Examination of Witnesses (Questions 235-239)
PROFESSOR SIR
KEITH O'NIONS
20 JUNE 2007
Q235 Chairman: Welcome to this second
part of the Science and Technology Select Committee's evidence
session this morning, this time on International Policies and
Activities of the Research Councils. We are delighted to have
as our witness this morning the Director General of Science and
Innovation, Professor Sir Keith O'Nions. The Committee agreed
that we would look at overarching themes in our review of the
Research Councils and this has turned out to be a particularly
interesting one. As Director General of Science and Innovation,
what role do you play in actually influencing the UK's international
research activity?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Directly,
I am responsible for the Research Councils and their budgets and
set their performance management. The international dimension
and strategy for the Research Councils and RCUK, therefore, are
certainly my responsibility. Also, the budgets that go to the
Academies—the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering
and the British Academy—are again from my budget. We set
their tasks, and so I have a direct involvement there. More broadly
across government, I play a role in GSIF, which is the body that
tries to draw the threads together.
Q236 Chairman: In terms of, for instance,
the resources you put to the Royal Academy of Engineering and
to the Royal Society, are there strings attached to those in terms
of international activity?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Yes,
to the extent that the Royal Society has a formal UK responsibility
for particular international relationships; it would propose to
us a budget for that and we would agree that budget. In terms
of the detail and the mechanisms of that—
Q237 Chairman: You leave that?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: We
are fairly confident that they know what they are doing. If we
felt that they did not, we would intervene more.
Q238 Chairman: You would step in.
There is no doubt, and I think that every inquiry we do now really
points us in the way of international collaborations and international
activities. Science is a global activity, and trying to pretend
that it is not seems to be a rather pointless activity. What is
your vision, as, if you like, the key person here in terms of
the UK's international research activity?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Let
me say that I agree totally with the remarks that you make. I
would draw on three statistics which I think highlight just how
international our activities are. In terms of papers—published
papers, cited papers—we are up at close to 40% of those
now which are internationally authored from the UK, and that has
been increasing quite rapidly. Getting on for half of our PhD
students in the UK are international or from a non-UK source.
If you look at business R&D in the UK, I think the present
number is around 45 to 48%[1]
of all of the R&D spend in business in the UK which is through
investment of overseas-located companies. So it is thoroughly
international and is becoming increasingly international. Given
that, my vision, as it were, is that an international dimension
and strategy should really be embedded in all of the delivery
agents that we have—the Research Councils, the Academies—and
should be a part of normal business, and we should have a very
clear strategy from those organisations. This probably needs to
be clearer than it has been in the past all round, and we are
asking Research Councils to produce much clearer strategies for
each of them and an overarching one for RCUK. I therefore think
that should be embedded. Perhaps I may add that we are, within
a few days, establishing the new Technology Strategy Board, at
arm's length in Swindon. Obviously that is occupying a lot of
time, but we need quite soon to turn our attention also to the
international dimension of its activities, and we have not done
that so far. Over and above that, I think that organisations,
particularly the Research Councils, need to plan for some financial
flexibility; because in numerous cases it will be necessary to
earmark a particular increment of money to either start a new
relationship with a country where we do not have strong relationships,
or jointly to fund a particular project. My vision then is that
this is deeply embedded, with enough flexibility to be earmarking
particular funds for strategic purposes, for new relationships
or strengthening the existing ones. Fundamentally, however, it
has to be part of the way we do business.
Q239 Chairman: There is a real tension
here, and we have picked it up in this inquiry, between your role
and your responsibility, that we only fund the very best science,
and yet having international collaborations which, if you like,
are seed-corn funding with countries which may not necessarily
have the best science, but they are a pathway into collaborations
which can have huge benefits later on. How do you actually manage
that?
Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I
think that we square the circle. Let me give you a specific example.
We have had a scheme called Science Bridges with the United States
latterly, and the aim of this was to make institution-to-institution
relationships—the Cambridge-MIT was the grandest of all
of these. I think that there is an important role for those, but
to meet the requirements by the particular projects that are ultimately
funded they really must be of an international standard. For example,
the Science Bridges we have in the US at the moment has particular
projects in health research in Texas; it has things on aerospace
and composites with University of Washington; but the projects
that are being undertaken are clearly of international standard.
I think that is how we square the circle. I do not think that
we would ever ask Research Councils or an Academy to be funding
things that were demonstrably second-rate.
1 Note by the witness: The actual figure is
30%. Back
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