Supplementary memorandum by Professor
Raymond Agius—in response to supplementary memorandum by
Mr Ivan Lewis MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Care
Services, Department of Health (p 320)
Yes indeed we did meet the HSE on 4 April and
earlier today I e-mailed the University's response to the HSE.
Since the unresolved funding situation is such
that we are having to consider seeking "commercial sponsorship"
we have had to consult our stakeholders and the last meeting we
had with them was on Thursday 17 May. In essence our stakeholders
would rather we did not seek commercial sponsorship since we might
lose some participation and perhaps even some standing, but on
the other hand commercially sponsored schemes are better than
no schemes at all.
The University has bent over backwards and has
agreed to forego the "full Economic Costing" (fEC) basis
of charging the HSE. Effectively through our own resources and
some charitable support we were able to offer to do the work to
the HSE at around half the true "fEC" cost.
However on 4 April HSE could only offer us about
one half of this already grossly reduced latter amount (ie just
over one quarter of the fEC cost). In today's response to the
HSE we suggested another means whereby, with their agreement,
we could save money on extant work that we are doing for them
and thus reduce our costs for the extension of the THOR schemes
even further. Yet there is still a substantial gap, and we await
the HSE's further response.
Actually in relative terms these sums aren't
vast—they represent about 1-2 per cent of the money that
we understand that the HSE pays every year to the Health and Safety
Laboratory (which had unsuccessfully tendered competitively against
us for the work in the first place).
Yes indeed we have, together with other European
partners, bid for EU FP7 money. However the outcome of this bid
would not be known until around the end of the year. If successful
it would provide considerable added value to what we do now, such
that we would have data across the EU that is comparable in its
quality—and compared in terms of outcome. However EU funding
would not significantly reduce the "core" UK costs for
the collection of the fundamental data on occupational illness
and its trends that are so important for determining and monitoring
UK national policy to prevent this ill health.
In short: EU funding would amplify the basic
work we do now but would not significantly "subsidise it".
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