Lord Broers
Main Page: Lord Broers (Crossbench - Life peer)Scientific Infrastructure (S&T Report)
Lord Broers Excerpts
Lord Broers (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of the board of the Diamond Light Source for the past six years. I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the committee on this report, which is very important. I agree with what he and others said about the inadequacy of our overall R&D expenditure in the UK; I have mentioned it several times in this House.
I am speaking in the gap because I want to make a detailed point about the flexibility of capital spending. At present, recently imposed rules—coming from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills perhaps and set by the Treasury—prevent the carrying over of any capital funds from one financial year to the next. This is not sensible; it is even detrimental in the funding of state-of-the-art, large, complex scientific systems. Many components of such systems are themselves under development, and delivery times, even from the best suppliers, are not reliable. These components can also be very expensive; for example, quite easily 10% or more of an annual capital budget. Should a delivery slip across the end of a financial year, the money is presently lost, leading to overly conservative purchasing decisions. There are also cases where suppliers offer special time-limited deals on equipment, and it pays to have reserve to take advantage of this. The lack of flexibility in carrying funds from one year to another also encourages the bad practice at the end of a financial year of just buying back-up equipment and putting it in cupboards. I have seen this inefficient practice in industry, when the mistake was made of imposing on research organisations a zero carryover policy. I recommend that exceptions be made and flexibility allowed in the funding of large, state-of-the-art scientific systems. This was certainly enjoyed by Diamond in its early years and was quite important in meeting budgets and schedules et cetera—perhaps 10% should be allowed in the carryover.