UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 887-iHouse of COMMONSMINUTES OF EVIDENCETAKEN BEFOREINNOVATION, UNIVERSITIES, SCIENCE AND SKILLS COMMITTEE
PRE-APPOINTMENT HEARING WITH THE CHAIR-ELECT OF THE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGIES FACILITIES COUNCIL, PROFESSOR MICHAEL STERLING FREng
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This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
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Transcribed by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Houses of Parliament: W B Gurney & Sons LLP, Hope House, Telephone Number: 020 7233 1935
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee
on
Members present
Mr Phil Willis, in the Chair
Dr Evan Harris
Dr Brian Iddon
Graham Stringer
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Q1 Chairman: Could I welcome very much Professor Michael Sterling FREng, the Chair-elect of the STFC, to this pre-appointment hearing. Thank you very much indeed for coming. I am going to officially apologise to you for starting this session slightly late. Could you start really, Professor Sterling, by saying why you as the next Chairman? What have you done to deserve this honour other than a very distinguished academic record in engineering?
Professor Sterling: That is a very good question, Chairman, and it is one that I have asked myself in the run-up to this hearing today. I was approached by headhunters some months ago and, as is usual with these arrangements, the first conversation is about who one might suggest to be appointed to this post, and vice chancellors get these calls two or three times a week so that is not unusual, but the second call is the one to beware of where they tell you that others have suggested your name as being the appropriate person to be appointed, and that requires a lot more thought. My initial reaction, to be perfectly honest, was that the Committee would be looking for a physicist and I was very quickly told that that was not the case and that actually because it was a big organisation, employing a lot of people and spending a lot of money, that the physics dimension to it would be handled by the chief executive, as indeed of course when one thought about it would be true, and that they would be looking for someone who is used to running a large organisation. After 19 years as a vice chancellor I thought I could just about qualify to do that part, so they had my interest from that point on, Chairman.
Q2 Chairman: Basically the headhunters came and approached you, made you an offer that you could not refuse, so you applied and here you are?
Professor Sterling: I certainly went through the Nolan process, Chairman, but they were very persuasive about the need to come out of retirement, because I was planning to retire and my retirement within the sector had been known for a long time. I think that only encourages headhunters to think that you might want to do something else and this turned out to be irresistible. It is a quality organisation doing internationally acclaimed research with international partners and that part is particularly interesting. I have enjoyed in my time as vice chancellor collaborations with other universities across the world and it is particularly rewarding to see how others do it and I am looking forward to that aspect of this job as well as running a large organisation.
Q3 Chairman: You have an incredibly distinguished record and I suppose I should put on record that I am a graduate of Birmingham University so perhaps I should have declared an interest. However, if you do not mind me saying, you are very, very close to the Russell Group. You are an ex-chair of the Russell Group and you are steeped in their philosophy of getting as much research money into their institutions as possible. Could you not be accused as being less than independent in terms of your role as Chairman?
Professor Sterling: I think I
could honestly claim to be even-handed in relation to the physics agenda
because I have not received funding from any of the physics committees in my
career, I am an engineer, and so my detailed knowledge of the physics agenda is
limited. I do not have a particular bias
in relation to what STFC funds at all and I have a completely open mind as to
what is good science. When it comes to
the university aspect, I think the large physics departments do tend to be in
the large Russell Group universities, although not exclusively of course, and I
believe that there is a good balance of funding across all types of
universities that have significant physics departments, so I would not see any
conflict of interest at all in regard to that.
Q4 Chairman: So you do not feel - and let us take Birmingham, which has a very large and very good physics department - that somehow there would be any bias at all perceived by the community when Birmingham gets huge STFC grants next year?
Professor Sterling: I am sure they would like that to be the case. Of course the advantage of knowing and being vice chancellor at Birmingham for eight years is that you know your physics department very well, so I think they would see it as a two-edged sword as to whether I would be biased in favour or against because I know the people involved and I know the good work that they do. I also know a lot of professors elsewhere in the country as well so, no, I would be completely impartial. Remember, of course the role of the Chairman is not to actually make those scientific decisions. That is coming up through the Science Board that advises the STFC Council, as I understand it, and so it would only be major strategic issues I suspect that the board would be taking decisions on.
Q5 Chairman: One of my colleagues will come on to that issue about your role as Chairman because I think we are quite interested as a Committee in that and the role of the board given some of the problems in other quangos recently, but you said that you were not in receipt obviously currently or in the past of an STFC grant?
Professor Sterling: Correct.
Q6 Chairman: So that is out of the way but you are a member of the Council for Science and Technology.
Professor Sterling: I am.
Q7 Chairman: A distinguished member of the Council for Science and Technology. Will you give that up?
Professor Sterling: I was not planning to but I think our membership of that is due to come to an end at the end of this calendar year just on the normal appointment process. I think there is some discussion as to when an election might be called as to whether membership would be extended or not but that is not for me to decide.
