Examination of Witnesses (Questions 521
- 539)
WEDNESDAY 21 JANUARY 2009
RT HON
JOHN DENHAM
MP, MARK BEATSON
AND PROFESSOR
JOHN BEDDINGTON
Q521 Chairman: We welcome this morning
the Rt Hon John Denham MP, Secretary of State for Innovation,
Universities and Skills, to this final oral session of our inquiry
into engineering. We also welcome Professor John Beddington, the
government's Chief Scientific Adviser, and Mark Beatson, the head
of analysis at DIUS. Welcome to you this morning and thank you
all very much for coming. May I start with you, Secretary of State.
It goes without saying that engineering is of absolute central
importance to society and of central importance to the government's
mission particularly at this very, very difficult time. Your government
has a Chief Scientific Adviser and not a Chief Engineering Adviser.
It has a Minister for Science but not a Minister for Engineering.
It has a Director General and a ten-year framework for science
and innovation with no mention of engineering. Why does the government
not take engineering seriously?
Mr Denham:
Could I start by saying how much we welcome the inquiry and thanking
you, and the Committee, for your co-operation in changing the
date of the meeting to suit me which I do appreciate. Having said
that, I suppose I could come back to the Committee and say when
you asked to be renamed you asked to include science in the name
of your committee, you did not ask to include engineering in the
name of your committee. We would both say let us not get too hung
up about it. Amongst the team of science advisers, as they are
called in departments that John leads, are professional engineers
and whose training is in engineering. They may have science in
the title but they bring engineering expertise into government
policy making. In practice Lord Drayson, as the Science and Innovation
Minister, and you have had him as witness, clearly is every bit
as engaged in engineering as he is in science policy. I would
not read too much into the absence of a word from the label.
Q522 Chairman: Do you feel that in
terms of understanding engineering across UK PLC that you actually
have a really good handle on the profile of engineering across
the UK? Could you do an off-the-cuff speech on that now? I am
not asking you to.
Mr Denham: I think I could do
that as well, or as badly, as I could do an off-the-cuff speech
about science, and the reason for that is we have very similar
relationships with the main bodies and institutions that promote
engineering as we do with science. The Royal Academy of Engineering
is a very close partner of the government at different levels.
Ministers are in correspondence and have meetings with the president
and the chief executive. We meet with the professional groups
of engineers. We engage with particular groups. Claire Curtis-Thomas,
the MP, as everyone knows is very prominent in the Woman in Engineering
movement and we know of her work. The structures of the department
in organisations like the TSB, plus our engagement with things
like the Manufacturing Strategy, all bring us very directly into
discussions about the issues involving engineering, whether it
is the professional use of engineering or the development of industries
who will rely on engineers or the future supply of engineers.
I do believe that we are as engaged in engineering as we are in
science. We tend perhaps not to see them as quite separate activities.
Q523 Chairman: You make speeches
on science. You frequently mention, if you look at the department
website and the speeches of yourself and Professor Beddington,
at other ministers particularly Lord Drayson, science is mentioned
time after time but engineering never seems to have a profile
in the utterances which are coming from yourself and other senior
ministers. Why is that?
Mr Denham: That is a very interesting
point. I think it is probably true to say that when we talk about
STEM, which we frequently talk about, or engagement around science,
it is often taken for granted perhaps by ourselves that embraces
engineering as well as what one might perceive as pure science.
There is a lot of debate about applied science which very often
involves huge engineering skills. It is a fair point to raise,
but as a judgment of the department's interest in engineering
it would be wrong.
Q524 Chairman: Just try to give us
an indication as to when in fact the process by which a civil
servant is expected to identify whether or not a policy requires
a professional engineering input? At what point does the professional
engineer come into the picture?
Mr Denham: Because of the nature
of our department that is a very wide-ranging question. If it
were a particular issue requiring the expertise of engineers,
one might engage with the Royal Academy. In other areas we have
just recently been in discussions at official level with the Royal
Academy about engineering in the nuclear industry and the future
demand for engineers in that area. We engage with the relevant
learned society in that area.
