Examination of Witnesses (Questions 246
- 259)
MONDAY 5 MARCH 2007
PROFESSOR SIR
DAVID KING
Q246 Chairman: Sir David, we are
very grateful to you for sparing the time to come and see us.
We met you at the beginning of our inquiry into trade with just
Brazil, and the subject has widened into trade with Mercosur,
and now you are our very last witness at the end of the inquiry,
so you provide the bookends at both ends and, I am sure, a great
deal of illumination as well. Before we get into the evidence
session itself on the subject on the order paper, as it were,
I feel I ought to ask you one question having listened to the
Today programme this morning with my usual thoroughness,
about the concern expressed by some of your civil service colleagues
apparently about a £100 million cut in the science budget.
Professor Sir David King: The
concern was expressed by several of the research council chief
executives—who are not civil servants; the research councils
are at arm's length from government—and there is a very
real concern they are expressing about the loss of a sum of the
order of £100 million this year in the process of settling
the DTI's budget. I think the good news on that is that we have
an assurance from the Treasury and from the Secretary of State
at the DTI that the baseline funding for the research councils
as we go into the next spending review is the higher figure, as
it should have been.
Q247 Chairman: My understanding had
been, unless I have misunderstood completely, that actually there
had been some kind of underspend which was being clawed back,
and there is no cut at all. Is that accurate?
Professor Sir David King: Yes.
The sum that is being used is the underspend by the research councils
for the current year but, just looking at it from a research council
point of view, that was part of their budgeting process and I
accept that this is the case. In other words, with the rising
demand, because of the move to full economic costing, the final
year of the spending review round was likely to be the year of
heaviest demand on their budgets, so I think there is some real
concern being expressed by the research councils.
Chairman: That is a helpful clarification,
and I am grateful to you, Sir David. We will turn now to the main
agenda.
Q248 Mark Hunter: Could I start with
a few questions, please, about Brazil and the Year of Science
which has stimulated our interest? We do not in the normal context
of these inquiries have the opportunity to have the Chief Scientific
Adviser in front of us, but as we have today it seems a useful
start point. Our interest was stimulated by learning that 2007
was designated as the UK-Brazil Year of Science. Could you tell
us a little bit more about that? For example, the factors that
made the Government perhaps decide to enter into a Year of Science
with Brazil? We had not heard of the initiative previously and
we would be interested to hear a little bit more from you about
it.
Professor Sir David King: In the
first instance, to give you background information, I am the Chairman
of the Government's Global Science and Innovation Forum, a body
which brings together all of the government players in the international
scene on science and innovation, and this includes the Foreign
Office, DfID, DTI, UK Trade and Investment, British Council, Royal
Society and Defra—I have left a few others out—
Q249 Chairman: We will be asking
some more questions about that particular organisation later,
if we may.
Professor Sir David King: Right,
but what we looked at were four areas of focus when we look at
our interaction with other countries. These were around, on the
one hand, research; secondly, innovation; thirdly, influence and,
finally, development, and having analysed all of our major partner
countries Brazil was chosen under the heading—and this is
why I wanted to mention this—of influence. While we could
see certain strengths in innovation and in scientific research
that was not felt to be strong enough to raise Brazil into the
category of preferred partner whereas the influence one was, so
in terms of influence: Brazil is one of the five rapidly emerging
economies on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the whole climate
change/energy/biodiversity agenda was very strongly in our minds
in choosing Brazil. In terms of the Year of Science, the previous
Year of Science was in China and I think this was a highly successful
enterprise. As a matter of fact at the end of that year I went
out to China for a big ceremony to close it only to be met by
the Chinese asking us to continue it for a further year, and now
we are moving into the same with Brazil. Despite what I have just
said we do have a significant presence in Brazil through the Embassy;
we have three science and innovation officers in Brazil; and this
again does reflect the importance that we attach to our work with
Brazil. In the Year of Science we have already decided on the
themes, the objective to promote awareness in Brazil of UK excellence
in science and innovation and to strengthen collaboration between
the two countries, but as we found very successfully in the Chinese
case, this is a useful thing to do, we have decided to focus on
five themes. The themes are in turn, firstly, planet Earth, where
we are looking at these issues of climate change, energy, renewables,
agricultural science, animal health and biodiversity; secondly,
human life; thirdly, reaching beyond, that is stretching into
the sciences of the future of nano technology and advanced engineering;
creativity is the fourth one—digital content, media, design,
intellectual property; and then, finally, linking up science co-operation,
science policy issues.
Q250 Mark Hunter: No one can accuse
you of having a less than ambitious focus, anyway! You paint the
picture that obviously this initiative is important in its own
right but we visited Brazil and Argentina last autumn and spent
time in Sao Paulo with, amongst others, government representatives
and UK government representatives, and this whole UK-Brazil Year
of Science did not crop up in conversation. Is it something that
is sufficiently well publicised, as far as you are concerned,
or is it a scheme perhaps that might benefit from a little bit
more promotion and publicity?
Professor Sir David King: The
launch of the scheme will take place next month when I am in Brazil,
so I will be involved in that process, so we have been working
at this point very closely with our Ambassador and with our team
out there. We have seconded a fourth person to join the team from
my office to strengthen it. When we launch it we will hit the
public waves but not until we do so, and the real test, I suggest,
would be if you told me in a year's time that people did not know
it had happened.
