Chief Scientific Advisers: S&T Committee Report

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Selborne]

My Lords, over the years I have had many reasons to be grateful to departmental chief scientific advisers and, for that matter, Government Chief Scientific Advisers, particularly in my capacity as chairman of the Foundation for Science and Technology—a role which I took over from my noble friend Lord Jenkin. I hope that we have been of some help to chief scientific advisers; they have certainly been helpful to us in formulating policy by ensuring to ensure that what might be called a discussion held with policymakers, parliamentarians, industry, academics and the like can explore a whole range of scientific issues.

That has led me to agree entirely with the thrust of the report that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, introduced so concisely and clearly. What we are looking for from any chief scientific adviser must be credibility and respect from their own community of scientists and engineers. They must have the ability to speak on level terms and must know who to go to nationally and internationally, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, reminded us. There must also be confidence in their ability to navigate the shoals of Whitehall—not necessarily an easy one if coming out of academia. They need good links with the user community, whether doctors, industry, academia or farmers such as myself. Above all, they need independence of mind. When they find that their views do not conform with the Minister’s or the Permanent Secretary’s, they must be prepared to speak out. My noble friend Lord Jenkin dealt very clearly with the issues that arise when the DCSA is stifled.

The role is, clearly, to offer independent advice to Ministers that is underpinned by the evidence base. Much more than that, it is important to recognise that the DCSA has a role within the department to ensure that scientific evidence is used to a consistently high standard throughout. As my noble friend Lord Willis has reminded us, there is not a culture of scientific understanding and appreciation in either Parliament or the Civil Service—at least, not very deeply. Promoting trust of the department’s policies among the user community—the scientific and engineering communities—is a central role. That is where credibility has to be maintained. If the credibility of the DCSA is to be undermined, measures have to be taken to protect his or her credibility. There has to be public trust, too, in the policies of the department on scientific issues. That includes in Parliament; that is very much part of the role of the DCSA.

To achieve these objectives, you are looking for somebody who has communication skills and an understanding of policy issues and risk assessment. They simply must be independent; the idea that it could be an appointment from within the Civil Service seems to beggar belief. My noble friend Lord Jenkin provided an exposition of the need for a protocol that can be followed—guidelines which could be developed—in order that CSAs who have felt the need to express disagreement with policy decisions do not put their relationships at risk with the Permanent Secretary or the Minister. This seems to be absolutely critical. I agree with those who have already said that the Government’s response in that respect has been disappointing. It is not just that the Minister might find it inconvenient. It is much more likely that if the chief scientific adviser cannot speak his mind, the whole department will eventually find that it will return to haunt them.

On reflection, the committee asked a rather unfair question of Sir John Beddington which, nevertheless, he answered with aplomb. We asked him what was his greatest failure and, as we have heard already, he mentioned his inability to persuade the Government that they should not be spending money in the National Health Service on homeopathy.

We also heard examples of the failure of chief scientific advisers to engage effectively within departments. Professor Collins gave us the example of offshore wind, where he was not able to participate in the discussion and the department let him down. Professor Wilde of the Home Office said that when he heard about ID cards it was on the “Today” programme. That is not a very good example but it was clearly a failure to engage the CSA which, in turn, will lead to a lack of trust in policies.

As a farmer, I always follow with interest the scientific issues in the farming and food sector, where public trust has been a real issue for many years. We have already heard mention of BSE, genetic modification, foot and mouth, salmonella, e-coli and much else. We all remember the lesson that public confidence was destroyed by not being transparent enough with the information; by not engaging in a dialogue where you treat the public in an open and frank way and put all the information that you have in an accessible form. Of course, nowadays, that means websites. If you do not do that, the chief scientific adviser, again, will find himself or herself greatly exposed.

That brings me back to badgers. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said that he would succumb to temptation and mention badgers. This is a topical issue. The noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord May, and 28 other very distinguished scientists published a letter in the Sunday papers to which there has been a response today in the Times. This demonstrates, at least to a layman like me, that this is an area where, at the very least, there is an enormous scientific divide. We are told by two equally eminent groups of people that the culling either will or will not help. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has already given his views on that.

This is a topical issue. I looked at the Defra website today to see to what extent this has been taken on board—presumably many people are concerned and confused by this plethora of advice—and the only thing I could find which referred to this particular issue dated back to March 2012. It mentioned the Observer and the BBC and described it as a “myth bust”. In other words, what the BBC and the Observer were saying about the culling lacking scientific support was a myth. I hope the debate moves up a notch to something much more responsible than that.

Do please recognise that you must put in the full evidence that Natural England and other scientists are giving to the Minister and compare it with the contrary evidence that you are getting from others such as Professor John Bourne, who led the original trials and is one of the signatories, and the public must be given credit for having an ability to weigh both arguments. I am not passing judgment as to whether the 30 signatories are right or wrong; I am simply saying that the way the debate has been handled is wrong.

Lastly, let me refer to the need for links from chief scientific advisers into the user community, which will often mean business. Until recently, I chaired the Partners Board of Living with Environmental Change, which included all the research councils, a large number of government departments and agencies, the Met Office, the Environment Agency and many others, and we did one thing which was helpful—we set up a business advisory board. I was enormously impressed by the commitment of those very high-powered members of the business advisory board; in fact, the Minister took much more notice of our advisory board than he did of us. That is perhaps understandable, because the transformation of policies into wealth creation, quality of life or whatever else is their purpose simply will not happen until you engage the user community.

At the moment, in his effort to try to promote the science policies within his department, the chief scientific adviser has a science advisory committee, and there may well be people from business or from the user community on it. However, they are really there as an accident; they are not quite there in order to help the transformational research. So I commend very strongly the idea of something like a business advisory board, or whatever other advisory board, for transforming science into the user community. That is a precedent which could be followed elsewhere.