Q8 Chairman: Would you see that as a potential conflict of interest between your role there advising the Prime Minister on science and also being Chairman of one of the largest research councils?
Professor Sterling: I do not think we get into that level of detail, Chairman, on the CST.
Q9 Chairman: Perhaps you should.
Professor Sterling: Indeed but the Chair and the officers would actually determine which things we look at. We have been looking in the recent past at water systems and energy systems, we have been looking at infrastructure in the latest report we have just published, which are fairly general areas of interest, and they do not get down to specifics of whether a particular experiment should be running and funded or not.
Q10 Chairman: But you have got major facilities within the STFC's remit, little things like the Diamond Light Source which is quite an important part of your portfolio. Is it not conceivable that on the Prime Minister's advisory body for Science and Technology that some discussion of the use of major facilities might crop up and therefore you will be perceived as being perhaps not entirely objective?
Professor Sterling: It is quite conceivable, Chairman, in which case I would declare an interest because it happens to many members of the CTC that they are closer to some areas than might be desirable, and we always declare interests.
Q11 Chairman: But that is an issue that you are mindful of and which might need to be resolved?
Professor Sterling: Absolutely.
Q12 Chairman: What will the challenges be for you in holding a non-executive role in the STFC because in the past you have been the king?
Professor Sterling: Thank you for that but, yes, I am very well aware of the relationship between the chairman and the chief executive. In fact even while I have been vice chancellor I have chaired external bodies, starting with the Higher Education Statistics Agency and various professional bodies and other organisations that are associated with the university but distinct from it. The relationship between the chairman and chief executive, in my view, is critical to the successful operation of the organisation, and I have seen in a number of cases, mostly in universities, where that relationship does not work and the organisation does not prosper as a result. One of the difficulties that has occurred where I have observed it elsewhere is that the chairman sometimes feels that he is still the chief executive, and I am very mindful of that so I will avoid that, or indeed the chief executive feels that he is above scrutiny by the governing body, and that too is a danger, so I will ensure that that does not happen either. I have been involved as a vice chancellor for a long time with six chairmen of my governing body councils and they have all operated in different ways but all successfully, so I am fully aware of the tensions that could occur and how to manage that interface.
Q13 Chairman: You mentioned a couple of times to me earlier that in terms of the physics community this is not an area that is your specialism?
Professor Sterling: That is correct.
Q14 Chairman: And that therefore you would leave that to others to be able to advise. Some people might say that your specialisms are in computer-based monitoring and control systems, that is where your academic expertise is, and that is a relatively narrow field compared with what the STFC's portfolio is, so are they not going to be pulling the wool over your eyes?
Professor Sterling: I am sure some might try to do that but I will have a chief executive who is an expert in that area.
Q15 Chairman: He might be.
Professor Sterling: He might be but then a good governing body, a good Council, will be able to make the right challenges on that because when it comes down to running an organisation of that scale the detail of the physics has been looked at, as I understand it, by the Science Board that reports to the Council, so that has been through rigorous peer group assessment at the highest level and so there is not then an argument at the Council level as to whether the science is good or not. It would not have got that far if it was not good science. It becomes one of strategy and the strategy needs to be understandable by the Council, and of course by Members of Parliament and the general public, because otherwise one cannot convince them that the project is worth funding. It has at that level to turn more into laymen's language rather than the details of the physics that are involved. That will have been looked at by the Science Board.
Chairman: The problem that I was suggesting, Professor Sterling, for most research councils is not the lack of excellence and excellent proposals, it is that there are too many and the difficulty is choosing between them. I know this is an area that my colleague Graham Stringer is going to pick up with you now so I will pass over to him.
Q16 Graham Stringer: Professor Sterling, you have had a very distinguished career and it makes for very impressive reading but it is much more interesting to know about your mistakes and failures. Could you tell us what has been your largest failure or mistake in your career?
Professor Sterling: I cannot think readily of something which is of such magnitude as to stick in my mind. There are lots of things that I think I could have done better. It is often said that I might be, shall we say, not sufficiently aggressive in responses to particular situations. I try to find a negotiated solution. In my view, that is actually a strength but some see it as a weakness, so I do not order people to do things, I ask them to do them, and there are different interpretations on whether that is the right or the wrong strategy.
Q17 Graham Stringer: So there are no major decisions, organisational mistakes, no procedural skeletons in your cupboard that it would be helpful for us to know about?
Professor Sterling: Not that I can think of, I am sorry, I cannot think of any.
Q18 Graham Stringer: The Chairman was asking you about your knowledge of physics and how strategic decisions would be made. Did you read our report on science budget allocations published last year?
Professor Sterling: I did, yes.
Q19 Graham Stringer: Can you tell us what you thought about it?
Professor Sterling: I think they are coping as far as I can see, and remember this is from some distance from actually taking on the job, and they made the best they can of a difficult budget situation. The funding in that area has been reduced and the cost base has gone up. International subscriptions, as I understand it, have been rising, principally because of the exchange rate difficulties, and of course the Council will have been keen to make sure that the science that was using those facilities was maintained as well and that of itself will have led to cost pressures. In consultation with the science community and through the Science Board they have arrived at what, at least to me at this range, appears to be a perfectly sensible way of proceeding.
