Memorandum submitted by Professor Phil
Allport (FC 08)
COMMENTARY ON STFC: FINANCIAL, STRUCTURAL
AND LEADERSHIP ISSUES
1. The problems with STFC fall into 3 categories,
each of which individually would represent a major handicap but
which together have led to an organisation that is manifestly
not fit for purpose. The areas in need of resolution can be broadly
identified as financial, structural and governance/leadership.
Many of these issues had previously been identified by the House
of Commons Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science
and Skills in its April 2008 report, but we feel that little
progress has been made since this very comprehensive analysis
was published. We particularly agree with the Committee's conclusions
which seem to be as relevant today as they were nearly two years
ago. "STFC's problems have their roots in the size of
the CSR07 settlement and the legacy of bringing CCLRC and
PPARC together, but they have been exacerbated by a poorly conceived
delivery plan, lamentable communication and poor leadership, as
well as major senior management misjudgements. Substantial and
urgent changes are now needed in the way in which the Council
is run in order to restore confidence and to give it the leadership
it desperately needs and has so far failed properly to receive.
This raises serious questions about the role and performance of
the Chief Executive, especially his ability to retain the confidence
of the scientific community as well as to carry through the necessary
changes outlined here."
(A) FINANCIAL
ISSUES
2. The financial issues date back to the
underfunding of STFC at its formation through the shotgun marriage
of CCLRC with PPARC. These are also well documented in the Select
Committee report, which includes the recommendation "We
believe that the Government should ensure that its original commitment
to leave no legacy funding issues from the previous Councils is
honoured." That this issue was never addressed remains
at the heart of STFC's financial difficulties.
3. The lack of sufficient resourcing at
the formation of STFC, in the relatively affluent times before
the current recession, makes the impact of subsequent cuts even
more severe. In addition, the increase in the fraction of first
PPARC and then STFC's budget devoted to international subscriptions
has inexorably squeezed the funding available to do the science
which the subscriptions in principle enable. These problems came
to a head in the December 2009 announcement of further cuts
by STFC Council, cuts which have decimated the programmes of all
areas of science in STFC's stewardship. An astonishing number
of projects have been terminated, representing a wanton waste
of years and sometimes decades of UK investment in cutting-edge
science. The problem is certainly exacerbated by allocating resources
by project rather than programme, since programme managers would
be able to make more nuanced decisions than the current STFC committees.
For example, the current advisory panels could more efficiently
manage a financial envelope for a field, fitting in small activities
which keep future opportunities alive. The crude top-down planning
that the current structure necessitates has caused enormous reputational
damage to the UK.
4. There are many recent analyses of the
financial difficulties within STFC. A good recent critique of
STFC's self-congratulation over the recent emasculation of the
research areas for which it has been entrusted stewardship can
be found in the January 12th 2010 4pm contribution to http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/thesword/.
It is entirely disingenuous to blame STFC's problems on the "global
financial crisis". Needless to say, the impact of cuts which
could total 15 to 20% on top of 25% cuts currently being
implemented in, for example, particle physics is devastating to
both its programme and morale. The timing is also disastrous,
with major facilities at CERN and JPARC (Japan) just starting.
Indeed UK involvement in one of the 4 major LHC experiments
is to be terminated (ALICE) and the long-term future involvement
in LHCb is threatened by non-funding of the LHCb upgrade programme.
Furthermore, almost the entire particle astrophysics programme
in the UK is to be terminated, negating decades of investment
and achievement by UK scientists. Even projects not cancelled
are to be cut by 10-15% on top of both explicit and implicit further
cuts to the grants line. Across all areas it is difficult to see
any glimmer of a long-term science strategy for STFC, with the
current plan reading like a staged withdrawal from almost all
areas of STFC science. Since low-cost investments that keep alive
longer-term aspirations are being cut despite the savings being
negligible, the clear implication is that the UK is deliberately
planning to exit from the sort of blue skies research currently
supported by STFC, a message not lost on UK students thinking
about careers in science or overseas scientists thinking of bringing
their talents to these shores. And to heap insult on injury, part
of the recent STFC cuts involve a 25% reduction on PhD studentships
and no new postdoctoral fellowships at all in 2010, at a time
when the country is crying out for highly skilled young scientists.
(B) STRUCTURAL
ISSUES
5. The structural problems arise mostly
from STFC's CCLRC+PPARC inheritance. The organisation has signally
failed to resolve the conflicting demands of the scientific communities
it ought to serve and the needs of the facilities and staff it
manages directly. This is made worse by STFC having to tension
its grant-giving function to University groups (the PPAN areas)
with resourcing its laboratories and facilities (the PALS line).
6. Indeed, its recent decision to transfer
up to £25 million to £28 million per year from the PPAN
line into the PALS line shows the consequences of such a major
conflict of interest which will cripple the research in University
areas supported by STFC grants. There are three prima facie problems:
(i) that year-to-year changes in international
subscriptions are beyond the control of the UK;
(ii) that the funding of national facilities
is currently tensioned against a small subset of the UK science
programme and there is a major conflict of interest for an organisation
that both runs its own national facilities and subscribes to international
ones;
(iii) that no functional forum, with appropriate
representation from the major stake-holders, exists in which a
national strategy for investment in facilities can be formulated.
