UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation

Written evidence submitted by
Cancer Research UK, Medical Research Council, University College London, and the Wellcome Trust (UKCMRI 09)

Introduction

1. The UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation (UKCMRI) will be outstanding in scale and multi-disciplinarity, with the breadth of scientific and technical innovation vital for future advances in discovery research and clinical and commercial translation. Bringing together scientific teams from Cancer Research UK (CR-UK), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and University College London (UCL) and research funding from the Wellcome Trust, UKCMRI will be a unique international centre for scientific excellence in the heart of London.

2. The UKCMRI partners welcome the interest of the Select Committee in this major national resource which we believe will play a major role in sustaining the position of the UK as a world leader in biomedical research and deliver future commercial and health benefits. The national importance of the vision for UKCMRI is supported by continued Government commitment, including £220 million of capital investment and the central role of UKCMRI in the UK's first ever National Infrastructure Plan.

3. This Inquiry provides the opportunity to discuss the significant progress that has been made since the Inquiry of the IUSS Select Committee in 2008, including the UKCMRI building, development of the scientific vision, establishment of governance structures and the appointment of the Senior Management Team to deliver the vision.

4. This submission is made on behalf of the four UKCMRI partners and addresses the questions identified by the Select Committee as they relate to the vision, objectives and realisation of UKCMRI. Some issues are addressed more effectively by UKCMRI Limited, the charitable company being established by the partners to build, own and operate the institute: these include detailed information on planning, public engagement and security and have been addressed in a separate memorandum from UKCMRI Ltd.

Main submission

Review the progress on the UKCMRI since 2008 and assess the plans for the coming years.

5. The MRC has provided regular reports to this Committee and its predecessor in line with the recommendations of the 2008 Inquiry. We understand that these progress reports, which have been provided every six months [1] and report across the project, have been made available in the House Libraries.

6. As the Committee will have noted, significant progress has been made on the UKCMRI project since 2008 - the scientific vision for UKCMRI has been developed and administrative and governance structures established, including the Joint Venture Agreement (JVA), the establishment of UKCMRI Ltd and the appointment of the Senior Management Team to deliver the vision. The recent approval of planning permission by the London Borough of Camden is a major milestone in work towards the new institute. A summary of progress is outlined below; a number of these issues are addressed in further detail in the submission from UKCMRI Ltd.

6.1. Land purchase: In 2008, Government approval was granted for purchase of the 3.5 acre site for UKCMRI on Brill Place, behind the British Library. This site presented opportunities to support collaborative research on a size and scale not previously envisaged. The sale was completed in June 2008. The land was purchased from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport for £85m, of which £46.75m was provided by the MRC. The partners will remain as freeholders of the land and buildings, which will be leased to UKCMRI Ltd.

6.2. Project Management and Leadership: During 2009, UKCMRI recruited a number of key people to form the UKCMRI Executive Team. These included a Chief Operating Officer and acting Chief Executive Officer; Construction Project Director; Finance Director; and General Counsel. Sir Paul Nurse became the first Director and Chief Executive of UKCMRI in January 2011; Sir Paul has chaired the UKCMRI Scientific Planning Committee for the past two years. In addition the Executive Team also involves the directors of the CR-UK London Research Institute and the MRC National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) at Mill Hill, and representation from UCL.

6.3. Governance: Heads of Terms for the Joint Venture Agreement (JVA) were agreed early in 2010 and negotiations continued throughout the year to complete negotiations of the Agreement and to establish the charitable company. Negotiations included detailed discussions between the MRC and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), and were also subject to scrutiny by HM Treasury. In view of the revised public funding arrangements for the project, which include the commitment of £220m of capital from the Department of Health (DH), the Agreement was also subject to DH approval. The JVA was signed by the chief executives of the four partners and Sir David Cooksey on behalf of the company (as Chair of the UKCMRI Steering Group) in November 2010.

6.4. The Agreement outlines the maximum commitments of the four founding partners to UKCMRI’s construction cost and states funding conditions for the operation and maintenance of the institute. In line with Government requirements, the MRC’s final business case includes all funding aspects to cover construction, land, operations, building life cycle costs and transition costs and is subject to approval by BIS and HM Treasury Ministers.

6.5. Following the signing of the JVA, the company and the founding partners entered into discussions with two additional London universities that wish to be involved with UKCMRI. This would expand opportunities for collaboration significantly. Discussions are ongoing and are expected to conclude in spring 2011.

