Examination of Witnesses (Questions 540
- 559)
WEDNESDAY 21 JANUARY 2009
RT HON
JOHN DENHAM
MP, MARK BEATSON
AND PROFESSOR
JOHN BEDDINGTON
Q540 Dr Harris: There is a feeling,
and you have accepted, that the content of the advice so far,
in general perhaps but certainly in specific examples, has been
lacking in the engineering aspects. I think that is recognised
on specifics. As the chairman said, your guidelines, which I accept
you inherited, on scientific advice and policy making have no
substantive mention of engineering at all and I think you indicated
that might have to change. What are you suggesting should change
in order to make the system you are defending, which is a single
person within the continuum, more robust in respect of engineering?
Professor Beddington: The first
thing is those guidelines do need to be thought about and it is
one of the things that I am going to be discussing with my team
of chief scientific advisers. The second thing to say is we need
to have, as chief scientific advisers, where appropriate engineers
who actually take that role if they are in a department where
it is more appropriate to be an engineer than to be a scientist
and that should be the appointment. I do not see that that is
particularly problematic and indeed it happens; we just discussed
Kelly.
Q541 Dr Harris: You would not want
to rely on that because if you happen not to be an engineer it
might be "We are not a department that deals with engineering."
I think you are right that you do need to embed it in the culture.
Are you saying that in those departments where there is a lot
of engineering, engineering advice will feature as a part of the
scientific advice and to a greater extent there is not a case
for having, as well as a chief scientific adviser to deal with
the social science and the science, an engineering adviser, or
chief engineering adviser in specific cases so you do not have
a blanket rule saying, which I think is where you are at the moment,
no, the departmental chief scientist will include engineering
and be an engineer if necessary?
Professor Beddington: That would
be my preference for a number of reasons. First of all, I think
it is important to try and support the continuum, which I think
is appropriate. I think it is possible to get scientific advice
and engineering advice within departments in appropriate ways.
Departments have engineers or consultants can be brought in. What
seems to be key is where there are particular issues that need
to be addressed you get the appropriate mix of science and engineering
to address those problems and that is the challenge. I do not
see that it is helpful to say you have a chief scientist and a
chief engineer in a number of departments because how do the responsibilities
lay. How is the responsibility for the engineer? Are they only
going to provide advice on engineering or are they going to overlap
into science? It has the potential to generate some degree of
silo activity and one which I do not see is particularly helpful.
You clearly need to address problems and ask do those problems
need addressing by a mix of scientists, engineers and social scientists.
It is the problem we should focus on not the structure; the structure
is reasonably robust.
Q542 Dr Harris: What troubles me
is in a department which has a chief scientific adviser who is
a scientist and not an engineer, and indeed lower down that is
the case, while you may desire them to think engineering the fact
is over the history of science and engineering in this country
science has not been taken much to include engineering. At the
beginning of this session the Secretary of State said we asked
for science and not science and engineering in our title. We asked
for science, got a change and launched an immediate inquiry into
engineering whereas you have not even got science in the name
of your department. If words meant anything, then you really need
to go to science first but it is actions that matter. What worries
me is there will be a lack of awareness of the need to get engineering
unless there is some constitutional reference to it within a department.
Mr Denham: I do think we are in
terrible danger of thinking this is an issue about labels. I would
say if any chief scientific adviser in my department came to me
and said "I did not include engineering or social science
in the advice I gathered together for you because I am a science
adviser" I would have thought they had done a pretty poor
job.
Q543 Dr Harris: They are not going
to say that.
Mr Denham: Or even to have done
that in practice. You would expect somebody holding these senior
positions to have sufficient knowledge or ability to access knowledge
to get all the relevant advice together. It would be a shame if
this focused on an issue simply about getting engineering advice
into government. I am very open about this. The real challenge
is getting the best policy advice, whether that is social science,
science or engineering, into government in a systematic way. That
is the issue on which I am happy to say I think government has
made considerable progress over the last few years but there is
still some way to go. Focusing overmuch on engineering, one could
easily have a similar discussion with social scientists about
the same issue.
Q544 Dr Harris: If you did improve
the overall quality of advice on social science, science and engineering,
would it be more likely, in your view, for government to follow
it more frequently than they do?
Mr Denham: The whole point is
you have to ensure that you have the right systems in place for
the advice to be presented in a way that is useful for policy
makers. Academic advice that does not understand the context of
decision making is very hard to use in government, and that is
true at a ministerial level or a civil service level. Secondly,
the more we improve that, on the other side from the government
point of view, we have to improve the receptiveness of civil servants
and ministers to that advice. As evidence of the commitment, you
have the work that is going on across government to establish
government scientific advisers in each department. I have made
a number of speeches on this over the last few years so it is
no secret my view. Government is not there yet in terms of harnessing
the best advice in the most effective way but the more that government
gets its structures right and gets the right scientific advice
the better we will get. At the same time, as the Council of Science
and Technology acknowledge, you have educate the academic community
to be able to present the advice in the right way.
