Science and Research

Lord Willetts Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He will not be shocked to hear that I am not going to give a spending commitment for what a Labour Government would do in 2015. However, the broader point is that long-termism is not just about the headline amount given to science. Saying, “This is your deal for 10, or maybe 15, years—off you go” is also important because it encourages private sector investment; the private sector will know that a Government are serious about science, and it will know what will happen if they stay in power at the next election. That certainty breeds greater investment, and it will offer a much better deal. I cannot, of course, give the exact sums that we will allocate when we, I hope, form the Government in 2015, but we will return to that theme as we continue to debate these important issues.

Let me move away from the size of the budget and the length of the spending cycle on which it is based. The hon. Gentleman talked a lot about people, and that is a really important part of science policy, although we often forget that when we are grappling with the overall sums and how long they are allocated for. In particular, he raised a really important point about women in science, which is something I have picked up on since I took up the science bit of my brief. My predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), was a female scientist, so she had experience of being a woman in what is very much a man’s world. I pay tribute to her work as a woman in science and a woman who speaks up for science and scientific issues.

There is clearly a problem: if we cannot ensure that we take forward the best talent that we have and make the most of it, we are truly missing out on something that should be a competitive advantage. Many in the science community tell me that the problem is often less about getting women into undergraduate science degree programmes and more about retaining them once they have graduated, when they are trying to plot their careers as researchers and academics and to combine their work with family life and career breaks to have children. I have said a number of times that the issue is not unique to the scientific community; it is a problem across our society, and those of us in the world of politics know only too well the difficulties that political parties of all persuasions have in attracting female talent into politics and in ensuring that women can progress to the very top in much the same way as men. This is therefore a cross-sector, societal issue, and it is important for the science community, too. In the few months that I have had this brief, I am pleased that so many people—not just women—have wanted to talk to me about women in science and about how we can do more to attract and, equally importantly, retain female talent in the science pool.

I was sad to see the Government withdraw funding from the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology, which was set up when the Labour party was in government to encourage more women into STEM subjects. If the Government scrap something and replace it with something else, I guess that they have an argument that they are still committed to the agenda, but there is no plan B when it comes to scrapping the UKRC’s funding. I would therefore like to hear a bit more from the Minister about his plans regarding women in science and how he sees things developing. How will he ensure that we meet the challenge of not only getting women into science, but retaining them?

The hon. Gentleman made a broader point about inspiring our young people and children into careers in science and about making science fun. One of my best visits since becoming a Member of Parliament was the morning I spent at the Big Bang science fair a few months ago. Tens of thousands of children were part of the fair and experienced it. It was incredible to see the energy in the Docklands arena, as those young people were exposed to science and scientific ideas. One thing that really struck me was a project that had been entered in one of the many competitions being run at the fair. A group of young girls had done a study of the science behind hair straightening. Some of the women reading or listening to the debate will recognise that hair straightening is a big industry, and it is certainly something a lot of women grapple with—it might not affect the Minister or the hon. Gentleman quite so much, but I know a lot about it. It was really interesting that the young girls could take something that mattered to them—they talked about the protective qualities of the different serums that they can put on their hair to protect it from the intense heat that they apply when they use a hair straightener—and understand that there is a lot of science behind it. They were able to study, understand and relate that to their own lives. That was a powerful way to show them that science is all around them and that it is not a scary, dry, arid, austere thing that only geeky boys do when they are at school, but an exciting, challenging thing that they use every day, often without realising it. Lots of good work is therefore being done to make science fun for our young people, although we can always do more.

I sympathise greatly with the hon. Gentleman’s point about specialist science teaching in our primary schools. The Campaign for Science and Engineering has spoken to me a number of times about the issue, which is part of a campaign that it is running. I am very sympathetic to the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion, and I am involved in discussions with the shadow education team about how we might make it happen. However, I absolutely agree with the broad principle, because we need people who understand science and who are passionate about it to be there right from the beginning of the educational journey that our young children make if we are to make sure that they do not drop science as soon as they turn 14, when they have to decide which options to take.

