Nanotechnologies and Food: Science and Technology Committee Report

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, we should give thanks to the Science and Technology Sub-Committee on Nanotechnologies and Food and to its excellent chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who was the most effective and communicative chairman of the Food Standards Agency in its founding. The committee clearly did a good job, as one can see from the previous Government’s response. However, in their response, and that of the current Government, one does not hear many promises about resources. We shall look to hear about that from the Minister.

As other noble Lords have mentioned, the natural world is full of small particles essential for the physical state of the atmosphere, the oceans and the processes in the Earth. But as with smoke, asbestos and traffic, human activities also produce particles ranging down to the scale of molecules and the wavelength of light. As the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, said, it is the tiny gold particles in red glass that make it look red—the thesis of my grandfather, by the way.

These nanoparticles are constrained within engineering processes and are more or less under control, but of course they are less constrained as they move through the environment and living tissue. Noble Lords might like to know that probably the first parliamentary study of nanotechnology took place on Clapham Common in 1760, when Benjamin Franklin took a party of six parliamentarians to study how an extremely thin monomolecular layer of oil can damp water waves. This interest was for calming waves in His Majesty’s dockyards at that time—everything was to do with His Majesty’s dockyards—but this continues to be a problem, as we have been seeing more recently.

The potential of nanoparticles is very considerable, from electronics to catalysts and, perhaps most importantly for the whole world, the extraordinary possibility of their use at a molecular or nano level for water purification and desalination. There are some groups working on this in the UK at Aberdeen, and MIT is involved. This is potentially an enormous boon to the poorest communities in the world. Broadly speaking, clean water might come under the category of food—it probably does for these people.

The other important point is for agriculture. Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, said, it is not just that we can use pesticides more efficiently—currently only 20 per cent get into the crop and 80 per cent go down the rivers—but this technology may be a big boon for agriculture.

However, the benefits of this technology have to be balanced with the health and environmental effects, both for the public and for workers. Some workers may have high exposure, and it is very important that this dimension is not forgotten. I notice that there was no actual evidence from the trade unions to this working group, but this is very important. Of course, exposure in industry is a lot better than it used to be. I have never been so drunk in my life as when I worked with ICI and we had trichloroethylene coming out of the plant as we filled up the bolts—one could get very drunk on that. But that is the older kind of industry; now we have much more sophisticated methods.

Public fears can easily be aroused, as we saw with GMOs and asbestos, but public attitudes are based on a delicate balance of perception of advantage and concern about risks. This balance can be influenced by public bodies and collaboration between the political world and scientists working together. Internationally, the UK has often been in the lead in these delicate areas of risk and advantage. The committee addressed all these issues and made sensible institutional and policy recommendations to deal with research, government regulations, industry and international co-operation. However, some of the recommendations have been made before, as we have seen in previous House of Lords reports on science-related issues.

The research on nanoscience and nanotechnology is done largely by industry, research councils, government departments and agencies—some of them using contractors or research institutes—and of course by the EU. This report, as we have seen previously, points to how research councils sponsor research but often, rightly, have limited capability and direction to respond to governmental, societal or industrial needs, as the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, emphasised. That is often not their central objective, which is generally fundamental and open science leading to publication.

In the 1990s, a larger proportion of the science budget was spent by government departments on projects that had direct relevance to policy, and this changed particularly under the emphasis of the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury. As I know from experience of working on GMO dispersion for a government department, the results were then published. If the government department sponsors work, that does not then lead to non-publication. Although government agencies make use of research councils’ research and data, they cannot direct them, which is the point made in the committee’s report and by other noble Lords.

Another aspect concerns toxicological research and the fact that it needs to be directed—that is at paragraph 4.58. Another advantage of directed and politically sensitive research being funded and directed by government departments is that the public communication and consultation could be done professionally and with political understanding, which is important in this area. The recommendations in the report for public bodies need to be supported, and a positive role is needed to overcome the concerns of scientists who are very cautious. I talked to nanotech scientists, funded by research councils, before the debate, and learnt that they are extremely sensitive about commenting publicly in any way about the applications of their work. So if scientists are to avoid being involved in debacles such as we have seen with GMO and Climategate, they need to find some form and methods of working with government to ensure that they can stick to their fundamentals and publish openly, and that the more tricky, applied aspects are handled more by government and agencies which are familiar with that aspect.

That brings me back to the point that if government departments needed funding or the capacity to do that kind of work, they could apply the openly published science for their own purposes. However, there is a difference in the approach of the United States. There, government agencies fund applications to turn the openly published science into useful products. Remarkably, they will look all around the world for their science, including papers by JCR Hunt. As I know from experience, a government department there will say, “Goodness me, this is an interesting paper. Let’s fund somebody in America to set up a company and do something with it”. That does not happen in the UK. It must therefore be remembered that 90 per cent of the research is done outside the UK. It is not the job of research councils to review the research being done around the world—that should surely be the job of technically able groups in the government departments. The UK Technology Strategy Board has the same aim of developing UK technology, but it requires quite a large financial hurdle, often too large for smaller companies to work.

Another crucial institutional aspect referred to in the report is the co-ordination with research in the European Union. It is strong where there is very strong research, and the EU is leading globally on regulations. Also, EU research is working towards commercial projects and setting up new European-wide standards. Our concern, as has been expressed today, is that even our civil servants and a recent European Commissioner on these Benches have commented privately that the UK does less well than others in taking a strategic view of that EU research and driving research in the direction of the UK's interests in technology. That is essential. As new European programmes have been established for FP8, it is important that we should take a more strategic view. Of course, the research councils could help there.

The other point made is that there is concern that the work being done by our research councils is not co-ordinated with research being done in other national research councils in the rest of Europe. I used to be a chairman of a committee in NERC under the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and I used to keep badgering colleagues in NERC to find out what was going on in exactly the same area in the other research councils. They did not know their names or their telephone numbers. A lot more can still be done in that respect. It is as if in the United States you had a research policy in California, in Arizona and in Illinois all doing different things and not co-ordinating. We must do better. The European Science Foundation has helped in that regard, but there is a long way to go and the committee has pointed that out.

We look forward to the Government's response. I particularly look forward to their response about public information. I note the comments made by other noble Lords about the fact that some major companies involved in the area are not particularly open. Without naming names, I spoke to the advertising agency for one of the major companies in this area. The advertising agency person told me that their advice to that major company was not under any circumstances to mention the environment or any of their products in that context. That is the situation, and we must move away from it.

Once again I thank the committee for its report, and I look forward to the Government's response.