Q20 Graham Stringer: I will come back to this point, if I may. One of the major conclusions of the report was to be critical of the chief executive and the communications both within the organisation and by the organisation with the outside world. How would you deal with those problems of communication?
Professor Sterling: As I understand it, the Council has reappraised its communications strategy and I think that is necessary because, just as an observer as a vice chancellor on the difficulties that the STFC was having some six, nine or 12 months ago, it seemed that the communications could have been better, both to those who were proposing to fund STFC and to the user community. Having said that of course, one is aware of the characteristics of each of the different subject groups, the way in which they operate, and the physics community is very vociferous about the need to fund the scientific activity adequately.
Q21 Graham Stringer: They had a lot to be vociferous about, did they not, 18 months or so ago?
Professor Sterling: I think had they understood more the way in which the Council was trying to deal with the financial situation they would have been less vociferous. There is a danger of course that special interest groups have a strong lobby and are able to effectively communicate that to the general public which then brings pressure back on to the Council, so I think one has to guard against that, and the way one does that is by better communication to the science community itself such that they are party to the inevitable hard decisions that have to be taken. There I think STFC have put in place mechanisms that will improve that for next time round, so it was not handled in an optimal way last time and I think the Council knows that it could do better.
Q22 Graham Stringer: You have talked about structural changes. Have you any sense about whether those structural changes, either internally or externally, are working, or are you just relying on the fact that there have been changes?
Professor Sterling: As I was reading through the briefing for today's meeting I realised that I did not even know the abbreviations for the various physics experiments that were going on, let alone exactly what they were doing in scientific terms, so I would be on dangerous ground if I were to try to answer that question directly. It is really up to those parts of the community to be communicating to their colleagues in the physics area what the advantages of research in that area are and for that to be an open dialogue such that the Science Board is able to give the Council good recommendations about what to fund because otherwise one is in a position that the Council cannot judge, I suspect, adequately the scientific merit of detailed proposals. That is why you have the physics community doing it.
Q23 Graham Stringer: You have been very open about not knowing what all the initials stand for and all the acronyms are and the fact that you are an engineer and not a physicist. Are there any areas, apart from those areas, you feel you should be better acquainted with or will you make any efforts to get better acquainted with them?
Professor Sterling: The part that
I think I will not have a difficulty dealing with is the people management
side.
Q24 Graham Stringer: Can I return finally to the point that the Chairman was making that the problem that the research councils have is over-subscription with lots of very good science and projects across the board. My sense having listened to the chief executive and listened to the Government as well is that there is a move away from ground-based solar terrestrial physics and particle physics. Do you agree with that and if there was a sense of the process moving either way really, how would you deal with those strategic decisions, because you have said that it is really your role to chair and master the strategic debate, knowing whether the money should be put into a particular atom smasher in Birmingham or Newcastle?
Professor Sterling: How would I chair that discussion, is that what you are asking?
Q25 Graham Stringer: Not how you would chair it; how you would deal with the strategic issues. What would be your response if there was a big drive either towards more money into fundamental physics research or away from it?
Professor Sterling: There one is advised by the community itself and they can be quite cutthroat. All the academic disciplines that I have had the privilege of working with in universities have had a very clear idea of what is important in their discipline and, as long as they have enough of the academics involved in that discussion then usually what comes out of that is a clear idea of the priorities which the community is willing to sign on to. That will inevitably mean there are a small number of people who are disadvantaged by that and they will be, as indicated, very, very vociferous about that cut-back that they are having. I do not think I could encourage the STFC Council to be digging down to try and second-guess what the physics community has decided is good science. When it comes to the strategy I think that is something where the Council is legitimately involved in the discussion with those who fund it, principally the Government, about the national priorities, and there one enters straightaway into the Haldane Principle as to who is actually making the final decisions. There perhaps with my engineering background I am much more comfortable with the fact than some, as I understand, in the physics community that it is up to government to decide the major strategic directions that it wants to fund at the board level of research councils but it is up to the research councils to look within that budget at what areas they think are good science and the relative merits of each.
Q26 Graham Stringer: That is a very interesting answer. There has been a debate over the last six months or so instigated by different government ministers about that. If the Government said, "Right, we want to put a lot more money into particle physics," you would see it as your job to ensure that happened rather than make the case for those engineering or scientific groups who were going to lose out?
Professor Sterling: No, it would not be as passive as that. By the time it got to the decision that government ministers were taking about budget we would have argued our corner as well as we could. We would have suggested the different advantages of putting more funding into STFC relative to other activities and making as strong a case as we could. If at the end of the day the Government decides other than what we have recommended then it is the job of the STFC Council to implement that. We would have had our day in court and we would have tried to persuade but thereafter we would be charged with living within our budget.