The hon. Gentleman also touched on the impact of the Government’s immigration policies on science and the wider higher education sector. When I was promoted to the position of shadow Higher Education Minister, I had no idea that my previous experience as a shadow Minister in the Home Office team would be quite so relevant, but somebody will talk to me about the impact of the Government’s immigration policies almost every week. The Minister and the Business Secretary are very sympathetic regarding the problems that have been visited on the higher education sector and the science community as a result of the Government’s immigration policy, and I suspect that we are often on the same side when we talk about the fact that the impact has been negative and that we need to change things. Unfortunately, to date, we have been unable to persuade the Home Office and Downing street to change course.

Why is that important? Because the Government’s pledge to reduce net migration to tens of thousands can be achieved only if they dramatically reduce the number of legitimate international students who come to our country, and only if they sit back and pray that lots of British people leave this country, while lots of Brits living abroad do not come back. We cannot get away from that fact. On the other things that impact on net migration figures, such as family migration, the Government have limited rights of appeal and so on, but they cannot do any more without falling foul of human rights law; they cannot outlaw people from having any kind of family life whatever or from marrying spouses from abroad. That leaves international students as the one group the Government can decrease significantly to meet their target.

We are in the bizarre position that the Government are holding up as a sign of success the fact that net migration has dropped, but missing out the fact that that is entirely down to Brits not coming home, Brits leaving and legitimate international students not coming to our country to study. Our competitors are absolutely rubbing their hands with glee over this. I met some colleagues from Australia a couple of weeks ago. The first thing that they said was, “Thank you; you have done such a great job. We made a huge mistake by trying to reduce the number of our legitimate international foreign students. We were starting to pay the price, but then you guys did the same thing, and now they are all coming back to us.” That is a problem.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

Will the hon. Lady confirm that the most recent set of Home Office statistics, in the past couple of weeks, showed net migration falling, and, within that, a rise in the number of overseas students coming to study in Britain?

[Shabana Mahmood]

There has been a drop in net migration and there is a flux backwards in relation to international students; the overall picture of what has happened in the past three years, since the policy was introduced, has been to create a perception that Britain does not want to educate international students and does not draw a distinction between legitimate international students and those who are here illegitimately or illegally. The London Metropolitan university affair did great damage to our standing in the world. Our competitors have picked up on that, and marketing departments in universities in Canada, Australia and America are homing in on it. It is the one thing that every higher education institution in this country—whether a leading Russell Group institution, a million-plus institution, part of the University Alliance or something else—has said is a big problem. Every part of the sector has been affected by the immigration policy; and it affects scientific talent as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

I appreciate the opportunity to respond to this very important debate, Mr Caton, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) on his excellent introduction of it. As he said, if we were not able to have this debate at a Campaign for Science and Engineering event, at least we can have it in Westminster Hall. I also enjoyed the contribution to the debate by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood).

There were many points in my hon. Friend’s speech that I agreed with, but I just want to mention a couple of them to start with. First, he rightly said that although this debate is called a debate about science, we are actually talking about the wide range of research activities across all disciplines. Indeed, within the science ring fence I was very keen, on the advice of the experts, that we should not do some dramatic rebalancing away from the arts and humanities or whatever. Within that ring fence, we have broadly maintained the cash funding going to the Arts and Humanities Research Council and to the Economic and Social Research Council. In fact, one of Britain’s strengths—we face challenges, but we should not forget our strengths—is that for a medium-sized economy we have an extraordinary range of scientific and research activities, and as every major challenge facing the world will be tackled by harnessing a range of different disciplines it is very important that we maintain that breadth.

I also very much liked and strongly agreed with my hon. Friend’s point that, unlike conventional fears about “crowding out”, this is an area where we “crowd in” spending. Indeed, there is a theme running through a lot of the new initiatives that the Government have been able to introduce of actively trying to encourage industry, business and charities to come in and invest with us. That was part of the logic, for example, of the competition for the investment in new research and development facilities on university campuses, the research partnership innovation fund. With £300 million of public money, we have attracted more than £700 million of private investment. There has therefore been £1 billion of new investment in R and D on university campuses, but with only £300 million of that £1 billion counting as public expenditure. My hon. Friend made a lot of other good points, but the two that I have mentioned particularly caught my attention.

