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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 900-x House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY committee
SCIENTIFIC ADVICE, RISK AND evidence: HOW THE government HANDLES THEM
WEDNESDAY 7 JUNE 2006
PROFESSOR SIR GORDON CONWAY KCMG, PROFESSOR PAUL WILES CB and PROFESSOR FRANK KELLY Evidence heard in Public Questions 1020 - 1141
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Science and Technology Committee on Wednesday 7 June 2006 Members present Mr Phil Willis, in the Chair Adam Afriyie Dr Brian Iddon Margaret Moran Mr Brooks Newmark Bob Spink Dr Desmond Turner ________________ Witness: Sir Nicholas Stern, Head of Government Economic Service, Cabinet Office, gave evidence. Q1020 Chairman: Good morning everyone and good morning to you, Sir Nicholas. Sir Nick, is that how I address you? Sir Nicholas Stern: Nick will do. Q1021 Chairman: Nick will do fine. Thank you very much indeed. Good morning to Sir Nicholas Stern who is the Head of the Government Economic Service. I wonder if I could start by asking you what that means. What is your role? Sir Nicholas Stern: The Government Economic Service is about a thousand people across government in different departments across thirty departments. What we do - and I have the Head of the Economics in Government Team behind me, Sue Holloway, who organises all this - is that we try to make economists better by helping with the recruitment, organising that part of the story for economists and organising the training and the professional development of economists. We make them better economists so that they are better able to serve government. At the same time I work with fellow permanent secretaries to try to encourage the appreciation of what economics can do. It is a cross-government role. Q1022 Chairman: It is across the whole of the departments. Sir Nicholas Stern: Yes, it is. Q1023 Chairman: You have responsibility for that. Is it analogous to the job of the chief scientific adviser? Sir Nicholas Stern: No, it is a bit different. I am the head of profession looking after the development of all these people. Dave King advises HM Government across the whole scientific story and he has a big office at the OST. I am actually focussed on looking after the economists across government and encouraging the better use of economics across government. I have direct advisory roles to HM Government on the economics of climate change and of development, but those are separate from my GES responsibilities. Q1024 Chairman: Why are you not called the Chief Economic Adviser then, or the Chief Economist? Sir Nicholas Stern: I am called the Head of the Government Economic Service. In the past that has been combined with Chief Economic Adviser; at other times it has not been. At the moment I am just the Head of the Government Economic Service. Q1025 Chairman: In terms of the economists who work, for instance in the Home Office or in the Department for Education and Skills, do you have a direct supervisory responsibility for them? Do you have a policy responsibility for them? Do they report to you in any way or do you simply manage them in a broader sense. I cannot get a handle on what your relationship is with the departmental economists. Sir Nicholas Stern: It is more the latter. We have a professional relationship. We meet every couple of months; all the chief economists meet and we discuss policy issues of the day. They might bring some examples to discuss. We discuss how to run the Government Economic Service because we apply the same standard in all departments. From time to time they ask me, as the head of the profession, for advice on particular issues. It is not a direct supervisory relationship but it is quite a close intellectual relationship and we actually meet as a group every couple of months. Q1026 Chairman: Do you think it would be useful to have the equivalent for science, a government scientific service? We seem to have one sort of set of arrangements for science and another for economics. Sir Nicholas Stern: Subjects are different and functions are different and I do not see a big pay-off in insisting that different bits operate in exactly parallel ways. I know what works for the economists and I do not assume that exactly that model would work for others. Q1027 Mr Newmark: I am still not clear on that because it seems to me you effectively have more of an operational role in looking at the various departments within your remit as opposed to being a chief economic adviser. Looking at it purely from the thinking side it is more of an operational role. I am curious as to your answer as to why you do not see any parallel to what could be done with science and technology in the departments and a need to separate the thinking overview in terms of the way people view it as opposed to the operational view which is what you seem to be handling. Sir Nicholas Stern: It is not quite the operational thing that I am handling, it is the professional thing. What we are trying to do is to build a strong core of economists in government and to build a strong understanding of what economists can do. The latter would be in the senior management of the individual department. Q1028 Mr Newmark: You are still dealing, I guess, with more the people side, purely the thinking of trying to fill in with people the gaps you may have in thinking. Is that right? Sir Nicholas Stern: Yes, by getting the right kind of people who are able to use the tools of economic analysis well in building them and supporting them, and getting the senior management of those departments to understand how to use economics, that way we feel we get the strongest influence into good economics across government. I am not an operational quality controller looking at the economic analysis that takes place in each individual part of government. What I do have responsibility for is making sure that there are good economists there to do it. Q1029 Mr Newmark: Given the emphasis the Chancellor as well as the Prime Minister now seem to be putting on science and technology and the importance there, surely we need to be thinking where those gaps are in science and technology and dealing with it in the same way that you are dealing with it. Sir Nicholas Stern: That is for Dave King and his colleagues to think through. I know after me you have some chief scientific advisors coming. Q1030 Chairman: That is the diplomatic answer; we would like to know what you think. Do you think it would be good to have the sort of arrangements that Brooks Newmark alluded to and that I have alluded to in terms of a government scientific service? What is your gut feeling? Sir Nicholas Stern: I always hesitate to propose new institutions; I always think we have enough institutions and the challenge is to make them work well. You can ask the chief scientific advisors if the current system is working well. Q1031 Dr Turner: You have illustrated how important it is to have an economic service so that government policy can be based on good economic evidence. When I was a lad I seem to dimly remember an institution called the Scientific Civil Service so we did, in fact, have a scientific service in government. That no longer exists. Are you in a position to give an opinion - that is all I seek from you - as to whether the fact that that is longer there has, in the recent past, weakened the ability of the Government to make sensible use of science and technology evidence in policy making? Sir Nicholas Stern: That is clearly an interesting question. I have been in government for two and a half years and I do not have that historical sweep. My interactions with the scientists suggest the system works pretty well. I see Dave King a lot; I worked very closely with him on the Commission for Africa. I spent the previous year mostly writing a report to the Commission for Africa. This year the majority of my time is spent on writing a big report for the Prime Minister and the Chancellor on the economics of climate change and I interact with Dave King a lot on that as well. We bump into each other at the Wednesday morning meetings of permanent secretaries as well. Dave and I get together regularly, every month or so, and we see each other and talk to each other quite a lot outside that. Sir Gordon Conway - who is coming up later this morning - and I have worked together on development over the years when I was Chief Economist of the World Bank when he was head of Rockefeller. We interacted a lot there and our interaction has continued, particularly now on climate change. You have Paul Wiles and Frank Kelly coming up. The Chief Economist David Pyle in the Home Office supports Paul and they work together very closely. In Transport the Chief Economist is Dave Thompson and he works in parallel with Frank Kelly and you get all kinds of integrated analyses of the way in which the mechanical systems work in Transport and the economics of that story alongside it. My own experience is close working personally and with my colleagues as chief economists and their colleagues as chief scientific advisors. My experience of that suggests that the system of collaboration between economists and scientists is working well. That suggests that we have somebody good to collaborate with. Whether there are other ways of doing it in the science side is really not for me, but what I see of it functions well. Q1032 Mr Newmark: You have mentioned you meet Sir David King, but apart from climate change can you give me a couple of other examples of areas where you met to collaborate and discuss issues? My next question is, how often do you meet with him on a more formal basis rather than informal? Sir Nicholas Stern: He will have told you - or you will know anyway - about his Foresight analyses. Every year they get a group of serious academics - mostly from outside government, one or two from inside - to think through the big intellectual discoveries in their areas and how it might fit together. That would be an area where we would be together with Dave in thinking across a broad canvass. Most of my personal interactions with him at the moment are on climate change. Q1033 Mr Newmark: Are there any other specific policy areas that you have been working on together? Sir Nicholas Stern: Not at the moment. As I say, last year we did a lot of work together on Africa. It depends on the challenge at hand really. Q1034 Bob Spink: You are Head of Profession for Analysis and Use of Evidence in Government. You are an economist so you are well used to looking at the evidence and making decisions based on the evidence. Are you ever frustrated that policy is sometimes driven by other imperatives than evidence? Sir Nicholas Stern: I actually think that the way policy works at the moment is a lot more evidence-based than I had the impression from outside before I came in. There are so many examples across government where evidence now is really helping to shape policy. The Welfare to Work programme was based on quite detailed micro studies of how people respond to different kinds of incentives as was the Educational Maintenance Allowance; as I mentioned, the analysis of how transport systems work and building a case for road user charges. I think, across government macro and micro, you are seeing it much more strongly. There is a problem of time. You would always like, as an ex-academic, more time to look into the evidence than the pace of decision making life allows you. That can be frustrating sometimes but it is important to be able to offer advice in the timescales that people need it. Q1035 Bob Spink: You have given us some examples of evidence driven policy which I do not altogether accept. Let me give you some where evidence clearly was not driving the policy. The Government's Sure Start programme, for instance, was not evidence based; there was no evidence as to how that would impact on families or children or communities. The drug classification system is not evidence based; that is something that is undeniable. The decision to go along with the EU directive on magnetic resonance imaging was not evidence based. In fact the evidence would suggest that was a silly thing to do. Do you feel that somehow there needs to be more focus on the evidence base rather than on other political imperatives such as timing and public opinion? How does the Government actually communicate to the public all the various factors that influence policy and the part that evidence actually plays within the eventual policy decision that it makes? Sir Nicholas Stern: It is difficult for me to comment on the particular cases where I do not know enough about the history to do it. If I take the spirit of your question as to whether I would welcome a still stronger emphasis on evidence base in government policy making, yes I would. Q1036 Bob Spink: Are you aware of any departments where they do well on taking account of evidence and analysis or any that are week in that area? Sir Nicholas Stern: That is a difficult one. Chairman: Nobody is listening to this; you can be as bold as you like. Q1037 Bob Spink: It is your responsibility to push analysis and use of evidence across all departments and so you will be aware of strengths and weaknesses across these departments. Sir Nicholas Stern: Let me give you a picture in this way. If you look at the number of economists in a department that is partly influenced by the proximity of that department's work to the subject of economics. It is also an indicator of how, in the past, those departments have emphasised the economics. The big economics departments are the DTI, the DWP, DFID and the Treasury. They are