Q27 Dr Harris: I was going to ask you about this in a moment but if I may while we are on the subject. That is a strategic decision. Do you think that is a decision for government or would you argue that that should be a decision for Parliament? The two are different.
Professor Sterling: Yes, indeed, and appearing here today I think makes that clear. Ministers are as accountable as the STFC is for the decisions that they take, so a minister eventually, as I understand it, makes the decision and signs the letter that tells us what to do.
Q28 Dr Harris: Yes, but you see Parliament may have a view but it could never express the view, nor could the public, if they do not know what is going on. To what extent do you think directions from ministers to you in the negotiations about how you spend your budget strategically (because I think there is no debate about who chooses in the responsive mode at least the best projects) to what extent do you think that conversation, if it is a conversation, or that instruction or direction, should be public so that accountability can exist at the time?
Professor Sterling: I think that could cause difficulties because that sort of conversation is normally highly sensitive and could cause unnecessary waves within the funding community. I think where it does come into the public domain is when the strategic plan is produced. That is a public document. I would be uneasy about the detail of discussions with ministers about the budget being directly in the public domain without going through a separate process.
Q29 Dr Harris: I can understand what you mean about contemporaneous publication because that does interfere with how you do things. You would rather not create waves and keep things a secret. I am not sure I subscribe to that but I can understand that you do not want to have negotiations in public. Is your view that Parliament is entitled to know after the fact, if you like, to establish accountability, what led you to take the position of proposing the final business plan given that we know there was some interaction between you. Do you instinctively feel that should remain secret for 30 years?
Professor Sterling: No, I am quite comfortable with that and I would be surprised if that were not already the case because the research councils produce a strategic plan that is justifying. It is not just we are going to do this without any justification. As I understand it, it is fully justified and the explanation as to why is produced.
Dr Harris: I think in our report we did make a recommendation that something should be made public that the Government felt should not be.
Q30 Chairman: I think the issue which Dr Harris is referring to is the secretaries of state letters of instruction to the research councils which the chief executive was happy for us to have but the Secretary of State was not happy for us to have. You have also indicated that you would be happy for Parliament - because we represent Parliament, that is all we are at the end of the day - should have those.
Professor Sterling: I think I am indicating that I am surprised that through the strategic planning process and the published document that is produced by the Council that is not actually there. In other words, that the reasoning, as Dr Harris was pointing out, for what reason have we taken a particular course of action or supported a particular activity, it strikes me that should be in the public documentation. That is different from publishing the letter of guidance from the minister. It is downstream, as you rightly point out, it is a downstream justification of why the Council has taken a particular decision.
Q31 Chairman: Both of these issues were not published, the bilaterials between the Council and the Government and indeed the Council and various parts within the organisation were not published, and that meant that analysing why the STFC made a particular decision was not transparent. You have indicated that you would be open to looking at that in a more transparent way.
Professor Sterling: I think that is a fair summary, Chairman. I do understand the sensitivities of ministerial letters. It was sensitive in the university world and I imagine it is sensitive in the research council world as well. Any organisation that is in receipt of large amounts of public funding needs to be able to justify its decisions and I would expect the STFR to be doing that.
Chairman: Okay, I will move on. Dr Iddon?
Q32 Dr Iddon: If we can carry on with the discussion on your vision for the STFC and particularly on the strategy of that organisation, Professor Sterling. Can I ask you first of all how much consultation have you had on the STFC's strategic plan or its strategy up to date either with the chief executive or others?
Professor Sterling: I think the short answer to that is very little, I am afraid, Dr Iddon, because I have only known that I was appearing before you for a little over a week and that I was the preferred candidate for a little over two weeks, so I have not have had time to go through in any detail with the chief executive the strategic plan. I have clearly spoken to him and I have had a teleconference with him and I have also met officials but more than that I am afraid I have not had time to do. It is an early priority.
Q33 Dr Iddon: I will not press you on questions on that because clearly you have not had time to study it in depth yet. Obviously the STFC was a marriage between the former CCLRC and PPARC and some of us were a little sceptical about that merger because it was bringing together large facilities. In fact the rationale behind the merger was "to create a more integrated approach to large scientific research facilities". Will you attempt to measure this or indeed have you given any thought to whether that marriage has been a happy one or not?
Professor Sterling: I think that is very much what the Council needs to do because we are now some two years downstream from that decision. I sense, and it is only from a superficial knowledge, that things are settling down. Bringing two organisations together is always difficult, even in the university world it is difficult, and here you have large facilities coming together with funded programmes. There are bound to be tensions and I have read in the press some of those tensions about which areas seem to be getting priority. The organisational aspects are actually quite interesting as to whether there have been economies of scale. There may have been diseconomies for all I know, I would be interested to find that out, because one reorganises in the hope of doing something better, producing better science or a more efficient organisation, and I think that is something which the Council does need to ask itself. I do not know the answer to it at the moment, but it is something I would be keen to find out.
