Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
PROFESSOR JULIA
GOODFELLOW CBE, PROFESSOR
COLIN BLAKEMORE
AND PROFESSOR
ALAN THORPE
28 JUNE 2006
Q60 Chairman: Julia?
Professor Goodfellow: No pressure
from OSI. Certainly government departments like Defra are doing
much less commissioned work; they are not supporting the long
term work and they are going for short term contracts across the
whole system.
Q61 Chairman: Colin, we see the time;
thank you very much for your contribution.
Professor Blakemore: Thank you.
Q62 Margaret Moran: Any organisation
that has a research element in it has difficulty in maintaining
its research base in the face of re-organisation and closure.
I declare an interest in that my brother is an environmental economist
at SAC (Scottish Agricultural College) going through this process
at the moment. How do you specifically protect research base and
do you monitor or do you keep any data as to what happens to your
researchers if they have to be made redundant?
Professor Goodfellow: It is quite
difficult to get the data for that, for what happens to people.
We have been monitoring the process as formally as we can—which
is really very informally—about the Silsoe Research Institute.
We did make considerable efforts to provide resource for them
and consultation to help them get jobs elsewhere. We did move
some people on, so areas that we certainly saw as important we
found homes for in the system (one was within a vet school and
another within an institute). We do know informally that a lot
of them have got jobs in the system; quite a large percentage
of the scientists have actually gone on to other jobs.
Professor Thorpe: It is similar
with NERC. In CEH for example we know of a few instances where
scientists are not able to move in terms of the relocation and
restructuring of CEH and we are trying to work with universities
that have positions that they might be interested in to try to
help with that transition. In our case we think that the position
at the moment is that scientists who do not want to stay with
CEH are staying within the UK and within the field. Clearly in
the future if they move to universities they will not only be
in the field but also bidding for funding from NERC.
Q63 Margaret Moran: Obviously it
is essential that we maintain a skill base within the UK particularly
to deal with emerging issues. Is that a role for the Research
Councils or should government play a role? Do you think the Government
should take the responsibility for maintaining the health of the
UK science base and what more could it do?
Professor Thorpe: I think the
health of disciplines is important; I think it is recognised by
government in OSI, but it is also recognised by NERC. Clearly
environmental science is, by its nature, multi-disciplinary. We
need physicists, chemists, biologists, mathematicians and so it
is definitely a concern to my council the supply and training
of those basic disciplines leading into environmental science.
We look carefully at times when, for example, we have recently
done a review of our masters courses which is a major source of
training to look at the overall portfolio to see where there are
skills shortages. We talk to learned societies that have opinions
about particularly shortages of trained staff and try to link
that to the training that is done in the MSc courses. I think
we do take a role in looking at this but of course we have to
do this in relation to other partners. Universities have a role
themselves in maintaining the health of some of the basic scientific
disciplines. It is definitely within our training programmes—PhD
and MSc—a factor that we take into account.
Professor Goodfellow: I would
give exactly the same answer. We do it mainly through MSc and
PhD programmes. We also work with specific communities if they
feel there is a problem. We try to work with vet schools because
not many vets go into large animal work. We try to have links
between vet schools and our large animal work in our institutes.
Q64 Dr Turner: We have heard criticism
that training in Research Council Institutes is isolated and it
is not as good as provided in university departments. Do you think
the Research Council Institutes can actually give added value
to trainee researchers that they cannot get in universities and
how do you respond to the criticisms?
Professor Thorpe: Speaking to
a number of students and researchers who are doing at least part
or maybe even the majority of their studies in our institutes
they find them really great places to work. I have recently been
to Antarctica for example and via our funding initiatives there
are students who are working in Antarctica on their research projects
using facilities that would be very difficult to obtain in a university.
Similarly in a number of our institutes there are a number of
unique facilities they are able to use and are able to work in
an environment where there is a strong number of people working
in the same research area. My experience of talking to students
who are in those environments is that they find them pretty rewarding.
Q65 Dr Turner: Research Councils
do not spend much of their budgets on training within the institutes
so how do you decide where you put your training budget, in institutes
or universities?
Professor Goodfellow: Can I just
come back to the first point because where our institutes are
close to universities we often have joint training programmes
anyway so there is not much difference for example between the
John Innes Centre, the Institute of Food Research and the University
of East Anglia; they all run a graduate training programme that
is shared. I think they get the access to resources they would
not normally get through the different infrastructure. I think
there is a problem for some of those institutes which are isolated.
I do not know what the social life is like in Antarctica but some
of them perhaps find themselves in the middle of the country where
they need to have a car et cetera and we have to find accommodation
for them because they can be in a completely isolated village.