Q525 Chairman: Just to interrupt
you, it is not the point at which you know you need engineering
advice but the point before that. At what point do you say we
need engineering advice? Where do the engineers come in within
the Civil Service?
Mr Denham: In a department like
ours we operate through a lot of arm's length organisations: the
Technology Strategy Board, the Research Council and whatever.
If, for example, we were to ask which are the areas of future
industry and economic activity that we should be aware of that
are going to be important to our economic future, we would tend
to go to bodies like the Council of Science and Technology or
the Technology Strategy Board and we would expect those bodies,
and they do, to engage the relevant engineering expertise in coming
to their conclusions. Very often I would say it is the bodies
that we consult that embody the engineering advice as well as
the engineering advice that comes directly into the department.
Q526 Chairman: The actual formulation
of policy, you feel that engineering advice is actually brought
in at the formulation of policy stage.
Mr Denham: Yes, I do.
Q527 Chairman: How could it be then
that in the formulation of policy such as reducing carbon emissions
in buildings, installing wind turbines particularly in the seas
and building eco-towns that engineering advice was not sought
before those policies were announced? We have evidence to support
that.
Mr Denham: You have listed three
areas of broader government policy. The previous questions you
were asking me were about my department and my department's involvement
in policy formation. I can only speak as the Secretary of State
for DIUSS about my department and the involvement of engineers
in there, where I would say to you in confidence that I believe
we involve engineering expertise where it is relevant. If you
took the area of low carbon technologies, I would be confident
that on the low carbon programmes run by the Technology Strategy
Board they are consulting actively with professional engineers
and academic engineers in the formulation of their innovation
platforms, the various noise transfer partnerships they do and
so on.
Q528 Chairman: Could I pass a question
to you, John Beddington, because you are ostensibly the chief
scientist and chief engineer. Why did you not stick your nose
into those policies?
Professor Beddington: Can I step
back from that, and I will answer the question. The first thing
to say is in the network of chief scientific advisers to which
John alluded we have three engineers there. We are in the process
of recruiting new chief scientific advisers and I think it is
highly likely that we will be recruiting engineers to a number
of the available posts. In terms of the retrofit issue in buildings,
the chief scientific adviser currently in CLG is Michael Kelly,
who is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and he has
taken a very strong line, and I believe very successfully, in
pioneering the need and pointing out the requirements, both engineering
and economic, for actually doing a major retrofit. In a similar
way, the Foresight Study that I have sponsored, which deals with
the sustainable energy management in the built environment, also
used very high level engineering input. It reported to the stakeholder
community back in November and is being taken forward by CLG as
being one of the major issues. The creation of DECC in October
meant that we do need to align with those. One of the things that
I did, as soon as the department was created, was to arrange to
ensure that they had engineering advice because they did not have
a chief scientific adviser. Professor Collins has been providing
DECC with engineering advice since that department was set up
and they have agreed to appoint a chief scientific adviser at
director general level. Because DECC has a wide, brief both for
climate change and energy, it would depend on the individual but
we would be looking for an individual who clearly has the ability
to operate within an engineering environment although not necessarily
a chartered engineer.
Q529 Chairman: Without being rude
or difficult, can I say to you it was actually Michael Kelly who
made the comments to us. Michael Kelly said "In my own department
there is no-one with any practical building engineering experience
on the team considering how new and existing buildings will play
their full role in meeting the target, soon to be set in law,
of 60 per cent, let alone a punitive 80 per cent, reduction of
carbon emissions across the economy." Surely that is a damning
indictment of a system which clearly does not take engineering
advice at the point in which policy is made. Is that a fair comment
I am making?
Professor Beddington: The problem
about CLG is that essentially Michael was the only engineer there
and I think he has done an extraordinarily good job there. I am
meeting with them; in fact, Michael's tenure is ending in the
summer and I met with him this week and had the conversation where
I urged with them it is absolutely essential that they had engineering
in there. One of the things that I did when I first arrived in
the department, as Michael had no real support, which is unfortunate,
was we transferred someone from my own office to actually work
closely with him which I believe has helped things. My input to
CLG is to say engineering is one of your major issues. You need
to be looking at it and you need to be thinking very seriously
to ensure you have that input. The CLG quite reasonably have an
issue that part of their brief is social science, an enormous
part, so they do need to have social science input. I would not
dispute that but the argument I have been making to them, and
I have made it this week, is you really have to ensure you have
engineering advice in there.