Q34 Dr Iddon: If you saw there were difficulties, would you as Chairman be brave enough to flag these up, first of all obviously with the chief executive and your Council and, if they agreed with you, with Government ministers?
Professor Sterling: I certainly would. I think my track record would show that I will not duck those sort of issues, because I do not like waste - engineers set out to do things economically and there are lots of jokes, Chairman, which I will not bore you with about the difference between engineers and physicists, but they do point to an underlying difference of approach, and engineers look for value for money. That is something which I would find hard to leave behind so I shall be on the case essentially looking to see if it has gone smoothly and is a more efficient operation.
Q35 Dr Iddon: I think rather than call it "waste" I would prefer to call it "efficiency".
Professor Sterling: Efficiency, of course.
Q36 Dr Iddon: Obviously the STFC is running some of the biggest facilities in the world, with its involvement with the Swiss project, the large Hadron Collider and they have recently announced cuts to the Diamond Project and the ISIS project at RAL. It just seems to me that the cost of running these very large facilities is very unpredictable in some ways, particularly when you are paying out large sums of money in foreign currencies on the astronomy projects as well, and that the research community and the grants going to the research community are suffering as a result.
Professor Sterling: Yes.
Q37 Dr Iddon: If, when you have looked at this huge enterprise that you have kindly agreed to chair, you thought the same way as some of the community thinks, again would you be prepared to flag this up very strongly with those who matter?
Professor Sterling: Most certainly and in fact I have already begun to ask the question about who takes the risk in relation to foreign currencies. In the university world we might hedge the foreign currency situation, but I understand that hedging is not allowed because effectively there is an element of speculation against one's own currency which the Treasury would not be happy with. But we are allowed, I understand, to buy forward currency, so to an extent, I am sure, the Council have already done that to try and mitigate the effects of the exchange rate changes. In the end it is a question of who carries the risk for that exchange rate. Is it the Treasury, is it the department or is it the research council? Provided everybody knows who is taking that risk, they are all workable. The difficulty is that the lower the level the risk is borne, it has a bigger implication on those areas which are outside the currency risk, in other words the funded programmes. So in the extreme one could get into a difficult situation where all one could afford to fund were the subscriptions, because of the exchange rate variation, and no science to go with them, which would be a ludicrous situation. So there has to be an element of risk management and I will need to understand where that risk management is actually taken on now and I do not fully understand it. I understand that the response I am giving is based on the question I have already answered but I think I need to dig deeper because, you are quite right, the community might reasonably say, "If all we are paying for is the subscription, what about the science to go with it?" and that is a perfectly reasonable thing for the community to be upset about.
Q38 Dr Iddon: There is no secret that in some of the leading research countries, that risk is carried by the governments of those countries.
Professor Sterling: Indeed.
Q39 Dr Iddon: So that it does not damage the basic research within the enterprise you will be running. If that becomes high up in your agenda, again would you argue that strongly with the Government?
Professor Sterling: Once I was convinced that that was the right solution, I would argue it. At the moment, I do not know. My initial reaction when I was approached about this job was to ask that very question, why is the Treasury not carrying the risk of currency variations, because there are commensurate gains for governments when currencies fall, but I do not understand the politics yet of how the Treasury operates in relation to exchange rates. I am looking forward to learning more.
Q40 Graham Stringer: In a number of inquiries we have asked Science Ministers and the Government whether there should be a regional strand to investment in scientific facilities, and we are not clear yet where the Government stands. When it comes to Daresbury they say they support Daresbury, but they also say they support the Excellence Principle and they will send money to where the most excellent science is going to be done and not take into account the regional criterion. That seems to us to be a contradiction. Where do you stand on that? Do you think there is a contradiction between running Daresbury and the Excellence Principle?
Professor Sterling: No, I am not aware that non-excellent research is being supported at Daresbury, quite the reverse in fact, my briefing tells me that there is excellent work being done there. I would see that in the context of national decisions judged excellent not on a regional basis but on a national basis, and therefore where it is is secondary to the excellence of the research which is going on. I could not but fail to understand the regional dimension and the importance of Daresbury to the North West, and if that were to close the effect it would have, so I do understand there is another political dimension to how it operates, but I think it would be risky for the STFC to be starting to take into account regional politics as overriding scientific merit. I think that would be difficult. Of course there will be grey areas, where there are activities for example which are not purely scientific, which might be technology transfer which are going on near to the laboratory, and that strikes me as entirely appropriate and where the Regional Development Agency is no doubt already putting funds into that activity. So it becomes one of partnership. I sit on an RDA board, as you have seen, the West Midlands RDA called Advantage West Midlands, and there we are always looking for activities which are nationally recognised, or preferably internationally recognised, where the region can join in the backing of those for the benefit of the region. What we do not argue for on AWM is for special treatment for the region when there is already another national activity alongside it, so we try to partner with the organisation which is already adjudged to be nationally important.
