Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-126)
Dr Ben Cowell, Dr Miles Parker, Professor Nicola
Spence and Dr Liam Kelly
11 MARCH 2008
Q120 Chairman: We are virtually out
of time but I wonder if I could very quickly put two questions
to you. One is to DCMS and it is about progress on appointing
a chief scientific adviser. This Committee in other guises, for
example in its report on science and heritage, pressed the case
and we were rather hoping, not least because there are implications
for this report, that progress was being made. Can you tell us
how far you have got?
Dr Cowell: As you know, we are engaged in a
look at how best we ensure scientific advice is supplied to the
Department and its ministers to enable us to formulate policy
appropriate in our various different areas. We continue to consider
options, most recently discussing with the new Government Chief
Scientific Adviser on how best to proceed. We thought it a good
idea to consult the new appointment. We are now considering options
around a possibility of a part-time appointment from academia
to carry out this role. Clearly the issue will be from which part
of the broad scientific community that adviser might come. It
is unlikely, I suspect, that it will come from the systematics
or taxonomic field, more likely perhaps a social scientist, but
we are progressing the discussions with the Government's Chief
Scientific Adviser.
Q121 Chairman: We press the taxonomic
case because of your responsibility for museums which is very
much within the DCMS area. I have to say I hope that the considering
of options does not go on much longer because we feel you have
had a fair crack at that and it would be quite nice to see progress.
Could you keep us in the picture on that?
Dr Cowell: Absolutely, we will keep you updated
as things develop.
Q122 Lord Krebs: If I may come in
behind that, in the interim whilst you do not have a chief scientific
adviser in DCMS, I wonder how you determine whether the amount
of investment in taxonomic infrastructure in the museums, both
nationally and regionally, is the right level? How do you make
those judgments? If you had a chief scientific adviser, he or
she would help you perhaps through an advisory committee to reach
those judgments; how is it done at the moment?
Dr Cowell: We very much rely on the advice given
to us by the experts in the institutions that we fund, not least
the Natural History Museum that I believe you have already heard
from. I have to say this perhaps relates more to other departments'
chief areas of interest than our own, but we are very happy to
fund the Natural History Museum to the degree that we do (which
gets a substantial allocation from the Department). It is the
most generously endowed museum of all the museums that we sponsor.
That in part reflects the excellent work that they are doing in
this field, so the answer is that we rely on their judgments and
advice at Spending Review time in making the allocations that
we do among the different bodies that DCMS sponsors.
Q123 Lord Krebs: Could I just come
back, if I may Chairman. I can see that this seems to be a very
nice position for the Natural History Museum to essentially tell
you how much money they want; I wish I was in that position myself!
What about the regional museums? You talk about this Renaissance
in the Regions programme and you are spending £45 million,
which sounds like a big number to me, but how do you judge whether
that is the right number given that you list these incredibly
important collections in a number of regional museums? I should
at this point declare an interest as the Chairman of the Oxford
University Museum of Natural History. How do you determine whether
you are giving those museums the right amount of money? Is it
the same process that you ask the director how much he or she
wants?
Dr Cowell: Of course there are many competing
claims on DCMS funds and we cannot possibly satisfy everyone,
so we do rely on the expert advice in our sponsored museums which
we then have to weigh up very carefully at Spending Review time.
When it comes to the Renaissance programme, this of course is
a programme of support for museums generally not just for natural
history and collections. We talk very closely with the Museums,
Libraries and Archives Council and we are very pleased that that
particular programme continues into the new Spending Review period.
Indeed, they have had an inflationary increase in their budget.
I think the degree to which we seek expert advice on natural history
collections I have to say does probably not come into the allocation
decisions in a great capacity except insofar as MLA tell us there
are particular needs in those particular areas.
