Examination of Witnesses (Questions 110-119)
PROFESSOR SIR
ROY ANDERSON,
MR TREVOR
WOOLLEY, MR
MARK PRESTON
AND DR
PAUL HOLLINSHEAD
28 NOVEMBER 2006
Q110 Chairman: May I welcome you to the
second part of the morning. I wonder if you could perhaps introduce
yourselves for the record and tell us what your role is. Professor
Anderson, would you like to start.
Professor Sir Roy Anderson: I
am Roy Anderson, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence.
Sitting to my right is Trevor Woolley, who is the Finance Director,
and beyond Trevor is Mark Preston, who is the Director in the
Business Delivery Group within the Ministry of Defence, reporting
to Trevor, and to my left is Paul Hollinshead, who is the Policy
and Planning Director within the Science Innovation and Technology
part of the MoD.
Q111 Chairman: Could you describe
to us, please, your role as the Chief Scientific Adviser in the
Ministry of Defence in terms of research, particularly in relation
to Dstl.
Professor Sir Roy Anderson: Within
the Ministry of Defence, the Chief Scientific Adviser's position
is the oldest one within all government departments, established
during the Second World War. Responsibility is as a top-level
budget holder for the science and technology budget. That is the
first responsibility, and that is to ensure that the Ministry
of Defence gets sound technical and scientific advice on both
capability today and also looking into the future about the strategic
capabilities required. The second area is to do with the deterrent,
other more strategic technologies in that area, and the third
responsibility is as Chairman of the Investments Approval Board
for the category A projects and, as a consequence of those two,
I sit on the Defence Management Board of the Defence Council.
Q112 Chairman: The category A projects
are which projects?
Professor Sir Roy Anderson: They
are the big ones, as it were, which are over a certain value.
Q113 Chairman: What is the value?
Professor Sir Roy Anderson: About
£300 million.
Q114 Chairman: How many scientists
do you have in the MoD, not including Dstl?
Professor Sir Roy Anderson: Within
the Science and Innovation top-level budget, that is, within the
main building at Whitehall, then we have a subsidiary site at
Shrivenham, which is the Research Acquisition Organisation, the
current total is roughly 240. It varies between 240 and 270. Half
are based at Shrivenham and half in the main building in Whitehall.
Q115 Chairman: How do you decide
which work goes to Dstl on which work those scientists do?
Professor Sir Roy Anderson: We
have a Board, a Science and Technology Board, which is populated
by the customers, equipment capability and so forth, and the Services
themselves, and we have discussions at the Board about the policy
of directing research towards Dstl. The management of that is
largely undertaken by the Research Acquisition Organisation in
Shrivenham. If you think of a research council in the civil sector,
research councils like the Medical Research Council and so forth
have a body of staff who procure, monitor, and peer-review the
quality of research and that is the function of the Research Acquisition
Organisation.
Q116 Willie Rennie: We received a
note from the MoD recently about the DDA, and it said the DDA
was established in 1999 to facilitate defence technology transfer
into the civil sector and to broker civil technology back into
defence. As you will have heard, in the previous session we heard
that the Dstl had a light relationship with the DDA and there
would be no gap to fill if the DDA were to go. Why is that the
case, when they were supposed to take technology transfer out
and in, and the Dstl is one of the main holders of technology?
Professor Sir Roy Anderson: I
am going to ask Trevor, as Finance Director, largely to answer
this but I want to stress the point that Frances is made. A deep
understanding of the research that is going on in an organisation
is absolutely crucial to deciding what bits might be exploited,
and I think it is more appropriate that Dstl, being best placed
to make those judgements, has this intimate relationship with
spinning out small parts of the organisation. That is the point
I want to stress which Frances made.
Mr Woolley: I think the key facts
are that events have moved on since the Defence Diversification
Agency was originally created. It was originally created as part
of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, DERA, which of
course has now subsequently evolved into Dstl and into QinetiQ.
As Professor Anderson says, in terms of the spin-out of technology,
as far as MoD-owned and funded technology is concerned in Dstl,
the Ploughshares arrangement is the one that we think is most
effective, and that is the route through which the spin-out is
going. QinetiQ are heavily engaged in the civil and commercial
sector anyway and are well placed to spin out technology there.
As far as the spin in side is concerned, MoD procurement policies
now encourage the pull-through of civil technology directly into
the defence supply chain through the prime contractors, and it
is therefore less clear what role there is in technology brokerage
for the Defence Diversification Agency, and that is why its role
has been reviewed, that is why it is the subject of a consultation
document and a consultation period, in the light of which Ministers
will take final decisions on its future.
Q117 Willie Rennie: But the relationship
has never really been there, from what we heard earlier on, so
it is not really that the landscape has changed; the relationship
was never there in the first place. Is that not the case?
Mr Woolley: I think the landscape
has changed. As I say, originally DDA was part of DERA, as part
of the Department's in-house research and technology organisation
but events have moved on. There is not a clear requirement from
customers within the Ministry of Defence for the services that
the DDA provides and there is not an evident requirement in the
defence industrial community for that service and therefore we
had to ask the question whether this is the best way of spending
defence money, which of course is, as always, extremely tight.
Q118 Willie Rennie: So the DDA were
successful in the past, under the old structure, in getting spin-in
and spin-out?
Mr Woolley: What the DDA has come
to be is a technology brokerage service. It is not directly spinning
in or spinning out.
Q119 Willie Rennie: It is facilitating
the process.
Mr Woolley: It has facilitated
it. It is a sort of dating agency. The question is, though, whether
it is essential to that process and whether the value it adds
to that process is commensurate with the cost to the Department.
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