Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
WEDNESDAY 19 NOVEMBER 2008
PROFESSOR DAVID
FISK, PROFESSOR
MICHAEL KELLY
AND PROFESSOR
WENDY HALL
Q20 Dr Iddon: I wonder whether our
other two witnesses could give any examples of successes or failures
where engineering policy is of concern.
Professor Hall: I can. On energy,
for example, the CST reviewed the Government's nano-technology
policy recently, in the last year. That was taken very seriously
and has really raised that up the agenda, we believe. I also remember
a meeting we had with Tony Blair when he was Prime Minister about
energy supply in the UK. There was a startling moment when our
experts in this area showed him the graphs of what would happen
if we did not renew the nuclear options. That was taken very seriously
but then you see policy being made, if I may use the expression,
on the hoof later about alternative energies where really we are
raising issues about: is the National Grid up to what is being
talked about here? These are big engineering problems. These calculations
have not been done. This advice is being ignored—not ignored
but it is not being taken up at the moment. I would also say that
in my area of computing, software engineering is what runs this
country; the infrastructure of this country is built by software
engineers almost. There have been many reports about how the procurement
of large-scale software systems should be done differently that
have been ignored.
Professor Fisk: In my evidence
I focused on Treasury. Treasury does not have a Chief Scientist;
it does not have a science stream inside it. As a taxpayer sometimes
I am grateful that it does intervene in the shaping of policies
protecting my interests but there are a number of areas in which
the engineering as we have been describing it here would have
been a major input into a policy that does not seem to been informed
in that way. I had an opportunity to interview the team that designed
rail privatisation. It turned out it had never occurred to them
that the track and the wheels that rest on it are a coupled spring
system. They were not all mechanical engineers. They had in their
mind the sort of model you would get owning a train set when you
are a boy. So they thought them quite independent and very easy
to divide the market in that way. They may still have been right
to stratify the market for rail privatisation as they did but
what they did not realise was that there would be an engineering
cost for making the break where they did. A second example would
be when there was a dispute between the Mayor of London and I
guess the Treasury essentially about how the ownership of track
repairs should occur in the London Underground. Again, there may
be good economic reasons for doing it one way or another but it
was pretty clear it became presented as a political argument between
the players when actually there is a real engineering issue about
managing the way men can work in tunnels. It is a very difficult
issue in terms of managing cost overruns. So there is a thread
in which sometimes the Government Economics Service takes upon
itself the engineering realities, having assumed it understood
the engineering. There is another last case I might give you,
and again all these cases were well-meaning Treasury interventions;
they were not trying to do anything wrong. There was the classic
case in the 1980s of one of the very earliest green taxes that
Treasury tried to introduce, which was intended to be more friendly
to cars with low NOx emissions than high ones; it was roughly
proportionate to the size of the engine. The tragedy there is
that small engines, because they are under so much more strain,
actually produce more NOx than very large ones for each kilometre
they travel. The Treasury had no internal way of checking that
what they thought in man in-the-street way it would work would
actually work. This has a large effect on the design of many of
the institutions we look at. When the Treasury is protecting our
interests it does not always do it with a great deal of engineering
knowledge.
Q21 Dr Iddon: Professor Fisk, you
are clearly in agreement with this Committee that there should
be a CSA in the Treasury. Do our other two witnesses agree with
that?
Professor Hall: Absolutely.
Q22 Dr Iddon: Turning to you, Professor
Hall, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the engineering institutions,
of which there are a great number of course, too many perhaps,
have said that more use could be made of the Council for Science
and Technology. Do you agree with that? Perhaps you could expand
on how that could be done?
Professor Hall: Yes, I would agree.
I am a member of that. We are not asked to do enough. We produce
reports, which I believe are extremely useful and generally well
received. We have a lot of deliberations about what we should
do our work on. We want to do things that cut across departments
and that cannot be done by one department or another, or one sector
or another, but we do not feel we are asked for advice enough
about where the Government should be. We are called the Prime
Minister's Council of Science and Technology. We used to meet
Tony Blair. We are meeting with the current Prime Minister soon,
but it will be the first time in this government. We meet with
advisers and Chief Scientific Advisers and we have lots of very
influential people come to the committee but we do not feel we
are giving the advice at the level at which we were commissioned
to give it. Other international comparisons show that their top
level science committees do talk at the top level to give advice.
