Scientific Infrastructure (S&T Report)
Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Howe of Aberavon
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I should declare a very ancient interest in the sense that I was an undergraduate and studied chemistry, so I have some background in this—I am afraid that it has not been an active pursuit, although one tries to keep up as much as one can. However, it has been a useful background for reading this report and some of the evidence referred to in earlier speeches, which certainly taxes some of the skills that I acquired in that earlier period.
I thank the chair and all members of the committee for their excellent report. I also thank him for his valedictory appearance as chair. He introduced his report very well and made it very easy for us to get into this debate. I am on record as always complaining when asked to debate committee reports. We have this wonderful system in the House of organising committees on specialist topics, with the time and the resources to inquire in depth into areas. As a result, their reports are often mines of information and fantastically useful for all interested in public policy if not necessarily in the particular area concerned. Therefore, for example, I think this committee reported in November 2013, and the government response came in January 2014, but we are only now able to debate it. That is a pity. It is not that the recommendations or the quality of the report will go off with time, and neither will it improve like a wine. Nevertheless, it would be better if we could somehow get a message back to the powers that be that we should somehow align better our discussions and debates on the results of the work that is done. No doubt I will get myself into trouble with that comment as I did the last time I raised this with the Chief Whip, who got very cross because of what I said, and said that it was not her fault. I am sure that in this case it is not her fault—I emphasise that. However, I just make a general point that it would be in the interest of this House if we could do a bit better as regards getting to discuss those issues.
As the report recognises, our scientific infrastructure plays a key role in maintaining our reputation for research excellence. We have high-quality facilities, which attract world-class researchers and investment from around the world, therefore allowing us to carry on research projects which in turn support the wealth and welfare of the nation. As the committee rightly points out, it is important that this country maintains and builds upon this reputation if we are to keep up in the global race. I do not think that there is any party-political disagreement on that, as was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. We welcome the Government’s announcement of a long-term commitment to increase the science and research capital investment in real terms to £1.1 billion in 2015-16, then grow it in line with inflation each year to 2021. I say that not just because it follows the recommendations or the practice of the previous Government, although we had a 10-year plan and not just a five or six-year plan as is now the arrangement. However, this is the right way to approach this area, and I welcome not only the announcement but also that the consultation will take place to make sure that the strategic UK priorities we are building up or continuing in our world-class science can be carried out. However, I will come back to both those points later on.
Lord Howe of Aberavon (Con)
I wonder how far I can afford to be profoundly discourteous. I did not know that this debate was taking place; I have only just seen its identity and its nature. One of my overwhelmingly important hobby horses is our total failure and neglect of our units of measurement—
Lord Howe of Aberavon
I wanted to ask only the following question. Magna Carta declared profoundly that the most important thing for the country was a coherent and effective system of units and measures, and that has been repeatedly reviewed. I will not go through the details to a great extent, but once in the 19th century—in 1862—the House of Commons unanimously recommended the adoption of the metric system. In 1904 the House of Commons did the same thing. In 1939 it was adopted. Certainly, in my time as Minister for Consumer Affairs in 1984 it was there, and we dealt with it entirely.
This is why it is important for me to make the following confession: the folly which created our present chaos came about when I was Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1983 I think it was. The Metrication Board had been in existence for many years. I dissolved the board, whose work was completed, but as a result we are now almost unique in that almost everyone—schools, scholars, scientists—has to grapple with a dual system of measurements. Happily, Ireland has given that up and it has metrication, as has most of the Commonwealth—Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. We are alone in this shambolic state. I plead, deeply seriously, to take this opportunity to draw attention to it. I hope that noble Lords have been taking close interest in this important set of problems, because I cannot think of any other aspect of it that deserves more importance than the one that I have had the impertinence to identify.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, I ask the Minister to respond to that point, if he can.
I was struck by the assertions made at the beginning of the report not only on the need to preserve the Haldane principle, which I agree is a very important part of what needs to happen within the scientific community, but about the need to ensure that the allocation of funds for science that are to be used within a long-term planning framework should be done by an independent committee. I am a little confused by the Government’s response to the second and third recommendations, which both mention committees. When the Minister comes to respond, perhaps he could be clear about how this is going to be taken forward. Is the committee that is going to be advising on the long-term strategy, and which is to be led by the director-general of knowledge and information at BIS, to be a ministerial committee, or will it be outside the ambit of ministerial control? The third recommendation appears to refer to a ministerial group that would be led by the BIS DGKI but, in response to the second recommendation, the Government say that the Minister will be leading a group to look at the strategy. It would be helpful if the Minister could give us some clarification on this point, and in so doing perhaps he could say how many committees will be set up, what work they are actually going to do, and how those arrangements fit best with the committee’s recommendations.
Much of the debate today has focused on the need for a better match, or to remove the disconnect, between the capital investment coming forward and the operational and running costs. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, drew attention to the problems around long-term capital operations and whether the funding is going to be in place for the long term, although perhaps not as long as it could be, and the shorter-term funding that will be available to meet running costs and the possibility that that will be considered within the overall departmental spend. Is it not important to try to reconnect these issues because, without proper consideration being given to operational running costs, investment will have to be mothballed or, worse, closed down without it ever making the contribution it should? If there is genuinely to be a long-term science commitment, surely it must apply to both running costs and capital costs.