the biggest; they together would contribute slightly under or close to half of the people in the Government Economic Service. That, for example, is telling you that given the large number of economists in DWP that there is a big emphasis in DWP on the economic approach to evidence. Q1038 Chairman: So the two largest spending departments of Health and Education have the fewest number of economists. Sir Nicholas Stern: I think I have the numbers here. I gave you the top ones. DfES has 37 compared, for example, with DWP at 128. Q1039 Chairman: What about Health? Sir Nicholas Stern: Forty-two. These are members of the GES. That is 42 for Health and 37 for DfES, so obviously not the smallest. Q1040 Chairman: Would you not feel with massive spending departments where there has been unprecedented spending in Education and Health you would expect the largest input in terms of economists in those in order to make sure that money was being well spent? Sir Nicholas Stern: I do think there is significant scope for expanding the use of economists in those two departments. Q1041 Adam Afriyie: The Government has made a great play about evidence being used in the formation of government policy. Under the Professional Skills for Government programme what specific training and incentives will be on offer to promote the use of evidence in policy making? Sir Nicholas Stern: In Professional Skills in Government there are a range of subjects in which the people at different levels in the ladder are expected to perform; they are supposed to have experience on these different aspects. Obviously analysis and use of evidence is regarded as a core skill and there are specific aspects of that where people are required to get training. I would be more than happy to send you the training programmes and what is involved in those training programmes if you would like to look at that in detail. Q1042 Adam Afriyie: Are there incentives involved as well? Sir Nicholas Stern: As we build up this whole story of Professional Skills in Government these will be core requirements for promotion and advancement. Yes, you have to have those skills. Q1043 Adam Afriyie: Once this programme is fully up and running, assuming that it works, what improvements are you expecting from the current position to the new position with regards to the evidence being used in government policy making? Sir Nicholas Stern: Partly it will be the individual skills which people apply themselves that they have learned. They will learn about trials, they will learn about the basics of cost benefit analysis and so on. In some cases they will apply those skills themselves. In other cases they would actually be aware that these skills are there and can be used and they will call them in. I think that awareness part of the story - what cost benefit analysis can do, what serious analysis of trials can do - will increase the demand for evidence whether or not they actually do it directly themselves. Q1044 Adam Afriyie: In a way this is a wonderful thing and will no doubt make staff feel better, but how will you actually monitor or measure whether or not that training has been affective or that awareness is actually having any output in terms of any changes in the way that government policy is made? Sir Nicholas Stern: I think what we would like to do over time is understand how those skills are being used; we could do that directly and we could apply the techniques themselves. We could do sampling across the country. Q1045 Adam Afriyie: Do you have plans to do that sort of thing? Are those plans in place now where you will monitor whether the change in the way you are providing evidence to the Government is actually having an impact? Sir Nicholas Stern: We will certainly be doing monitoring of the whole story. I could let you have the details of what we will be doing. Q1046 Adam Afriyie: Do you have detailed plans of how you are going to monitor? Sir Nicholas Stern: Those are being developed. Q1047 Adam Afriyie: The definition of science includes natural sciences and social sciences but seems to exclude economics. Why is that? Sir Nicholas Stern: Economics is a social science, along with all the others. It is a question of labelling academic subjects. Economics is a social science. That does not mean that the kind of grouping used in that kind of definition is actually an operational definition. Q1048 Chairman: Sir David King, your friend, says not. He actually says that the Government's definition of science does not include economics in its broadest sense. Sir Nicholas Stern: That is exactly the distinction I was drawing. If you ask somebody from the London School of Economics where I was a professor: Is economics a social science? You will get an unambiguous answer: Yes. If you are talking about administrative structures and whether a particular administrative structure happens to follow the broader scientific definition you will get something different, and that is what we have, something different. It is a social science. That was the question, and economics is a social science. Q1049 Adam Afriyie: Sir Nicholas, today how effectively do you think the social sciences are coordinated in order to affect government policy making? Sir Nicholas Stern: I think that interaction is quite good actually. I see a lot of Karen Dunnel, the National Statistician, and the Government Statistical Service which, as you know, has some parallels with the Economic Service which is under Karen. Sue Duncan has a reporting line to me; she is Head of Social Research. There is the CRAG group which I think you were told about last time - the Coordination of Research and Analysis Group - where we meet regularly there as heads of profession. Dave King is there and myself, Sue Duncan and so on, and operations researchers. I think that coordination is quite good. That is at the level of the heads and we try to set a good example, but it is department by department that I think the cooperation works well but in different ways, as I was describing before. My colleagues who are coming after me as chief scientific advisors could describe a department by department coordination which is of course where the hard detail analytical work is carried out. Q1050 Adam Afriyie: It sounds like you are comfortable that things are going well, but there must be some key weaknesses to the current system. What might they be? Would you identify any weaknesses to the current system? Sir Nicholas Stern: I think we do have to push harder on using evidence in government and I would welcome, for example, the examples of Health and Education we had before. I would welcome a still stronger presence of economists in those departments. Those would be the areas where I think we could move forward, and Defence also. Q1051 Chairman: Defence as well? Sir Nicholas Stern: Yes. Q1052 Dr Turner: How crucial do you think the Cabinet Office and the Treasury are in their roles in policy coordination in persuading civil servants to actually take note of evidence in policy formulation? Which department or individual do you think is most effective in this role? Sir Nicholas Stern: I think there are ways of working that help a lot. I think the ten year Comprehensive Spending Review which is being carried out now will have very strong emphasis on the use of evidence and it is one of those occasions where you actually ratchet up the emphasis on the use of evidence. It is the points where you make big, long run allocation decisions where I think you push quite hard on. I think the Prime Minster's Delivery Unit - which is the Cabinet Office entity that is housed in the Treasury - is another place where the emphasis on the use of evidence starts to bite and gets pushed hard. I think with these kinds of examples - one a unit and one a process - we are collaborating as Treasury and Cabinet Office to press for even stronger focus on the use of evidence. Q1053 Dr Turner: I interpret that answer as being that the Treasury is actually more or less in the driving seat which is what many of us would suspect. How relevant do you think it is in that context that the Treasury does not have a chief scientific adviser? Do you think that that is right? Do you there is a case for one? What is your view? Sir Nicholas Stern: Just on your first observation, I think it is genuinely collaborative. The fact that the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit is housed in the Treasury I think is a measure of the collaboration and it is a good example. The Treasury and the Cabinet Office are clearly both cross-cutting departments, as they should be. What we do is to draw on the scientific advice of the other departments. Dave King is Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government and as such we can draw on Dave King's advice. We regularly draw on the advice of the chief scientific advisors in other departments. I think it is quite appropriate that the central partners of government are able to draw on the scientific advisors of other parts of government and they do exactly that. However, it is would be a decision for Nick McPherson and the Treasury Board (I am a non-executive member of the Treasury Board) as to whether they want to go forward with that. Again, I think the current structure seems to function quite well because we draw on the assets of government as a whole. Q1054 Dr Turner: Finally, a lot of people talk a lot about the precautionary principle in policy formulation. A lot of it is nonsense and it gets stretched too far. You have advocated taking a precautionary approach rather than trying to define a discreet principle. How do you approach this in your work and within the Treasury? Is there any guidance? Do you think guidance is even appropriate or whether it is possible to write sensible guidance on the precautionary approach or principle? Sir Nicholas Stern: I think what you need is good understanding of the economic analysis of risk and how to analyse probabilities with different information. There are probabilities of bad outcomes, good outcomes, what kind of information you would need to estimate and revise those probabilities. At the same time you need to understand consequences of different outcomes in terms of lives saved or lost or whatever they might be, and then the different instruments you can use to approach risk, whether they be instruments which cut back through investment or instruments that deal with building higher flood defences or insurance instruments of various kinds. It is understanding how you estimate probabilities, understanding consequences of risk and understanding the policy instruments you can use, and that is the analysis that you bring to bear. It is a very rich analysis in economics and I do not think you can reduce it to one particular principle or one particular rule. You can show the kind of economic analysis of risk that is necessary to take an evidence-based analytical approach to those problems. That is why I think it is so important to get the standard of economics in government still higher. I would like to emphasise that over the last five or six years - we can give you the growth rate - the number of economists in government has grown pretty rapidly. It is not as if that message is not getting through; I believe it is getting though. I do not think you can reduce the whole theory and practice and use of evidence in risk to one narrow rule. Q1055 Chairman: Can I just throw one last question at you? You now have a desk in the Cabinet Office as well as in the Treasury. Do you think Sir David King should have that? Should David King have a seat in the Cabinet Office the same as you have? Sir Nicholas Stern: I actually do not use the seat in the Cabinet Office; I am actually sitting in the Treasury, although my affiliation is in the Cabinet Office. My affiliation is there because I am embarked on a project which cuts right across government and affects every department but actually the Treasury building is a very good place to run a research team and that is my main activity at the moment. Q1056 Chairman: It seems a very good place to run everything from, Sir Nicholas. Thank you very, very much indeed for coming to see us this morning. Sir Nicholas Stern: Thank you very much. Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Professor Sir Gordon Conway KCMG, Chief Scientific Adviser, Department for International Development, Professor Paul Wiles, Chief Scientific Adviser, Home Office and Professor Frank Kelly, Chief Scientific Adviser, Department for Transport, gave evidence. Q1057 Chairman: Could we very much welcome Professor Sir Gordon Conway, Chief Scientific Adviser, at the Department for International Development, Professor Frank Kelly, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Transport and Professor Paul Wiles, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Home Office. I would like to start questions with you, Professor Kelly. How often do you meet your secretary of state or the permanent secretary? Professor Kelly: I have had an hour and a half's meeting with the secretary of state in the time that he has been in the job so far, the current one. Looking back over the three years that I have been the Department's Chief Scientific Adviser I suppose I have seen the secretary of state in one role or another maybe every three weeks, something like that. I attend each of the board meetings once a month; I spend maybe three or four hours with the permanent secretary and the DGs and I probably meet the permanent secretaries once a month outside of that. Q1058 Chairman: When Norman Glass came before us a couple of weeks ago, what he said to us was the old Civil Service phrase that eggheads and boffins should be on tap and not on top is very much alive and well. What I am trying to get at with all three of you really is how embedded are you actually in the policy making of your departments or are you there simple to give advice when it is called upon? Professor Kelly: I think that is a very interesting question. I can describe my own experience. I have been Chief Scientific Adviser for three years, fifty per cent. So that is not a long time and you can make your own judgment about how much confidence to put in my experience. My experience was that at the beginning, the first six months or so, it was pretty important for me to be at the meetings in order to establish a relationship with the ministers. After that it was just a lot easier. The private office had got the idea that they should let me know this or that I could contact them and so it became a lot easier after that first six months. Q1059 Chairman: You feel you are embedded into that system. Professor Kelly: There are always issues concerned with information, concerned with who knows what, but I did not feel in any sense excluded, no. Q1060 Chairman: You feel you are on top and not on tap. Professor Kelly: I would not put it either way round. It is a sort of working relationship and sometimes it is going to be difficult and you hope to make it easy lots of time so that when it is difficult people carry on with the relationship. Q1061 Chairman: Paul, in terms of your secretary of state and permanent secretary? Professor Wiles: As far as the permanent secretary is concerned, first of all I report direct to the permanent secretary so I see him fairly regularly both with bi-laterals to discuss work that is going on but also in terms of my own performance. I see him quite regularly. I have been in the Home Office now six and a half years so this is the fourth secretary of state that I have worked for in that time and it has varied from secretary of state to secretary of state. I think the important thing for me is not so much how often I see the secretary of state but am I happy that my colleagues in the science and research group in the Home Office are at meetings that the secretary of state is holding where they ought to be there to give advice. Whether it is me there doing it or one of my colleagues is of secondary interest to me as long as I am convinced that the right person is there. The current secretary of state I am sure you will not be surprised to learn I have not had an opportunity to meet at all. He has had some other things to deal with, but I look forward to meeting him for the first time. I did meet Charles Clarke and I was working with him on a number of projects before he unfortunately resigned. Q1062 Chairman: Gordon, how often do you meet the permanent secretary or the secretary of state? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I formally report to the permanent secretary. I see him in one guise or another I suppose once a week. I have a relationship with him and the three director generals in the sense that people go in and out of each other's offices and talk. I reckon I see the secretary of state or the minister, Gareth Thomas, every week in one context or another. I see the secretary of state on a formal basis for a kind of review of what is going on every three months. That is a set, formal kind of meeting with the secretary of state where we go over things. Hardly a week goes by that we are not in a group discussing a particular issue or problem with the ministers. Q1063 Chairman: One of the points of this inquiry is really looking at the Government's policy of evidence based policy making. It seems to the Committee that fundamental to that is having a chief scientific adviser who is at the heart of policy making, who is the custodian of evidence based policy making and we get the impression that the chief scientific advisers - certainly the Home Office - are not at the heart of that policy making, actually bringing evidence to bear in terms of policy. Is that a fair comment? Professor Wiles: No, I do not think it is. Q1064 Chairman: Do you feel excluded? Professor Wiles: No, I do not feel excluded. Can I explain my role in the Home Office and how that relates to the different members of the science and research group because I think that would answer your question? I am responsible for all science, both physical and social science, to some extent across the Home Office - I will explain the qualification in a moment - and also for economic analysis, operational research and national statistics. As far as the social science is concerned and the national statistics are concerned those teams are embedded in the four main business areas of the Home Office. They are line managed by the senior policy person in those four business areas but, very importantly, they have a dotted line to me in terms of the quality of the work they do, in terms of their recruitment, training, development, standards, promotion and so on. We have a deliberate matrix relationship where I have a link to all those teams but they are embedded in the policy areas. It was for that reason I answered your initial question the way I did. For example, as you can imagine, the secretary of state recently has been spending some time looking at issues in the National Offender Management Service - as he has in all areas of the Home Office - and what I am concerned with is that my Assistant Director in that area, Dr Chloe Chitty, is at those meetings and she has been at those meetings. Whether I am there as well is a secondary issue, as long as the right person is there who is responsible for the research and statistics in that area. Q1065 Chairman: With the greatest respect, Paul, there is a difference between being at a meeting and having what you have to say actually listened to and acted upon. Professor Wiles: I can assure you that what was being said was being listened to and has been acted upon. I was not just saying they were at meetings for the sake of it; I am saying that one of the reasons we embedded those teams into those policy areas was precisely for the reason you are trying to address which is: Are they influencing policy? The answer is, yes, they are working directly alongside policy colleagues as policy gets developed. That is why they are embedded. Q1066 Chairman: Is that the case with you, Gordon? Do you feel that, because that was not the case within your Department? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: We have a policy department, a division within DFID that produces papers and I get involved in the production of those papers and then we have a development committee which is the central policy making committee of DFID which meets every two weeks for a two hour meeting. I take part in those at the table and I comment on everything. I do not just comment on things that are narrowly meant to be scientific because science gets into everything. We had a discussion about corruption recently and I talked about ways in which you can use technology to minimise corruption. It comes out all the time. Q1067 Chairman: I am grateful for that. I wonder if I could just move on to you, Frank. In terms of your relationship with Sir David King, the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, do you regard him as your boss or as your advocate? Professor Kelly: I think one aspect of getting academics in from outside is that they are not very used to having bosses. Maybe I should, but I have not and I hope he does not mind. Q1068 Chairman: Surely he runs all the chief scientific advisers. Does he tell you what to do? Professor Kelly: He has been a great help; I have found him a great help over all sorts of aspects of getting assistance here or there or putting pressure on other departments. Q1069 Chairman: Do you react to his orders rather than orders from the secretaries of state? Professor Kelly: I think one of the features government has to get used to if it brings in independent scientists from outside is that we are not used to that sort of question; they do not think like that. Q1070 Chairman: What about you, Gordon? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I see the Chief Scientist probably every week or ten days. I had dinner with him last night. We meet informally and we meet formally. He does not tell me what to do. He makes suggestions; he makes strong and vigorous suggestions and I may agree with them or not agree with them and that is how we work. Q1071 Chairman: Is there a tension there between what your secretary of state and the permanent secretary want and what Sir David King wants as Chief Scientific Adviser? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: There may be tensions over emphasis. Q1072 Chairman: Do you welcome that tension? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: Sure. I think government should be about argument and dialogue and tension, and we play a role in that in providing scientific evidence in those debates. Q1073 Chairman: Sir David is such an advocate for having chief scientific advisers in every department. The question really is, is that part of his empire or is your real responsibility to your secretary of state? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I do not even think he thinks of it as an empire. I think that is a word you are using. Q1074 Chairman: I am just using it provocatively. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: He is Chair of the Chief Scientific Advisers Committee which we all go to; he is Chair of the Global Science and Innovation Forum which we tend to all go to. There is a range of other committees and meetings that he chairs which we go to and we have lively dialogues at those meetings. I think that is the way it should be and that is the way it goes. Q1075 Chairman: Paul, how do you feel? Professor Wiles: Two things, first of all to repeat what my two colleagues have said as it were but also two other things. Sir David does have regular meetings with my permanent secretary and I think he does with other permanent secretaries as well. He is not directly managing the science in the Home Office; I am accountable through the permanent secretary to the home secretary, but that does not mean to say that he has no roots to exercise some influence both via me and directly himself to the permanent secretary. There are mechanisms for that. The other thing I would add is that Sir David is also the Head of Profession for Science and of course through that route (and you have been to some extent exploring that in relation to economics) he also exercises influence across Whitehall and it is quite right that he should do so. Q1076 Bob Spink: We have already established that the ethos, structure, culture and working methods of civil services are different from academia and different from the real world, if I can put it non-pejoratively. Do you think it is always right to have the DCSAs as an external appointment, someone from outwith the Civil Service or do you think sometimes the DCSAs might come from within? Frank, you deal with random processes at Cambridge so perhaps you are the right man to start with. Professor Kelly: I can speak from my experience in Transport but I am not sure how far it generalises. I feel that some of the big wins from having a chief scientific adviser in the department is the challenge function and the opening up of the relationships between science and technology within the department and in the science base as a whole. I think that if you come from outside of government you perhaps find that a little bit easier because you have strong connections with that science base outside government and then you can use your position within government and the very effective and strong support you get from the Civil Service in the role. You can then make that bridge more easily. I think that is where there is a big win from transparency, from peer review, from engaging the broader science base with the scientists and technologists within the departments. For that reason I have found it is certainly helpful in my position in Transport to have come from outside. Q1077 Chairman: Gordon? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: Yes, I think that is right. I think it does help having people from outside, particularly senior people from outside. You have three professors sat here; we all spend some part of our time in an institution - I spend a day a week at Imperial College - and it helps. When we speak it carries a bit of weight. I was recently evaluated on my performance and one of the members of staff said, "He did not turn out to be as intimidating as I thought he might be"; I wanted to be a bit intimidating. If you come from an academic institution in this country and you have established a reputation there you carry with it a weight that goes behind the evidence you are trying to get across. Q1078 Bob Spink: Do you find there is a difference by which civil servants and politicians/ministers actually are proactive or reactive in dealing with you? Do some of them come to you seeking help and advice and involving you early and with other people do you have to go in there ferreting around trying to encourage staff? Do you find there is that difference? Professor Wiles: Yes, there is that difference. I think probably all three of us have had a common experience here - Frank has already alluded to it earlier on - in that you have to learn how to do that subtly. Where there are situations where there are issues being discussed or decisions being made or plans being implemented where you feel there has not been sufficient notice taken on the scientific advice or there has not been proper scientific advice then we have an obligation to get in there and change that situation. Q1079 Bob Spink: Do you think that if you were there full time instead of part time ... Professor Wiles: I am there full time. Q1080 Bob Spink: One day a week and fifty/fifty with Cambridge. So do you feel perhaps, Gordon and Frank, that if you were there full time you could have more influence and develop the relationships and the interchanges more successfully? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: Four days a week is a kind of odd figure because I travel all the time. I am probably doing seven days a week for the Government and a day for Imperial College. It feels like a full time job. The way in which we influence our colleagues within our departments, a lot of it depends on who we are and how we go about putting evidence across. If you are dealing with people in other disciplines, trying to get them to believe in what you are saying, you have to go at it through your reputation, you have to go at it through your own particular skills of argument and so on and so forth. It is not a question of coming down like a ton of bricks. Q1081 Bob Spink: Frank, you are fifty/fifty. Professor Kelly: I think it must depend on the department and the individual. I think, for example, the Ministry of Defence or Defra are departments with strong science establishments, such a dependence on science that you clearly need someone who is eighty per cent or more. In Transport I am not sure you do. It is also the case where many of the academics you would like to get are not going to be willing to stop their academic research streams. I think there is a compromise which needs to be made here. I think that good support from within the Civil Service, establishing the right sort of support structures, makes it possible to do fifty/fifty. Q1082 Bob Spink: I am surprised that you feel that Transport is one of the departments that is not so scientific. I would have thought Transport was one of the most scientifically based departments in government. Professor Kelly: That is certainly an argument I make a lot of the time. Q1083 Bob Spink: Does your involvement as a DCSA help your academic career? Does that give you status or credibility at Cambridge? Professor Kelly: I have not perceived it as such but I suspect it probably does. I think to have a foot in the real world - which in Cambridge is defined as everywhere other than Cambridge - is considered to be of benefit. Q1084 Bob Spink: Do you think the fixed term contracts of three to five years are a good thing or do you think they should be shorter or flexible or longer or what? Professor Wiles: I think what you are uncovering here is the fact that different chief scientific advisers at the moment are in very different terms and operating in different ways. I actually have a permanent Civil Service contract and I think I am probably the only CSA who has that. The reason for that I think is because I originally joined the Home Office as the Director of Research and Statistics and Development and later became Chief Scientific Adviser. Actually I think there is an interesting question for the future in the Home Office of whether the Home Office would in the future, when the time comes for me to go, wish to appoint a chief scientific adviser in a similar way that other departments have, in other words for a fixed term, maintaining their university positions so they can return to those university positions. Q1085 Bob Spink: Do you think that in the Home Office your particular contractual structure has been more successful than had you had the same as the other departments? Professor Wiles: I do not think it has been particularly important one way or the other. I think I would say, however, then when I first joined the Home Office I did actually myself want a structure similar to the ones the other CSAs have, that is maintaining my position at the university and perhaps going one day a week back there. At that time - and things change of course - it was felt that that was not appropriate. Things have changed and most of the other chief scientific advisers now have that arrangement. Q1086 Bob Spink: Could I ask Frank and Gordon very briefly, do you feel that fixed term contracts are a good thing or do you think they should be longer or shorter? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I think in my case it is fine. To some extent I am a trial. I am the first chief scientist that they have had in DFID and I would rather hope that when my contract ends - it is a three year contract - they would want to replace me with somebody of a similar nature to do a similar job. Professor Kelly: For me personally it is three years fifty per cent. This has been ideal; I could not have done more and maintained my academic position. For the Department I think there are advantages in turning over chief scientific advisers. They come with different skills and will thus spread out the connections between the Department and the science base. Q1087 Bob Spink: It took you six months to a year to really get to know the set up. Professor Kelly: Absolutely, and that has to be traded off against this. Q1088 Bob Spink: Very briefly to all of you, do you feel there is a conflict or tension between your two roles? On the one hand you are the departmental head of profession for scientists and on the other hand holding to account the board of management. Professor Kelly: In the case of Transport we have separated that. My deputy, Dr Rob Sullivan, is the Head of Profession for Science. Part of the reason for that was that potential difficulty but also because as head of profession he is far better at many of the career advice aspects of being head of profession and his experience allows him to be able easily to answer questions which I would struggle with. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I am not head of profession. There are heads of profession in DFID in areas like environment, health and infrastructure and so on. We do not have a head of profession of science. There is at the moment a zero based review going on and the senior management review going on in terms of the structure of DFID and that will be discussed in that review. Professor Wiles: The Head of Profession for Science in the Home Office is Alan Pratt who is the Director of the Home Office Scientific Development branch. There are also separate heads of profession for economics, social research, operational research and so on. Again the same separation as Frank has just explained. Q1089 Dr Turner: Gordon, I am sure you remember that before your appointment this committee was quite critical of DFID and its scientific in-house capabilities. Can you tell us something about what you have done since you have moved into the Department to increase in-house expertise so that DFID is able to be a truly intelligent client in using external scientific advice and research? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I am very conscious that in some respects I am a kind of child of this Committee. Q1090 Dr Turner: We are not that responsible. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I have been spending the last year and three months or so getting to understand DFID, getting to understand how it works, how the Civil Service works within DFID, and getting to understand what it does all round the world. I have been travelling extensively. I have been to China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Malawi, Ethiopia, South Africa and so on. I spend a lot of time with our field officers because that is where a lot of our money is spent. Two billion pounds gets spent out of London in those offices. I have been going round talking about climate change, avian flue, tsunamis, soil erosion, watershed development, et cetera, a whole range of scientific issues in which I am trying to provide help to those particular offices in the problems they are struggling with. I have just been to Malawi, for example. I know this Committee went to Malawi two years ago. Malawi has the dreadful problem of food insecurity. I went with the Chief Economist and the Head of Government in DFID; the three of us went together to Malawi. We are producing a report on it but basically what we have been doing is to help that office think through what needs to be done in Malawi from the DFID perspective and in terms of the other three partner donors; how we work with the Malawi Government to get over this appalling problem of food insecurity. That is the kind of practical, on the ground advice that I provide. More generally I have been providing advice through the Development Committee and again it has been on a whole range of activities. I have been providing advice for the secretary of state and the junior minister on the things that they get involved in. Last week I was before the Environmental Audit Committee with Gareth Thomas, the junior minister, and we talked about the environment work that we are doing. What I have been focussing on in the last two or three months is the white paper. I cannot tell you what is going to be in the white paper; it is going to be, I think, distributed to ministers next week. I should say that I am very pleased with the latest draft; that is about as far as I can say. Last week when we were at the Environmental Audit Committee the minister did make a statement about our interest in the environment and natural resources so that is on record. I can read it or you can get it off the Internet. It is quite a strong statement about a future commitment to work in the area of environment, natural resources and climate change. Q1091 Chairman: Do you feel you have influenced that? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: Yes, I have no doubt about it. Q1092 Chairman: To answer Des's question about capacity, has capacity actually increased? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: On the environment side - because I think it indicates what would be true elsewhere - the minister said: "I believe that White Paper will demonstrate further the Department's intent in the areas of sustainability which I have mentioned. At the same time, we are also considering what further staffing and organisational challenges we have to address to support the further work that we expect to do as a result of the White Paper. We, as Ministers, have specifically asked the Permanent Secretary and his management team to look at environmental capacity across the Department. They have set in train two reviews ..." and he talks about the two reviews. That is a specific commitment. Q1093 Dr Turner: We can assume it is possible then that DFID will actually employ more scientists, engineers or suitable experts in-house. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: This is a commitment to look at that in the context of environment, environment being defined pretty broadly. I cannot make other commitments, except we are in the middle of a zero based review so that all of the staffing will be looked at in that way. Q1094 Dr Turner: Can I ask your two colleagues how they would measure this in their own departments and whether, for instance, on a crude measure the number of scientists and engineers in your departments is growing or shrinking? Professor Wiles: I think overall if you are including in the Home Office physical and social scientists across the board they are shrinking, as is the whole Home Office. They are not shrinking disproportionately but they are shrinking. The major shrinkage has been in social research. I have halved the number of social researchers in the Home Office over the last few years. On the other hand, I have increased to some extent the number of economists and operational researchers, that being a deliberate policy to try to rebalance the expertise within the Department in a way I thought was better able to fulfil what the Home Office needed. You started off asking Sir Gordon about your previous criticisms and I am painfully aware you have also been highly critical of the Home Office and science within the Home Office. Indeed, to some extent the reason why I am CSA was in response to some of those criticisms. You were right to be critical. I think there were a number of things first of all to do with the organisation and influence of science in the Home Office, not particularly the number of scientists, the Home Office has always has quite a lot of scientists - good scientists - but you were right to be critical. Home Office officials who have appeared before this Committee in the past have often not been scientists and therefore not surprisingly you were not persuaded of the science. We talked about this in the past; I hope that is at an end. I hope we have now got in place the correct kind of structures and procedures and I am happy to talk about that if you want me to. Professor Kelly: I have some numbers but I am not sure they tell the whole story. I can think of two major aspects of the employment of scientists and technologists in the Department. One has been the long term transition from a situation where the Transport Research Laboratory was part of the Civil Service whereas it is now a separate body where we have a relationship, so the issue there is how you manage that relationship in order to get the flow of science and technology ideas backwards and forwards across what is a commercial interface. That is one aspect of the transition that has happened in the Department of Transport over decades. Another is the way in which, when there are particular initiatives - road user charging is on that is a big issue at the moment - the Department is able to second