Q23 Ian Stewart: Professor Hall,
You cite there the different situation now in relation to relations
with the Prime Minister. What actions have the institutions taken
to put that right?
Professor Hall: We have had meetings
with his advisers and talked about the work we do. The secretariats
have worked a lot behind the scenes.
Q24 Ian Stewart: In your view, is
that a weakness on the part of Number 10 not understanding or
is it a weakness on the part of the academies and institutions
or is it both?
Professor Hall: I was talking
about CST. You must not link that with the academies. One could
say the same sort of thing. With CST I think that a meeting should
have been set up earlier than it was, or at least what we were
doing should have been taken into account when the science and
engineering policy was being developed.
Q25 Ian Stewart: Is that a symptom
of a lack of confidence in the engineering role?
Professor Hall: You are confusing
two things. We are the Council of Science and Technology. You
could argue it is a lack of confidence in what the CST does. The
evidence is that the reports we have produced and the feedback
we have had and the reviews for that have been very positive.
Q26 Dr Iddon: Can we be clear about
who organises the CST meetings? Is that arrangement made by the
Cabinet Office?
Professor Hall: No, we come under
DIUSS now. I think it was all part of the reorganisation of the
departments that this happened. We are in GO Science, the Government
Office for Science. We have two Chairs because we are half in
and half outside government, which is an advantage and a disadvantage.
The Chief Scientific Adviser is one of our co-Chairs and the other
is a member of CST; it is currently Professor Janet Finch.
Q27 Mr Cawsey: I want to ask a few
questions about how the Civil Service should be making greater
use of engineers and scientists. Professor John Beddington at
a previous session of the Committee said that no-one knows how
many engineers there are in the Civil Service and, moreover, when
pushed further, he did not even know when that information might
be available in the future. Should we know? Is it important? What
would we gain from having that information?
Professor Fisk: For my evidence,
I had to resort to the Freedom of Information Act to extract from
a number of departments how many engineers they had. I tried a
very simple test. I just asked how many Chartered Engineers they
had because the attraction of Chartered Engineers is that at least
they have a continuing professional development programme, so
we are not relying on a first degree they took three generations
of technology ago. The actual record I record is pretty grim.
I think the human resources in the Civil Service at the moment
have rather lost the plot on professionalism in general. Unless
there is a severe external attack like needing legal advice and
so on, it finds it very hard to keep count of professionalism.
One or two of the human resources departments I received information
from clearly did not really understand what a Chartered Engineer
was. One rather extreme case, Ofcom, that works in a very technical
area, did not know how many Chartered Engineers they had but they
did notice that they paid the fees for three. It seemed to me
when I looked at the board of a number of them—the Environment
Agency was one I looked at yesterday—very often the scorecards
given to the board do not measure the internal competence of the
organisation. They will measure how well the outside world is
performing as it is being regulated but there is not a track.
As you will see from my evidence, at the time I asked the question
the Financial Services Agency did not know how many Chartered
Accountants it had. You would think, in a body that has been under
considerable pressure on its competence over several years, it
would have begun to tighten on these things. I think there is
a real looseness in the system. May I touch a bit on the earlier
question? Comparing the UK system with some of the systems abroad,
the thing that strikes me very starkly is that we have a lot of
structures to give advice but we have very few structures for
critical analysis; that is to say, if you were looking at some
of the US material that was accessible, this is commissioned by
Congress to look at what the Administration is doing. It is not,
as it were, run by the Department of Energy or the Department
of Defense. I think there is a sense in which a lot of the things
will repair themselves if government departments were aware of
that, if there was a bit more free-ranging criticism available
from, say, the Council of Science and Technology, rather than
reviews necessarily being a mutually agreed agenda. I think that
is just a part of what would help Parliament with its task.