Q41 Graham Stringer: Do you not feel there is a role sometimes with a facility or university which needs extra support to get them up to standard, to increase the quality of the work they are doing, and that that should be a criterion? It is slightly different from a regional criterion but it is in the same category.
Professor Sterling: Yes, I can see that in relation to the
development of researchers and graduates where a lot has been written about the
need to produce more science graduates and science engineering graduates, and I
can fully see there is a regional dimension to that because the statistics
clearly show that graduates tend to stay in the region from which they graduate
more so than to move elsewhere. So there
is an advantage to a region to have graduate production in that area. So thinking particularly in relation to STFC,
it would be post-graduate education where the graduates who come out of
universities with masters degrees will be very useful to a regional
economy. Something we have been looking
at in the
Q42 Chairman: Can I add a quick rider to that? The point Graham Stringer was making was not really about under-graduates and even masters, what we are talking about is the placing of large facilities which by definition then create a critical mass. We do not, and I think perhaps I might contradict my colleagues, as a Committee understand how you can create critical mass without a facility, because it is the facility that then attracts the scientific excellence in order to be able to generate it. You are going to be the chairman of a research council which has at its heart large facilities, and I think the question we would like to ask is do you see in the placing of future large facilities the need to take a regional dimension? Because otherwise everything is going to be in the golden triangle, is it not?
Professor Sterling: Yes, and coming from an area outside the golden triangle, I am interested in the question you ask. But the heart of it still has to be the scientific merit of the proposal. Where, shall we say, there were Regional Development Agency funds which were being put towards a project which the Council was also interested in, inevitably that would influence the decision, that if the science was equal between two proposals and an RDA in one area was proposing to come into partnership in that area and an RDA in a competing area was not, then I think that would be a legitimate influence on where the facility was located.
Q43 Chairman: But that facility is at a very low level, is it not? When you are talking about facilities the size of the Diamond Light Source or ISIS, you really are not talking about the marginal funds which RDAs would put in making any difference, are you? Really?
Professor Sterling: Well, the RDA budget that I am involved in is £340 million a year, and AWM has put in £80 million over four years into partnership between the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick. That is significant to the two universities concerned, I can assure you, and I think significant within the country. I suppose I am not used yet to the number of noughts on the end of the budgets we are talking about here, but I would have thought £80 million was a significant sum.
Chairman: Thank you for that. It is an area which we are concerned about. I know Dr Iddon in particular is very concerned about the RDA science budgets. I will have to suspend the sitting for ten minutes now. We have one more group of questions.
The Committee suspended from 5.08 pm to 5.20 pm for a division in the House
Chairman: Over to you, Evan.
Q44 Dr Harris: Do you work for the Government in your new role?
Professor Sterling: No, I work for the Council. I am Chairman of the Council, appointed by the Government. I guess the money comes from the Government originally but I would see myself as independent.
Q45 Dr Harris: So if a Minister outside of the normal rules comes up with a suggestion which you, and indeed your Council for that matter, do not think is a sensible use of STFC resources, and this is outside the CSR discussions or the Budget allocation discussions, would you feel in any way constrained given that you were appointed independently? You do not owe anything to a minister, do you, for your job?
Professor Sterling: I am effectively appointed by the Minister and this is approved by the Prime Minister, as I understand it.
Q46 Dr Harris: The Code of Practice of the Commission for Public Appointments?
Professor Sterling: That is the Nolan process?
Q47 Dr Harris: That is right. Forget my previous question, let us just clarify this: could the Minister have vetoed your appointment?
Professor Sterling: I believe that to be the case, although I do not know for certain.
Q48 Dr Harris: Does the fact he did not veto that appointment mean you are in some way less independent than you would have been if you had been appointed by the same process but without a ministerial veto?
Professor Sterling: I would not feel it to be inhibiting in the way you suggest.
Q49 Dr Harris: Coming back to my question before, if the Minister came up with an idea which you and your Council felt was not the best use of your resources, would you feel in any way constrained about pointing that out?
Professor Sterling: No. I would not just point it out, I would try to explain the rationale for the difference of opinion to be able to justify the difference. STFC must be able to justify all the decisions it takes, it cannot just do things on a whim.
Q50 Dr Harris: Looking at this issue of strategic priorities which came up, which some people might say was a suggestion which came from somewhere, what was your view on that? Let me phrase it more particularly. Lord Drayson and others said it is time we concentrated in research terms on those areas where we are good - I am paraphrasing - and areas where there is a likely return. Were you attracted by that?
Professor Sterling: Separate from this process, as an engineer, I would always be prejudiced to look for the return on investment, but in the context of STFC that return is going to be long-term, it is scientific knowledge which may not necessarily, even in the short to medium term, lead to a direct financial return, but nevertheless can be very worthwhile doing.
Q51 Dr Harris: Do you think we should be doing something different? I think everyone agrees with what you have just said.
