Memorandum submitted by the National Physical
Laboratory (FC 21)
Independent studies have demonstrated that the
National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has a huge benefit to the economy
of the UK—some £2 billion per annum. It also impacts
significantly on the quality of life of the UK's citizens: for
example, nearly 200,000 people a year receive radiotherapy
treatment that relies on accurate measurement of dose as determined
by NPL. However, whilst measurement science contributes hugely
to the UK, much of this work goes on in the background. We are
not sure if the importance of this work and its economic impact
is always appreciated, particularly by those charged with making
funding decisions on science research. In particular, NPL has
recently faced a significant reduction in its core funding, at
a time when its counterparts in the USA, France and Germany have
received major increases. This would jeopardise NPL's status as
one of the leading National Measurement Institutes and ultimately
impact on the UK economy.
1. The National Physical Laboratory (NPL)
is one of the UK's leading science and research facilities. It
is a world-leading centre of excellence in developing and applying
the most accurate standards, science and technology. NPL contains
a National Measurement Institute developing and maintaining the
national measurement standards and supporting infrastructures
required to ensure quality of life and economic benefits. NPL
is BIS's largest directly-owned science asset with world leading
experts in important areas such as materials, the environment,
healthcare, advanced manufacturing and knowledge transfer that
enable UK business to stay internationally competitive.
2. Estimating the economic impact of research
and the process for deciding cuts. BIS, NMO and NPL have carried
out studies to evaluate the economic impact of the research programmes
delivered by NPL. These studies have:
(i) developed economic models to estimate economic
impact from research. These predict that an additional
£6m of investment in measurement research programmes would
bring at least £400 million of benefit to GDP;
(ii) surveyed users of the services NPL provides
to obtain their estimate of the added value they deliver; These
found that in one year innovative business using our services
increased their profitability by more than £700 million;
and
(iii) used case studies to estimate the return
on investment of particular research projects. These found
returns on investment from measurement research projects of between
10 and 30 times.
All these studies support the view that the
£50 million a year government investment in the National
Measurement System research programmes provides a benefit of greater
than £2 billion per annum to the UK economy. However,
we have concerns that this evidence does not always reach those
making decisions about cuts, which sometimes seem to be uniformly
applied rather than evidence-based. This is of particular
concern at this difficult time for the economy when our major
competitors in the global market, including Germany, France and
US have announced significant increases in funding for our sister
organisations overseas (in the US, the equivalent laboratory,
the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), had
an additional $600 million support in 2009-10).
3. Ring-fencing budgets. The ring-fence
as currently operated excludes research organisations like NPL
from receiving any direct funding. It has also made it
very difficult to align research funding through the Research
Councils and the NMO. NPL has been successful in working collaboratively
with universities, but the research is mostly funded through uncoordinated
programmes. We believe there would be significant benefits
for the UK to enable national laboratories like NPL to be funded
for joint research with universities from inside the ring-fence.
This would make more efficient use of national facilities
and would bring NPL's expertise for the delivery of economic impact
from research into the academic community.
We can see some merit in a ring-fence for departmental
research budgets, but first it would be necessary to have a greater
understanding of these budgets. We have recently tried to quantify
government research programmes delivered by other national laboratories
like NPL, and found it very difficult. It is even difficult to
obtain a definitive list of these laboratories and their roles.
We believe there would be many benefits to government by looking
at the national laboratories together and we are already seeing
benefits for the four national laboratories which Serco supports
for the government, NPL, AWE, NNL and Dstl, by taking this approach.
4. Achieving Science and Innovation Investment
Framework objectives. The forerunner of this Framework,
the Innovation Report of 1999, identified a number of bodies,
including the NPL, as National Innovation Assets. In recognition
of the importance of NPL to the innovation ecosystem, the predecessor
of BIS established two new National Measurement System programmes,
Measurement for Innovators and Measurement for Emerging Technologies
(MET). Despite high hopes at the time, no additional budget
was found for these new programmes, and budgets for existing programmes
were reduced. Since that time the NMS budget has been further
reduced, and now BIS has announced the closure of the Measurement
for Innovators programme, despite the high demand from industry
and the measurable impact the programme has achieved. The budget
for the successor to the MET programme is also under severe pressure
as the National Measurement Office that is responsible for the
National Measurement System programme budget has understandably
asked for essential UK NMS infrastructure to be given priority.
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