Correspondence between the Committee and
the Science and Technology Facilities Council regarding the Government's
Response to the Committee's Report on Science Budget Allocations
Letter from the Chairman, Phil Willis
MP, to professor Keith Mason, Chief Executive, Science and Technology
Facilities Council
SCIENCE BUDGET
ALLOCATIONS
The Committee has considered the Government's
Response to its Report on the Science Budget Allocations and has
written to the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities
and Skills in relation to it. Our primary concern with the Government's
response is that it spoke on behalf of STFC on a number of occasions,
where we would have preferred a response directly from STFC. We
highlight these occasions below, as we consider STFC's responses
point-by-point.
Para 53
We welcome STFC's decision to commission an
independent organisational review. We would like a copy of the
review upon completion.
Conclusion 10
Please could you provide a response to Conclusion
10.
Conclusion 11
STFC is right to characterise PPARC's strategy
for solar-terrestrial physics (STP) as "continued investment
in EISCAT but withdrawal from all other facilities", but
wrong to characterise its Delivery Plan 2008-09—2011-12
similarly. The Delivery Plan stated: "We will cease all support
for ground-based solar-terrestrial physics" (p 6). STFC argues
that it "should not suspend the implementation of the policy
previously agreed by PPARC in March 2006" (para 61 of the
response). Since PPARC's intention was "to maintain a capacity
in ground-based STP" (see para 56 of the report), STFC should
not characterise this intention as being in disagreement with
our report. We urged STFC to suspend its decision to withdraw
from all ground-based STP, not PPARC's decision to withdraw from
some ground-based STP.
Conclusions 12, 13, 14 and 15
The Government has spoken on behalf of STFC
in paragraphs 66 and 67 of the response. Please could you provide
a response to these conclusions.
Conclusion 16
Please could you provide a response to conclusion
16.
Conclusion 17
Please could you provide a response to conclusion
17.
Conclusion 18
We are pleased that STFC has accepted our criticisms
and recommendations on the matter of internal and external communications.
We would like to receive a copy of the action plan for implementation
of STFC's strategy to improve its communications structure and
capability.
We are also pleased to hear that STFC has made
a number of changes to improve internal communications. Please
could you outline what these are and how you plan to review the
effect of these changes.
Conclusion 21
In reference to the reviews of in-house research,
which we labelled as "secretive" (para 95 of the report),
STFC has responded by saying that "STFC does not agree that
these reviews were `secretive' [...] STFC always intended to publish
these reports in a suitably anonymised form" (para 89 of
the response). This does not tally with what Professor Keith Mason
told us on 27 February 2008. In explaining to us why he set up
the reviews of in-house research, he repeated what he told the
reviewers: "I told them, `You can be as honest with me as
you like because this report is coming to me to advise me, it
is not going to be shared with my managers or staff, so you can
tell me what you really think'" (Q 326 of the oral evidence).
A little later he went on to say that "the problem is that
this exercise (ie, the reviews of in-house research...) is taking
on a significance that it never was intended to have and does
not deserve. In the light of that we will be making the reviews
public and people will be able to see what they say" (Q 334
of the oral evidence).
To summarise, Professor Keith Mason told us
that the reviews were commissioned under the assumption that they
were for his eyes only, and that only after concern about the
reviews had been expressed did STFC decide to make the reviews
public. STFC's response said that it always been the intention
to publish the reviews. Please could you explain the discrepancy
between these two versions of events and say which one is correct.
We would appreciate a response to each of the
points we have raised above by Friday 11 July.
June 2008
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