Q545 Chairman: You have spent tens
of thousands of pounds as a department actually branding the department
and branding the names. The reality is that you have admitted
that engineering is absolutely at the heart of every major government
and global project that faces us and yet the status of engineers
out in the country is at a very low level. You are saying there
is no connection at all with the fact that the government rarely,
if ever, mentions engineering and the fact that the public at
large do not regard engineers as very important.
Mr Denham: The evidence is, for
example, that 51 per cent of young people regard engineering as
a good career choice. That is one positive indicator and comes
as a result of the very active work we have been doing to promote
the image of engineering. I would challenge the idea. We have
not spent ten of thousands of pounds on the branding of the department.
I think it was £11,000 so we can quibble on that. It was
not huge sums of money. I do not personally believe that the way
in which we talk about the department is creating a problem for
engineering. Of course we will be very interested in what your
Committee's conclusion is from the evidence you have heard. The
evidence is we have done a very considerable amount of work to
promote the image of engineering, as we have to promote the image
of science through the STEMNET ambassadors, through the computer
clubs for girls, the science and engineering clubs in schools
and all of those sorts of activities which shows how keen we are
to promote the image of engineering and of science as activities
and as professions.
Q546 Ian Stewart: My basic questions
are to you, Professor Beddington. First of all, having heard the
Secretary of State's statements this morning, and I for one, and
am I sure others on the Committee, accept that he has been consistent
about this over his period as Secretary of State, is there a profile
of engineering in the UK and do you know what it is?
Professor Beddington: I am not
sure I understand what you mean by a profile.
Q547 Ian Stewart: Where is engineering
carried out in the UK, for example?
Professor Beddington: In many
of our major research universities, in government laboratories
and in industry, there are very substantial amounts of activity.
There is a potential confusion in the sense that there are a plethora
of engineering institutions. One of the issues that I encountered
when I came in was how one dealt with these. I meet, on a regular
basis, six or seven of the chief executives of the major institutions
and link in with the Royal Academy of Engineering. I was at Imperial
College before I moved to this job and Imperial College has an
enormous research and engineering base.
Q548 Ian Stewart: I am not going
to major on this but who does the intelligence about the engineering
profile in this country? Is that your responsibility?
Professor Beddington: By the engineering
profile you mean where the work is carried out and who actually
does it? It is a mix of things. I would have thought, in terms
of engineering research, that would be lie with DIUSS and Adrian
Smith's work and the Engineering and Physical Research Council,
so that would be monitoring what was happening within the university
and research community. In terms of, for example, associated agencies
and so on, one of the early places I visited when I arrived was
the National Physical Laboratory, and I have been back three times
since, which is where there is a very serious amount of very important
engineering taking place. If you think about it in particular
government departments, by far and away the largest engineering
community is actually in the Ministry of Defence.
Q549 Ian Stewart: I am not looking
for that sort of detail. I was looking for a general view of whether
there is an understanding of the profile across the country. The
reason I am asking this question is it stands to reason that we
on this Committee are not all engineers. It was good to hear the
Secretary of State say what he said earlier but we have to continue
asking these questions throughout this session because of the
evidence of the witnesses that we have had before us previously,
interestingly including Mr Kelly who was mentioned earlier. I
can remember one member of the Committee almost accusing them
of being insecure and certainly that they were dispersed, diverse
and had not got their act together in their relations with government.
They expressed their concerns so we are going to ask the questions
on that basis to hear what your answers are so let me press you.
We visited, as a Committee, China and Japan recently. We found
that there were several members of the Chinese government who
were engineers. In Japan the engineering bodies meet with the
prime minister on a monthly basis. That does not happen in the
UK. Is there a reason to promote the likes of, and I am only using
it as an example, the Council for Science and Technology and should
a body like this Council for Science and Technology meet regularly
with the Prime Minister and perhaps the Cabinet?
Professor Beddington: If I can
answer that last question first. In fact, the Council for Science
and Technology met with the Prime Minister about three weeks ago
and, as you probably know, seven out of the 16 members are actually
engineers. We met with the Prime Minister and the discussion we
had ranged relatively widely and included the issue that the Secretary
of State has raised about the way in which academia provides input
into government and the inadequacies of that process currently
with suggestions to improve it. It also included a very detailed
discussion on infrastructure, and indeed the Prime Minister has
actually asked the Council for Science and Technology to go away
and think about it. The Council have already started an investigation
into infrastructure issues led not by an engineer but led by Mark
Walpert but obviously with input from the engineering community.