Let me briefly touch on the nitty-gritty of spending, because underneath the fine words it is obvious that Members want to focus on where we are on spending. There is a powerful logic for the science ring fence as we have constructed it for this Parliament, because for the first time it brings together all the main areas of current spending. It is deliberately and explicitly a current spending pledge for this Parliament, which means it brings together the quality-related research funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England, running at about £1.6 billion a year, and the spending of Research Councils UK, running at approximately £2.8 billion a year. In addition, there are specific items such as the funding for the learned societies and the Higher Education Innovation Funding programme, which get us to the £4.6 billion ring fence. I think that this is the first time we have had a ring fence that has included all those items, so that even in a time of austerity we have been able to say that we are maintaining the cash going into current activity.

Although sometimes people have set alongside that what has happened in the retail prices index and said, “Well, that is a real-terms cut”, if they look at the advice that we have received from the experts about the efficiency of the science base’s performance, they will see that there clearly was, and still is, scope for efficiency savings. In so far as any group of scientists and researchers can save money by working more efficiently, they can be confident that that money is extra resource that can go into real activity instead, because it is within the ring fence.

To give one example of how we are generating efficiency savings, there is now far better sharing of scientific kit than there used to be. If we consider some of the initiatives, for example, in the N8 group of northern universities, we see that for the first time—it is rather shocking that it is happening for the first time—those universities are preparing registers so that they know all the equipment that is available in all their science labs. Consequently, before one of them buys some expensive new piece of kit, they can work out whether they can share a piece of kit that one of the other universities has. If they do need new equipment, they can purchase it collectively so that it can be shared among them. I do not buy the argument that performance and efficiency are fixed, and that the cash ring fence therefore equals real-terms cuts.

I am pleased with what both the previous speakers have said about the scientific community, and I greatly appreciate and salute the community myself. However, one of my challenges to the community is to turn the cash-protected ring fence into a real resource-protected ring fence by delivering efficiency savings to offset the rate of inflation.

It is indeed the case that capital is outside the ring fence. Again, that was a deliberate decision. The aim in the time of austerity was at least to keep the activity going. However, more discretionary decisions about capital investment can of course be taken. I must say that we inherited some stark discretionary decisions from the previous Government. There had been an artificial surge in science capital spend in 2009-10, but we then inherited plans for significant reductions in science capital spend, as part of a wider reduction. People should remember that the 40% reduction in capital spend was simply the overall plan for capital that we inherited from the previous Government. We did not add any further cuts.

Let me get back to the figures. Initially, about £1.9 billion of science capital was expected in the five years of this Parliament. We have been able to add approximately another £1.5 billion to that so that we have ended up with science capital spending, over the life of this Parliament, that is not out of line with the level that it was running at before the exceptional year of 2009-10. With great support from the Chancellor, who completely understands the value of science, I have taken decisions that have enabled us to have imaginative investments in new science capital. I will not go through the details of that now.

We have heard criticism about those being ad hoc decisions. My hon. Friend made an eloquent plea, asking, “Can we have a long-term plan?” Last autumn, Research Councils UK published a strategic framework containing its plans. In fact, it was launched in the most favourable circumstances possible, as part of a speech by the Chancellor in august surroundings in the Royal Society. I cannot think of a better way for a capital plan to be launched than via a speech by the Chancellor.

We did not commit ourselves, there and then, to all the capital spending that has been set out, but we provided a framework and recognised the uncertainties of politics and finance. We cannot always be sure exactly what we will be able to afford at what moment. Nevertheless, we have a clear, consistent, long-term vision. Drawing on the expertise of the scientific community, we tried to identify where the need for new capital was most intense and where there were strong arguments for extra capital investment. We published that document, and in the autumn statement the Chancellor made a further £600 million of investment that helped deliver on some of those aims. Even with capital, our record and our plans show that we have achieved a lot.

I do not want to get into specifics at this rather delicate moment in the plans for public spending in 2015-16, but the coalition stands by its pledge. We are aiming to make Britain the best place in the world to do science. That is partly a matter of financing and partly about the wider context and culture. For example, our lead in the global debate on open access and open data ensures that we are seen as serious players in the science debate. Indeed, I look forward to putting on the agenda for discussions with G8 Science Ministers in London, just over a week from now, what we can do to agree on further progress towards open access to research findings internationally and—even trickier, probably—how we can ensure greater access to the data behind the research findings. In that respect, there are a host of rather tricky technical questions about standards for the storing, and hence the mining, of data. We can be proud of what we are trying to do to support Britain’s excellent reputation on science.

