Science Research Funding in Universities (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to have the chance to contribute to this debate. There are so many things in this report. I really want to speak about the disastrous impact of the dysfunctional system of tuition fees, the impact of Brexit and the failure to resolve so many relevant issues as the Brexit transition period comes to an end, many of which are clearly highlighted in this report and, in the year since, have only become more pressing.

What I have chosen to focus on, however, is the scope and approach of the whole report. I understand that it is the Science and Technology Committee, and that this was a report about science research. A limited scope is therefore, on one level, fair enough, but what is lacking in this report is even a hint of understanding that to assume that “science” can be walled off as a separate area of study, relying on test tubes and instruments rather than being integrated as part of systems thinking about the goals of the whole of society, is disturbing. I am also very concerned to see this in government thinking often. I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley of Nettlestone, referred to the excellent social science at the University of Hull—something I encounter regularly as a resident of the region.

We hear some rhetoric from government and official sources about the need for systems thinking, the removal of silos and importance of cross-disciplinary research, but everything I hear from researchers and academics on the ground is that it is just that: purely rhetoric. I am told time and again that is very hard to get funding for truly cross-disciplinary work and get full professional credit for it.

I encounter many in “science” who treat the economic, social, cultural and political environment as a given—the permanent, unchanging reality in which they have to work—rather than as a constantly shifting landscape where they need to work with economists, sociologists, political scientists and many others so that they can understand the interaction of their activities with broader society. That limits and damages the quality of their work and its effects.

Excellent work is being done in the UK in some of these areas. Some that I have encountered include the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures at the University of Sheffield, the Centre of Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity at the University of Surrey and the sadly discontinued Centre for Research into Economic and Socio-Cultural Change, which did brilliant work on everything from care homes to pig farming. There are also independent organisations such as Forum for the Future. But when I look around the world, leadership chiefly rests elsewhere. One example of the kind of work we need far more of is that done by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna.

What does this lack of systems thinking mean in practical terms? With the Agriculture Bill before the House, that is a good area to focus on. A very useful Food Ethics Council research paper reports that the direction of research funding has remained almost unchanged for 20 years, despite the huge global shifts in thinking about agriculture, particularly the importance of soils, agroecology and systems thinking. There is an “obsessive focus on wheat” rather than crop diversity, which could feed into a healthier food system, centred particularly on fruit and vegetables.

The UK is not on track, as the world is not, to meet any of the sustainable development goals to which it signed up. At the heart of the goals, their whole structure is the understanding that we operate in a complex, chaotic, shock-ridden world that needs to be thought about holistically, not in silos. I hope this will be taken as a constructive contribution and I suggest to the committee that it turns serious attention to these issues. I ask the Minister to address these issues on this or a future occasion.