Scientific Infrastructure (S&T Report)

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)]

My Lords, I join my noble friend Lord Selborne in congratulating the chairman of the committee, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, on his four years. I believe that it is the last occasion on which he will introduce a report of the Select Committee in the House. We thank him very much for his service. It has been apparent that those who have spoken so far, and who all took part in the inquiry, are very familiar with the evidence. I must confess that although I have tried to look at it all, I should say that there are 500 pages of it on the internet and, quite frankly, I have not read more than a small part. If anything I say has been covered, I can only apologise for that.

I have two responses to make to the debate. One is a worry that has been touched on but which I would like to take a little further, while the other is a question for my noble friend the Minister. I turn first to the worry. There has been general praise for the Government’s response, and I should say at once that it is mostly encouraging. The committee raised the issue of the operational costs involved in making the best use of scientific infrastructure expenditure and considered the question put by my noble friend Lady Sharp, which is the provision of a suitably skilled workforce. That was included in the part of the report headed “Not just machines”, and of course that is hugely important.

I do not need to spell out the detailed evidence on which the committee made its fourth recommendation because it is set out in the report. The recommendation, which has been quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and others, describes,

“a damaging disconnect between capital investment and the funding for operational costs”.

The committee recommended that a way should be found in which two funding sources could be,

“tied together in one sustainable package”.

That sounds very sensible, but it is the Government’s response to this that worries me. After talking about recognising,

“the importance of greater alignment between capital and resource funding”,

and arguing that the commitment to rising capital spending is “matched” by the stability of ring-fenced resource funding, the response ends by referring to the recently published consultation paper, to which reference has been made. It is entitled Creating the Future: A 2020 Vision for Science and Research—A Consultation on Proposals for Long-term Capital Investment in Science and Research.

Over the weekend, I had a very good look at that consultation paper and perhaps I might be forgiven if I refer to it in rather greater detail than other speakers. Section 2 is headed “Science Strategy for Major New Projects”. Annexe A lists the projects on which consultees are invited to give their views. While a few of them are able to spell out the operational costs and to give estimates, most of them—indeed the majority—on the question of operational costs say:

“Subject to detailed business case”,

or that this depends on “international negotiations”.

How on earth are the scientists invited to look at this consultation paper, to express their views on the various exciting projects spelt out, to be able to do anything if they are given no guidance whatever as to what the operational costs may be? Even more, how could they do so if they do not have any confidence that their share of the allocated resources would enable them to play their part in operating the proposed infrastructure?

Paragraph 14 of the consultation paper is remarkably frank on that. It states:

“While capital budgets have been set to 2021, resource budgets beyond 2016 will be considered as part of the 2015 Spending Review (as with other areas of Government resource spending). Consequently, this consultation does not in itself represent a commitment to funding; rather, responses will inform the Science Capital Roadmap and decisions will be subject to the development of satisfactory business cases”.

How far does that take us?

The Science Minister is constrained by the Haldane principle in his ability to tell the research council what its priorities should be, but that does not apply to the capital budget so that he and his colleagues can prioritise the capital projects. Here we come to the point, which the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and my noble friend Lady Sharp have mentioned, about ad hoc announcements. The noble Lord mentioned graphene and a number of others have also been mentioned. They are decided outside the prioritisation process led by the research councils and the Technology Strategy Board. As we have been reminded, research councils are held to a flat cash budget in the current CSR and are not able in theory to commit resources beyond the CSR period. Therefore, they are reluctant to commit to new research budgets to make use of capital investment. I understand the point made by my noble friend Lord Selborne and, as has been pointed out, it often is extremely painful to have to cut back something in order to fund something new.

This is an issue of joined-up government. I do not see in the Government’s response to the committee’s recommendation anything other than that it is wholly inadequate. Having been a Minister and having dealt with responses of this kind, I detect that officials have drafted a form of words to sound sympathetic but to make sure that nothing changes. Therefore, I do not share the universal praise made for Government’s response. I hope that my noble friend may have something to say about that in his reply.