I think socially it can be difficult for them but they all have
strong connections with universities, they all have a university
supervisor. In terms of how we give out our training budget, everybody
applies in so the institutes apply just the same as everybody
else. There is a studentships and fellowships panel which sets
up every three years to renew our training grants for PhDs; institutes
are treated competitively exactly the same as everybody else.
Q66 Dr Turner: So there is no deliberate
act of policy.
Professor Goodfellow: There is
no protective policy whatsoever.
Professor Thorpe: It is the same
for NERC. In fact we have an algorithm for determining our PhD
studentship allocation and that is based on a number of factors
including research grant income et cetera and some of our institutes
have quite strong allocations from that algorithm.
Q67 Mr Flello: Julia, in a diplomatic
answer to an earlier question, you said that more money for science
is always welcome. In terms of actual strategies in place to cater
for a reduction in government funding what strategies do you have
for any reduction in government funding for RCIs?
Professor Goodfellow: Basically
we always have a contingency budget within our budgeting to take
account of issues that can come up. For instance we were able
to start an avian flu initiative very quickly. If we are aware
of potential liabilities—and at the moment the changing
Defra funding is actually a business critical project for BBSRC,
it is being monitored by our audit board—we plan what we
could do. We do twice yearly business planning meetings with every
institute so we do look forward and we do try to be proactive.
Clearly if we can move staff onto other posts, the institutes
very actively do move staff around. Really I think we are as proactive
as we can be with business planning and we also have contingencies
and monitoring at the audit board level.
Professor Thorpe: Similarly for
NERC. We are currently involved in a project to look at our processes,
particularly for this reason, to be able to respond flexibly to
changes in the outside world whether they come from our overall
allocation from OSI or whether it comes to the institute from
commissioned research income. We have a project on funding allocation
and budgeting specifically to see if we can build in a better
responsiveness and a more flexible responsiveness to those sorts
of changes. We are looking at a number of processes there but
we recognise it as a critical risk both for our overall allocation
but also in terms of commissioned research.
Q68 Mr Flello: You mentioned about
working with Defra on the Pirbright new labs, what efforts could
be made more widely to develop joint working strategies between
the Research Councils and government for the RCIs?
Professor Goodfellow: I think
we have a number of forums in which we can discuss things. The
Chief Science Adviser at Defra is on my council and I believe
he is on your council so is privy to all the discussions. We have
basically interactions at all levels within government departments.
Professor Thorpe: We have a thing
called the Environment Research Funders' Forum which was instigated
about four or five years ago which brings together all the major
funders of environmental research whether they be government departments,
Research Councils et cetera. That actually provides us with an
element of strategic long term thinking about trends such as the
ones we have been talking about. That is an important mechanism
for us.
Q69 Mr Flello: Have those efforts
been successful and what more could be done in those areas?
Professor Thorpe: I think the
ERFF for Environment has been helpful in this regard but I think
we need better and improved dialogue between key government departments.
In our case it is a number, but let us talk about Defra in particular.
I think at a time, as at the moment, when both Defra and NERC
are devising their new five year strategies it is a very critical
time when we need to have very good and effective dialogue. We
are certainly engaged in that dialogue and trying to look at what
collectively and in partnership we can deliver together. It is
also at the moment timely for this because of course the spending
review is coming up as well. Trying to look at the overall national
needs with contributions from the basic science through to the
policy is where those discussions are at at the moment.
Q70 Mr Flello: You say there is the
need for good dialogue; do you think that is happening?
Professor Thorpe: We can improve
that dialogue. I have been in this post for a year so it is hard
for me to give you a long term perspective on that. Julia has
mentioned mechanisms of membership on both sides of management
and strategy panels but we are engaged also in bilateral discussions
to try to improve the situation. I am not going to say that it
is as good as it could be but we are working hard to make it better.
Professor Goodfellow: I have tried
for four years to make it better. You have the evidence; you can
see the financial figures. It varies very much between different
areas. On the animal health side we seem to have better dialogue.
We certainly have the joint thing with Pirbright. We are actually
doing a joint review of the veterinary labs and the IAH at the
science level to look at what science is being done. I feel we
have a very good dialogue going on there. On the land use side
which is where the cuts are we do not see a strategic change going
on. We see random change going on and we see a major drop in income.
The Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research based in
Aberystwyth and North Devon has had a 33% cut in its Defra funding
over two years. Rothamsted Research has had a 50% cut in its Defra
funding over two years despite a large level of consultation at
all levels from the scientists doing the work down to myself and
the chief science adviser, and we are just not getting anywhere.
I am not saying they should not change direction, of course a
government department can choose the direction it wants to go
in, but they have to recognise that they are losing skills and
they are going to lose infrastructure as well because they are
withdrawing resource very rapidly, so it is not a strategic withdrawal.
Q71 Mr Flello: Do you feel that your
representations are being at least listened to?
