UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 506-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

INNOVATION, UNIVERSITIES, SCIENCE & SKILLS COMMITTEE

 

 

PRE-APPOINTMENT HEARING WITH THE CHAIR-ELECT OF THE BIOTECHNOLOGY AND BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES RESEARCH COUNCIL

 

 

Wednesday 13 May 2009

PROFESSOR SIR TOM BLUNDELL

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 33

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Innovation, Universities, Science & Skills Committee

on Wednesday 13 May 2009

Members present

Mr Phil Willis, in the Chair

Mr Tim Boswell

Mr Ian Cawsey

Dr Brian Iddon

Ian Stewart

Graham Stringer

________________

Witness: Professor Sir Tom Blundell, Chair-elect Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, gave evidence.

 

Chairman: Can I welcome this morning Professor Sir Tom Blundell, the Chair-elect of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, to be called BBSRC from now on. Welcome to our pre-appointment hearing. We are delighted that you have been brought to our attention by the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister and we hope to have a very pleasant 40 or 50 minutes with you this morning. Thank you very much indeed for coming.

Q1 Mr Boswell: At this stage, can I just declare an interest formally. As I think Sir Tom will know, I am a former member of the precursor body, AFRC, as a Council member and our paths did cross at that time or just afterwards. I very much look forward to what you have to say to us.

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: Thank you very much. It is nice to see you again.

Q2 Chairman: Sir Tom, you have clearly got a very strong interest in BBSRC's work, but I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about how you came to be on the shortlist for this particular post. Were you approached? Did you see an advert somewhere? Was it an inspirational thought on the journey home?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: Let me say that I am a basic scientist at one level but I have always been a scientist who is interested in policy, so over the past 45 years I have been a city councillor, I was on Margaret Thatcher's ACOST for several years ---

Q3 Chairman: Steady!

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I chaired the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in terms of science and policy. I have also been very heavily involved in translation of research both into the agricultural side but much more into biotech and pharmaceuticals. I have founded two companies. The activities of the BBSRC and, indeed, some of the other Research Councils are very central to my life, which is how do you get excellent research competitively completed in the UK and how can we translate it. In answer to your question, I was not originally thinking of applying because the model we had previously when I was involved in setting up the BBSRC was to have an industrialist as Chair and to have an academic as Chief Executive and I thought that model was to be sustained. I was approached by various people who suggested I applied saying that those interests in both basic science and applications were relevant, so I put my name forward.

Q4 Chairman: When you say "various people", who are we talking about?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: A number of colleagues and also, of course, as usual, headhunters.

Q5 Chairman: Was this a formal headhunting company?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: Yes, it was a formal headhunting company.

Q6 Chairman: Can you name them, for the record?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: It is the one I can never pronounce. It is Saxton Bampfylde.

Q7 Chairman: They approached you and colleagues thought it was a good idea. You mentioned the usual pattern, and it has been a pattern over the other Research Councils, is to have a leading industrial/commercial figure chairing, as you say, and an academic becoming the Chief Executive. Why do you think there has been this change? We know you more as an academic, if I might say, than a great tycoon in the City, or perhaps you are both, I do not know.

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I am not a tycoon in the City but I should say, unlike most academics, I spent a very large time consulting for both large pharma and food. I have been on the board of a FTSE 100 company. I have founded two companies. I may not be known in the financial side of the City but certainly my company is because we raise money there. I have been very much involved in that side. Unusually, I have also had this interest in conservation and environmental and agricultural areas, so what I can do is to bring the translation of research into the broad and several areas that BBSRC has an interest in. I assume that is why I am here today.

Q8 Chairman: You are currently in receipt of a BBSRC grant in terms of your research.

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: Yes.

Q9 Chairman: Do you regard that as a conflict of interest and would you be relinquishing that?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I think that has more or less finished its term now. I should say that my position is changing quite radically this summer. I am 67 this summer and the statutes of the University of Cambridge decree that I can no longer be head of school, which is equivalent to being dean; I can no longer be head of department; indeed, I cannot be the Sir William Dun Professor, I have to be Professor Emeritus. Nevertheless, they have agreed to pay my salary for another three years and I will be doing research but at a decreased level. It is currently funded by the Gates, by the Wellcome, and by industrial companies.

Q10 Chairman: In terms of the BBSRC grant, that runs out and you will not be applying for further BBSRC funding?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I have no plans at the moment. I think I have no space for it.