Q530 Chairman: How do you ensure,
as the chief engineer, if that is what your role is as well as
chief scientist, that in every single department that the advice
you have given to CLG is actually the norm? How do you make sure
that is going to happen? Do you write to everybody? Do you get
ministerial approval? Does the Secretary of State buy into that
or is it just a hope?
Professor Beddington: Let me step
back from that and give a relatively recent example which is to
do with the Severn Barrage. This is a major area where quite clearly
the idea of examining this in any detail without engineering input
would be nonsense. I wrote to the Secretary of State, not putting
it in quite those terms, indicating that it was absolutely essential
not only that there was significant engineering input but also
there was some appropriate peer review. One of the things I have
offered, which is now in hand, is that as the consultation on
the Severn Barrage develops that will be looked at by a small
group of my own chief scientific advisers, of which three are
engineers, and will actually have ongoing input into the team
involved there. That is one example and it will be horses for
courses. MoD has an enormous requirement for engineers; the chief
scientific adviser in MoD, Mark Welland, is a Fellow of the Royal
Academy of Engineering and I feel very comfortable about that.
The requirement for engineering in other departments is somewhat
less but one has to deal with that. What I do have, and I think
this is again important, is this network of chief scientific advisers,
and perhaps they arguably could be called chief scientific and
engineering advisers but you have had that conversation with the
Secretary of State. Those advisers have to focus within their
department and provide input into our team of chief scientific
advisers about whether there are issues where engineering advice
is actually needed and perhaps not coming through. They link in
and report. Some of them are on departmental boards, some of them
have reporting lines to their own ministers, and others are reporting
to the permanent secretaries. I rely on that network of individuals
to actually flag when there are important issues on engineering.
In the case of the Severn Barrage, Brian Collins who, as I indicated,
is providing engineering advice to DECC, drew this to my attention.
I contacted the Secretary of State and we have taken it forward
which has all been accepted. There will obviously be issues. For
example, eco-towns is one where it seems to me engineering advice
should have been sought at an earlier time and I have concerns
with that. How that should have been done needs more exploration
but I would say that is a clear area where engineering should
have been brought in at a much earlier stage and was not. I can
see others where things have worked well with lots of successes
in a number of ways.
Q531 Chairman: In terms of clear
guidelines for policy making, do you feel that rather than a footnote
there ought to be a clear statement as to where engineering should
come in as part of those policy guidelines? Would that be helpful?
Professor Beddington: I think
it would. The other thing I would say is how we engage with the
engineering community is really important.
Q532 Chairman: We will come on to
that.
Professor Beddington: I will speak
very briefly to it then. The engineering community is enormously
available. I walked through the door of this job a year ago and
it was quite clear to me that I had to engage with the engineering
community because so many of the major global issues we are facing
have to have engineering solutions. I immediately started dialogue
with them and that has been ongoing, and I will go into detail
later on. It is extremely important. The fact that many of the
problems require some degree of engineering solutions we have
to accept and some form of policy guideline about that seems to
me to be a perfectly sensible suggestion.
Mr Denham: I wanted to say that
we should be quite straightforward and say that across science
and engineering the questions of embedding science and engineering
policy advice in government decision making is a developing process.
The Chief Scientific Adviser has taken that a step forward in
the way he is working. The work has been done by my department
over the last year, funding the Sciencewise Centre to develop
knowledge of public engagement, the report that the Council on
Science and Technology produced for me a weeks ago on how government
can use academic policy makers more effective, I give to you as
indications that ministers know that the situation is not yet
where it needs to be and this is a process we need to strengthen
rather than say we have it absolutely alright at the moment.
Chairman: That is a fair comment and
we thank you for that.
