Examination of Witnesses (Questions 94
- 99)
WEDNESDAY 10 JANUARY 2007
DR DAVID
WILLIAMS, MISS
PAULA FREEDMAN
AND DR
ARWYN DAVIES
Q94 Chairman: Good morning to everybody
and good morning to our first panel of witnesses this morning,
David Williams, the Director General of the British National Space
Centre, Paula Freedman, the Director of DTI Space within BNSC
and Dr Arwyn Davies, the Director of Earth Observation at both
the BNSC and the Natural Environment Research Council, NERC. Happy
New Year to you all and welcome to our visitors as well this morning;
you are very, very welcome. David, a fair amount of discussion
in terms of our inquiry, and it is great to see it is so topical
at the moment in terms of what is happening in the media, is really
about the benefits and drawbacks of the UK's partnership approach
to space rather than having an agency. I wonder if you could start
by giving us your candid views as to what are the advantages of
having that partnership approach rather than an agency because
everybody else seems to have agencies.
Dr Williams: Not many countries
actually have agencies. NASA is an agency, Germany do and France,
but within Europe many of the countries operate at a departmental
level or at the inter-governmental level. The main reason that
we have a partnership rather than an agency at the moment is that
one of the things we wish to do with space is to keep the tension
across why we do things using satellite systems as opposed to
other mechanisms. For example, in the science world, the partner
that looks after space science, PPARC, decides whether it should
use a satellite system or a ground-based telescope. The Natural
Environment Research Council likewise decide which way they should
do the science, whether it is a satellite-based system or a non-satellite-based
system and keeping that tension in the system, I think, is an
important element in the debate and in the way that space is funded
so that we do useful things. If we had an agency, we could look
at it the other way and say, "Well, the agency spends the
money on space programmes", but you still need to bridge
that gap and have the user community on side and agreeing that
that is the way forward, so the important element of the partnership
was to get that link across to the user side to make sure that
we are doing things not just because it is a satellite system
or a space system, but because it is useful in the area of application
that it is being applied, and that is valid in the DTI as well
for the more commercial things and in the MoD for the MoD activities.
Q95 Chairman: But surely then the
issue with the BNSC is that you just do not have any lobbying
power? This was the criticism which was made by CCLRC in its submission
to us, that you do not have a lobbying power with government and,
therefore, you are not taken terribly seriously.
Dr Williams: We have direct access
to the Minister, I have direct access to the Minister and that
in itself is enormously useful and important when it comes to
specific issues, trying to promote things within government. We
are directly linked into the Department of Trade and Industry
mechanisms for access to, if you like, the financial regimes.
Something like 80% of the total budget of the BNSC comes through
the Office of Science and Innovation in the Department of Trade
and Industry into DTI directly, into PPARC and into NERC, so we
do have a lobbying mechanism, it is just not a public lobbying
mechanism. I think if we went outside to an agency, I could stand
up and say, "Yes, I think we should do more in space",
or, "I think we should do this", but I am not sure that
that is more effective than my talking directly to the Minister
and directly to the officials at my level and above and saying,
"Let's work this into the system, let's work with the Treasury
in trying to make this happen" in a more quiet way, so we
do have a quiet lobbying mechanism and it is called the line management
system in government rather than a public lobbying system.
Q96 Chairman: So why do you think
that the CCLRC say that it is not an effective way of lobbying
government?
Dr Williams: I think that is probably
for the CCLRC to answer in the next session because that is their
view, not my view.
Q97 Chairman: Miss Freedman, do you
want to comment on that? Why not an agency?
Miss Freedman: I was going to
add that of course there is an enormous network of stakeholders
within the civil space activity, a very competent and energetic
industry, a large number of scientists and academics and of course
they are all very skilled at lobbying. Indeed, industry has worked
on the Case for Space very much as part of their lobbying activity.
The NAO, which reported on BNSC a couple of—
Q98 Chairman: And was very critical
of it.
Miss Freedman: In some ways it
was, but it did comment on the agency status and said that there
are a variety of organisational arrangements that exist among
nations and that the UK's partnership approach is appropriate,
given the UK's policy emphasis on the users and the users of space.
Q99 Chairman: My question is: is
it effective? The indication from both of you is that there are
no problems. The NAO thought there were significant problems.
Dr Williams: There are always
problems when you want to try and get more money through the government
system and the issue there is that it is a matter of priorities
for the Government on how it spends money. Yes, the partnership
brings problems in the interaction between departments because
it really highlights the fact that what you have to do is demonstrate
that the satellite system or the space system which is being developed
really has value in the community that is going to use it in a
way which is not `hideable', you cannot hide that issue in that
debate of why you do something where I think in some agencies
sometimes there is a tendency to go off and do things because
they have a budget.
|