Q11 Mr Boswell: If we can pass on. Indeed, it occurs to me that we now have another joint common interest, not only the one I declared but also the fact that we are both 66 and I do not feel very Emeritus either. Talking about familiarity with the Council, do you think that would be a positive advantage in this role? To put the converse, would it have been better to have had a completely fresh pair of eyes that had never seen the Council before?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: As you imply, there are both sides to this discussion. I should say that when I finished being Chief Executive at the BBSRC, and previously I had been Director-General of the AFRC, which is now 13 years ago, as a matter of principle I had nothing to do with the policy of the BBSRC, I thought it would have been wrong for me in any way in public to put forward views about how my successors, Professor Goodfellow most recently and Dr Baker before, should proceed, so I kept out of it. I am not terribly familiar, as I discovered, with the workings and structure of the Council. Actually I feel quite fresh coming back to it. What I am aware of is I need to remember everything I have learnt from being on boards where there is a non-executive chair and a chief executive to remember the distinctions between the two roles. I have worked in both capacities in a number of bodies before.

Q12 Mr Boswell: You mean you have had this transition from an executive role to a non-executive chair role in other experience?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: Yes. For example, I have been President of the Biosciences Federation, which is a non-executive chair, and I had a paid chief executive. I am presently President of the Biochemical Society and that is equivalent to non-paid, non-executive chair, and I have a chief executive. I have been on many boards and watched the way they operate. I had the great advantage of working with Sir Alistair Grant when I was a chief executive so I have a role model to follow, and quite a challenging one I think.

Q13 Mr Boswell: Thank you for that. We are not here for a seminar on corporate governance, but what would you see as being the main distinctions between having been the secretary and now hopefully being the Chair? What are the differences of responsibility?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: A chief executive is a chief executive responsible in all ways to the board and a chairman has responsibilities to make sure that the affairs of Council are properly conducted, that the affairs of the body are following proper procedures, and to give strategic direction and advice mainly by networking and linking and bringing experience from the industrial side, from agriculture, environment, pharmaceuticals, and also linking in with ministers and giving advice. There is a very clear distinction in my mind.

Q14 Ian Stewart: If I might just ask you a clutch of questions about the evolution of your role if this is confirmed. I think very commendably, if I may say, you embodied Baldwin's Doctrine that on retirement you should not talk to the captain or spit on the deck, which I think is a wonderful summary of how you should leave a particular role. I am going to tempt you a bit in terms of your take on the Council since you left and whether at this stage you have any views as to current strengths and weaknesses as to what it is doing. Maybe I can put all this together because it is probably relevant: areas where maybe the emphasis in the corporate plan may not be quite as you expected them to be; areas that you do not know as much about as you might do had you continued as secretary; and, indeed, one final question, because it is a Chair responsibility, anything in the composition of the Council that strikes you. That is a bit of a portfolio. I realise you will not want to give us a detailed answer, but what looks to be the sort of area you might apply yourself to as Chairman?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I think the 1993 White Paper looking at the way that basic science should contribute to the health and wealth of the country still remains pretty well good guidance and largely it is embodied in recent statements coming out of DIUS. In the UK there have been huge pressures on the Government over the past years. I think the expectation that research in the private sector would increase with increasing the science base has not been forthcoming, so there are going to be pressures to see other mechanisms for increasing certainly translation of research. One of the ways that things have changed, although the underlying principles have stayed the same, is the pressures are probably more acute. Incidentally, it is very similar in the charities. I am very much involved in both Wellcome and most particularly in Cancer Research UK through the Institute of Cancer Research and there has been a very similar change of pressure over the last 15 years. Again, ultimately it comes from concern of the public, in that case those who donate, about whether the institutions are really delivering from their basic science. It is a very broad change.

Chairman: We want to return to that point later. Can you respond to Mr Boswell's comments particularly about the state of the Council?

Q15 Mr Boswell: The state of the Council, the state of the board.

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: The state of the Council is reflecting those pressures and I need to spend further time to discuss with colleagues. It is an understandable development. Looking at the Council, it has a good spread of academics and those with industrial experience. I would venture two things about it. One, it probably does not have enough women on it. Women have been my bosses almost all the time. I have a woman head of college, a woman head of the university. I work with Dorothy Hodgkin. I had a woman head of Birkbeck when I was there, and so on. We probably need some more women on the Council and I wonder whether the number of academics who are members of the Academy of Medical Sciences and so on might be increased. Those are my comments, but they are very much an outsider looking in.

