Chief Scientific Advisers: S&T Committee Report

Lord Mitchell Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Mitchell]

My Lords, first of all I congratulate the Minister on his new position and welcome him to the job. He and I are both new boys at this and are both non-scientists so we have a difficult task in front of us. I was very fortunate to serve on the Science and Technology Committee, which reported on nanotechnology and food and was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. I was able to witness first-hand his mastery of the subject, his team leadership and his ability to tease out every last detail, and in the report before us we see the very same competence. It is an excellent document on an important subject, and it is a tribute both to the noble Lord and to all the other Lords who have spoken in this debate today. I must say a particular word to the noble Lord, Lord May of Oxford; he spoke for 16 minutes and I would have happily sat here for 16 hours listening to what he had to say.

On previous occasions I have lamented the inability of Government to take reports issued by your Lordships’ House as seriously as they should. That is as true of this Government as it was when my party was in power. I just do not understand why a report that was published at the end of February has taken so long to come to the Floor of your Lordships’ House. I know that this is another debate for another occasion, but it is very irksome.

I would also like to add that in 2004 I had the privilege to chair another Science and Technology Committee report on science and treaties. In that report we wrote a section on chief scientific advisers and examined closely whether DfID and the FCO in particular should have CSAs. We achieved one immediate victory in that, shortly after the report was published, DfID indeed appointed its own CSA, and the FCO followed later. The noble Lords, Lord Oxburgh and Lord Hunt, were on that committee at that time. Was the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, on that committee?

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

No, I was not on that one.

[Lord Mitchell]

I shall be referring to that 2004 report tomorrow in the debate on Antarctica, in which several noble Lords speaking today will also be speaking—it is a busy two days. However, to my mind today’s report follows on from the initial recommendation that we made back in 2004. I am no longer a member of the Select Committee on Science and Technology. Obviously I did not sit on this investigation but, when I read the report, the word “frustration” screams through, barely concealed—the lament of scientists at not being appreciated by politicians and not being listened to, in some cases until it is too late. Not much has changed.

Luckily for us, but unluckily for the badger population of this country—I too will succumb to the temptation—we have a very topical example in front of us today of politicians versus scientists. We see how a decision to instigate this cull has been taken against the advice of some of the leading scientists of the country. The cull must be the wrong decision, but why do decisions of this nature happen? Why do the politicians so frequently get it wrong? In my opinion, it happens because politicians live in a different world and march to a different drumbeat. It is this disconnect between politicians and scientists that I would like to address today.

I am a businessman by background. Indeed, they describe me as a serial entrepreneur—I think that that is a compliment but I am never too sure. Businessmen in general make for lousy politicians and the reasons are not difficult to see. In business, the CEO generally takes what they believe is the correct course of action; you make an executive decision and you live and die by the outcome. Often you do not have to persuade your colleagues to back you. The buck stops with you. If you get it right, you get the glory, and if you get it wrong—well, as the CEO of Citibank saw yesterday, you have to fall on your sword. Business is not about 100% success; it is about getting it right more often than getting it wrong. However, politics is a different game. You have to be seen to be infallible. You have to be collegiate—or pretend to be collegiate—you have to take the team with you and you have to live for the moment. In a 24/7 world it is always tomorrow’s headline that matters. We have all seen this but in this new world of social media, where a single tweet can go to hundreds of millions of people in a second, the game becomes even more intense, and it is often a nasty and brutish game. You are never completely sure who is on your side. This is not my personal experience, but it is what I have observed.

Why do I say all this? Because scientists also come from another world—not another planet, but another discipline with a different temperament. Their judgments are evidence-based, their opinions do not pander to the media, their timeframe is long-term and their reputations have to stand the test of time. I am going to say something that many people might not agree with, but I am going to say it all the same: scientists need to learn to play the game. They cannot just lean on the purity of their research. They have to fight for their views to be taken seriously and acted upon. A noble Lord mentioned sharp elbows, and they are absolutely needed. Just as we in the business world have to adapt to the realties of the world of politics, so too should scientists. The game is often murky but that is the world that politicians inhabit, and to get their attention we outsiders have to have guile and square up to them on their territory, or we will never be heard.

Throughout this report we hear about scientists’ frustration at not being taken seriously—“easily marginalised”, I believe it says in the report. We can visualise it now: the Minister has had a bad day, everything has gone wrong, it is late, and his wife has told him that he dare not be home late. He is in a foul, stressed mood. Then in comes the CSA with yet more bad news. They use terminology that the politician does not understand and does not want to understand; he listens, but he does not hear. It is the clash of cultures, and it will be another disaster. I love the expression used in the report about the interchange between the scientist and the Minister: “Truth speaks to power”. That just about sums it up. It reminds me of the old adage: “Don’t let the facts spoil a good story”.

The report spends quite a bit of time focusing on the skills that departmental CSAs must have—his or her standing in the scientific community, communication skills, public engagement, understanding the policy environment and project delivery—but I wonder how many of them actually fit the role. Lack of access is constantly cited; the Minister is too busy to see the CSA. The report even talks about CSAs having to kick down the door, but does that really happen? I am a pretty good door kicker, but I am the first to admit that I am a pretty lousy scientist. We must be careful in seeking attributes in people that in many ways are mutually exclusive.

The report refers to the now infamous NHS IT project where the Blair Government decided to digitise and computerise the whole NHS at a stroke. It is an interesting example. At that time I was a consultant to IBM, not directly on that project but certainly on the periphery. The anticipated benefits of the project were enormous, but so too were the dangers. No businessman I know of would ever have taken on a project of that size without taking it step by step, but for the politician it was the opportunity to change everything at a stroke. Grand plans and glory beckoned but they went pear-shaped, and someone else was left to pick up the pieces. In that case the Government were naive in the extreme, and they were taken to the cleaners. They did not ask the questions and they certainly did not want the unpalatable answers. Those with experience knew that it would all end in tears; £12 billion later, they were right. It was a river of tears, and so it is with chief scientific advisers, who are often right but are so often ignored.

My advice, for what it is worth, is this: CSAs need to be much more politically savvy and must be able to play the game. Perhaps they should be selected from scientists who have ventured into the outside world, from quasi-scientists who are not really scientists but who understand the scientific argument or even from scientists who have ventured into politics—although I concede that there are not many of them.

In summary, we have a real problem. Scientific experts need to be listened to by Government, and this excellent report makes strong recommendations for CSAs to be given much more prominent positions. I believe that CSAs should also be appointed as much on their personalities as they are on their scientific skills.