Let me touch on two or three specific questions. First, my hon. Friend asked about postgraduates. I understand the anxiety about postgraduates. I have to say that the Government have not been deliberately reducing funding for postgraduates; the funding through research councils and HEFCE has been broadly maintained. There has been some shift in some of the research councils’ policies on larger centres for doctoral training, reflecting a view that it is probably better for people studying for doctorates to be in centres alongside other people doing so. That has also enabled us to make stronger connections between people doing doctorates and their opportunities for business and industrial experience.

We have to understand what is happening with postgraduates. Some universities increased their postgraduate fees in line with what was happening on student fees, but, of course, the latter was being done as part of a policy and was matched by access to loans only to be repaid when the graduates were earning more than £21,000. There is not the same kind of programme for postgrads, so the decision by universities to raise their fees, even though there had not necessarily been any reductions in funding, has had some impact on demand.

Arguments are being made for postgraduate loans. I welcome the debate about options for postgraduate student funding, but my experience with part-time students suggests that if we went down that route, there would have to be some controls over numbers and some regulation of postgraduates, which would change the postgraduate scene from the relatively open, unregulated one that exists at the moment. Pros and cons need to be carefully assessed.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood asked about women in science. I understand where she is coming from, and I agree that the science community needs to do more to deliver diversity. I tracked down some depressing statistics, showing how many people with good As and A*s in GCSE physics and maths converted those into a decision to carry on at A-level. That brings home the challenge that she is concerned about. Some 52% of boys who get an A* at GCSE physics carry on to do A-level physics, but only 25% of girls who get an A* at GCSE physics do so. That is a real challenge. Meanwhile, it is interesting to note—sadly, we are talking about gender stereotypes—that 41% of boys with an A* in GCSE biology go on to do A-level biology and 56% of girls with that grade go on to do so. Some decisions are being taken that we need to tackle. I will be at the Cheltenham science festival later this week, which is a great event, and among the many things that I will celebrate there, I look forward to meeting our STEMNET ambassadors—now 40% female, which helps—who go round schools and colleges encouraging young people to get into science. There is obviously far more that we can do.

We have made progress and we strongly support the Athena SWAN principles, aimed at diversity. In the past year, the Department of Health has required clinical medical schools to have a silver award for Athena SWAN principles. Research Councils UK, in a statement earlier this year, which I welcomed, said that it expected institutions in receipt of RCUK funding to provide evidence of commitment to equality and diversity. Participation in Athena SWAN was the kind of evidence that they were looking for. We are trying, without getting too directive, to use our nudge powers—the fashionable doctrine that we in the coalition signed up to—to get research councils to use their clear financial clout to nudge institutions towards those important Athena SWAN principles.

Both my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood, asked about overseas students and student visas. I have to say to the latter that, not for the first time, Labour’s figures do not add up. The evidence that I cited in my intervention shows that it is possible to reduce the total net migration number, as measured by the United Nations, and maintain the flow of university students. I was intrigued and encouraged when she did not follow my hon. Friend into the issue of the measurement of migration. There are different ways of constructing the statistics.

There are two crucial issues for higher education institutions. First, they fear that, in response to bad figures on net migration, there would be a crackdown on legitimate overseas students as the only way of meeting the target, but we made it absolutely clear in the coalition’s mid-term review:

“We will place no cap on the number of genuine students coming from across the world to study in this country”.

We have no plans to introduce any such cap, so there should be no kind of planning blight with people saying, “We are okay at the moment, but they are going to do something nasty to introduce number controls.” There are no such plans, and we made that clear in the coalition’s mid-term agreement.

The second anxiety—I noticed how the hon. Lady shifted her ground to this position—is about bad public relations and bad publicity. There has been very bad publicity, with hostile and often misleading media coverage, in India in particular. That is why the Prime Minister made it one of the priorities of his most recent trade mission to India, on which I accompanied him with representatives of higher education, to get the message across in India that legitimate students are welcome, with no cap on numbers. I heard him say that in interview after interview, and I took the opportunity to say so, too. We all need to do everything we can to get that message across, which appears to be a particular challenge on the Indian subcontinent; the growth in the number of students coming here from China is healthy and being maintained. Our commitment on not planning to introduce number controls in the future should help.

