Antarctica: Centenary of Scott Expedition

Lord Avebury Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, I join with the congratulations that have been expressed for my noble friend Lady Hooper on securing this timely debate. It allows us to debate NERC’s plan to sabotage the British Antarctic Survey.

The objective of the merger with NOC is to save money in the longer term by reducing the scientific resources devoted to polar science and oceanography. About 18 BAS posts will go during the CSR period, depending on the salaries of the staff who leave, and this will already impair their ability to achieve their scientific objectives. Beyond that, the expected costs and savings arising from the merger are not identified in the consultation, as has been said, but are due to be revealed to the council in December. Can my noble friend say how many staff are actually in post now in BAS and NOC respectively; how many there will be at the end of the CSR period; and how many on completion of the merger? Without this information, the Select Committee on Science and Technology, which intends to assess the merits of the proposal, will be unable to do so.

Of course, NERC is in some difficulty because of the Treasury’s demands on it. Cutting the resources devoted to the environment is not the act of the greenest Government ever when there are other ways of balancing the books, such as taxes on the rich. Vandalising the nation’s research base should be ruled out altogether in the Government’s search for ways of reducing the deficit.

Will the Government pay attention to the advice against the merger, not only by Martin Holdgate, who was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Jenkin, but also by Jonathan Shanklin, one of the BAS scientists who discovered the hole in the ozone layer, who says it would create a comparable hole in British science? The RSPB, with its million members, deplores the threat of commercial development in the polar regions contrary to the Antarctic Treaty 1991 and the mission statement of the NOC.

With climate change already threatening the survival of millions we should be careful not to do anything that would impair the capacity of science to examine its causes. Recently, an enormous basin has been discovered below the west Antarctic ice sheet, the characteristics of which suggest that the risks of the whole sheet collapsing are greater than was previously thought. In the worst case scenario, the global sea level would rise by several metres, overwhelming the Thames flood barrier as well as many coastal regions. To design a new barrier it would essential to have reliable estimates of the rise in sea level over the following century. If we can no longer afford scientific work of the quality now being done by BAS scientists, how will Governments be able to make decisions that require the spending of tens of billions of pounds?

NERC wants the management of the marine infrastructure and logistics for polar and marine research to be undertaken by its Swindon office. Three ship reviews and one on marine engineering over the past 12 years have shown that merging these operations would generate no savings because the polar ships and their operations are fundamentally different from those of the blue water ships. As has been mentioned, the last review by a respected member of the NERC executive board was completed in the spring and gave detailed reasons against the merger. However, if, contrary to all expert advice, NERC insists on a merger of marine operations, then Cambridge should be the single location because, on its own analysis, the shore side management and engineering support in BAS is more effective than NOC’s, as demonstrated by the relative staffing numbers and the level of satisfaction recorded by scientists using the ships of the two organisations.

As mentioned by my noble friend Lord Willis, in 2011 NERC tried to close down the Signy research station, which is an excellent example of multinational co-operation, and also tried to scrap the polar ship “Ernest Shackleton”. The Government decided that that decision was wrong. They called it in and vetoed it then, and they should do the same for this merger now. If they cannot do that, they should at least tell NERC to do the arithmetic on BAS management of the marine infrastructure and publish it, together with the rest of the missing information, in time for it to be considered by the Select Committee.