A related point was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. There is a need to align the training of those who are to operate in these centres with the capital and running costs funding. This raises the high-level apprenticeship problem, which has come up in a number of debates and discussions. There are more and more apprenticeships, which is a good thing, but the quality of the training they are receiving seems to stop at the lower end of the spectrum and does not reach the higher technician level, which is what will be desperately needed if the science agenda is to be continued.
The noble Earl, Lord Selborne, along with several other noble Lords, raised the question of the PSREs, which come out well in the report. The intention is for them to be privatised, which may result in a loss of the data which have been built up over the years; there is an issue around the lack of control we will have over that. Another problem is that of the inability of these bodies, once they are privatised or semi-privatised, to contribute to international research. I hope that the Minister will refer to this when he responds. As a result of the problems with JET, which have been alluded to, we were unable to get international projects that would have been of benefit because we had failed to identify the contribution that could be made within the PSRE circuit.
We have talked a bit about co-operation, particularly with industry but also with other aspects of industrial life, including the NHS and other areas. Obviously, the contribution made by the RPIF as signalled in the report has been good, but the question to be asked here is this: what more could be done? Does BIS have any plans to try to stimulate industrial spending on R&D and is there a way in which it could be identified in order to harness the work effort better within the science community?
The final question I want to put reflects the request by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for a little more support than is outlined in the Government’s response. I would like to know whether the Minister can commit to that. I am sure he will say that it is a matter for the Treasury at the appropriate time, but it would be interesting to know whether he can in some sense respond to the interest that has been expressed in more money—not just because that would be good in itself, but of course because of the problem, which I will come back to, of the gap in funding that has grown between 2010 and 2015.
The question of AstraZeneca and Pfizer was also raised. Again, it would be interesting to get a response on that, not just because it is topical but because it reflects an overall ambition that government must have to ensure that there is a broader context in which the science happens. Without the industrial contributions from AstraZeneca, based in Britain and with resources all round the country, the work that is done in science will be diminished if those facilities are curtailed because of that result.
At the heart of this is a question about the money—the gap that exists because of the way in which the original plan from 2004 still hangs in the air. Obviously, if the Government’s ambition is to make the UK the best place in the world to do science and research, it echoes what was said when the 10-year investment framework for science and innovation was produced at the time of the 2004 spending review. That framework, which was produced by the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury—he did a great deal of work on that, for which we should pay tribute to him—had a slightly higher ambition in the sense that it was not just science and innovation for its own sake; it was also trying to link it to the contribution it would make to economic growth and public services.
I did not see much of that wider contribution referenced in the Government’s response to the Scientific Infrastructure report. That may be because the report itself did not specifically cover those areas, but it would be helpful if the Minister could confirm that that remains part of the contribution. This is a much bigger picture. As the Mayor of London said in his contribution to the debate, we have to think very hard across all the organisations that are working in this area—the NHS, the centres that are being built up, particularly in universities, and the industrial centres—because they all need to contribute if we are going to get the best out of this.
I come back to the problem with the money. By my calculations, the cut that was made in 2010 comes to about £500 million. That is not being replaced, even though the new baseline figure will be moved forward with inflation as we move to 2021. Simply having a ring-fence in place, which was the situation when Labour left office, did not protect the science budget from austerity measures. We are not going to get back the frozen cash terms in 2010 and capital spending that has been cut.
As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, we have seen ad hoc announcements. But the problem with that, as he said very clearly, is that you get one-off grants; they are welcome but they are not what was meant to happen because they do not fit with any plans that might have been there. They therefore in turn have a sort of stifling effect on the planning that would be going on ordinarily because those who might plan it will not be certain that they are going to get the funds. They also seem to introduce an alien element, which is that the decisions to fund come from somewhere else. They do not come from the community or from BIS; they are imported. They are not wrong in themselves; it is just that they are not necessarily fitting in. We cannot be against money for a graphene centre. I am sure that is the future. But if it could be developed within an overall policy that allowed for it to come on stream at the appropriate time, that would be so much better.
My second point is that although the government response of 2014 talks very clearly about the funding that is going to be available up to 2020, things have changed since January 2014 and it is now common knowledge that the department for business, which after all is responsible for science policy and provides the funds for the UK-wide research councils, is going to have to make further cuts of about £100 million a year, possibly from the science spending, as a result of its strategy to deal with a big hole in its finances. Surely we should have learnt by now that the existence of even more uncertainty around the future of science spending will be as damaging as before, because universities, research groups and others will not be able to do proper forward planning.
The irony of all this is that the black hole in the BIS finances stems from a greater than planned growth in student loans as a result of the failure to plan for and to control student numbers on programmes, particularly HNDs and HNCs, offered by private providers. I would be grateful if, when the Minister comes to speak, he would shed light on whether there are to be further cuts to the previously announced figures. That will be an important factor.
I would like to end on a further point. Are not the cuts, if they are made, going to be to the science budget, which applies on the basis of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England? The devolved territories of course fund their students on a different basis. Therefore, the irony we have is that problems in English student financing are going to affect the UK science budget as a whole. The idea of robbing a UK-wide science budget to pay for English mistakes would seem particularly odd at a time when we approach the devolution settlement.