[Dr Huppert]

The Minister is absolutely right. There is no cap, but there are issues with perception. There are also problems with administration, and there are cases of students being badly dealt with by the UK Border Agency, as it was. Will he try to ensure that problems that do not fit with the policy are corrected?

[Mr Willetts]

Yes. I accept that there are problems with administration, and the UKBA, HEFCE and Universities UK are now working together in a more co-operative spirit than we have seen for a long time to try to address those problems.

My hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration is now visiting universities. We have heard about his visit to Cambridge, and I went with him to the London School of Economics a month or two ago. It was an interesting visit, and it began with LSE officials saying, “One of our female students came back into the country yesterday to sit her exams. She wasn’t able to take them earlier because she had been ill, but, sadly, she was detained at Heathrow”, or wherever it was. They asked, “Could you perhaps ensure that she is released so that she can come and do her exams?” My hon. Friend undertook to sort that out, and I am pleased to report that she was released. My hon. Friend is actively visiting universities. He has already visited Cambridge and LSE, and I think he plans to visit others. I accompany him when possible, and he is trying to ensure that the systems work well and effectively so that universities know where they stand.

I will conclude this very useful debate by referring to some other initiatives, because I do not see what we have been doing on science as simply a defensive operation for maintaining the cash spend. The coalition can also be proud of the initiatives we have taken to drive forward the agenda, and I will end with some brief examples of those initiatives.

First, I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge does not like the name, but I think “Catapult centre” is a great name—although admittedly it is a bit unfortunate for the space Catapult centre. [Laughter.] Britain withdrew from having its own launch vehicle 30 years ago, but the space Catapult centre is not an attempt at bringing back a new, cheap option for a launch vehicle.

The space Catapult centre is a bit tricky, but the rest are excellent. Of course, the Catapult centres are our attempt to catch up with the German Fraunhofer institutes, and it is interesting that, in his report for the outgoing Labour Government, Hermann Hauser proposed something similar. When my party was in opposition, I was involved in commissioning a report from James Dyson, and he also proposed something very similar. The Catapult centres are proving to be a great success. We started with the high-value manufacturing Catapult centres, which drew on a lot of facilities that already existed. We inherited those facilities, but we spread them into exciting new areas such as regenerative medicines, applications of satellite data and renewable energy.

Another initiative is the catalyst fund, which tries to provide rather greater cohesion between research council spending and Technology Strategy Board spending. The £180 million catalyst fund in life sciences comprises £90 million of Medical Research Council funding and £90 million of TSB funding working together so that researchers in the life sciences may have a grant—it is non-dilutive finance—to fund their work all the way from the lab to commercialisation. The reaction to that scheme from researchers and industry has been very positive, and we have been able to repeat it on a smaller scale in one or two other areas such as biotechnology.

At the beginning of my speech, I think I referred to the research partnership investment fund and the co-funding of higher education R and D capital. That has now leveraged £1 billion. As well as those types of innovative policies, we continue to play a full role in the development of science globally. Later this week, we will be celebrating the topping out ceremony for the Francis Crick Institute in London. There is fantastic, massive investment in the life sciences in London. Last week, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge mentioned, Her Majesty the Queen officially opened the new buildings for the laboratory of molecular biology in Cambridge. Sadly, I was not able to be there, but it has a claim to be the post-war world’s most productive science lab, and it is up there as one of the greats.

In Britain, we have also been able to play a leading role in the square kilometre array, which is a massive radio-astronomy project that will involve 3,000 satellite dishes spread across the deserts of Australia and South Africa. The massive data flow from those dishes will be coming to and managed out of Jodrell Bank, where there are the finest traditions of radio-astronomy. We are keen to use the square kilometre array to drive the development of scientific capability in, for example, sub-Saharan Africa, because it will be one of the biggest single science investments that southern Africa has ever had. We can be pleased with the initiatives we are taking, and I will discuss open data and open access at the G8 summit.

As I believe there is about to be a Division in the House, I will conclude by welcoming the high level of shared recognition, across all three parties represented today, of the importance of science and of supporting it. In a way, the fact that our three parties approach science in that vein is our best single guarantee of long-term stability for scientific activity in this country.