Chief Scientific Advisers: S&T Committee Report

Lord Krebs Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Grand Committee

Moved By

[Lord Krebs]

That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report of the Science and Technology Committee on The role and functions of departmental Chief Scientific Advisers (4th Report, Session 2010-12, HL Paper 264).

[Lord Krebs]

My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I want to start by thanking the members of the Science and Technology Select Committee for their excellent contributions to this inquiry. I want also to thank the clerk and the policy analyst for their outstanding support for the committee and the Minister for the Government’s response to the report, to which I shall return shortly.

In this country, we benefit from what, by international standards, is an excellent system of scientific advice in government. That is of the highest importance. I can think of no area of government policy, whether related to economic growth, enhancing our quality of life, the sustainability of the environment and much else, where scientific advice does not play a central role. When I say “science”, I mean to include engineering and the social sciences as well as the natural sciences.

In one recent review of EU member states, it was reported that while all member states have some kind of system—usually a committee—of providing scientific advice, only four countries other than the UK have independent chief scientific advisers—the Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland and Latvia. In recent times, we in the UK have been very fortunate to have had a succession of distinguished government chief scientists who have commanded respect from the scientific community and been effective, independent voices for scientific evidence within government.

The Government also have many other sources of independent expert scientific advice, including the 70-plus scientific advisory committees that deal with specific issues such as nutrition, drug use and climate change; the Council for Science and Technology, chaired by Sir John Beddington and Dame Nancy Rothwell, to report to the Prime Minister; and the 14 departmental chief scientific advisers. It is those departmental chief scientific advisers who are the focus of our report.

With all this scientific expert advice in place, your Lordships might think that Ministers are sufficiently well furnished with scientific advice to enable them to base their policies on evidence. This Government have often said that they wish to base their policies on evidence. Sadly, however, it is still the case that the Government, perhaps too often, prefer policy-based evidence rather than evidence-based policy. For instance, the Government still insist on wasting taxpayers’ money on homeopathic treatments and have a Secretary of State for Health who believes that homeopathy works. I hesitate to mention the topical subject of bovine TB and badgers, given my involvement in this policy area during the past 15 years, but I will succumb to the temptation. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of scientific experts have concluded that the policy of killing badgers to control TB in cattle will have only a small beneficial effect, if any. It is essentially a waste of effort and money, and a distraction from the business of getting on top of a serious animal health problem that can have devastating effects on the livelihoods of farmers.

Together with other scientific experts, I would not expect scientific evidence to be the only factor that influences policy in this or any other situation. As is often said, scientists advise and Ministers decide. But where Ministers override the scientific evidence, it is vital that they make it clear that they are doing so and explain their reasons rather than pretending that the science supports their case. Only yesterday, the Food and Farming Minister was reported in the Guardian as saying that the science supports badger culling. If he looked at the evidence and listened to the experts, he would see that it does not.

I turn now to the substance of our report. The inquiry was triggered in part by the downgrading of the chief scientific adviser in the Ministry of Defence from four star to three star; by the failure of DCMS to appoint a chief scientific adviser; and by wider concerns about the lack of consistency of the roles and qualifications of chief scientific advisers across departments. This inconsistency has been highlighted by the Campaign for Science and Engineering’s recent publication of a scorecard. For instance, some departments have CSAs who are senior figures from outside the Civil Service, with established reputations and authority in the scientific and engineering communities; in other departments the CSAs are more junior officials from within the Civil Service.

We recognised in our report that, overall, the system of scientific advice works well, but our recommendations highlighted where improvements could be made to level the playing field up rather than down. We made 19 recommendations and I do not propose to go through all of them.

For me, the three central issues for an effective CSA are authority, independence and access. Authority comes in part from external reputation and in part from level of seniority within the Civil Service system. That is why we recommended that all CSAs should be external appointments and at least at the level of director-general—in old speak, Grade 2. Senior external appointees with a high reputation command both the confidence of stakeholders and, importantly, have the networks to seek advice on matters where they do not have intimate expert knowledge. Knowing whom to ask is crucial for a CSA, especially where the science is uncertain. I know from my own experience as head of the Food Standards Agency that, especially when dealing with the science of difficult problems such as BSE, it is important to know who are the experts and to be able to act as an intelligent customer for expert advice. We were somewhat sceptical of claims that grade no longer matters in the Civil Service. Certainly in my experience it remains one of the most finely graded hierarchical organisations in civilian life.

