Examination of Witness (Questions 40-59)
PROFESSOR KEITH
MASON
4 FEBRUARY 2009
Q40 Mr Cawsey: Professor Mason, obviously
you will be aware from the report of this Committee and your own
self-assessment that one of the big criticisms related to communications.
We are aware that in August of last year you appointed Terry O'Connor
as communications director. What are your priorities for improving
communications and how do you intend to measure those results?
Professor Mason: Terry has taken
the bull by the horns from the very first day. We have reorganised
our communications team to focus on two things: internal communications
and stakeholder engagement. Those were the lead things that we
really needed to do. I think that is already having a huge impact.
I have already referred to the Investors in People report which
highlights the improvement in communications and the way the staff
feel much more positively about the information flow. We are also
pursuing that increasingly with our external stakeholders. We
are consulting with people regularly and with learned societies.
We are holding workshops, for example, in relation to our consultation
exercise and strategy basically to try to get a much more joined
up vision to which our stakeholders and staff sign up to so we
can move forward in the same direction. I think that is incredibly
important. We are here to make a difference to the UK science
base and to extract the benefits of that for the wider society.
Q41 Mr Cawsey: The Investors in People
strategy is quite a good way to measure the internal feedback
in terms of what staff feel about what is going on. What are you
doing to satisfy yourself that your external stakeholders are
more confident and happy with the way things are now?
Professor Mason: By talking to
them and getting their feedback we will as time goes on be assessing
that and asking them what they want from us and how we should
improve. We are actively engaged in that now and are very open
to suggestions. I hope everybody is becoming aware that this is
a big job. Organisations need to take it very seriously and it
is not easily done, but we are working on it and are making huge
progress.
Q42 Mr Cawsey: Is all of this being
done internally with your new appointments and management or have
you also employed some external communication consultants?
Professor Mason: We did have some
external communications consultants in the interim before we appointed
our new communications manager. We still employ consultants as
and when necessary for special events or issues. If it was deemed
important to do a survey of stakeholder opinions naturally we
would want to use independent external people, but throughout
all of this we have to balance the cost of doing that. We have
a fixed budget and if we spend money on that we are not spending
it on science, so we do not want to do that unnecessarily.
Q43 Mr Cawsey: What sort of resource
have you been spending on consultants on communications?
Professor Mason: I do not have
a figure to hand but I can provide one if you wish.
Q44 Chairman: Can you let us have
that?
Professor Mason: Yes. Typically,
it is of the order of one or two people.
Q45 Mr Cawsey: I notice that in the
recent edition of Research Fortnight there was concern
that you would interpret the need to improve communications as
a call to spend more money on corporate PR fluff.
Professor Mason: I read that too
and that is furthest removed from our mind. We are interested
in useful communications, short simple messaging and getting the
thing turned around, not creating some media presence. We are
there to do the science and get the benefits from it and we are
absolutely focused on that.
Q46 Mr Cawsey: So, readers of Research
Fortnight can sleep easily?
Professor Mason: They certainly
can.
Q47 Graham Stringer: I am finding
it difficult—perhaps you can help me—to reconcile
your answer to Dr Gibson's question with your response to an earlier
question put by the Chairman. When you talked about recomposition
of the board and the over-representation of the executive the
converse of that was that you needed more scientists on the board,
the theoretical physics community being up in arms. You said that
it would not have made a lot of difference to the composition
of the board. That would be a real change, but all you are doing
is talking about communications. Do you not think that the physics
community would feel much more relaxed if it was better represented?
Professor Mason: I think this
is one of the messages we need to make very clear. I believe that
the physics community is represented very strongly in our advisory
system. Council has overall responsibility. It has responsibility
for governance but it seeks advice from the various bodies it
commissions to give it advice particularly on science. We have
a very strong science board which has a much greater influence
on our council than on equivalent bodies and other councils. That
was the balance put in place originally to compensate for the
fact that the Council itself was small. The Council receives advice
from the science board and the chairman of that board sits at
every Council meeting. Concerns and issues of scientists of any
flavour can be fed up through the advisory system and are taken
notice of by Council. These are very real issues to which Council
pays a huge amount of attention. My comment in regard to the issues
last year, without wishing to rake over old coals, is that we
took a series of steps. As far as Council was concerned they were
the only steps it could have taken and with the benefit of hindsight
no one has suggested a practical alternative outcome. That is
the sense in which I say it. It was not as if there was some other
solution out there which scientists would have spotted and the
existing Council did not.
Q48 Graham Stringer: If you do not
mind my saying so, when you put that in different words in your
first sentence you said basically that if the composition of the
board had been different it would not have made any difference.
I do not understand how you can know that.
Professor Mason: I say that in
the sense that nobody suggested an alternative to the actions
that were taken. Where it would have made a difference perhaps
is in the perception. I acknowledged earlier that perception was
important and that is why we have taken the steps we have to change
the balance on the council.
Q49 Graham Stringer: There is a fundamental
difference, is there not—politicians probably know this
better than others—between giving advice where you are in
a less powerful position and being on a body that takes decisions?
I think the perception certainly of the theoretical physics community
is that if they had been sitting round the top table decisions
would have been taken differently. I do not want to pussyfoot
around this, but your answer that it would not be different, or
there is not a lot of difference, sounds very complacent to me.
Professor Mason: We are certainly
not complacent.
Q50 Graham Stringer: Perhaps I may
first finish the question. In a sense you are not acknowledging
the criticisms by this Committee and other parts of the science
community that were not just about governance but leadership issues.