Professor Goodfellow: We are making
representations at many levels. I think they are listening to
them but I do not know whether they have the ability to respond
in a strategic way. The chair of the science advisory committee
for Defra—which we are both on as members—has actually
said that there is clearly a gap in the long term planning and
their evidence and innovation strategy has been delayed a bit
more while they actually think about some of the longer term issues.
There is some hope there but we have already taken very large
cuts and there are areas which I think will be difficult to recover.
Q72 Mr Flello: Julia, what percentage
of your staff are on contract rather than full-time employment?
Professor Goodfellow: You mean
in non time limited contracts?
Q73 Chairman: Yes, in the institutes.
Professor Goodfellow: We have
changed very rapidly; I do not actually have the figures but we
have put nearly everybody onto non time limited contracts. The
only people who are on fixed term contracts are people at the
early stage in their career where they are gaining extra training
and experience and they are mainly at John Innes and Babraham.
The old idea of somebody in their forties still on contract does
not exist, we have changed it. We can certainly get the numbers
for you.
Q74 Dr Iddon: Is that reflected at
NERC, Alan?
Professor Thorpe: At NERC the
vast majority—perhaps close to a hundred%—are full
time open-ended contract.[3]
Q75 Dr Iddon: That is good to hear because
this Committee is very critical of short term contracts, as you
know. I mentioned earlier long term strategic research. How do
you balance the needs of that with an emerging crisis? We have
avian flu, we have had BSE in the past and we do not know what
crisis is round the corner. Presumably when there is a crisis
your institutes are called on. How do you cope with that?
Professor Goodfellow: Foot and
mouth was obviously an example where everybody at Pirbright just
stopped all their long term research and went immediately into
crisis mode. It is obviously very hard to do that and we gave
money to make sure PhD students were not disadvantaged. They may
well have used the core strategic grant because they can direct
and do as they want with this, but we obviously recognised that,
and would recognise that in any review, if they have spent six
months or more of their lives responding to a crisis.
Professor Thorpe: It is a critical
advantage of Research Council Institutes it seems to me that we
can respond very quickly to discoveries. The Antarctic ozone hole
would be a good example for NERC where the discovery led to substantial
amounts of extra unforeseen activity to be needed. Because NERC
has a very major part of its budget committed to council institutes
we have the ability to be flexible. I see them as an answer to
being flexible.
Q76 Dr Iddon: How do you both answer
the criticism that comes from some quarters that there is a lack
of coordination within government in terms of provision of research
to drive their policies? Do you think that could be better or
is it as good as it gets?
Professor Goodfellow: The government
department I deal mostly with is Defra and I would say they have
been trying very hard to get coordination of their policies. I
would say their chief science adviser has been working very hard
to get a strategy through and do that and to change a culture.
I think they are trying.
Q77 Dr Iddon: Is it working?
Professor Goodfellow: I think
we need a bit longer to see that.
Professor Thorpe: I think it has
been very important that the scientific advisers in government
departments have had a key role and provide not least a point
of contact and dialogue with us. Another department that we attempt
to interact with is DfID and as you known Gordon Conway is their
chief scientific adviser and we are therefore involved in better
dialogue about how to take agendas forward. As to whether things
can be improved, I am sure they can be improved but I think the
existence of those chief scientific advisers is incredibly helpful.
Dr Iddon: I think this Committee can
take credit for some of that.
Q78 Dr Harris: Does the approach
of Defra threaten the viability or the sustainability of some
research institutes and, therefore, by extension, some of the
research that government itself needs to revise on policy?
Professor Goodfellow: Yes.
Professor Thorpe: It is inevitably
the case that in our institutes they actually have a portfolio
of customers who are funding research programmes and as they change—as
I have mentioned with CEH—there has been a slow decline
in recent years and that has caused us to restructure. It definitely
has a role.
Q79 Dr Harris: It is not just the
decline; it is the lack of clarity about the future funding streams.
Professor Thorpe: That is always
difficult to cope with.
Professor Goodfellow: I tried
to summarise the situation. In 2000-01 MAFF was contributing 22%
of the total funding to BBSRC institutes. In 2005-06 it is down
to 14% of the budget. In 2001 MAFF were basically putting in 50%
of the money compared with what BBSRC put in; they are now down
to 25% of what BBSRC puts in. It is a massive drop in a short
period and there does not seem to be a strategic driver other
than it is dropping and we have not been able to have the high
level strategic framework which says, "Okay, if it is dropping,
how are we going to deal with it between us?" We really need
to find a way out for the UK; are we sure we really want to lose
this resource? The last person who works on diseases of bees has
been made redundant from Rothamsted. She had been on long term
funding from Defra; there is now nobody in the UK working on viral
diseases of bees, for example. I have just given the one example
but I do think there are strategic things where we could be doing
better in this area.
3 Note by the witness: Not all NERC staff are
full time. Back
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