6.6. Government Commitment and scrutiny: In October 2010 the Government announced its commitment to UKCMRI, confirming funding of £220m from the Department of Health as part of the Spending Review.

6.7. The UKCMRI project has been reviewed by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) on three occasions since 2008:

§ The OGC Major Projects Review Group (MPRG) reviewed the project in May 2009. The principal issues raised during this review concerned the degree of protection of the public interest in the then project arrangements and have been addressed by the JVA.

§ A second MPRG review was carried out in March and April 2010. This highlighted issues about cost and risk management which have now been mitigated.

§ The OGC also undertook a Project Assessment Review as part of its Major Projects Assessment Review across government in July 2010, specifically examining the potential for cost savings in major projects and providing information to the Spending Review process. This review gave UKCMRI a delivery confidence assessment of "amber-green". The review concluded that there were no viable options for significant cost savings and did not recommend cancellation or relocation.

6.8. Construction and Procurement: A Construction Project Board was established (comprising three representatives of UKCMRI and one from each founder partner) to support the Executive Team of UKCMRI, which is responsible for the day-to-day management of the construction. The Construction Project Board meets monthly. Since August 2010 an observer from BIS has been invited to attend the meetings.

6.9. UKCMRI Ltd is currently managing the tender exercise for stage one of a two-stage construction contract. A recommendation on the preferred contractor will be made to the Construction Project Board with a view to signing a Pre-Construction Agreement by the end of March 2011.

6.10. Town Planning: The Planning Application for UKCMRI was approved by Camden Council (acting through its Development Control Committee) on 16 December 2010.

6.11. Building Design Status: The design is currently in RIBA Stage D, which is due to be completed in February 2011.

7. Key milestones for future plans are outlined below. A number of these are discussed in greater detail in the submission from UKCMRI Ltd.

8. Critical success factors for UKCMRI partners include: sufficient space and scale of operations to house effectively a critical mass of research staff to deliver the full breadth of world class science in a multi-disciplinary institute; the development and training of a critical mass of basic and clinical researchers; the ability to attract and retain talent; the completion of the project within the capital budget (of £540m) and the efficiency of the new facility.

What do the four partners hope to achieve from the project and what new technologies and innovations are being considered?

9. The UK is a world leader in biomedical research and it is essential for UK competitiveness to ensure this position can be sustained in the face of increasing international competition. UK clinicians and scientists must be able to engage with the most challenging research questions which will lead to discoveries that improve the treatment and care of patients with common but tragically intractable diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. That is the shared vision that underlies the development of UKCMRI.

10. UKCMRI will bring together scientific teams from CR-UK, the MRC and UCL and research funding from the Wellcome Trust at a unique international centre for scientific excellence. It will be one of the most significant developments in UK biomedical science in a generation. UKCMRI will play a key role in addressing concerns identified by Sir David Cooksey’s 2006 review of publicly funded health research in the UK, specifically around the risk of failing to reap the full economic, health and social benefits of public investment in UK health research.

11. The partners already attract world-class scientists from the UK and around the world. In the coming years, the research required to address major healthcare problems will be multi-disciplinary, requiring day-to-day collaboration between scientists from not only the medical and biological sciences, but also the physical, social and engineering sciences. In order to remain at the global forefront of research, scientists from different disciplines will have to work together to take advantage of the revolutions in genetics, imaging and computing. UKCMRI will create a visionary, multi-disciplinary environment with the size and scale to enable a world-leading, interactive critical mass to be created and sustained for the future. It will provide the ideal training environment to develop young scientists as future scientific leaders. Innovative appointment policies will support the UK-wide remit and the spread of expertise. Research group leaders will be supported in building their reputations at UKCMRI, laying the foundations of future scientific achievements and later in their career transitions to other major institutes.

12. The primary goal of UKCMRI will be to understand the basic biology underlying human health and disease, driving forward better treatment and prevention of the most significant diseases affecting people today. The objectives and aspirations for UKCMRI are outlined in the Scientific Vision and Research Strategy [2] . The vision was developed by the Scientific Planning Committee, chaired by Sir Paul Nurse, and discussions included many of the world’s leading biomedical scientists, as well as representatives from the founding partners. Alongside discussions around research programmes, the vision also addressed the use, development and roll-out of innovative new technologies in order to open new avenues of research. UKCMRI will nurture a culture in which clinical and commercial translation is valued as highly as discovery research.