Professor Sterling: I think what he was signalling was actually looking at the way in which Government spends its money and to make sure that that benefit is there in one way or another, rather than doing something because it has always been funded in the past. I am not suggesting the STFC has done that, but a critical appraisal of where research funding is going seems to me to be an entirely appropriate process, and to ask oneself what are the benefits of that research is a necessary question which should be asked.
Q52 Dr Harris: To ask yourself the question and answer it, "Who are the winners here?"
Professor Sterling: The winners are going to be the best science. If the process is working the best proposals will have come to the top, and they will have been adjudged by the community itself as well as, if it is major strategic things, by the STFC.
Q53 Dr Harris: I am still confused because there are two options, are there not? You are saying the normal process, which you hope is good, could always be improved by peer review and identifying the best science, but the Government do not say, "Carry on as you are" in this debate. The question was, "Do what you are doing but try and identify those areas which are likely to bring a return and/or where we are strong?"
Professor Sterling: I do not see a particular threat to STFC in that approach because, from what I have already read, I can see justification and returns on what STFC has actually been doing. Direct examples of where research which was funded through STFC and its predecessor is leading through to commercial exploitation in a reasonably short timescale. I would not want to see that set as a direct requirement for every piece of funded research, but analysing what has happened in the past seems to me to be perfectly reasonable.
Chairman: I am going to have to call a halt again because we have a second division.
The Committee suspended from 5.25 pm to 5.32 pm for a division in the House
Chairman: Dr Harris, you were in mid-flow.
Q54 Dr Harris: We were having an exchange about the question of strategic priorities and let us deal with an example in your own area. Let us say within STFC the Government said, "Rather than simply go on the basis of the best science, which of course you try to do already, we would like you to give additional priority in terms of your funding, and possibly in terms of other funding modalities, to that technology which - and I am paraphrasing the Minister now - has more easily identifiable economic returns and/or is one of the areas where we are likely to be in the top two in the world. That might not coincide with simply the best science because it might be an isolated best science where we could never be among the top two in the world. So if you accept the premise of my question, what would your response to that be if that request persists or emerges?
Professor Sterling: Inevitably the Government funds the activities of all the research councils, so one way or another it has a way of ensuring its wishes are carried out. It is up to STFC to make sure the consequences of any such action are fully understood by the Minister or the Government. If, once one has explained the impact that that decision will have, the consequences of it, the Government still wishes to direct the research councils to do that, then the Government is the paymaster.
Q55 Dr Harris: I happen to agree with you, as it happens, but I am trying to establish what sort of argument you would use or be prepared to see used by your Council against such an approach. Do you see drawbacks in it despite being an engineer?
Professor Sterling: I think I would listen to the argument because the Minister would not have proposed it unless they had good grounds for doing so. So if the Council did not agree with it, then we would have to marshal strong reasons why not, and if they were not accepted then eventually one has to accept the Government can actually cut off the money supply if you do not agree.
Q56 Dr Harris: I admire your faith in politicians because the Minister might have a particular predilection for Martian exploration, just because they are a human-being - not the Martians, the Minister - and they might be interested in that, or manned space flight, because they are interested in it. That is not a good reason.
Professor Sterling: I have no doubt that this House will actually be party to that decision if it was something of that magnitude. I cannot imagine politicians whose constituents might be affected being silent on such an issue. If the whole political community, as represented by the Government and all of the Opposition MPs, are minded to do that, it would be very difficult for the STFC to stand in the way of doing that and just to say, "The science is not good enough." The Government eventually would find a route for funding it. I am conscious of who the paymaster is in this process and if we cannot win the argument, then we should not actually be doing the ----
Q57 Dr Harris: What I was trying to get at was what sort of argument you would put, and I was concerned to hear that because it was put it must have good reasons behind it. There are plenty of things which happen in this House, and occasionally in laboratories, which are bad ideas, put forward for no good reason.
Professor Sterling: If they were such bad ideas, we would have exposed the flaws in the argument, because I do not believe that, with the media scrutiny which goes on these days, it is possible for a really bad idea which is not supported other than by the Minister, in the scenario which you suggest, to actually hold sway. I do not think he would be able to do that.
Q58 Dr Harris: What if the stakes were higher and the Minister had, let us say, a good argument this time, backed up by good reasons, which had some political support - although I do not think you are ever in a position when these things come out to a vote in the House or a referendum in the country - and that was that we are going to cut STFC's budget because it is not immediate enough in terms of economic return, we are going to give 50 per cent to another research country, or other research councils? Do you think you would put up an even stronger fight than the one you have just talked about?
Professor Sterling: I jolly well hope we would. With dramatic cuts in funding, we would have failed to justify the research we were already supporting, and that would be a consequence not just for the STFC Council but the whole research community. Then effectively major politics comes into play, does it not, because it is then an argument which is being put to the country as to the importance of a particular piece of research, and influencing MPs in that process is a critical part. There I would expect we would be targeting Members of Parliament to explain to them why what was being proposed was not the right way forward.