Q251 Mark Hunter: Could you tell
us a little bit more about the recent developments with your plan
for the formal launch, and where are you at in terms of what has
happened so far in preparation for the launch? What form will
that take and what can we expect when it does all formally start?
Professor Sir David King: It will
develop through a series of public lectures, largely by UK academics.
It will involve science fairs which are networking opportunities.
There will be interactive events, structured discussions between
UK and Brazilian stakeholders on particularly chosen areas where
we have a common interest, and a series of research workshops.
The workshops are where we are beginning to get into the detail,
but on the first three of these we are in quite an advanced state.
Q252 Mark Hunter: Can I ask specifically
about the UK-Brazil Joint Plan of Action on Science, Technology
and Innovation, which I gather was signed in March of last year,
obviously the Year of Science being a major part of that. Does
the UK have any plans to have similar initiatives with other countries,
or is there something special about Brazil in this context which
is what has made the Government decide to have that?
Professor Sir David King: The
Joint Plan of Action is the five year strategy—is that what
you are referring to?
Q253 Mark Hunter: Yes. It was signed
in March of last year, I think.
Professor Sir David King: It was
signed by myself and Minister Rezende during the State Visit of
President Lula in March 2006. The plan aims to promote and support
concrete co-operative initiatives on the basis of mutual advantage,
that was basically what we signed, with a series of priority measures
spelled out: health, agriculture, climate change, nano technology
and science and technology management. As you will see, we are
planning to deliver on all of these under those different headings—
Q254 Mark Hunter: But my point is:
is Brazil a special case? Is there something specific that meant
we wanted to have this formal situation specifically with Brazil
as opposed to any number of other countries that might have merited
consideration?
Professor Sir David King: Brazil,
one is tempted to say, is a special case because the President
was in the UK, but a more serious side to this is we are back
to the fact that Brazil is one of the five rapidly emerging economies
that the British Government is very keen we establish good relationships
with, and science and technology are seen to be one of the means
of delivering that better relationship. I could be more explicit
in the sense that I will then tend to repeat myself and come back
to the issues of climate change—and that is related to Brazil's
key position on the G8 plus 5 group that the Prime Minister set
up during our G8 Presidency—and energy technologies, but
also looking at creating added value from the forests, so the
potential for finding new pharmaceuticals from the biodiversity
of the tropical forests.
Q255 Mark Hunter: Moving on to a
slightly different point, we have a Joint Commission on Collaboration
of Science, Technology and Innovation with China, India, Japan,
Russia and South Korea, I think I am right in saying. Given your
answer to the previous question and clearly the importance of
this project with Brazil, why do we not have a Joint Commission
on Collaboration on Science, Technology and Innovation with Brazil?
Professor Sir David King: During
this Year of Science we have allocated a budget from my office
of £100,000 in total, the first £50,000 to assist the
Ambassador to establish the Year; the second £50,000 to establish
networking arrangements as we move forward in time all leading
up to the possibility of adding Brazil to that group, but no decision
has been made at this point.
Q256 Mark Hunter: So it is designed
in part at least to address that issue, is it?
Professor Sir David King: And
it is scoping the ground for that.
Q257 Mark Hunter: Finally for now,
we understand there are matched funding networking schemes with
China, India, South Africa and South Korea, and we know that the
UKTI evidence to the Select Committee talks of a £50,000
commitment to a new UK-Brazil fund along the lines of those schemes
but that confirmation of matched funding from the Brazilian side
had still not been confirmed. Has that actually happened as yet,
or are we still waiting?
Professor Sir David King: The
£50,000 you are referring to is the second half of the £100,000
I have just mentioned. That is coming from the British side, and
at this point in time we have not yet discussed with the Brazilian
side matching funds.
Q258 Mark Hunter: That is fine. On
the European Union perspective, does the European Union collectively
or Member States individually have any frameworks with Brazil
on science co-operation? Are you aware of anything happening on
that level?
Professor Sir David King: I am
not aware of that but our analysis indicates that in terms of
collaborative research— One metric of this is co-published
papers with Brazilian and British scientists, and if you take
it as a total of Brazilian co-published papers the top country
for collaboration is clearly the United States. Something like
40% of all co-published work is with scientists in America. France
is number two and we are number three, so we are number two in
the European Union, not far behind France. I seem to remember
the number is 11% of co-published papers for the UK,[1]
so there is an indication that we have some basic strength there.
I should tell you perhaps as a backdrop to this that I published
in 2004 a fairly detailed analysis of the scientific strength
of nations, and my analysis was based on citations and Brazil
came 17th in the table on that, so this is why I am saying Brazil
is not one of the high nations in terms of scientific impact that
we would see as crucial to interact with today, but Brazilian
science is growing in strength year-on-year. In terms of volume
of citations with Brazil over the period 1980 to 2000 it increased
from 0.4% of world impact to 1.4%, so Brazil is rising up that
table quite rapidly.
Q259 Chairman: That may explain in
very large part what I detect is your very strong personal interest
in Brazil? Is that the case? Do you have a strong personal interest?
Professor Sir David King: I do,
basically because as a research scientist I had been to Brazil
on a number of occasions. I have on-going collaborative research
with scientists in Venezuela and in Brazil but that is where my
personal interest lies.
1 See Q296. Back
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