That study will obviously link in with the major engineering institutions
and with the Royal Academy of Engineering so it is happening and
it is happening at an appropriate level.
Q550 Ian Stewart: When you say it
is at an appropriate level, should the royal academies be consulted
on a statutory basis in your view?
Professor Beddington: It is not
a question I have thought about. I do not think so but it is not
a question that I have thought carefully about. My initial reaction,
and I would emphasise it is an initial reaction, is probably not.
You have lots and lots of opportunities to focus on problems.
There is not often much merit in having a visit between presentation
by the Royal Academy of Engineering or indeed the Royal Society
except via their approach to different problems. That is the key
input they can have. I can cite, for example, something that was
done jointly which was the Royal Society and the Royal Academy
of Engineering study on nanotechnology. There is a Royal Society
study on the potential for the use of plutonium in the nuclear
industry which involved engineers. There is problem solving that
can be enormously helpful but the statutory meeting from time
to time does not seem to me to have obvious merit.
Q551 Chairman: I actually found your
last answers quite bizarre. We have the Council for Science and
Technology, which you have admitted is full of some of the most
prominent engineers we have in the land at the moment, and you
are talking about a new infrastructure programme which is going
to be led by a scientist from the Welcome Trust. Do you not find
that quite bizarre?
Professor Beddington: I do not
find it bizarre.
Q552 Chairman: Do you not find it
rather strange that you have the Royal Academy of Engineering,
which is stuffed full of the most eminent engineers in the land,
and you have not thought as to whether in fact there ought to
be some formal arrangement by which you take engineering advice
from them?
Mr Denham: The Council for Science
and Technology is a group invited by the Prime Minister to advise
him. They are extraordinarily eminent researchers and they handle
their own internal affairs. If they choose to bring a team together
and put the proposals to the Prime Minister that work should be
done on infrastructure, as a minister that probably works more
closely with them than anybody else I am confident they have sufficient
expertise to bring together the right team of people and to draw
on the right external expertise and to go to the right people
to get the right advice together. I would not get into the business
of saying "You should have chosen this person or that person"
because the reports they produce are of uniformly high quality
and they show the ability to bring the right people together and
to consult the right people. In terms of a consultation from a
ministerial point of view on a formal basis, it has not occurred
to me either. I will tell you a short story of the last ten days.
The relationship we have with the Royal Academy of Engineering
is I receive a letter from the chief executive raising some issues
from one of their seminars about supply of skills in the nuclear
engineering industry. That prompts me, within a few days, to have
a meeting with the junior minister and my officials about the
issues that are involved there, which then follows up a meeting
with the Royal Academy and my officials and the relevant sector
skills councils and the National Skills Academy. The relationship
we have is one like that. If you are running on a basis where
the Royal Academy can prompt a whole series of ministerial and
official meetings on the basis of a letter, it had never occurred
to me that you also need to have a formal statutory relationship
because it has gone beyond that. It is a working day-to-day, week
in/week out, month in/month out relationship. To then say now
once every six months let us have a formal session, it is an interesting
thought but it does not seem to be where we are.
Q553 Ian Stewart: What that does
is indicate that on an issue-by-issue basis the system may work
relatively well. The timescale you gave from receiving the letter,
going through your junior ministers and responding and meeting
sounds quite reasonable. My motive for me asking the question
about whether there was an understanding of the engineering profile
was not only about where engineering was done, although I did
ask about that, it was also about the status and understanding
so there can be anticipation which can inform policy development.
If it is accepted that the balance between the advisers is not
quite right yet, how can you get that balance right without that
intelligence and policy formation structure work?
Mr Denham: Meetings would also
take place from time to time between ministers and presidents,
as they do with the Royal Society or with the British Academy
or similar, or they take place at official level. There would
also be the forums in which those sorts of issues are discussed.
Those also exist as well and it is not that you only deal with
the immediate or the instant. I was perhaps trying to illustrate,
by one very recent example, that there is responsiveness in government
and a desire to hear and a willingness to take the Royal Academy
seriously which complements the more strategic relationship our
officials have with them.
Q554 Ian Stewart: In your mind, as
the Secretary of State, engineering has had a higher priority
in your tenure than it had been before. Let us accept that. Should
a prime minister also have that same attitude as you, and is 18
months between a prime minister meeting with the engineering community
too long a period and should it be more regular?
Mr Denham: I would be very surprised
if somebody would say that is the only engagement that the Prime
Minister has with the engineering community because he would meet
with people from engineering companies, with professional engineers,
with the Council for Science and Technology on a pretty regular
basis in a different context. The question you have to ask is
would you be better engaging a prime minister every six months
or every three months. I would not presume to speak for the Prime
Minister or his diary advisers but I know, from my point of view,
that my most productive relationships with external bodies are
when we come together to deal with issues, whether they are immediate
or strategic. If your diary gets completely clogged up with regular
formal meetings, it is often quite an unproductive relationship.