7. Our specific proposals to solve these
three primary problems are as follows:
(i) Each particular Research Council with the
predominant use of an international facility takes responsibility
for the corresponding subscription and the volume part of that
subscription is transferred to that Research Council budget. Future
volume changes in that international subscription should come
out of the overall budget of that Research Council, but all other
changes, which include currency fluctuations, GDP changes and
the inflation compensation built into the international agreements,
are dealt with centrally. In year, the non-volume changes for
each subscription are compensated centrally at the highest possible
level, preferably above RCUK. This proposal follows the suggestion
of section 8.9 of the Wakeham review.
(ii) Establish a National Laboratory (physically
located over multiple sites) with responsibility for the national
centres and facilities, such as ISIS, and for the provision of
large-scale engineering and computing facilities for both public
and private sectors. Innovation campuses sit naturally inside
such an organisation. The National Laboratory should be run by
a Director reporting to a stakeholder Board, as in all comparable
major laboratories overseas. The National Laboratory should be
funded by subscriptions from each Research Council, initially
set according to recent usage. These national subscriptions are
set by this Board in a process that must strike the right balance
between flexibility for the Research Councils and the stability
required for running major facilities. The peer-review processes
of the contracting Research Council to allocate time on the national
facilities are unchanged. A properly constituted National Laboratory,
which should include an appropriate level of in-house research
activity, would naturally take its place alongside other national
laboratories overseas providing reciprocal access to facilities.
(iii) There is a need for a forum where the national
strategy for investment in large-scale facilities is discussed,
and the choice is made between those facilities that are best
provided nationally and those where it is more advantageous to
join an international facility or bid to establish one in the
UK. It is important that any such body is representative of the
UK science community as a whole, and that it is at a sufficiently
high level to have the necessary authority. Proposals for new
national facilities would come naturally through the Director
of the National Laboratory. A separate National Science Facilities
Board with representatives from RCUK, the learned societies and
representatives of UK Universities, would make recommendations
to RCUK about the relative priorities of the various options.
A mechanism must be found to couple consideration of operating
costs tightly into the decision process.
8. It therefore follows that the residual
grant-giving functions of STFC would be best dealt with by a new
research council with responsibilities for the international subscriptions
relating to astronomy, space science, nuclear and particle physics
and the communities they serve. These subjects have many links
and the time scales required for planning their programs run into
decades, requiring a Research Council with a long strategic-planning
horizon. Research grants in the current PPAN areas must reside
within the same Research Council that pays the international subscriptions
in these areas. Separating these functions would not allow for
the tensioning of volume increases or decreases in international
subscriptions with exploitation based on peer review. It would
therefore be highly undesirable to transfer existing STFC grants
in the PPAN areas into EPSRC.
(C) LEADERSHIP
AND GOVERNANCE
9. The issues of leadership and governance
by STFC Council were already highlighted by the Select Committee.
The communities that STFC serves have even less confidence now
than they had at the time of the last Select Committee report
that their science is being appropriately advocated to Government
or even discussed in an even-handed way between the different
disciplines. The sort of spirited defence of his research council
activities in the face of proposed cuts launched by MRC Chief
Executive, Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, (The Times, 11th January 2010)
is completely lacking in the context of STFC.
10. By contrast, in its 2008 report
the Committee raised serious questions about the STFC Chief Executive's
ability to retain the confidence of the scientific community.
This confidence has long ago evaporated completely, and it is
a widely held view that his removal from office is an essential
prerequisite to addressing and solving STFC's problems.
11. STFC as presently constituted is also
unable to provide coherent leadership for either of the UK National
laboratories at Daresbury and Rutherford. The Select Committee
recommendation that each laboratory should have scientific leadership
in the form of an on-site laboratory director has been ignored
by STFC. Such directors would be a natural part of the advisory
structure for the overall National Laboratory Director that we
advocate above.
12. The greatest problem, however, as stated
above, is that the STFC Chief Executive does not enjoy the confidence
of any of the communities STFC should serve. STFC is managed by
edict and spreadsheet and even when it consults, it either ignores
the inputs entirely or fails to iterate proposals with those involved
in the consultation. Despite recent efforts to engage more directly
with the community, The Council still seems unable to impose good
governance on the Executive. The dreadful financial settlements,
with the irreparable damage they are doing to subjects where the
UK genuinely enjoys international leadership, all point to the
need for a new model and a new style of management. This is now
long overdue, and vital to rekindle the sort of confidence within
the community that the current incumbent is patently unable to
provide.
13. In conclusion, STFC has so many deep-seated
structural and managerial problems that a new start is desperately
required to save the world-leading science that its failed stewardship
has placed in jeopardy. We believe that the way forward is clear:
strip STFC of its responsibility for national facilities with
the concomitant internal conflicts of interest by founding a National
Laboratory which would tension the funding for these facilities
against ALL the science they serve; properly protect the remnant
organisation from changes beyond its control caused by currency
fluctuations, inflation compensation etc. in its international
subscriptions; and establish new leadership to allow the enormous
expertise and potential of UK scientists in astronomy, nuclear
physics, particle physics and space science to continue to flourish
at the forefront of world science.
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