Q59 Dr Harris: Let us take manned space flight. Do you have a view on whether that is a sensible use of your resources, given I understand Lord Drayson has indicated he would like to see the UK support that again?
Professor Sterling: It strikes me, and this is an uninformed view, I hasten to add, that a lot has been achieved without using manned space flight. The remote probes have done an awful lot but I am off territory that I feel comfortable with, so I do not think I can go any further than telling you my personal prejudices.
Q60 Dr Harris: You want to keep your feet on terra firma in this case. I have to ask you a slightly leading question because of the time: if the Government says, "We think these are winners", would you think it was satisfactory for them to leave you in a position of telling the losers they were going to lose funding? Or would you expect politicians, whoever the Government is when you are Chairman, if they are going to put an existing budget more into certain areas, to be prepared to say which areas lose out? Would you feel it is okay for them to say, "STFC, you are going to have to find out where this money comes from"?
Professor Sterling: I think that depends on the granularity of the decision which is being taken. If it is a very high level one, it is up to the politicians to justify why they are moving large chunks of money at a high level between research councils. If it is about whether one facility or not is being supported, I think there is dual responsibility there, because the STFC will have had a part in the advice which has gone to Government and if Government has therefore backed it then both parties are committed to that route and must defend their decision.
Q61 Dr Harris: Do you accept there may be scenarios where you will be the scapegoat?
Professor Sterling: Unquestionably.
Q62 Dr Harris: And whether you are prepared to back that?
Professor Sterling: After 19 years as Vice-Chancellor I know that if there is one person who gets blamed if things go wrong or if difficult decisions have to be taken, it is the Vice-Chancellor. Although in this situation I am not the chief executive but I am the Chairman, I too would be exposed to comment from the community, which is presumably where most of it would come from, that we have not adequately defended that particular area. I am perfectly well aware that there would be a lot of flak-flying if there are difficult decisions to be taken.
Q63 Dr Harris: What is your view of the likelihood, and how do you think you will cope, with the flat-cash allocation in the next Comprehensive Spending Review? Which you know means effective cuts.
Professor Sterling: In real terms, yes. I am not in a position to understand the detailed disposition of the Budget and where the strategic plan lines up with that Budget, that is something I need to understand at fairly early stage; the alignment of what the Council has said it wants to do with the expectations of the money likely to be available. I would imagine that all research councils have been through a process of scenario planning to analyse what happens if the grant goes down by X per cent, how does that match with the priorities we have already identified within the strategic plan. What I would be uncomfortable with is if there was no such contingency planning because grants go up and grants go down, and I would expect there to be scenario planning.
Q64 Dr Harris: In terms of the workforce that STFC funds - and you will have seen it within universities, think of the workforce in your science departments in Birmingham - do you have any priorities for developing that workforce which you can identify you would like to see possibly dealt with during your tenure as Chairman of the STFC?
Professor Sterling: That is an interesting thought. I am sure it is true that the skills base which is within the STFC is highly sought after in the commercial world. I have come across, even as an engineer, technicians who operate within the physics world who are absolutely first class and have a market value, whether they be in universities, in a lab or in the commercial world. So I think there is surely an element of preparing people were there to be difficult times ahead for alternative careers. But I do not think STFC employees would have any difficulty at all. It is a world-class operation and they would be able to survive in the commercial world.
Q65 Dr Harris: I am grateful for that but I am interested in not so much that but whether you have any insight to bring to the gender balance issues which exist in the physics and engineering workforce, which cannot have escaped your knowledge.
Professor Sterling: It has not and despite lots of efforts, particularly in the engineering world which I am very familiar with, has not shifted very much over time. There is still a large male dominance in engineering and it is still true in physics.
Q66 Dr Harris: Do you think that is a problem which STFC could do something about, such as having grants directed towards promising female scientists to recognise - as the Marie Curie grants do at EU level - the particular challenges they face? Publication grants, and that sort of thing?
Professor Sterling: Promoting interest in physics amongst women strikes me as perfectly reasonable. The WISE programme - Women Into Science and Engineering - started some 20 years ago and did have noticeable effects, but it remains stubbornly a male-dominated area particularly. I do not know why women do not see science and engineering as attractive but the facts of it are they do not.
Q67 Dr Harris: I am asking whether you would have a feminist agenda as Chairman.
Professor Sterling: I would always want to be even-handed when it came to funding arrangements. I do not think one can go into selective funding particularly for one gender or the other. Actually encouraging activities, it strikes me, is perfectly reasonable but not to actually be judging one particular proposal less harshly or favouring it more because it happens to come from a woman rather than a man is a dangerous path.
Q68 Chairman: On that note I am going to bring to an end this interrupted session. Thank you very much indeed, Professor Michael Sterling, for being with us and being so patient with us this afternoon. I do not think we know a great deal more about how you are going to lead this organisation at the end of this session but hopefully the next time we meet you we will have a clearer idea of that, but we do thank you very much indeed.
Professor Sterling: Thank you, Chairman.