people in, very, very skilled people, who are able to be recruited for particular projects. Every department is different but I think there is an advantage in having the ability to have teams assembled and working on a critical project for a period of time rather than long term career civil servants. Q1095 Dr Turner: Can I ask each of you to comment on how many dedicated staff you have with the departments who support you in your roles and had you considered setting up an independent advisory council in the way that Defra has? If not, why not? Professor Wiles: As to the first question, there is an immediate group of a small science secretariat - half a dozen people - who support me directly. Beyond that there is a wider group of people who are doing a range of things from procuring scientific research contracts to data entry and so on. We do have an advisory group; we call it the Home Office Scientific Reference Group. That is the main one and I will come back to that in a minute. We also have separate advisory groups first of all on animal experimentation which of course I am also responsible for. You have already been talking to the chairman of the Drugs Advisory Committee so you know about that. We also have an advisory Committee on the counter-terrorism side and, as you know, Sir David King is chairing an advisory committee on biometrics. So we have a number of advisory committees. The main Home Office advisory committee is similar but in some ways different from Defra's. It is similar in that we made sure that the membership of that committee was not, as it were, chosen by us, but we did it through a slightly different route than the way Defra did it. We asked various learned societies to nominate members to that committee, so we did not choose them, the Royal Society of Engineering and the Royal Society of Chemistry nominated those members. It is different in that it is not chaired by an independent chair, it is chaired by the permanent secretary of the Home Office. Is that an advantage or a disadvantage? I think to some extent it is an advantage because it means that the independent external advisory group is talking immediately and directly to the most senior administrator in the Home Office. I personally think that is an advantage, but I understand that you could say that having an independent chair has certain advantages as well. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: At the moment I have one member of staff and another one joining. The issue of having a senior advisory group is one that I am feeding into this senior management review. I think it would be an advantage. Professor Kelly: I am supported by the research and technology staff division which are a dozen. That has several tasks to do but they are all in one way or another associated with my role as Chief Scientific Adviser and there is a discussion about whether to rename it to the Chief Scientific Adviser's Unit. There is not a scientific advisory committee for the Department; the Department has several scientific advisory committees but they are in specialist roles (disabled drivers or various other ones). It does not make sense to have a scientific advisory committee for the whole Department because the issues, for example, of atmospheric chemistry, of aviation and climate are very different from the issue of how you communicate with hauliers or the economics of transport modelling. I think that the range of input that we need from the broad scientific community is so large that we would have around the table people who would have difficulty in talking to each other. Q1096 Dr Iddon: The professional societies have often said to us, either as individuals or in giving evidence to this Committee, that they feel a bit neglected with respect to giving evidence to government departments and they feel they have a lot to contribute. Could each of you comment on that, please? Professor Wiles: I hope they do not feel that about the Home Office. I certainly see it as part of my job to make sure that they are involved and they do get a chance to comment. We do that in a number of ways. I have already mentioned that we turn to them to provide members for our advisory committees largely, so we certainly involve them in that way. I meet with a number of the learned societies periodically precisely because frankly I need their help and I need their support in two senses. You know, because we have discussed this before, that I have always been keen since I took over as CSA at the Home Office to, as it were, open the windows. What I mean by that is to make sure that whatever the Home Office is doing is open to the kind of informed criticism that might make sure we get things right. Certainly the learned societies are a crucial route to doing that and I have always wanted to engage them. I hope we try to engage them; I hope that we have. Recently, for example, we had a couple of days away with the Royal Society of Chemistry where we talked about the kinds of things that chemistry could be doing to support Home Office work. It was a very successful couple of days. It fed into the EPSRC funding of their work on reducing crime. I very much welcomed it; I think they found it helpful as well. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I keep close links with the Royal Society but a range of professional societies provide evidence when we ask for it. The Royal Society of Chemistry is one of those societies that is quite aggressive about being heard for reasons that I do not need to explain. I tend to meet with them rather more than others. Professor Kelly: I have found the learned professional societies extremely useful, not so much for asking them to provide evidence but using them in the peer review challenge function. For example, the Royal Statistical Society organised a meeting that is referred to in the memo that you had on the statistics of speed cameras/road safety, that area. The Royal Academy of Engineering has recently just had a half day meeting on road pricing and the technology challenges of that. The IET has been extremely supportive over the Foresight Intelligence Infrastructure Systems project. So active engagements of the members of the societies in meetings, in criticism, in getting into the science that is underpinning the Department's policies, I think that is where a big opportunity lies. Q1097 Dr Iddon: All state departments put out consultation documents and again professional societies have been very critical about this. They are put out just before the Christmas holidays; they are put out during the summer when people are away on leave. There is a government cabinet guidance document on how consultation should be done, how long people should be given to return their responses and very often the departments do not even stick to the cabinet guidance document. Do you have any role to play in the way that these consultations are handled by your departments? Professor Wiles: I think that depends on what the consultation is about. Can I broaden the comment you have made because I do not think it is just about consultation. I have heard the same comments from the research communities - with some justification - that it also relates to when we put out invitations to tender for research contracts. There is a problem, I think, in that the rhythm of the political year for the Civil Service and the rhythm of the academic year are different. What is more, there is not a single rhythm of the academic year any longer just to confuse things. I certainly find I have to occasionally intervene and say, "Look, I'm sorry, but seeking to do that consultation or seeking to put out that invitation to tender just at the moment when virtually all our academics colleagues are busy marking final exams might not be a very sensible thing to do and can I suggest we do that at a different time" so I think there is an issue there. I do not think it is deliberate; I think it is literally a lack of understanding of the different timetables of different types of jobs. That is no excuse; we need to get it right. Chairman: I think you would all agree with that. Q1098 Margaret Moran: Can I ask about the Guidelines on the Use of Evidence in Policy Making? How useful really are those Guidelines and what evidence has each of you got that they are actually making a difference rather than just having a tick-box approach? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I am not sure I can answer that specifically. I can answer more generally in terms of how evidence is used within the Department for International Development. That is a more generic answer than the one I think you are asking for. Q1099 Margaret Moran: The Government uses scientific advisers to produce these Guidelines and one assumes that as chief scientific advisers within your departments you are working to them. Can you demonstrate how you are working to them and how effective they are? Professor Wiles: I am assuming you are referring to the Guidelines 2000 and something because we have upgraded them recently. The Guidelines 2000 and the subsequent iterations of that, what their key focus is really, I suppose, post the Phillips Report, trying to ensure that the scientific work that goes on in government is open to external scrutiny and challenge to try to get it right in the way we have just been talking about. I think that is very important; I will come back to give you specific examples in a minute. However, I see that as something that needs to be placed alongside the actual processes by which policy is developed. We try and push a model in the Home Office which is essentially an attempt to put in process terms the Treasury Green Book on how policy should be developed. I think it is getting the processes right and how evidence is used in the development of policy alongside the Guidelines 2000 that you are referring to, insistence that there should be some kind of academic challenge. We are going to come on later, I understand, to talk about ID cards. I think that is an example where that has happened. We have, for example for ID cards, recently invited the members of the Foresight Cybertrust and Crime Team to get together again and to spend a day providing a challenge function for ID cards. That was exactly the kind of thing the Guidelines 2000 suggests ought to happen. It was a useful and important day and one of your advisers was there that day. At that day was the then minister responsible for ID cards and the permanent secretary of the Home Office. Q1100 Chairman: The short answer from Gordon and Frank is that you are not aware of these Guidelines. Professor Kelly: I am aware of them. They set a context rather like the context that a contract sets in commercial terms. Something is going wrong when you try to read the contract. What should happen is that you can fall back on it but things are going wrong if you have to fall back on it. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I think it is important to understand that government departments are very different. The Department for International Development is not like the Home Office or like Defra; it has a quite different role. My understanding of the way in which evidence is used is that in general it conforms with those Guidelines which are the responsibility of the permanent secretary. The way in which in practice we make sure that evidence gets into what we do and help governments in developing countries look at evidence - which in some ways is the most important role we have - is a rather different approach from what other government departments will have. Q1101 Margaret Moran: Could you give us a concrete example, Professor Wiles, of how your science and innovation strategy is actually improving the Department's handling of scientific evidence? Professor Wiles: Until comparatively recently the Home Office had quite a large group of scientists but they were known as the Police Scientific Development Branch. They were very good; they did a lot of very important work to support practical policing, they also did work for the security service and some work for the Department of Transport as well. When I became CSA the problem was that there was no equivalent support for other areas of the Home Office and important though policing is it is one aspect of the Home Office. One of the things that we have been doing over the last eighteen months - you know this because we also renamed the Police Scientific Development Branch as the Home Office Scientific Development Branch - is try to make sure that equivalent scientific support was there for the Immigration and Nationality Directorate and for the National Offender Management Service, to make sure that the right kind of support and advice was there. That is an on-going project; it is something we are still working on and there are of course significant scientifically based or scientifically dependent projects as you are aware happening outside of the policing area and we need to make sure we get that science right. One of the things that has involved is changing the skills mix within the Home Office science base to make sure it was capable of handling that different area. We have recently recruited a chief biometric adviser; we have recently recruited from MOD a colleague who has expertise in CBRN and so on. We have been changing that skills base within the Home Office Scientific Development Branch in order to support a full range of the Home Office group activities. Q1102 Margaret Moran: Professor Conway, we are still waiting for your strategy around this. When is it coming and why is taking so long? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: The reason why we have put it off is to wait for the white paper because the white paper is what we have been working on and it is the commitments that will appear in the white paper which will determine what we write in the strategy. That is the reason for it. We are aiming for the strategy to be out in about November and that will be preceded by a document that I have been producing over the last year which is basically a review of the role of science and technology in development. It is a major review of all the aspects of science and technology as they relate to development: millennium development goals, economic growth, sustainability, the resilience issues, natural resources, governance, science and technology capacity building, intelligent use of science. It is a major piece of work that I have been engaged on for the last year. That will come out with luck in September/October and then the strategy will come out in November. Q1103 Margaret Moran: A lot of the issues you are addressing require cross-departmental cooperation. How do you deal with that? Do you meet together? Do you peer review each other's agendas and science strategies? How does that work? Professor Kelly: I have spent a bit of time on the Ministry of Defence review of their alignment and capability and I have found very helpful comments from other chief scientific advisers on things. We are all very busy so it is hard to set it up in a very formal way, but the phone call or the meeting and the specific question seems to me to be the most effective way to get help from my colleagues. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I can give you two examples. The big one is climate change. We work very closely with Defra. I headed the UK delegation of the Commission for Sustainable Development two weeks ago and I was head of both the DFID and Defra components. It was the same in Ethiopia about a month ago on the Global Climate Observatory system where I had both Defra and DFID staff and I was leading that. Another example is the Department for Education and Skills; we have been working with them on the issue of Higher Education in Africa. I suppose we have had some contact with most government departments one way or the other in terms of science. Q1104 Margaret Moran: In terms of horizon scanning we have heard some evidence that horizon scanning is not well developed within this area. Can each of you very briefly give one example of where you have been using a horizon scanning exercise in policy development and indicate whether that was just a one off or whether that is routine within your department? Professor Wiles: We have long done and published projections - note projections, not predictions - of prison populations and yes, those projections of future prison population, assuming current trends were to continue, are central to policy making in that area. Q1105 Chairman: I think we ought to know how you use it. Professor Wiles: If you look at those projections - as I say they published, they are on the website so they are available for everyone to look at - what they are indicating is, as I think everybody knows and indeed it is those projections which have often been behind the press reports, that we have a problem with the prison population at the moment. We are heading towards capacity and therefore we need to do things to handle that situation. Those projections have been absolutely essential to those debates about what is the problem and what do we need to do about it. I do not think there can be much doubt about the importance of those in that area of policy making. They are precisely horizon scanning. Q1106 Margaret Moran: You are giving us one example from one part of the Home Office. Professor Wiles: Do you want some other examples? Q1107 Margaret Moran: Could one argue that the immigration policy, for example, has been dealt with in a similar way? Professor Wiles: I created a year ago a small central intelligence hub within my core economic and operational research group to work partly with Sir David's central horizon scanning team to do horizon scanning. That has been doing that. I think the issue we have - it is common not just within government but within commercial organisations - is that doing horizon scanning is one thing, getting an organisation to actually lift its head from immediate problems and think ten or twenty years ahead and use that horizon scanning is sometimes a challenge. Q1108 Chairman: Are you saying it is not happening? Professor Wiles: No, I am not saying it is not happening, I am saying it is a challenge. I am saying that it is happening to some extent; it is still not happening in my view sufficiently and it is something I regard as a challenge. I regard it as something that I have to try to get the Department to do. You can imagine, particularly at the moment in the Home Office, it is difficult to get the Department to take its gaze above the immediate crises it has to deal with and say, "Yes, all very well, but in the long run the way to do that is to be able to look further ahead, understand the kinds of risks that lay in the future and think about how you are going to manage them." It is not easy but it is something we have to do. Professor Kelly: In Transport a major horizon scanning exercise was conducted by the Foresight group, the Intelligent Infrastructure systems project. The Department of Transport were involved with that and we have used, for example, the scenarios for what the future might look like in thirty or fifty years' time. They were radically different scenarios from each other and from what might be the man in the street's expectation of the future. We have used them as a basis for strategy group meetings within the Department and in different units within the Department, most recently rail. Rail has been using scenarios developed from these to look out. They have decisions to make about infrastructure which are long term decisions; they need to think along these timescales. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: Horizon scanning takes many different forms in DFID again. For example, with individual countries when they are helping them to develop their poverty reduction strategy plans which are the basis for long term funding, effectively that is a horizon scanning for the future of that country. We have just done it for Malawi, for example, and Tanzania. That is a kind of horizon scanning but it does not fall within the narrow definition. I think we are looking within DFID about how we will do more horizon scanning into the future and in particular I want to work more closely with the new chief economic adviser who has only come on board a few months ago. I think we have ideas about how we might together - which would be much more effective - get some more horizon scanning going. That is being looked at within the organisational review that is going on within DFID. Q1109 Bob Spink: Does DFID accept that with the increased occurrence of extreme weather events and natural disasters it may be that the way in which DFID operates in the future will change? Are you taking account of that in planning how aid will be distributed in years to come? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: We have a major programme in climate change in which I am heavily involved. We have had meetings and conferences and so on around the world. Quite specifically we are piloting some climate change screening. We are starting a pilot in Bangladesh and that will attempt to look at the impact of climate change on specific aid investments. It is a policy for the EU but we are going to pilot one of these for the EU as a whole and clearly that is going to be very important. Putting it very crudely, if you build a bridge and you have build the bridge according to a one in a hundred year flood you may have to revise that in the future because the one in a hundred year flood may be a one in fifty year flood. That is the kind of question we are going to have to tackle. Q1110 Margaret Moran: Do you each control your departmental budgets for commissioning research? If not, do you think you should or should there be ring fenced research council funding for that purpose? Professor Kelly: No, I do not think I should. Q1111 Chairman: You do not think you should have your own research fund? Professor Kelly: I have some of my own research fund but do I control the budget, no. The budged is devolved out to the units. There is a part of it which is within my unit but it is not the overall budget. Q1112 Chairman: I think one of the areas that we are anxious to get a handle on is that it is all right having a government policy about saying we must have policy based on good evidence and scientific evidence should feed into that, and yet there seems to be a situation whereby the chief scientific advisers have been appointed but do not have independent research funds in order to be able to carry out the sort of research that is necessary in order to inform the policy. Do you feel that you should have separate budgets? Do you think the Research Council should have ring-fenced budgets which you can tap into? Or is there some better way of actually being able to underpin the research you need? Professor Kelly: It is difficult to get good research and I have not myself found that the lack of money is the most severe constraint. For example in the negotiation with research councils about how to get from the ESRC more money into transport related economic and social research in that conversation money is not the issue. It is attempting to define the problem so it attracts the very best academics. Professor Wiles: The main research is funded by the central research department within DFID but there is also research funded by the policy division and of course each of the individual country offices will fund research. I can spend a small pot of money on research if I wish to do so but this has not arisen so far. It might be that that ought to grow in the future but at the moment it has not arisen. We have call down contracts for resource centres in various areas so that if we want something done quickly we can go and get it done. For example on climate change I only have to call the CEOs at the Natural Environment Research Council and say that we have a certain issue and do they know of anybody who can give advice on it and you get it. Professor Wiles: No, I do not control the research budgets in the Home Office. There is an interesting tension here that I think there is not a straightforward answer to. I think it is actually important that the research that is done in the Home Office is the research that will drive future policy or delivery and as a result of that what we have in the Home Office is to leave the budgets with those that are responsible for the policy and delivery so that they, as it were, are commissioning the research. Of course you could argue - I think it is implicit in your question - that that is all very well but it means that you, as CSA, cannot directly influence what is being done and that is true. The answer is that I have to get in there and mix it and talk to people about what kind of research I think is needed and why. I am genuinely ambivalent on this one. In some senses like any other scientist I would love to have the whole budget because then I could do exactly what I wanted, but I can actually also see that there would be problems if that were the case and I can see strengths in the way we do it. For example, before any social research is done in the Home Office we have what we call a triple key approach. A senior policy official at director level or above has to say they want the research, why they want it and what they are going to do when they get it. I have to say, as CSA, the research can be done to a quality that will answer the question and then a minister has to say, "Yes, that research should be done". Unless all three keys are in the lock research in the Home Office does not occur. Q1113 Margaret Moran: We have heard evidence, particularly on drug policy, that research is not being done at all. Professor Wiles: That is nonsense; I will talk to you about that later on. Professor Kelly: I, as Chief Scientific Adviser, and also the Chief Economist Analyst have a scrutiny function so that an evidence and research policy framework and so the research that is funded by the unit has to then go through a process of scrutiny. Quality pressure from the analysts and chief scientific adviser is important. Q1114 Mr Newmark: I want to turn now to risk uncertainty and how that is communicated both internally within departments and externally to the public. How well is scientific uncertainty being handled generally in terms of policy making? Professor Kelly: Transport has it relatively easy in terms of scientific uncertainty. Many, many of the risk aspects in Transport are those that are well measured and quantified: road deaths, railway deaths. There are large numbers, sadly, in these areas and it is a statistical problem rather than a problem of gross scientific uncertainty. Then there are other areas concerned with the evolution of technology, how rapidly technologies are evolving and what the impact of that will be on mechanisms for road user charging or mechanisms for train signalling where the issue is how to set up a separation, what is it the Government should be do and what is it that should be left to the market, the market being able to evolve rapidly as new technologies are adopted by society. I think Transport has it relatively easy, relative to other departments where there may be gross scientific uncertainties. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: In the big issues that I have been dealing with - tsunamis, avian flu, climate change - the issues of risk and uncertainty are huge. It is a real challenge to how you communicate the nature of the risk and the uncertainty and you have to be honest but you also have to be forceful. Some of them are extremely difficult. If you take the Sunda Shelf off the coast of Sumatra that is going to go, there is going to be another huge quake and a tsunami any time between tonight and fifty years from now. That is what you say but there is no evidence you can get at the moment to narrow that possibility. You have to try to convey that in the form that says, "Look, you must put in much better measures to actually prevent the damage being greater than it otherwise is going to be." That is what you tend to do. Q1115 Mr Newmark: Yes, but I want to focus on the communication of that risk. When that risk is communicated to ministers is that filtered through advisers who have no scientific background or is there direct communication through those who have the science and understanding to the minister who is handling that situation? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: For example in my case I will produce two or three page briefing notes on tsunamis or climate change or avian flu directly to the secretary of state. He will see them and look at them. In fact I have sat down with him and shown him the scenario for avian flu and tsunamis. Q1116 Mr Newmark: So in your experience there is no filtered mechanism between you and the minister? Professor Sir Gordon Conway: No, not at all. Q1117 Chairman: Sir David King does not filter it, neither does the permanent secretary. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: No. Obviously in many cases I am talking to the permanent secretary about this but in terms of those big issues I am dealing directly with the secretary of state. It is a tactic, if you like, because I think the most important thing we have to get within our departments is the confidence of the political leaders. We have to get to the point at which they trust us in what we are saying. They know that we are not being extremists on the one hand; they know we are not being too cautious on the other. We are presenting things forcefully and clearly as they are. Q1118 Mr Newmark: I hear what you are saying, but another way of looking at it is to explain that risk again to the outside world. It comes from you, it goes to the minister and you say there is no filter there. In communicating from government as a whole to the outside world unfortunately there are things out of your control such as the media and the media may well grasp onto something which in your analysis might be a tiny risk but it may well be blown out of all proportion as a disaster that is imminent. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: In my particular case the audience I am interested in is governments in developing countries when I travel to a developing country. For example when I was in Malawi recently we had dinner with three ministers and we talked to them about these issues. I have been speaking on climate change in about four or five different countries. I have had half hour interviews on television in those countries and you adopt exactly the same strategy as for the secretary of state. You lay it out honestly, forcefully and with the caveats that need to be there. You have to get people to accept that this is something really serious. On the one hand you are trying to be forceful but equally you must not be economical with the truth. Professor Wiles: I think the point about understanding more broadly out of the department is a difficult one. I am smiling slightly because Richard Faulkner from The Times is sat over there and he and I once a year sit down and I try to persuade him and his colleagues what is happening to crime in this country. It took me a long time to get the press to both accept and report that crime was actually going down. There was a great deal of scepticism when that first started happening. I am glad to say now that most of the press usually manage to say something like, "Overall crime is going down but ..." and then go onto something else, but at least we have that broad picture. Richard knows that over five years that has been a kind of struggle. There are some real difficulties there. I am not blaming the journalists or the press; I think there is a problem. There is a problem because, as we know, we do tend to have a rather weak scientific and numeracy culture in this country which does not help. The simple thing that I have struggled to get across so far as crime is concerned is that what we are publishing are national crime rates. However, crime victimisation is heavily skewed in its distribution both socially and geographically and therefore those national risks grossly over-estimate the risks for the majority of people. That seems to me a fairly simply point about distribution. Have I managed to get any of the press yet to report that? No. There is a constant struggle I think to try to get understandings of risk and probability. Q1119 Mr Newmark: It is the same issue with avian flu. Professor Wiles: Absolutely. Q1120 Mr Newmark: Do any of your departments publish all research that is used to underpin policy development? Professor Wiles: Any social research within the Home Office is published subject to three constraints. The first one is that I say it is of good enough quality to be published. When I say "I say" actually what happens is we have external and independent peer review and on the basis of that peer review I then take the decision as to whether it should be published. If I decide, as a result of peer review, it is not good enough to be published, if it is external research the authors are then free to seek publication if they can. The other two conditions in which I might constrain publication are first of all if I think it is in the national interest not to. I have done that very rarely but to give you a concrete example we recently had some research done on how the Internet could be used for child pornography. That actually literally explained how you could do it. I did not think it was in the national interest that that should be published. We made it available on restricted circulation to limited police officers and I thought that was the right thing to do. The third thing, occasionally, is commercial confidentiality. Q1121 Mr Newmark: I can understand the points you are making but generally expert advice that is given to ministers ... Professor Wiles: Forgive me, that is a different question. You asked me initially about research and I am saying when we commission or carry out social research in the Home Office then that is published subject to what I have just said. Advice to ministers is quite different. We do not publish the content of our advice to ministers. Q1122 Chairman: Do you think you should? Professor Wiles: I think it is sensible to do what we do, which is to publish the underlying research on which that advice is drawn. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: In principle I think all our research is meant to be available. I would not guarantee it is all out there. We have a new research portal which is being geared up at the moment so that is where that research will be published. I do not agree that advice to ministers as such should be published because I think it changes the nature and the quality of what you write. There has to be within government some areas where you can speak very frankly in a way that if it got out more openly and picked up by the press it would be distorted and misinterpreted. Professor Kelly: There will always be some tension between the quality of something - whether it is not of high enough quality to publish - and political sensitivities or media sensitivities. I think a large part of what I have been doing with great help from the Civil Service team who work with me is to get routinely the presumption established that our research management database, the web portal to our research, that that is populated, that the material is there. It aids with transparency, peer review and it pushes the quality up for the writers if they know it is going to be accessible. Q1123 Mr Newmark: Specifically on the advice side, advice to ministers? Professor Kelly: I do not have anything to add to what Gordon said. I think it is a tricky, difficult issue. Q1124 Mr Newmark: You feel you could not be as open with some of what you would like to say. Professor Kelly: I think that a key activity for CSAs ought to be to attempt to separate out those aspects of the issue which can be debated within, say, a learned society. For example, debating regression to the mean in the Royal Statistical Society, it was easy enough because I had very sympathetic ministers to convince them that this was a group who would actually view regression to the mean as hugely sexy and what they wanted to talk about rather than death on the road. Similarly the Royal Academy of Engineering was very, very keen on the technology of road user charging and were not up onto a newspaper headline. That is part of what the CSA has to help do to separate out those areas that can be put into a useful, transparent, open peer review area, and try to separate off other areas. Q1125 Margaret Moran: On advice to ministers you specifically referred to a research done on Internet child pornography. Would that advice be shared with other ministers in other relevant departments like DfES? Professor Wiles: Yes, it was. It was shared with other departments but its publication was restricted to officers and police forces. Q1126 Adam Afriyie: I am a relatively jolly person. I think that people's happiness should perhaps be the ultimate goal for politicians and their politics. Poor communication of risk can cause an enormous amount of stress and unhappiness for people, especially when it is misperceived or they are worrying about things which may or may not happen. Public consultation is the basis of this question and in particular I would argue that it may well be a cruel trick because it either raises the expectations of people taking part that something good may happen or it alerts them to risks that really have no relevance in their lives in the very long term. In your view what is the primary role of public consultation when it comes to evidence based policy creation? The alternatives might be: is it to shake government policy? Is it to inform the public? Is it to make the government aware of the public concerns? Professor Wiles: It is an interesting question and in a sense I was half guessing at that when I gave my example of the crime statistics. One of the reasons I gave that example is that I think that if we are not very careful people are left with an incorrect and overestimation of their risks. I think there is a very important balance we have to get right here. On the one hand you do want people to be sufficiently aware of the risks in order to take sensible precautions to manage those risks. I do not want to go around saying that there is no risk whatsoever of being a crime victim. That would be a silly and counter-productive thing to say because people do need to take precautions. What I do try to do - and I think it is important to try to do this - is to try to make sure that people understand that risk as much as possible, understand that it may vary from place to place and from people to people, and more to the point that as part of making that available we also make available the evidence we have on what you can do to mitigate the risk. For example - and I am glad to see the press have been very helpful on this - we have made very clear over a number of years in the Home Office that there are things that people can do to reduce the risk of household burglary and we have got good evidence on that. Therefore getting that message across that this is the risk and this is what you can do to mitigate and reduce that risk is a very important part of that process. Q1127 Adam Afriyie: In terms of public consultation what is the aim of it? Professor Wiles: First of all I think it would be arrogant and stupid for government to think that it knows everything and knows best. I think it is extremely important that we regularly test the assumptions that we are operating on and our perceptions against a wider public understanding and sometimes what happens of course is that you go out there and say, "This is the problem and this is what we propose" and people blow raspberries at you and tell you you have got it wrong. I have done that kind of thing myself, going round local communities, talking about crime rates and local communities saying, "Look, you've got it wrong; it's not what you're saying it is, it's something else". It is very important to have that dialogue because it is one of the checks against the evidence base you are using. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I would agree with Paul. What works with consultation is that every answer you get has usually got something new in there in terms of at least a perspective or maybe some new information. That broadens the range of views that we can take into account. Professor Kelly: I have nothing useful to add to that. Chairman: We are moving onto just yourself, Paul. You are quite welcome, Gordon and Frank to leave at this point, but we are only going to be here for another five minutes and I am sure you will be fascinated by what Paul has to say and if you want to add a question you can do so. Q1128 Margaret Moran: I am sure that you are aware that the evidence we have had around the scientific basis for ID cards has been somewhat critical. Can you tell us what your involvement has actually been in the development and implementation of the policy? Why does Sir David King chair the Biometrics Assurance Group rather than you? Professor Wiles: First of all, what has my own role been and, I suppose more importantly, what has the role of a scientific adviser been in the development of ID cards? You are asking specifically about ID cards; I actually see the problem as slightly broader than that because ID cards is not the only Home Office area where the use of biometrics to manage identity is being used. It is also there in the new borders programme; it is also there in the biometrically enabled passports. There is a broad range of things. What have I been doing on that? First of all we have an overall Home Office committee which covers the range of those different biometric identity management processes but they are in different parts of the Home Office. There is a technical sub-committee of that which I chair. There is a technical sub-committee in order to ensure that happens. What I have also done - and I referred to this earlier on - is to recruit and appoint a senior biometric adviser for the Home Office, Dr Marek Rejman Greene, who is there precisely to ensure that there is scientific advice and we recruited Marek because of his previous experience at BT and particularly his involvement in the development of international standards and so on. I have made sure that additional advice is brought into the Department as these processes began to development. We have, as you know - I think you were told this by my colleagues when they were before you - a biometric expert advisory group made up of people from within the Home Office and we also have the biometrics advisory group chaired by Sir David, as you have already said. Why does Sir David chair it rather than me chairing it? Because at the time that I felt it was necessary to have such an advisory group it was also clear that, although at the moment the first developments of biometrics identity management are happening in the Home Office, it was likely to spread to other departments in government as well. This is a new technology which I think is probably going to have wider application. It therefore seemed to me it would make more sense to have an advisory committee that was chaired by the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser so that it could act as a scientific advisory committee in the first instance for the Home Office development but then subsequently for development anywhere else in government. That was the reason why I asked Sir David to chair it and I am delighted so say he agreed. Q1129 Margaret Moran: You focussed on biometrics but obviously the issue of ID cards within the Home Office is much wider than that. Professor Wiles: Yes. Q1130 Margaret Moran: You said earlier, as I understood it, that you had halved the number of social researchers within the Department. Professor Wiles: Correct. Q1131 Margaret Moran: How does that impact on the social science in respect of ID cards? Surely it means, from the sound of it, you are neglecting that aspect of scientific policy altogether. Professor Wiles: No, I do not think I am neglecting it. We still have about 250 social researchers and statisticians in the Home Office. This was not a matter of reducing the numbers to the point where the work that was needed could not be done. It was a matter of balancing the portfolio skills, as it were. For example, when I arrived at the Home Office two things were not happening that are now happening. First of all there was no social research programme on immigration. Five years ago now I put that in place because I felt that was important. There was only one person having any interest in drugs research; we now have a drugs research team, so that was another re-balancing. We had a very, very tiny group of economists and we now have a slightly larger group of economists. Again I thought that was a necessary thing to do. The reason I referred to biometrics is because I do not have responsibility for ICT in the Department and of course if you are talking about ID cards there are I think two critical areas of dependency: one is the biometric technology and how well that does or does not work and the other is the IT platform on which that biometric technology will sit. I have been focussing on the biometrics side of that problem. Q1132 Margaret Moran: On the issue of the requirement for the ID card we have had a lot of evidence that there is a severe lack of clarity as to what ID cards are supposed to achieve and the extent that that poses a serious risk to the entire programme and indeed home security risks because of the way the proposals have been put together without any clarity about what they are expected to achieve. Are you satisfied that the scientific advice that is being provided is being taken into account in this whole programme? Professor Wiles: The brief answer is yes, but let me explain a little bit. First of all, the overall purpose of ID cards is of course a matter for you in Parliament and that was debated and put through the House. The bald purpose is there. The specific requirements for the development are of course precisely going to go out - and they are about to go out now - in terms of the start of the procurement process. We cannot possibly get into a procurement process for ID cards without being clear what we expect those ID cards to be able to do, so there will be specification in there. Have I been involved in that? Yes, I have, and so have my other colleagues. I keep stressing that it is not just me personally who is involved, it is other scientists in the Home Office and we have been involved in that. There are various groups and Sir David's group has also set up some sub-groups to work on particular issues of that to make sure those specifications are clear and will deliver the purposes for which we want ID cards. Q1133 Margaret Moran: Given that the objective has changed during this debate, if you accept that during the course of the debate the issues relate not just to the Home Office, are other scientific advisers in other parts of government also involved in informing the outcomes on the ID cards? Professor Wiles: You will forgive me, I am not going to comment on what was an implicit policy question there about the overall goals, but are there other scientific advisers involved? Certainly in terms of the Cabinet Office's responsibility for broad ICT platforms, yes that is happening. The other thing that has been going on - and it is important - is to try to make sure we understand the business cases and the potential business applications of identity management programmes across government. Clearly there is an important issue here about interoperability and whether we can ensure there is interoperability. My experience of that is that the most difficult problem - this is true both inside the Home Office and elsewhere in government - is not so much if you ask people "If you had ID cards, if you had this method of identify management now, what difference would it make to your business?" People tend to answer that in terms of their current business model. I think the more interesting question is: "Would it enable you to change your business model? Would it enable you to do something in a different way than you are doing it now?" That is where I think we have been working across government trying to get a greater degree of clarity. Q1134 Dr Iddon: We are doing three case studies. One is ID cards; the second one is the classification of drugs. Is the Home Office happy that the current classification of drugs is working for society? Professor Wiles: Can I just go back a little bit? Prior to the current legislation in this country we did not classify drugs into different categories, we simply banned drugs. Indeed, I think I am right in that more than half the EU countries still do that. Q1135 Chairman: That is not the question. Professor Wiles: I am answering the question, I assure you. We decided we wanted that classification and the question is, is the classification working? In a broad general sense yes, I think it is. I think there is broad agreement on the different risks at one end from the possession of a small amount of cannabis and on the other hand the supply of crack cocaine. I think there is broad agreement that those are clearly at opposite ends of a spectrum of harm and risk. I also think that generally speaking the classification system, since it has been in place, has provided a framework for those in the criminal justice system - the police, the judges or whatever - to implement the legislation. I think broadly it has done that. I think it has also broadly enabled most members of the public to understand the relative risks of these different drugs. I think broadly yes, it has. However, I am well aware - I read your exchanges with my colleagues from the Drugs Advisory Committee - that of course within that classification are some very difficult arguments about the relative rank order and the reason why you have those difficult questions - and Sir Michael, I know, made this point to you - is because we do not have a drugs classification system that has a single criterion running through it. If you had a single criterion then it might be easier to do that. We have a system that asks the Drugs Advisory Committee to take into account a number of different risks and those risks are not necessarily uniform in the way that they are hierarchically organised. Q1136 Dr Iddon: Sir Michael Rawlins and David Nutt (Chairman of the Technical Committee of the ACMD) told us that drugs are classified in that classification according to the risk to society and the risk to an individual approximately fifty/fifty. I put it to them that psilocin and psilocybin, which are class A drugs, I have never seen them for sale on the street, I have never heard of anybody using them, I have never heard anybody dying from using either psilocin and psilocybin. If the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs is correct in its definition, why are psilocin and psilocybin in class A? Professor Wiles: I think, as they both discussed with you when they were here before you, once you have a classification system like this there is a problem of historical accretion, as it were, at which point decisions are made. I think the point that I know you questioned them on and it is difficult, is of course the evidence base is changing. I think what you are really raising is: should it be the case that we go back to zero and re-do at some point in time as the evidence changes? That is not the way the Committee has operated; the Committee has tended to operated as new problems emerge, as significant new evidence emerges. It has never gone back and, as it were, re-done the whole classification from base zero. Q1137 Dr Iddon: Do you attend meetings with the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs? Professor Wiles: No, I do not and I should not do so. It is an independent scientific advisory committee. Q1138 Chairman: In terms of the re-classification, David Nutt and Colin Blakemore have actually produced a complete new classification. Why has that not been adopted? Professor Wiles: I assume you are referring to the unpublished Lancet paper which I have also read and I know you have seen. I think, as Professor Nutt explained to you, that is increasingly the basis on which the technical sub-committee of the Academic Advisory Committee on Drugs is operating and which of course Professor Nutt chairs. We do not have time, which is a shame, because actually there are some interesting issues even within that paper. Q1139 Chairman: Paul, we would be very interested in actually getting a response to that particular question as to why in fact Professor Nutt's work has not been adopted by the Home Office. Professor Wiles: Sorry, I think what I said was it is increasing debate on which Professor Nutt is operating as the head of the technical group on that committee. Q1140 Bob Spink: In terms of the classification of magic mushrooms as class A on the one hand and on the other hand crystal methylthioamphetamine as a class B drug when crystal meth is a highly addictive, very dangerous killer drug makes crack cocaine look like a Hershey bar according to the chief of New York police, do you believe that it is time to review fundamentally the structure of the ACMD? Professor Wiles: Can I first of all comment on the crystal meth point? Q1141 Chairman: I think we would like you to put that answer to us in writing. I would like to say thank you very much indeed. This is the last oral evidence session for our inquiry and we would be very grateful if you could very briefly give me one thing we should put in our report, just one single thing which would make the biggest difference in terms of the way the Government handles scientific evidence. Professor Wiles: Make sure that professional skills for government as they develop have clearly within it an insistence on a process and a framework for taking evidence into account. Professor Sir Gordon Conway: I would buy that. I think that is right. I think it is about processes and about the procedures you adopt, and getting those clearer within departments is important. Professor Kelly: Anything you could think of that could encourage openness. It is not a blanket thing, there are all sorts of subtleties about it, but openness is what helps get the quality up. Chairman: Professor Frank Kelly, Professor Gordon Conway and Professor Paul Wiles, thank you very, very much indeed for an interesting session. |