Q16 Dr Iddon: Sir Tom, you have just mentioned translating research into economic impact and you said that seems to be a current focus. What interaction do you have at the moment with the Office of Life Sciences, which is a new creation? Can you tell us something about how you feel that should work?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I do not have any direct experience of that, but I think a broad Office of Life Sciences is a very useful innovation. I should say the chief financial officer of my company, Astex Therapeutics, which I co-founded ten years ago, is looking after some of the financial aspects in that Office but I have not really discussed it with him. I do not have any detailed comments on that particular Office. All I can say is I believe very strongly that the life sciences have been under-represented. We have had a wealth of people coming into life sciences but the organisations both on the professional society side and on the Government side have been less well-coordinated than they might have been. That is why when I was President of the Biosciences Federation what we tried to do there was to bring all the many societies with 70,000 members together to get some coherent interaction with Government. As you may know, there is now a plan to take that together with the Institute of Biology into a new society. There is a great need, because I believe biosciences underpin much of our health and wealth, to have that coordinated more efficiently.

Q17 Dr Iddon: Do you think your Research Council has adequate links with industry? Are they strong enough or are there some weaknesses in the way that BBSRC interacts with industry?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: Again, I am not really familiar with the details of how the Research Council operates now. My model has always been consistently this: I believe that academics should be networked into not only the pharmaceutical biotech industry but also the agricultural, conservation and health industries as well. Those networks allow academics to think and to be aware and really take advantage of any opportunities that might come out of their work in terms of making it useful. It is very important to have a continuous interface. There is the old model of the academic coming along with a baton and passing it on to the industry but that is not how it works, it is an interface going in both directions. It seems to me that BBSRC has been doing that pretty well. I am very well networked into small companies, large companies, to the agricultural industry and, of course, to environmental policy where I have contributed in many ways.

Q18 Dr Iddon: Where do you see the new growth areas in the life sciences that could lead to income for this country through exports and so on?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I think there are one or two very obvious ones. There are obviously climate change impacts and the effect those have on the different ways we produce energy and food. You may know that I chaired the Royal Commission that produced the report Energy Changing Climate which led to the Government's 2003 White Paper and the 60 per cent reduction which came out of my report, by the way. That is an area where biologists are going to have a major role because impacts are certainly going to be there if we are not reacting quickly enough. The food chain and the need for production is a radical change that everybody was aware had to come, but having been through the post-war period of research for production and then the withdrawal from that position - that was one of the main reasons why the old Agricultural and Food Research Council had a lot of its funds removed, it was considered to be too focused on production of food - we have to have a sustainable agriculture, sustainable food production, but to put the two together and realise the challenges of producing food in the coming years are major challenges for biological as well as other sciences.

Q19 Dr Iddon: Is there a role for GM?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I think there is a role for GM. I am one of those people who feel very strongly that the industry got it wrong the last time round. I organised and managed to fund the first consensus conference in the UK where we got members of the public in to debate. It was not a jury system, it was a consensus conference. I do not think we did enough of that. I remember the look of horror when I told my Council I spent 80,000 on it and they were not very keen on doing that. Then we had large companies coming in with different cultures from outside and we just had to pause and think. If we go forward again we need to make sure we consult the public at all stages, we involve them at the beginning in the process and in the deliberative phase.

Q20 Dr Iddon: You have already explained your relationship with the Chief Executive and the Council to Mr Boswell. Do you personally have a vision for the BBSRC and perhaps some plans which may not be in the strategic plan at the moment?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I guess if I had been thinking of taking this job and coming back in it and had been heavily involved I probably would have a vision, but as this is somewhat of a recent idea that I should come back into it I have certainly not had a vision. I would certainly want to talk and find out how things are now. I think it would probably be dangerous for me to have a vision until I have had time to think and talk simply because I would otherwise be bringing back what was relevant 20 years ago.

Dr Iddon: Where do you think the policy should come from, top-down, bottom-up? How does the BBSRC develop its policy at the moment?

Q21 Chairman: Dictated by the Government?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I think the Haldane Principle, if it is a principle, is pretty good. I believe that Government has a role first to set some sort of strategic direction and they can implement that by relative funding in Research Councils and other bodies. They will also have a role as a customer. One of the sad things over the past 20 years is the decrease of funding in the departments which has meant that energy research and many other areas have been very, very sadly depleted, and the same with agriculture, so the number of customers for research from Government departments has decreased which puts extra pressure on Research Councils. I think the Government has a role in broad strategic direction and as a customer nearer market. The working out of what those strategies might mean has to come from a proper discussion with academics and other users, the public, and that is the responsibility of the Research Council. It is a mixture of the two. Certainly it is not the job of Government, in my view, to tell a Research Council what programmes they should be funding in detail.