Q124 Baroness Walmsley: My question
was quite similar to that of Lord Krebs really. I am sure you
get excellent advice from the directors of these institutions
about how much they should have, but it can hardly be said to
be independent, can it, and when you have a lot of these competing
claims, what is the mechanism for prioritising? Do you get independent
advice to advise you on which are the most worthwhile to fund?
Dr Cowell: We have a series of performance measures
to be applied to each of the museums that we sponsor and that
helps us to determine how we might allocate future spending priorities.
For example, a museum that performs well consistently is one that
we know we can trust with investment going forward. In addition,
in relation to the Natural History Museum part of the uplift they
received in the most recent Comprehensive Spending Review was
in respect of the fact they have a major new capital development
that will require on-going running costs into the future, the
Darwin Centre Phase Two, which will be a major contribution in
this field in particular.
Q125 Chairman: You have got the message
that we are watching. A last question since we have got representatives
of both the Scottish Government and Defra: we have had—and
this has been a theme throughout the afternoon—what we think
is possibly conflicting evidence about whether there is a shortage
of capacity and skills. The Scottish Environmental Protection
Agency for example indicated that they were having difficulty
meeting their responsibilities to comment on the Water Framework
Directive in terms of recruiting the right sorts of specialists
and one of the Defra reports, the Ecosystems Approach Action Plan,
suggested there were challenges in a comparable area, and yet
sometimes the message washes back that all is in order, there
are enough people around and the concerns of the community are
overstated. Would each of you like to comment on that?
Dr Kelly: I think first and foremost we should
also be clear that there are a number of ways in which taxonomy
is being used. This is a regulatory focus rather than a research-only
focus. That is not to decry the value of it in any way but it
is a slightly separate discipline from perhaps the type of materials
you might associate with longer term research projects. I suspect
that the Framework Directive has, if you like, created a demand
which has not been met over the longer term, coming forward to
the point at which the arrangements for the Directive are now
coming into force, but I would imagine that there is sufficient
capacity for training both within SEPA and outwith SEPA in other
organisations—universities and other sectors—which
would permit that skill base to be widened fairly quickly. I am
not saying that that is not evidence of a shortage, because clearly
if they have said there is a shortage they are feeling that, but
what I would suggest is that these are short-term demands which
I think any system struggles with regardless of what expertise
you look at.
Dr Parker: I would rather echo that. I think
the apparent inconsistency that you have picked up in that paragraph
is more apparent than real. I say that without getting complacent
about the fact that you will get flow problems and we will not
always have what we need when we need it. The normal reaction
to this is exactly the one picked up by bodies like SEPA, and
that is to train in-house. I would argue that there is immense
value in taking people with basic biology and training them in-house
in the specialist needs to fit the requirements of our particular
types of programmes. Incidentally, Professor Mace referred earlier
to just one Masters course with what seemed to be a colossal throughput.
A lot of those people are finding their way into our programmes.
They will not arrive knowing exactly what it is we need and we
have then got a job to do to train them.
Q126 Chairman: I understand the point
you are making, there are ups and downs and flows and so on, but
I was very struck by the fact that when I went to the launch of
the outcome of the three-year Funding Review for research councils
there were two Ministers present and the chief executives of research
councils present making speeches and the speech from the research
councils said there are three major global problems—global
climate and warming, water, and the other was demography and ageing.
Water is not one that I think is going to come and go because
there is major and international concern about ensuring the adequacy
and purity of water supplies. I am not convinced when you say
this is a temporary thing; I think water may be a special case.
Dr Parker: If I could just comment on that.
I think the issues of water supply that you are talking about
are undoubtedly global and major. The issues that we are facing
through the Water Directives are largely about water quality and
there are some quite specific biological criteria that get applied
there, and it was finding the right people to help us deliver
those that was posing some of the initial problems. I think that
the context is slightly different.
Chairman: I hear what you say. Can I say thank
you very much to each of you for coming, giving us your time and
also for the written evidence that you have submitted. If you
have further comments, and some of you have suggested that you
will have, that would be very welcome also. Thank you very much.
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