13. For CR-UK and the MRC, the institute presents an opportunity to build on the success of some of their current research institutes, specifically the CR-UK London Research Institute and the MRC National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) at Mill Hill. It will secure their future in a state-of-the-art, world-leading new institute which is exceptionally well located for clinical partnerships and national and international collaborations.

14. The MRC’s strategy is to undertake research that is most likely to deliver a step change in the potential for improved health outcomes, to bring the benefits of research to all sections of society, to secure progress in international medical research and to support and sustain a robust environment for world-class medical research. UKCMRI provides the opportunity for the MRC to optimise its contribution to translational research and to build upon the work of NIMR, moving to a new environment and location which offers greater opportunities for collaboration and delivers more from the equivalent level of resource funding for the current institute, currently capped at £42m. These issues are addressed in more detail in a separate memorandum submitted by the Director of NIMR, which also describes the contribution NIMR staff have made to the development of UKCMRI. Research programmes and activities transferring to UKCMRI will be subject to peer review and will be agreed by December 2012 under terms yet to be negotiated.

15. The London Research Institute (LRI) is the largest of CR-UK’s five research institutes. Its research programme focuses on the basic biology of cancer development and spread, and has been at the forefront of research in cancer biology for many years.

§ The LRI is currently located across a split site, with laboratories at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in Holborn and Clare Hall at South Mimms, Hertfordshire. The LRI’s split site, and its distance from appropriate academic and clinical partners, threatens to endanger its position as a world-leading cancer research institute.

§ The LRI's current buildings date from 1965 (LIF) and 1985 (CH). The 2006 LRI Quinquennial Review considered that "... the physical environment of the [Lincoln's Inn Fields building] was sub-optimal and will not sustain the continued success of the Institute in the long term."

§ With the move to multi-disciplinarity in biomedical science, the biologically-oriented LRI research groups are becoming increasingly collaborative and increasingly reliant on input from mathematicians, engineers and physicists to keep their research at the international cutting edge.

§ UKCMRI will create an outstanding multi-disciplinary environment for CR-UK's basic cancer biology programmes. Its researchers will at last be consolidated at a single site and their work will be enhanced through UKCMRI interests in imaging, physics, maths and other disciplines, integration into the broader medical and scientific environment of UCL and UCLH, and the complementary expertise coming to UKCMRI from the relocation of the MRC National Institute for Medical Research.

§ CR-UK’s expectation is that moving LRI research activity into the UKCMRI environment will help to significantly accelerate progress in the fight against cancer.

16. As a funding partner in the initiative, the Wellcome Trust is dedicated to the goal of establishing a new world class research institute for the UK. Its contribution aims to ensure that UKCMRI will provide an environment in which outstanding researchers from around the world can pursue big research questions, generating breakthroughs in knowledge and innovations that will enable major advances in health. The Trust's long term commitment to UKCMRI forms a key component of its activities to deliver its ten year Strategic Plan for 2010-20, and further its overarching vision to achieve extraordinary improvements in human and animal health.

17. UCL’s contribution to the long term success of the project will come from clinical collaborations and from the breadth and depth of its activities in the life sciences, chemistry, physics, engineering and computing. UCL’s key strengths include its commitment to interdisciplinary endeavour involving the physical and social sciences and the humanities; its commitment to research training and developing the next generation of life and clinical scientists; and extensive clinical collaboration. Interdisciplinary links of particular relevance to UKCMRI involve chemical biology, biomedical engineering, nanotechnology and computational science, all of which contribute to collective expertise in biomedical imaging. UCL is the academic partner in UCL Partners, involving four elite hospital trusts and the wider health community making it the largest Academic Health Science System in Europe. The reach of the partnership extends to a population of 6 million through the Joint Health Innovation and Education Cluster involving East London and Thames Gateway, providing a diffusion mechanism for health science advances. Population impact at scale is further enhanced through UCL’s strengths in population sciences and public and global health.

18. UKCMRI will provide all four partners with the opportunity to build and develop extensive networks locally, nationally and internationally with academia, industry and the public sector. It will support public engagement to build strong relationships with local communities and support public involvement and participation in research. As the project moves forward, opportunities are being explored to extend the partnership to include a number of other universities to expand the potential for collaboration and multi-disciplinarity.