Q533 Mr Boswell: I want to come back
to Professor Beddington. You did mention, rather as a throwaway,
that there were cases where it worked well under the existing
structure but it would be helpful to the Committee if you were
able to give us one or two examples in correspondence. It would
be quite useful to re-balance this because we can all think of
cases where it has not worked perfectly. I appreciate you are
not writing our report so I will not necessarily ask you to give
a definitive answer. It seems to me, first, from what you have
said, of interest that one needs to get the initial input right.
Ministers in another government department are thinking about
some energy saving process, or perhaps something which is less
obviously engineeringly salient. They need to have, I would suspect,
an initial ability to refer to you, and you in turn may need to
refer to colleagues in other departments where there seems to
be a process issue involved. In other words, they have to be alert
to the fact, even if they have no engineering expertise themselves,
that they need to use their own departmental expertise where it
exists, and that needs to come to you and you need to share it
with those in and out of government, the economic stakeholders
or whatever you referred to. Is that the sort of formulation that
would be optimal if we could do it?
Professor Beddington: Yes, I think
so. It obviously depends on issues, and to some extent some issues
manifestly demand an engineering input. The ones where we had
to think rather more carefully, for example let us take the issue
I have been involved in quite a lot, food security, prima facie
this is a problem about plant growth and so on but there are really
important engineering issues there that need to be addressed.
In talking to the EFRA Committee I made that point relatively
recently. Just to give you an idea how in these areas where it
is not absolutely obvious that you need engineering input, we
are meeting with the chief executives of the main engineering
institutions. I am meeting with a sub-group of my chief scientific
advisers which is dealing with climate change and food security
next week with a view to exploring the way in which the Royal
Academy of Engineering and the institutions can actually input
this process.
Q534 Mr Boswell: My second question
is something you also said, and did not expand on, about social
sciences. Let me give you an example. What we have not heard evidence
on this time is the introduction of energy efficient light bulbs,
which we may think is a very sensible thing as I do. This is obviously
a very complex process involving both engineering issues, fitting
into the existing stock, being compatible and not creating safety
or disposal issues, which is straight within the engineering book,
but there are also some related social science issues which, in
a sense, are implicit in the process: will people use them and
can they afford them. I notice the Secretary of State is nodding
and may want to come in on this. How do we conduct the band in
these rather complex areas and the interaction of the engineering
community and its expertise, government and the citizen?
Professor Beddington: I would
agree completely that many of these rather complicated issues
do not need just engineering and scientific input but social science
input. Amongst our community of chief scientific advisers, the
chief scientific adviser of the Home Office is in fact a social
scientist and head of social science in government so we do get
an input at that level. It is quite clear that many of the issues
that we look at involve, in a sense, both scientific assessment
and engineering assessment but you have to think about the behavioural
sciences, and indeed I would include economics there. We need
to be thinking about whether economic incentives are sensible
or whether, in fact, they actually are counter-protective in some
ways. I think that input both from scientists, social scientists
and economists is absolutely essential as you take these policies
forward. I would agree with you and, I think in the way the Secretary
of State indicated, I do not think we are there yet. What we do
have as a way of taking this forward, and I mentioned CLG just
now in terms of Michael Kelly's successor, clearly you have this
issue with the retrofit. You have an economic incentive. In fact,
the pay back period on the economics is very short but why have
we not had take-up of cavity wall installation or loft installation?
It has to be a mixture of social and behavioural issues as well
as economic and the engineering solutions as well. I would agree
with you and we are working on that. If ever there was an issue
that is important, and you have an inquiry about engineering,
clearly social science I see is an integral part of the whole
community of social science, economics, engineering and science.
Q535 Dr Gibson: Some scientists think
the engineers are a bunch of jerks actually deriving from their
school days. You are obviously talking about a really coordinated
team of people, and no doubt within that there is risk analysis
as well where you have to calculate what is going to happen. Who
makes the decision? Who gets them all around the table together
in one place? Who gets the engineers along with all these other
groups of which there may be twenty involved in an eco-town? How
do the engineers get the feeling for these other areas, that they
are part of a team? If you just ask them for a view and say "Cheerio,
thank you very much" it seems like you did not co-ordinate.
Professor Beddington: It would
depend on the issue and the department how that actually operates.