What you are saying is that everything is fine and you are just
getting on with it, whereas everything has not been fine and very
little has happened.
Professor Mason: We have listened
to the concerns and have taken action to address them. We have
been very proactive in that regard. Far from being complacent,
as you can imagine we have been in the centre of this storm and
have been working incredibly hard to get the right outcomes. The
right outcomes are to get a strong science programme and we have
a world-class science programme over the next few years. We have
more scientific opportunities over the next few years than we
have ever had in these subject areas. We have the best telescopes,
spacecraft, accelerators and light and neutron sources. There
are huge opportunities here. We have worked incredibly hard with
the scientific community through our programmatic review. I say
again that that review involved an unprecedented level of consultation
with the scientific community where they were able to put their
view very clearly. We listened to that. Far from being complacent,
we have been incredibly proactive and have listened, taken action
and we are moving forward.
Q51 Chairman: The perception here
is that the council is dominated by the executive. The executive
makes decisions which are then consulted upon but because the
council is dominated by the executive the consultation is pretty
meaningless.
Professor Mason: I understand
that is the perception and I am very anxious to deal with it.
I am just offering my view. The STFC's Council is not one that
can be easily dominated by anybody, frankly, and it does it a
disservice to suggest otherwise. Everybody has worked incredibly
hard over the past two years of the existence of the STFC to get
it into an incredibly good position. We are in a very good position
with a world-class programme. We are moving forward in all the
agenda areas that we need. We have dealt with the real issues
like communications and we are moving forward at a pace. Mergers
of organisations do not happen over night and our job is not yet
complete. We are not taking our foot off the pedal. It will be
another couple of years or so before I can be happy we have reached
a steady state situation, but we are not being complacent; we
are moving forward as rapidly as we can. We are very keen to get
external views as we have through the organisational review of
our progress and to make sure we are on the right track, because
it is too important to get it wrong.
Q52 Dr Iddon: You will know that
some MPs in the North West are very concerned about Daresbury,
so I should like to pose a few questions on it. For a long time
there has been talk about a joint venture partner for Daresbury.
The joint venture principle seems to be working well at Harwell
but lagging at Daresbury. Can you tell us why that is?
Professor Mason: The sites are
going in leapfrog. I am sure you are aware, but let me just remind
you, that we trialled a number of the concepts behind the joint
venture at Daresbury, so we have a partnership with NWDA and the
local borough council. We have put in place the Innovation and
Cockcroft Centres. These are all experiments to validate the approach
of the campus. We have set up the joint venture at Harwell where
we are taking forward the principles developed at Daresbury. Having
learned the lessons from Harwell, we are moving that model back
into Daresbury. We have done a master planning exercise for Daresbury
and we are now in the final stages of preparing a notice for going
out to tender for a joint venture partner for Daresbury. It is
entirely on track and is as exciting as the Harwell opportunity
and we are keen to push that forward.
Q53 Dr Iddon: Things always seem
to be tried at Daresbury and then moved south. Why do you not
do the pilot at Daresbury and then follow up with a joint venture
partner there and then transfer to Harwell?
Professor Mason: The order in
which you do things is dependent on several factors, but what
you should not interpret into that ordering is any disadvantage
for Daresbury. The Daresbury joint venture is in a way more complex
because there are more partners and that is one reason we did
Harwell first. Daresbury will benefit. We will be able to accelerate
the process having done it at Harwell first and at the end of
the day Daresbury will benefit from this ordering.
Q54 Dr Iddon: Can you tell us this
morning when the joint venture notice for the Daresbury site is
likely to be issued?
Professor Mason: The target is
this spring. The exact timing is TBD.
Q55 Dr Iddon: Will not the current
economic climate cause problems?
Professor Mason: Clearly, it is
something of which we have been conscious and have discussed.
The DSIC board has determined that it should go ahead in any case.
One hopes that the current economic climate is a relatively short-lived
issue, whereas the investment return on a campus like Daresbury
or Harwell is 10 to 20 years, so we are looking at totally different
timescales. While there are short-term concerns about property
prices obviously the sorts of outfit that would look to be our
joint venture partner at Daresbury as at Harwell are in it for
the long term and recognise the long-term rather than short-term
potential of these investments.
Q56 Dr Iddon: Obviously, everyone
in the North West is anxious about the Tom McKillop review of
science in the region. Why has your organisation felt the need
to call that in three times now to have a look at it?
Professor Mason: I am sorry; I
missed that.
Q57 Dr Iddon: Why has the STFC felt
the need to see successive drafts of the McKillop review? Because
of that are you not in danger of compromising the independence
of that review?
Professor Mason: I am not sure
that we are. The McKillop review is proceeding in an independent
way. We have made our input into that review. I certainly have
reviewed the notes that came out of the interview I did with the
McKillop assessors and that is only right and proper, but it is
a totally independent review and I am sure that it will reach
its conclusions in the fullness of time.
Q58 Dr Iddon: I have here some minutes
which more or less suggest that the review will keep coming back
to the STFC until you are happy with it. How can that be an independent
review?
Professor Mason: I do not accept
that that is the case. I cannot imagine that Tom McKillop would
stand for such a thing and we certainly would not want to interfere.
Our interest lies in getting genuine, coherent and independent
advice because we want to make a success of this.
Q59 Chairman: But the Council's own
minutes call for the review to be brought in in draft form to
be looked at. It is a nonsensical process.
Professor Mason: You have me at
a disadvantage because I do not recall that.
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