the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in relation to your policy needs in addressing climate change. Are you closely involved in that restructuring programme? Professor Dalton: Yes, I have been involved through my role as council member of NERC's council in restructuring and considering the needs that the Natural Environment Research's council has of its research council institutes, principally CEH, so the answer is yes. Q222 Dr Turner: Looking to the future, you obviously have a science strategy, albeit one which is constantly evolving. Have you any view, as a department, about the sort of strategic research institutions and facilities which are going to be needed for the future on which you will be able to draw? Professor Dalton: That is a good question. Yes, we have been thinking about it to some extent, although we had not thought in terms of specifically what research council institutes or what research institutes we would need. There is little doubt, as Lord Rooker has indicated, that our priorities have been changing and changing quite a bit over the last few years. We have to respond to a whole number of changes that are occurring within society. We heard yesterday of the Stern Report and the implications that climate change is having on the globe. That is going to become a very important issue for us. We fund, for example, the Hadley Centre. The Hadley Centre were a very important part of the evidence base for the Stern Review. Our funding to the Hadley Centre incidentally has increased by 40 per cent over five years, so it is not all, as you might like to think, gloom and doom in terms of what we do. Q223 Chairman: We have never suggested it! Professor Dalton: We do fund research which is necessary for societal needs and for policy needs and, therefore, things will probably be changing in the next few years. For example, we are responding very much to the agenda on new technologies. Nano-technology is emerging as a new technology. We would be quite interested in being able to support research in that area if it is necessary in order to be able to fulfil our policy needs. The rural agenda is still very important and we do engage, and have been engaging, with the research councils to try and inform research in that area. There will be changes. Exactly which ones they are going to be, I do not know, but certainly climate change and energy are going to be very high up on our agenda. We know, for example, that the Energy Research Partnership has been established already, we know that BP, Shell and Branson even are putting money into biofuels and bioenergy. There is going to be a great demand for that sort of work in the future as well, so I think those are areas that we are indeed responding to, and have to respond to, really quite quickly. Q224 Dr Turner: Are you able to play any co-ordinating, levering role in getting those sorts of resources into the research areas that are important? Perhaps I could first ask you, the Hadley Centre which is a world leader in its field which we are all, I think, very proud of, the cost of the Hadley Centre work, is that coming out of your £150 million research budget? Professor Dalton: We fund the Hadley Centre, yes. Lord Rooker: It is £12 million. Q225 Dr Turner: It is part of the £150 million? Lord Rooker: It is part of the £150 million, yes. Q226 Dr Turner: So can you tell us a little bit about the sort of value that you think you are getting from your research budget which, given its wide coverage, may well be rather impressive and something that you might want to crow about? Professor Dalton: Well, we would love to crow about it. We do not necessarily always sing it from the rooftops. Jeff Rooker mentioned earlier on, for example, the science that goes on at Kew and we fund them to the tune of £20-odd million a year. It is seriously important. In fact I had a meeting the night before last with Lord Selborne and Steve Hopper, the new Director of Kew Gardens, about how Defra might get much more actively engaged in the sort of things they are doing in terms of publicity. Very few people at Kew realise that all the science activities that are coming out of Kew Gardens are sponsored and funded by Defra. Very few people understand that the Hadley Centre is also a Defra-funded operation. Maybe we ought to be raising it a little bit more and crowing a bit more about it. Q227 Chairman: They know about it now! Lord Rooker: You asked a question about the Met Office and the Hadley Centre, that £12 million is out of the £150 million, but the £20 million for Kew is not out of the £150 million and it is a separate grant in aid. In other words, our effort into science is much greater than the narrow budget, I suppose, that Howard is responsible for in that sense because there are other activities which Defra fund, but the publicity point is a fair one because, frankly, when I was at MAFF earlier on, I did not know about MAFF funding Kew and I had the MAFF logo put on all the leaflets there which is why the Defra logo is on them now, but no one takes a blind bit of notice about it. Chairman: They do. They talk about nothing else now! Q228 Mr Newmark: What do you see as the role of Defra in actually co-ordinating a strategy and would you rather the OSI give a clear lead in ensuring a joined-up approach across government? Lord Rooker: Yes. Howard can give you a perspective that I cannot, but if I could come back, I will home in on this because it is not an unimportant matter. Defra's own agencies, which cost nearly £40 million a year, work across government. The Central Science Laboratory, its name actually is quite clever, but it is Defra's Central Science Laboratory, but it should be the Government's as other government departments use it. I am trying to get a wider customer base for that excellent facility that is there. It is a huge, complex operation, so it has to go across government in trying to get other government ministers, if you like, not to just think about - I am on the government team first and I am on the departmental