It is quite reasonable to set up an ideal, and that would be a
proper integration of the teams where you work. We understand
that is difficult and it does not often happen, I would argue,
but it does need to happen and is one of the things that Paul
Wiles and I are pushing for. We believe that an awful lot of evidence-based
policy, which I have been commented on about rather recently,
has got to include not just scientific policy but social science
and engineering issues. They have to come into that.
Mr Denham: I was agreeing with
Mr Boswell's point about the breadth of advice. I would make two
points, as I see it, from my department. It is true that not every
piece of policy making involves the engineer at the arm of the
minister or the civil servant sitting there when the decision
is made. If you look at developments in the motor industry and
advanced manufacturing, that clearly has involved academic input
from Julia King, vice-chancellor of Aston University, on low carbon
vehicle potential. It involves the research councils engaging
with industry and some of the relevant research universities in
the West Midlands. It involves input with engineers in companies
and the Technology Strategy Board which helped to inform both
the automobile strategy work that has happened and the advanced
manufacturing. There is a whole amount of engagement in that sort
of process of real engineering and other scientific expertise,
not necessarily though in the case of a submission to a minister
saying can you agree or otherwise this policy. In other words,
the ministers agree collectively that we want to develop a clearer
manufacturing strategy for the automobile industry and then the
engagement of expert advice in the development of that strategy
is absolutely critical to the process. It is worth remembering
there is far more policy of that sort which gets developed in
government than the big one-off decisions that take place at ministerial
level. I am broadening the picture of where policy advice takes
place. The second point I make, just in general, because it is
my obsession and is why I asked the Council for Science and Technology
to produce their report for me, is there is a two-way process.
Government, in my view, needs to get better at hearing advice
from researchers from all sorts of backgrounds and researchers
also need to develop their expertise in presenting advice in a
way that understands the real dilemmas facing policy makers. We
have to come at it from both ends.
Q536 Ian Stewart: Secretary of State,
you heard Professor Beddington say that the balance of engineering
and scientific advice under his control is developing so, therefore,
perhaps the balance is not quite right yet. Are you conscious
of that as a policy matter and are you doing anything about it?
Mr Denham: In the sense that I
am an advocate in government for strengthening science and engineering
advice, yes. Within my own department I have been very keen to
ensure that we have good advice available to us. It is not my
job to do John's job. His job is to sponsor the network of advisers
across government and he is, as we discussed before, independent
of me.
Q537 Ian Stewart: Do you accept that
the quality of the advice you receive would be dependent on the
balance being right?
Mr Denham: Yes, I would. In my
own departmental role, Adrian Smith, who is the Director General
of Science and Research, is ultimately responsible in my department
for making sure that you get the right science and engineering
and social science input into our own department's policy making.
That clearly is his responsibility.
Q538 Dr Harris: You mentioned evidence-based
policy but you are not going to drag me down that path today.
We have had some specific discussion but I want to bring it back
to the general. Are you saying that your view is that scientific
advice includes engineering advice or do you think there is merit
in saying that they are different, with overlap obviously?
Professor Beddington: Thank you
for that; I can assure you I am not seeking to drag you down the
path of evidence-based policy which we can debate in the future.
I would say here there is a clear continuum. In answer to the
question should there be a chief engineering adviser, I would
argue that would be seriously misconceived because I would point
out there is absolutely no reason why my successor should not
be an engineer; indeed, previous chief scientific advisers, two
actually, have been engineers: Robin Nicholson and John Fairclough,
so eminent engineers. The chief scientific adviser does not have
to be only a scientist; he could easily be an engineer. He will
be called a chief scientific adviser but they will have engineering
qualifications and we have had two such appointments in the history
of the position.
Q539 Dr Harris: That is just defending
the status quo. If you had a chief scientific adviser and a chief
engineering adviser then you would generally appoint an engineer
to the latter and a scientist or social scientist to the former
so you are not rebutting that. There must be another reason why
you do not want to separate out, with overlap and close working,
those two strands of advice.
Professor Beddington: The point
about it is these strands of advice form an essential continuum
and to put them into silos would be unhelpful. I have scientific
and engineering advice, and what is pure science and what is engineering
does not seem to me a fruitful debate as they link across lots
of different areas.
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