Independence is also key. A chief scientific adviser must be able to speak truth to power, especially when the truth is inconvenient. Of course, we acknowledge that all civil servants should be able to tell Ministers the facts and the evidence without fear or favour, but we concluded that senior external appointees whose careers do not depend on progression within the Civil Service are more likely to feel uninhibited in telling inconvenient truths. One chief scientific adviser who gave evidence to us, a career civil servant, when asked whether a major policy change in the department following the last election was because the evidence had changed, gave the reply that the evidence as a whole had not changed but that Ministers had been presented with different bits of the evidence. This is clearly unsatisfactory for a chief scientific adviser. Senior external appointees will not guarantee independence but it is more likely to help than to inhibit.

To add a footnote, when Research Fortnight recently contacted the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to ask to speak to its new, internally appointed chief scientific adviser, it was told in terms, “Civil servants do not talk to the press”. This hardly seems to me a case where there is an independent voice within the department.

The third point I wish to highlight is access. We think it is crucial that chief scientific advisers have access to Ministers and access to key policy discussions within their departments. We heard of more than one instance in which departmental chief scientific advisers were sidelined in key policy discussions and/or rarely, if ever, saw the Secretary of State in their department. This is unacceptable.

I turn now to the Government’s response. Quite frankly, we were disappointed—very disappointed—in the Government’s response. We made 19 recommendations, of which the Government unequivocally accepted only eight. Crucially, they did not accept our key recommendations pertaining to the three issues I have highlighted—authority, independence and access. We were disappointed that the Government did not accept our recommendation that chief scientific advisers in departments should always be external appointees with standing in the science and engineering communities. We were disappointed that the Government did not accept our recommendation that chief scientific advisers should routinely sit on departmental boards at the top table to hear policy delivery and policy development. We were disappointed that the Government did not accept our recommendation that chief scientific advisers should be appointed at the equivalent of director-general level or higher. We made these recommendations on the basis of a substantial body of evidence—they were not just plucked from the air.

Subsequently, I have held a follow-up meeting with the head of the Civil Service, Sir Bob Kerslake. He has written a letter to me, as chairman of the Select Committee, to clarify the Government’s response to our report. His letter offers some degree of reassurance but I should like to ask the Minister, when he replies, to clarify further the Government’s position. First, does he agree that it is crucial that departmental chief scientific advisers have authority, independence and access to Ministers, and does he agree that our proposals would go a long way to ensuring that these requirements are met? More specifically, Sir Bob Kerslake’s letter in response to my meeting with him places a great deal of responsibility on the Government Chief Scientific Adviser to ensure that these requirements are met. Can the Minister explain precisely how the Government Chief Scientific Adviser will indeed be able to ensure that this happens?

I am sure that other noble Lords will wish to explore aspects of the report in more detail than I have been able to do in this brief overview, and I look forward to their contributions. I commend this report to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Krebs]

I thank all those who have taken part in this debate. I have enjoyed it very much and noble Lords who have contributed have illustrated great depth of understanding, experience and expertise. I do not propose to go through any points in detail, because we have already taken up a substantial amount of time. I thank the Minister. His reply, together with the letter from Sir Bob Kerslake, gives us some encouragement that we are perhaps inching in the right direction rather than making a sprint for the finishing line. I can assure the Minister that we will keep an eye on these matters in the Select Committee and will no doubt make our opinion strongly felt if we are not satisfied with the way that the Government respond in the light of Sir Bob Kerslake’s letter.

In closing, I make two further comments. One is to join others who have acknowledged the good work done by Sir John Beddington, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser. He has slightly less than six months to serve and, as I mentioned at the beginning, he stands in a long line of distinguished predecessors and has served with exceptional distinction. It will not surprise noble Lords if I give the very last word to the badgers. I want noble Lords to think about what the Government are proposing to embark on. The Environment Secretary will, I believe, announce this week the initiation of the pilot culls, designed to determine the effectiveness and humaneness of free shooting as a way of controlling TB in cattle. Think about what is being done. There are two areas, so there is a sample size of two. There are no control areas. So the analogy is with my being asked to figure out the average height of professors in Oxford. If I said, “I have measured two of them and here is the average height”, you would say, “That is ridiculous. You have to measure 100 or 200”. Then, if you asked whether professors in Oxford were taller than in the rest of the country, and I said that I had not actually looked at what was happening in the rest of the country, that would be ridiculous. It is a completely meaningless, pointless pilot. It emphasises how policy decisions, if they are to be of any sense or value, have to have a scientific underpinning. This is in a department where we have a senior independent chief scientific adviser. In spite of that strong system, the policy makes no sense. In departments where there are weaker systems, things could well be worse. However, I leave it at that point. The last word is with the badgers and I thank everybody very much indeed.

Motion agreed.