Q22 Graham Stringer: Just going back to Brian's question about GM food, I was interested in your answer about consensus panels. Do you believe the public have very strong and, some would say, prejudiced views on GM foods? Do you think it is possible under the current circumstances to reach a national consensus on GM foods?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I think in the UK with GM crops we have a particular culture which is very, very different from the United States, for example. I think that is why Monsanto got it wrong before and why things are different in the UK. If you go to the US you have agriculture and you have the countryside and they are different. In the UK our farmers are the guardians of the countryside they will tell you, and I subscribe to that view, so there is a very close integration in the public's mind in the UK between what is theirs, the countryside, and the production of food. This means that there are very much more complex challenges for us in the UK to take people along with us on any use of genetic manipulation compared to the US or in South America.

Q23 Graham Stringer: Does that mean the answer is really no, we cannot get a consensus?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: No. I think one has to proceed in a way where one involves the public, one involves everyone, and one needs to think through carefully what one takes forward. One of the things we were taking forward in the 1990s was tomatoes that ripened in the supermarket. The public was not convinced by that, they thought, "Oh god, this is the supermarkets buying in lots of green tomatoes, there are chemicals in them and they will ripen them when they sell them". If we are going ahead to use technologies like that we have to consult the public, find what they think is advantageous and make sure they are involved in all the stages.

Q24 Graham Stringer: You gave a pretty stiff defence of the Haldane Principle in answer to a previous question. Do you believe that Lord Drayson's initiative to give a clearer strategic focus to science funding is in conflict with that principle? Are you relaxed about Lord Drayson's approach?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I have not had the pleasure of meeting Lord Drayson personally, although I have heard him speak. My own view is that to set strategic directions, as I said I believe he is doing, and to encourage scientists to think about that is the right way forward and he does emphasise the role of basic science. That sounds fine but, of course, it can be interpreted in different ways.

Q25 Graham Stringer: Maybe you have not thought it through, but do you think there is anything in the approach that he has been talking about that will have implications that you will need to respond to from BBSRC?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: From the BBSRC side, in detail I have not seen anything which would cause me concern at the moment, but I would like to say I am in a pre-appointment phase and would like to have a more thoughtful look at it.

Q26 Graham Stringer: This is a similar sort of question about the relationship with Government. Do you believe that you will get the necessary support from DIUS? Are there any particular areas of the relationship with DIUS that you believe you need to attend to on taking up the position?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I must say that as a failed politician in my youth I am finding it much more difficult being a scientist. Retiring from being a city councillor to the relative peace of doing research I actually have much greater understanding, and certainly sympathy, for politicians than most of my colleagues do. Over the last 20 years, both through the Research Councils and through the Royal Commission, I have worked in a fairly close relationship with ministers from both parties. I have always found them extremely receptive and, in fact, sometimes very stimulating. I am sure that if I do have strong views I will be able to communicate them, and I look forward to it.

Q27 Graham Stringer: This is another approach to this series of questions. Do you think the priorities of the BBSRC should be, not the same as but reflect the priorities of DIUS?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I think they are bound to have some reflection because they certainly have some of the same drivers. The broad areas where we might be able to use our science in a way that is good for health and wealth are fairly evident, so there is bound to be some sort of congruence of the two policies. At the moment I have not had any indication that there are differences. Certainly I think with the importance of sustaining the very basic science that goes on in some of our biotech small companies, the importance of keeping the science base to retain the large pharma investment, I would be extremely worried if the large companies like GlaxoSmithKline over a period were moving executives across to the States. We have got to keep our research here. In agriculture I think there was a lack of confidence for a period of time that science was needed and could contribute, but it has to contribute both in terms of environmental impacts and food production. It seems to me all of those areas, as far as I can see, are shared between Government and the Research Council.

Q28 Graham Stringer: My last question is not so unlikely a question in a recession. Lord Drayson's strategic focus is looking towards supporting the biological sciences, but if you were left with either a cut budget or a flat budget what work do you believe would suffer at the BBSRC?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I would really like to talk to the Chief Executive when I am appointed before I answer that. All I can say at the moment is that the strategic emphasis of the Research Council seems to be broadly what I would think is important, so I do not see any area which immediately needs reduction. I can see several areas, infectious disease in livestock, for example, where further attention is required broadly, but that probably means further investment.