Is the financing of the UKCMRI robust and justified, with particular reference to the public support for the project and the knock-on effect on budgets for other research?

19. In the current economic situation it is vital for the partners to drive forward this joint vision to build for the future and to support recovery in a sector where the UK has a lead position. This lead must be sustained in order to reap future commercial and health benefits.

20. In view of the level of public funding available to UKCMRI, effective scrutiny of financing and project management is essential. To ensure value for money and sustainability, the investment of public and charity funding in UKCMRI has been robustly scrutinised. Public funding, via the MRC, has been scrutinised by BIS and HM Treasury and the MRC’s economic case developed in line with the Capital Investment Manual and HM Treasury Green Book. Sensitivity analysis has been prepared around capital and operating costs to determine the viability of the MRC investment. The project has also been reviewed three times against Office for Government Commerce (OGC) criteria (see paragraph 6.6).

21. UKCMRI’s estimated operating costs of approximately £100m a year will be borne by the partners in line with the agreed governance arrangements. Operating costs will be determined to support the scientific agenda and will be subject to the outcome of the quinquennial peer review process. The quality of research at UKCMRI is also expected to support the institute in securing external funding from other UK, the European Union and other international bodies beyond that currently realised by NIMR and LRI.

22. All partners have factored the costs of UKCMRI into future investment plans; contributions to UKCMRI are regarded to be among the highest priorities for all partners. UKCMRI has also been earmarked as a high priority by Research Councils UK (RCUK) following a recent prioritisation exercise for proposals for large facilities projects across all of the research councils on the basis of high research merit.

23. The positive settlement for the MRC in the 2010 Spending Review will enable its overall research spend to be maintained. The £220m contribution to UKCMRI construction costs by the Department of Health will further protect continued funding of MRC research activities. Funding contributions from potential new partners will be directed into accelerating the establishment of the institute, and it is anticipated that returns from the sale of the site of the former National Temperance Hospital in Camden and the existing NIMR site at Mill Hill will be available to the MRC to support transitional costs. In the current economic climate, there is some risk that the anticipated return is not fully realised however the MRC is working to mitigate this risk as outlined below.

What are the risk assessment arrangements to ensure the safety of the site?

24. The JVA is the main vehicle for addressing risk assessment and management. Under the Agreement, UKCMRI Ltd has primary responsibility for maintaining the risk register and management systems and the assessment of security and safety: these issues are addressed in the UKCMRI Ltd memorandum, which outlines work with local and police authorities and security specialists engaged by the project to advise on threats relating to animal rights extremism, terrorism and the impact of public demonstrations. A security annex is included in the MRC business case.

25. Investment risk has also been addressed and mitigating action has been identified to manage financial and operational risks relating to procurement, changing requirements, financial constraints and third parties and the impact of potential delays on delivery and budgets.

What are the arrangements for the closure of the existing National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill?

26. CR-UK and MRC research programmes transferring to UKCMRI will form part of the new institute, subject to peer review. Research activities for CR-UK and MRC that are to be transferred will be agreed by December 2012 under terms yet to be negotiated.

27. The impact of the UKCMRI investment is reflected in the additions in both land and buildings and equipment lines in the MRC’s full business case. There is some uncertainty around the valuation of the site of the former National Temperance Hospital, which is wholly owned by the MRC. However, the MRC is taking steps to maximise the value of the property at National Temperance Hospital and Mill Hill to counter reduced property values. Current projections assume that the valuation will recover in line with any general recovery in property prices, leading to a return to the pre-2008/09 valuation by 2011/12. Disposal of the site is anticipated in 2012/13. MRC capital assets associated with UKCMRI remain on the balance sheet as assets under construction until the facility becomes operational in 2015/16, at which point they will be transferred to become an Investment in Associate as per the agreed accounting treatment. The MRC will retain only a proportion of the value of existing equipment transferred to UKCMRI in line with an agreement on ownership of assets. The proportion of the value of equipment transferred to UKCMRI is treated as a disposal in MRC financial statements which will be shown as a loss on disposal within the Income and Expenditure account in 2014/15.

This submission is made on behalf of the four UKCMRI partners:

Sir John Savill

Chief Executive, Medical Research Council

Harpal Kumar

Chief Executive, Cancer Research UK

Sir Mark Walport

Director, Wellcome Trust

Professor Malcolm Grant,

President and Provost of UCL

12 January 2011