Professor Hall: I agree with that
but may I say something to the original question? I think Government
has to show leadership here. One of the issues that we have not
yet touched on is the lack of engineers and the lack of young
people wanting to go into careers in engineering. Part of the
problem is that engineering does not have the status and knowledge
of what a career in engineering is. It is not known about by people.
The issue of the Civil Service having so few engineers is part
of the problem. It is the same as companies that have boards without
scientists or engineers on them. I really think that every sector
of society should examine itself and say: we should be encouraging
engineers to come into our world—the legal world, the financial
world, whatever world it is. Government should be showing leadership
on that. Instead of saying we should be able to identify how many
engineers there are in the Civil Service, we should have a campaign
to encourage people with engineering degrees to come into the
Civil Service, go on the fast track and become the Permanent Secretaries
of the future.
Q28 Mr Cawsey: You think it is a
mixture of needing specialists for the special tasks but also
policy generalists who are trained in engineering as well?
Professor Hall: Absolutely, and
Government should be showing leadership in this. It would be better
for the Government and it would be better for the country, I believe.
If we do not do things like this at the highest level, we will
never have enough engineers.
Professor Kelly: I want to cut
this same question in two slightly different ways. The particular
aspect of my job that I am most pleased about and the way it works
in the Department is that I am one of something called the Analytical
Quartet: the Chief Scientist, the Chief Economist, the Chief Social
Scientist and the Chief Statistician. We meet pretty regularly
to review the research profile. Until that was formed about a
year ago, my knowledge of what was going on in the research agenda
was more sketchy. I would like to report that. The other important
matter is that it is one thing to get young engineers in. I have
a particular task at the moment where I am about to second somebody
from one of the major engineering consultancies for a short time
to do a piece of work. This will only be for three months. I can
see the advantage to both sides if major firms like Arups or WS
Atkins were to second one of their engineers for a period of two
or three years at a pretty senior level. The reason is that they
will bring the outside experience in, but also they can go back
to their parent organisation as the person with the experience
of working within government. I know that DTI in its form used
to do that; I have not checked whether it still does it regularly.
In the 1980s when I worked for GEC I was regularly inside the
DTI and talking to engineers who were on secondment from other
firms.
Professor Fisk: May I reinforce
that point? My own inclination would be to close the science fast
stream altogether. It does not do any good and it enables the
normal fast stream into the Civil Service to get off the question
of why it does not recruit quite so many scientists and engineers,
despite the fact that they represent something like 30% of the
boards of British companies. It would be much better to focus
much more on bringing people in who do have some real applied
engineering expertise into the service; that is to say, they have
done something, which is very much Professor Kelly's point of
the added value of the engineer. That is in the weakest part of
the Civil Service human resources exercise, which is bringing
people mid-career into the service. Agencies have been rather
better at it. If I were looking at an area that would really get
engineering expertise back in, it is crucial that it is not just
that they have been through mine, Professor Kelly's or Professor
Hall's courses; it is that they have done some things in the real
world and have an inclination of the risks and uncertainties that
you need to manage in real projects. That comes, it seems to me,
in your early 30s, and that is the entry point that is quite difficult
at the moment, particularly in central departments.
Q29 Mr Cawsey: I was going to ask
in this batch of questions about why do only three government
departments use the fast stream track but you are saying perhaps
that is not the best way of doing it anyway.
Professor Fisk: In my experience,
those young people try to get themselves transferred to the normal
fast stream as fast as possible because otherwise they walk in
with a funny mark on their head for most of their Civil Service
career.
Professor Hall: I was talking
about the normal fast track.
Q30 Chairman: Out of interest, can
I ask Michael and David: did you sit on the board of the department?
Professor Kelly: I do not. In
fact I report to one Director General, so I am one further down
from the Permanent Secretary, i.e. at Director Level.
Q31 Chairman: David, did you sit
on the board when you were there?