Q29 Mr Cawsey: In a previous report that this Committee did on biosecurity we visited and saw for ourselves the Pirbright redevelopment programme and I just wondered what you think the financial and scientific will be to BBSRC of Defra pulling out of the redevelopment and how you are going to approach this problem?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: Clearly I have not been personally involved in the discussions but I am very familiar with the old Pirbright, which I have visited many times, and thought many years ago it needed some attention. I am a little concern that further investment would be needed in Compton and I do think it is important to invest there from the BBSRC side and from the Defra side. Personally, I do not see any long-term alternative other than keeping the exotic diseases, Category 4, fairly closely in line with the endemic diseases like TB. I would think in the long-term we will have to somehow negotiate bringing everything together as was originally planned. We have no choice in the BBSRC at the moment but to go forward to make sure that Pirbright is secure, state of the art, that we need to bring Compton alongside and see whether we cannot get further integration in the longer term.

Q30 Mr Cawsey: In an answer to Graham Stringer on GM you spoke about the importance of involving the public in all these kinds of debates. How do you feel about representing the views of BBSRC to the public? Do you intend to take an active role in doing so?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I spent many years in all kinds of discussions with the public at various levels. It is one of the things that I think is important and I would be very happy to take part in discussions with all parts of the public, the NGOs, many of whom I have worked with very closely in the past. I have worked with Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth in the same way I have worked with the industry. I think a role of the Chairman is to play a role in that communication process.

Q31 Mr Cawsey: Finally, from me, the other thing is it is not just in the UK, it is about international work and international reputation of the UK, so how will you engage at an international level to ensure that UK biosciences remain world leading?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I think it is going to be a challenge in the coming years. I am delighted, and somewhat relieved, that over the past 30 years from a time when I thought biosciences was considerably under challenge that we have managed to maintain a very strong position in this area. However, I think we do need to be aware and I do travel a lot. I am a member of the Third World Academy of Sciences, I am a member of the Indian National Academy and I am very much involved in interactions with India. I have been to China about 25 times, I guess, and am very much involved in South America. On that area we have to remain very much together and work together with them. Huge investment is going into science now in India to a lesser extent, but in Singapore and in Shanghai. I was in Eindhoven a few weeks ago and they had these incredible Titan electron microscopes, $4 million each, and they had them lined up and I asked, "Where are all those going?" I thought they were going to German Max Planck and America, and they said, "These three are for German Max Planck but this one is Singapore and these two are Shanghai". I think we have got some challenges ahead of us. We certainly need to stay networked.

Q32 Chairman: Could I finally ask you, Sir Tom, so much of research today is interdisciplinary the idea that you can actually compartmentalise the Research Councils into their traditional roles seems to be something which many people are challenging. We were recently in the States looking at one of the Howard Hughes laboratories bringing together scientists of a multidisciplinary nature to look at some of the big problems in terms of researching the mind. Do you feel the days are numbered for individual Research Councils and this is the time that we should bring them altogether? Could you be a revolutionary?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: There are arguments in both directions. I remember when the old Science and Engineering Research Council was there, it was large, it was bureaucratic and it needed to be changed. The move to smaller Research Councils created much greater efficiency, much greater focus, but it is something that moves backwards and forward. I see the importance of bringing policies together and integrating as a very important part. I should say I am a person who has been in physical science faculties as well as biological sciences. I have taught in areas of physics and computing as well as in areas of areas of chemistry and biology. On my own research team I have got a nuclear physicist who engineers, computer scientists, chemists, biologists and clinicians. I am a multidisciplinary scientist. One has to have some sort of focus for an organisation, but at the same time one has to maintain the links and that is a challenge we all have. It is certainly going to be a challenge for the future. We should not just look at it in terms of having a physics department collaborating with a biology one, quite often you need physicists like Crick to talk to biologists like Watson and to be in the same lab. There are various models for this. It is a very, very important aspect.

Q33 Chairman: The purpose of my question was exactly that and whether, in fact, you felt that the Research Councils hinder that interdisciplinary work or do you feel they have sufficient structures to be able to create those dynamics?

Professor Sir Tom Blundell: I think structures can get in the way. I have got 12 people in my own lab writing computer code, really, really good computer scientists. I have got physicists running huge expensive equipment. I cannot see science going on without having that. It would certainly be a priority for the Research Council to make sure that we take advantage of that at all levels, at reductionist levels of determining individual molecules, at the systems level of understanding how things integrate into cells and organisms and, indeed, in the way we transfer some of the science into practice involves engineering and physics.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for that, Professor Sir Tom Blundell. We are very grateful to you for your time this morning. I think I speak on behalf of us all that we have thoroughly enjoyed our time with you. We will now deliberate as to whether, in fact, we wish to confirm your appointment or not. I am sure you will wait with bated breath outside. Obviously the Secretary of State will inform you in due course. Thank you very much indeed for your time this morning.