team second and that is the way I have always approached it and, where we can, to try and join things up and I am doing this not only in work on the Foresight Programme but with government chief scientists across other areas of activity. I do not think Defra can give a lead, but I think ministers have to give a lead that you want things joined up across government. There is an argument ---- Q229 Mr Newmark: My question was about Defra actually. What role do you see for Defra taking a lead on this as opposed to government? Professor Dalton: I will answer that to some extent and it is almost a bit of déjà-vu because we have already said it before, but the important point to bear in mind is that Defra does take a very important lead on a number of government committees and is responsible for setting up a number of other government committees, which include research council representatives as well. What we are trying to do, for example, we have an Environmental Research Funders' Forum which engages with everybody in the United Kingdom who funds any sort of work in terms of environmental research and I chair that. That was set up between the Chief Executive of NERC, that is the Natural Environment Research Council, myself and the Chief Scientist at the Environment Agency many years ago, recognising that we needed to join forces to understand the issues, so I chair that and many of the research councils sit on that. We have had the Global Environment Change Committee which I also chair which involves many of the research councils as well and we discuss strategy and develop strategies there and Defra takes the lead on that one too. I also have my own Science Advisory Council of course which actually engages very widely with many of the best scientific experts in the country to try and help formulate policy and scientific research responding to policy which of course Defra has taken the lead on as well. I do not take the lead on it, but of course sitting on the BBSRC and NERC councils helps us to try and understand a little bit better the joined-up thinking between the research councils and government departments, so I think Defra is taking quite a strong lead in many areas. Q230 Mr Newmark: Is it working? Professor Dalton: Well, I think it is working. I think it works extremely well and I think we are doing extremely well in trying to understand what the real problems are and where the gaps in our knowledge are. That is important. We do an incredible amount of work with a relatively small budget and what we also need to try and do is identify where the gaps in our understanding emanate from. The Environmental Research Funders' Forum, for example, has done a very good job in trying to identify where all those gaps are so that we can then plug those gaps and do something about them, but of course we cannot do everything. Q231 Bob Spink: We have heard from Lord Rooker that there is concern about climate change and about maintaining the science base. An employee of IGER who works in Devonshire and is responsible for the analysis of greenhouse gas emissions is a very well-qualified postgraduate and he earns just £14,500 per year. Is the Government concerned about this? Lord Rooker: Are you asking me about an individual case? Q232 Bob Spink: No. Lord Rooker: The general-principle argument is that people going into science are underpaid. We all know what the soft options are, the social sciences, journalism, the law and accountancy. You go and get kids to do science, engineering and technology and explain to them that they can change the world if they do that, it is actually quite exciting, but people ---- Q233 Mr Newmark: But people do not want hot air and no money! Lord Rooker: Because society's priorities have been, as I have said, on the soft options, they have actually ended up earning more. You are not trying to lecture me anyway, but the point about science, technology and engineering is that actually they should be better paid and better priority because people's understanding of it is vital. Q234 Mr Newmark: We cannot do that if the Government is not putting the funding into science departments. Lord Rooker: It is not necessarily down to the Government in the sense that ---- Mr Newmark: Well, the Government provides the resources which actually encourages people to go into these. You start off at university and if the Government is not putting the money up in universities and giving the support that is necessary to universities in science and in engineering, there is a problem there. Q235 Chairman: Lord Rooker, I would love to continue with this, but ---- Lord Rooker: I should declare an interest, that I was once an engineer, by the way. Mr Newmark: You were once part of the Government too! Dr Turner: Jeff, an unfair question, but where did the £200 million black hole in Defra's budget come from? What caused it? Q236 Chairman: Farm payments. Lord Rooker: No. Let us get it absolutely clear because the myths are out there, of the £200 million, some of it came from holdbacks last year which moved into this year in terms of funding because we were dealing with the end of foot and mouth and one or two other issues, so some projects were held back, so there was a move from one year to the other. There have been changes in funding rules from the Treasury which have had an effect. The Rural Payments Agency contribution to that £200 million is £23 million, so it is about 11 per cent. I do not have the full list. The full list I have disclosed elsewhere, there is no secret about it and I could send it to you on a sheet of paper. The fact is that of that £200 million, as I say, it is peripheral in a way, the Rural Payments Agency and Single Farm Payments, the contribution, as I say, is £23 million, about 11 per cent of that. Chairman: Thank you very much for that. Lord Rooker and Professor Dalton, thank you for a fantastic hour. We are very grateful to you for the honesty and indeed for the vociferous way in which you defended your case!
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