Professor Fisk: No, and I think
Chief Scientists who sit on the board traditionally have quite
a large expenditure programme responsibility. So the Chief Scientist
in Defra in the past had a responsibility for about 2000 people
within the overall Defra network and therefore was a quite legitimate
board member. Personally, one had contact with all board members,
so I did not find the board meetings particularly added value.
I tabled maybe two or three papers a year on issues relating to
the research programme.
Q32 Chairman: Would you have wanted
to be on the board?
Professor Kelly: I am on the board
of an electronics company and I have been on other boards and
I feel I would have things to say in those meetings that I would
not get an opportunity or sight of doing.
Q33 Mr Cawsey: Finally from me, over
the years the Civil Service has moved more and more away from
in-house expertise to buying it in through consultancy as and
when it is needed. Is there a danger in all of that that we are
going to get to a point where we have such a scarce resource within
the Civil Service that we cannot make intelligent decisions about
the consultancies we need and what we need to commission?
Professor Kelly: Absolutely and
I think the other point is the following. If we do retain consultants
to ensure the integrity of the legacy, we are going to have to
have another group of consultants to come in and peer review what
they are doing. There has to be an element of internal "stand
up and take personal responsibility". If something went wrong
with one of these, there would be a political responsibility but
where would the professional responsibility be? I do not think
there is anybody in the Department who would be capable of taking
that responsibility.
Q34 Mr Boswell: I have just a small
point to Michael Kelly. You said, and I think it was a throw-away
line, that if you have one lot of consultants you would need another
lot to peer-review them. What about the peer review of your in-house
consultants on the grounds that if you have people in-house, your
in-house staff, they clearly would need to stand up intellectually.
How do you configure that or how should you configure that?
Professor Kelly: There are a number
of reviews for handling that, in particular the Government Office
for Science did a review of the Department and made a number of
recommendations that are due back some time this year.
Q35 Mr Boswell: That would draw on
outside expertise?
Professor Kelly: Yes. A couple
of people are from other departments and the majority of the people
were lay in the sense of not being insiders.
Q36 Chairman: Professor Fisk, I am
confused with the answer you gave to Ian Cawsey earlier about
fast tract scientific Civil Service. In an earlier reincarnation
we made that very strong suggestion that we should bring back
a scientific Civil Service. Could you answer briefly how you would
incentivise engineering within the Civil Service if you do not
in fact have a dedicated stream of engineers coming through? How
would you do that?
Professor Fisk: This is just a
personal view. My impression is that engineers are just really
attracted to very interesting projects.
Q37 Chairman: And the Civil Service
is not?
Professor Fisk: If the Civil Service
were open to some of the very interesting projects the public
sector has, I think at competitive salaries, you would get that
process. I raise in my paper that one or two of the Civil Service
reforms have by accident made it extremely hard to recruit people
at that middle to senior consultant level because it has tended
to move into the Senior Civil Service, which has other definitions
for its competency. My own view is that that would not be a problem
if the price was right and the projects are interesting. There
is no doubt at all that the public service is buying more complex,
larger engineering than it has ever bought in its life, so I do
not think there is any issue about it being boring work in the
Civil Service but the recruitment opportunities are not there
and probably not at the competitive price to the consultants,
Q38 Chairman: What is the golden
or silver bullet which would attract more engineers into the Civil
Service at all levels?
Professor Kelly: I do not know
that there is a silver bullet. I would endorse that view.
Q39 Ian Stewart: Professor Fisk,
you started to allude to other models of relationship between
engineering and government from outside the UK. Professor Hall,
when you and I had an exchange earlier, I was trying to tease
out where the responsibly lay for the lack of a good relationship
between engineering and government in this country. Is there a
model, one model, that we could consider adopting in this country,
be it that of America or any other country?
Professor Fisk: My belief is that
just importing models will never quite work because the public
service in each country has an enormous number of distinctive
features. There are scorecard ticks that I would notice in other
countries that are not here. I would score France up very high
in the sense that its basic engineering education is far superior
to the UK. People leave French engineering schools able to run
companies the day they leave, not absolutely packed with five
years learning of technology.
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