Chief Scientific Advisers: S&T Committee Report

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, this is an important report on the role of chief scientific advisers and the Government Chief Scientific Adviser. I have had some experience of working with both those people—when I was at the Met Office, here in Parliament and indeed as a university professor. One point to note is that many technical agencies have chief technical advisers, such as the chief scientist at the Met Office and the chief mathematician at GCHQ, and these chief scientists are of increasing importance since the chief executives of many technical agencies are no longer technically qualified. This is therefore an important part of the whole grouping of scientific advice available to the Government.

Furthermore, these agencies—the Met Office, Cefas and GCHQ, and there are many others—report to departments, and an important role of chief scientific advisers to departments is to make use of the scientific ability in these agencies and to ask difficult questions about the effectiveness of the agencies. When I was head of the Met Office, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, the noble Lord, Lord May, who is going to speak later, said, “Why do you do all this computing of weather? Why don’t you just look at the clouds and use statistics?”. That was a good, challenging question, and we gave him an answer—we had thought about it. We continued to use our modelling but we were well aware of his idea. That kind of challenging approach is necessary in this large and important part of the Government’s scientific effort.

I refer to the final paragraph of the Government’s reply. There was a discussion about how to look at the annual performance of the GCSA and, by extension, the CSAs. I agree with the Government when they say that there are several ways of judging the effectiveness of CSAs, and in that context I want to comment that it is well worth while recording some of the signal achievements of CSAs and Government Chief Scientific Advisers. In some cases they have helped to identify issues and brought them to the Government and indeed to the country, notably on aspects of climate change, food security, emphasised by Sir John Beddington, and natural disasters, in the case of Sir David King. They have introduced new techniques. For example, on comparative modelling the role of Sir David King, whom I have mentioned, was very important, while the use of foresight models was an introduction of the Government’s. That kind of development of new techniques is very important. The one that might still be missing is the use of system methods in government, which is coming in; indeed, the noble Lord, Lord May, is working on that with the Bank of England.

The third aspect of the important role of CSAs is to emphasise and explain the practical aspects of scientific development, sometimes even before they have been published. Sir David King spoke often, perhaps somewhat dangerously, on some of the uncertain aspects of climate change, but he certainly brought it to the public. Recently Sir John Beddington has focused on the question of long periods of static weather, with heat and temperatures and so on. Again, this is an area where the science is still not completely certain but he has felt it to be so important that he has brought it before the public with the sureness of someone with a great scientific reputation.

The other aspect of their important role is that chief scientific advisers have raised the profile of science in government decision-making. However, there are some critiques of the role of CSAs that have not been brought out in this report. The first is the question of whether CSAs are ensuring that we are making the best use of foreign science. I keep commenting on this: Britain’s science is 7% or 8% of the world total but there is a huge volume of important ideas outside that. In the United States there is a strong programme to ensure that they are, as it were, horizon-scanning around the world and looking at the technical approaches of foreign Governments; they are not afraid to do that. One foresight panel that I was familiar with on flooding made almost no use of the experience of the Netherlands, which is not very far away.

The second point in this slight critique is that CSAs could do more with UK Trade & Investment to promote UK science and technology by showing how they are being used in government in a practical way in order then to explain this to other countries. That is something that we discussed in this Room a week ago.

The third point is that they could play a more effective role in the scientific aspects of the UK’s involvement in international bodies. The noble Lord, Lord May, was very active in the Kyoto climate change agreements. However, in my experience and as we have heard—and as we shall discuss tomorrow afternoon on the polar issues—CSAs have not been particularly active in pushing research councils on how they provide expertise through these international panels. That is an extremely important part of the scientific aspect of advising government on policy.

The fourth point is that CSAs have a role in informing Parliament. As we have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, there is some belief that CSAs should talk only to Ministers within departments. In fact, they have an extremely important part to play—the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin—on scientific developments and issues. Appearing at Select Committees is one thing; they also inform Ministers. My own hand was slightly smacked—not by the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh—when I was at the Met Office and advising the Opposition about various important matters before they came to power. In the United States, the head of the weather service spends the month of August on the Hill, talking to everybody. That is exactly how it should be. They do not have to go to the Hill; they can just go round the corner.

Another important point is that CSAs could do more to promote the important scientific developments emerging from the practical work of departments. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, is with us. I have a slight disagreement with him: his model of science used to go from pure to applied, whereas I believe that it often goes from applied to pure. One of the roles of chief scientific advisers is to see this applied work and ensure that it gets back out into the pure world. There are things that I cannot tell noble Lords about, but some areas of defence technology are leading to very interesting scientific developments. For example, the Met Office lightning programme is now out there and visible; people can use it. It provides the possibility of great new research. There are many government agencies working in data-handling and that is another area.

Another feature of this report is the question of appointment procedures for CSAs in particular departments. Again, it is essential to give signals that these CSAs are important. It should be clear that the Permanent Secretary or his or her deputy should be present at the appointment. If you are told that you are going to be able to speak to the Permanent Secretary but his or her deputy never comes to the appointment process, that sounds a bit hollow. If that was absolutely clear, it would send an important message through the department.

The report rightly recommends that external scientists should be on the panel. Departments would also benefit if the panels included foreign scientists, and the report recommended that CSAs should be scientists of international rank. For example, they could be scientists from international organisations that the government departments work with, so they would be familiar with the work of the department.

I agree with recommendation 7—that CSAs, having right of access to Ministers, should be allowed also to speak to politicians.

Paragraphs 11 and 12 refer to the CSA’s role in steering research, either through direct control with his or her own budget, or indirectly through oversight and the department’s programme. As the departmental CSAs are part time, the latter is probably their major role. It is very difficult to be part time and run your own programme. They can bring outside knowledge of different approaches and connections to other departments.

I believe that when they are appointed CSAs should learn one or two elementary rules of Whitehall; namely, you have a meeting. The CSA might make a good point, to which the Civil Service chairman might say, “Very good point”. However, the written minutes may not correspond with what was said at the meeting. If the CSA does not read the minutes of the meeting afterwards, their “very good point” may not carry through. That is elementary but it is part of the learning curve that might be explained.

In agencies with full-time chief scientists, their main task is running the research programme. However, in most cases a cultural shift is needed so that those chief scientists also have a role in the application of research and the operations of the agencies.

One point that this report misses is that chief scientific advisers have a wide knowledge of science and technology and they should make sure that the methods of science and technology are used at the highest level throughout an agency’s activities. They should be involved in areas relating not only to research but to operations.

A chief social scientist ranging over all departments and agencies could, I am sure, ask questions and improve methodologies in all the departments and agencies with which I am familiar; for example, from how to account for population policies which did not have the benefit of the input of social scientists when they were first discussed to how to present certain long-range forecasts and the many societal effects of that. Social scientists interested in politics could certainly help with the provision of policy advice to Governments. This might have helped with the difficulties in explaining the extraordinary change that took place in the reasoning for action to mitigate climate change from, in the 1990s, being a policy based on a long-term prediction to, after 2001, being a response to current trends. That leads to all sorts of difficulties—as was evident in a recent article asking all sorts of funny questions in the Mail on Sunday that I was looking at in the Library yesterday.

One hopes that this move will be supported even by Nature—I do not know how many scientists have been ridiculed for totally wasting time by a leader in Nature. We were just looking at the effects of wind on people. This was considered to be a joke; nowadays its social aspects are taken seriously, hopefully even by Nature.