Q555 Ian Stewart: Would once a year
clog your diary up?
Mr Denham: Once a year would not
but if you then got into the habit of mind, and I have seen this
before in government, where the Secretary of State has seen them
once a year so that is the last we need to bother the Secretary
of State. There is a real issue that it can produce a quite counter-productive
effect which is more observing the formalities than real engagement.
I would like to feel that key people in the engineering profession
do not feel that they are excluded from access to government at
the different levels they need to be any more than any other group
of people who think they have an argument to put.
Q556 Chairman: There is no way this
Committee is suggesting that a statutory arrangement with the
Royal Academy is about formal meetings. The point that Ian Stewart
made, and perhaps between us we did not make it well enough, is
do you think that in terms of policy formation you ought to have
a statutory obligation to ask the Royal Academy on engineering
matters for their advice. That is not about having formal meetings
but asking them on key issues for their advice. Your answer is
no.
Mr Denham: I am not convinced
that it would add to the engagement that we have at the moment
in the profession. I would worry that much time and effort would
then be taken up by lots of other organisations arguing about
whether they should be added to the statutory list or not. We
have some key professional bodies but there are lots of other
people who would say they we have the expertise in this area or
the strength there. We could just divert ourselves. It is the
quality of the relationship that matters.
Q557 Chairman: It was not just about
meetings because that would be ridiculous.
Mr Denham: I accept that.
Q558 Dr Gibson: Some of the reports
and some of the policies are helped and determined by civil servants.
The recruitment of civil servants is quite an issue. I do not
mean Oxford and Cambridge and all that stuff again; it is passé
but still a problem perhaps. I am interested in whether or not
people with specialist training, scientists, engineers or whatever
you want to call them, but people who can read original papers
and make a judgment on it because they have that training and
that background. Is that a major feature of the work that is going
on in your department or any other department?
Mr Denham: John has been leading
the work in developing the professional communities.
Professor Beddington: Yesterday
I held a conference, I believe the first, for the community of
science and engineers in government. I am head of profession of
science and engineering and we had a conference yesterday of about
380 people. There were presentations from Lord Drayson and Sir
Gus O'Donnell and 47 per cent of that community, which is a self-selected
community, are engineers.
Q559 Dr Gibson: How many is that
in total?
Professor Beddington: Let me step
back. When I came into government, and we had this discussion
at a previous meeting, I was head of profession and I said who
are the professions that I am heading, where are they and how
do I find them because I want to engage with them as that is part
of my job. As you know, that proved to be much more difficult
than I had expected. What I did was I said let us have a community
who genuinely recognises that they are scientists and engineers.
That was done by circulating an email, and so on, which said "We
are doing this. Would you like to be part of that community?"
A little under 1,600 people elected that they would like to be
considered as scientists and engineers and that was in the first
flush of this. Yesterday we had a conference with about 310 of
them and one of the things we said was "Is this helpful and
how do you want to take it forward?" 97 per cent of the responses
said this was helpful and they did want to take it forward. I
made a commitment at that conference to say we will engage you
but you have to go away and tell us what you need as a community
of civil servants who are scientists and engineers: what are the
key issues. We went through a number of key issues: career development,
whether you should be moving into policy or can you be rewarded
if you remain dealing with your expertise, all very important
questions. I made a commitment that we will continue to do that
and we will engage with this community. What I have said to them
is you have got to say this is valuable. You have talk to your
colleagues who are scientists and engineers in the departments
because I reckon we probably have about a tenth of that community
joining up and we have to build that up. We will, in my office,
be putting resources into building up that community which is
self-selecting. It is the individual civil servants who believe,
when your grandchildren ask what you are, "I am a scientist"
or "I am an engineer." That is how you feel. Those attending
were a mix of people who were actually dealing at almost the laboratory
or field level but also those involved in policy. There were some
interesting discussions we had with that community in which they
said "I am in policy but how do I keep my expertise up?"
We need to look at that. We need to be thinking in a much more
innovative way than we have hitherto about, for example, secondments
into academia and vice versa. There are a whole set of issues
out here which I think are enormously important and are getting
a great deal of my attention. This was the first one and one of
the things that came back to me in the discussion was "This
is great but is this going to be a one-off." You have had
a nice glitzy conference, you have Sir Gus O'Donnell along, and
now we are back to the real world. I made a commitment that this
will not be the only one. We will have a number of conferences
during the year which will focus on themes and we will certainly
have an annual one. I think this is the way to do it.
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