Antarctica: Centenary of Scott Expedition

Lord Willis of Knaresborough Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, on securing this debate. Inevitably much of it will focus on NERC’s proposals for the future of BAS, so I will confine my remarks accordingly. In so doing, I must declare an interest as a council member for NERC, so I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, for her warm comments.

The proposals to bring together BAS and NOC is exactly that—a proposal. It is not a done deal, and I wish to assure the House that the proposal and the responses to the consultation will be scrutinised by an independent academic before any firm proposal comes to the council in December.

Let me try to explain NERC’s thinking. First, let me make clear what is not being proposed. There is no proposal to close the BAS centre in Cambridge or the oceanographic centres in Southampton or Liverpool, or to close the bases at Rothera, Halley or Signy in Antarctica, or Bird Island or King Edward Point on South Georgia. Nor is there any attempt by the FCO or indeed NERC to abandon the region to the Argentineans, although we understand the sensitivities. Nor is there any proposal to reduce the size or capability of the fleet or aircraft. Nor is there any attempt to reduce the overall expenditure in Antarctic science during the current CSR, despite the 3% reduction in NERC’s budget; BAS has received a £42 million flat cash settlement for the whole period. Nor is there any attempt to reduce the number of scientists or current scientific programmes. Nor is there any attempt to reduce access to Antarctica for our universities, which, by the way, contribute well over 50% of the current polar research portfolio. It is important to put that on the record before we begin the debate.

So what challenges is NERC trying to wrestle with? Let me highlight two. First, NERC, like the other research councils, with the exception of the Medical Research Council, is having to make savings—in our case, around 3%. Our budget was reduced in real terms for Antarctica by about £9 million, and we estimate that by 2015 the cost of our major infrastructure will have increased by about £7 million. Put simply, running ships and aircraft, essential for delivering polar science, is an extremely costly business.

As a result, there is growing pressure on the amount of science that we can do. That leads to the inescapable logic that without a new major source of income—and no one is suggesting that there is—we will do less and less science as our infrastructure costs continue to increase. In effect, the status quo means NERC reducing world-class science elsewhere in its portfolio to maintain an open-ended, ever-increasing subsidy to BAS. Is that what your Lordships support?

We believe that there are logistical and administrative savings to be had by bringing the infrastructure of two similar organisations together. However, for NERC, simply looking for greater organisational symmetry would not justify a merger. There has to be a compelling argument that the merger will enhance opportunities for world-class environmental science.

So let me come to the second reason. Over the past three decades, NERC has pursued its strategic marine and polar science missions separately with BAS and NOC, and both have retained distinct scientific and geographic loci. Conversely, our scientific understanding has, over the same period, brought into sharp focus that the earth is a closely coupled system. In particular, the coupling between the oceans and the cryosphere is tight in the polar regions, which are the source of the deep water that forms one leg of the thermohaline circulation that in turn effects the global climate. This greater understanding of the ocean and its role in climate change is revealing problems of great scale and complexity. For example, the role of the Antarctic circumpolar current in supplying warm water to the Antarctic ice sheet base, with its consequent melting of the ice sheet into the ocean, is of massive concern to scientists. Likewise, as the Arctic sea ice melts, the altered circulation and redistribution of heat and fresh water in the Arctic Ocean, and its exchanges with the north Atlantic, is a massive cause for concern for us in the United Kingdom.

These are but two challenges that directly link polar and ocean science. It is self-evident that NERC as a world leader in environment research should seek to combine its marine and polar strategic science to maintain a world-class capability when dealing with problems of this size and scale. That is what the proposal is about. It is not about wrecking things but about building things for the future. If noble Lords disagree with NERC’s proposals, one should at least respond to these two significant challenges on the cost and the science, and provide some compelling evidence that the status quo offers a better way of resolving both.