I am talking as someone who did not take part in the inquiry but who has taken part in other work of the Select Committee and I now turn to nuclear research and development. I looked through the evidence—as much as I could get on my screen—to see whether anybody had raised the issues the Select Committee explored a couple of years ago about the inadequacy of nuclear energy research and development in this country. As many of the noble Lords who took part in that inquiry will remember, we were frankly horrified by what we were told by our witnesses on that occasion. Energy research and innovation had virtually collapsed; it had dwindled to a very low level indeed over the preceding years. Although we heard that there had been substantial infrastructure expenditure—notably on the very splendid central laboratory of the National Nuclear Laboratory at Sellafield—almost none of it had been properly commissioned, because there was no money for it. That totally illustrates the points made in the committee’s fourth recommendation, but it does not look to me as though nuclear energy has figured in the committee’s report at all. I am deeply puzzled as to why.

I question why nuclear research and development are not part of this study. On the previous occasion, our report was a wake-up call to Ministers, and it is much to their credit that they responded very positively. The Beddington committee was set up and produced its recommendations. Not all of them have been implemented yet. We are already trying to follow them up. The only reference to the previous inquiry during the evidence was a question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Rees of Ludlow, but it did not touch on why nuclear research and development was not included in the proposed strategy.

What seems to have happened is that research spending, including scientific infrastructure, which is entirely in the control of individual departments—that is certainly true of nuclear energy R&D, which is run by DECC—has been regarded as outside the scope of the present inquiry. That is reinforced when one looks at the consultation paper, which seeks views on which projects should be given priority. It lists a wide range of fascinating projects, but it is not until one reaches annexe A5, on page 84, under the general heading “Energy Security and Resilience”, that one finds anything at all about nuclear energy. Even then, it does not say anything about the major research areas we touched on in the former inquiry, such as the nuclear fuel cycle, advanced reactor designs, collaboration with other countries, nuclear waste treatment and disposal, or any of the other matters that fall within DECC’s remit. Yes, a few research projects are being undertaken by the EPSRC—it was asked directly to take those on—but this is only a small proportion of the nuclear research that the Select Committee two years ago urged on the Government. Why was this inquiry not extended to departmental spending? Why has it been confined to the areas of infrastructure spending that lie in the research councils and—as was said by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs—the main public sector research establishments that BIS is responsible for?

The committee’s second recommendation, to which reference has been made and which I fully support, is for the establishment of,

“a long-term strategy and underpinning investment plan for scientific infrastructure”.

It then goes on to add the important words:

“This should take a comprehensive view of scientific infrastructure needs across the UK, extending beyond the jurisdiction of the Research Councils”.

This simply has not happened. Nothing in the consultation document indicates that that is going to change. When John O’Reilly gets to work on this he may well pick up that point, and say that there are a whole lot of other things. A lot of Defra’s expenditure is totally outside the scope of this, but it can be hugely important as well.

My question to my noble friend the Minister is therefore: do the Government believe that the infrastructure needs of nuclear energy research and innovation should continue to remain in a separate silo outside the recommended strategic plan, and therefore have no access to funding from the national scientific infrastructure spending pool? DECC’s ability to provide funds for this is, we know, severely constrained because its nuclear expenditure is entirely concentrated on decommissioning and, as it will be, dealing with waste.

I am of course aware that NIRAB—the Nuclear Innovation and Research Advisory Board—exists to advise the Government on nuclear R&D, and I hope that the Select Committee will find an early opportunity to question its chairman, Dame Sue Ion, about how it is getting on. However, there seems little doubt but that the resources available to DECC, which NIRAB may well call on for research, will fall well short of what is needed if this vital low-carbon technology of nuclear energy is to fulfil its potential over the next 30 or 40 years. I look forward to my noble friend’s reply to that question.

I end on a happier note. I, too, share the huge admiration for the speech made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer a few weeks ago at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. It left me in no doubt whatever of the Chancellor’s deep personal commitment to the advancement of science and innovation in this country. While lauding the achievements which enable this country, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, put it, to punch above its weight—which is certainly justified; he gave the figures—the Chancellor did not shirk the areas where we simply have to do better. Notably, these included the turning of British invention and discovery into British industrial and commercial success.

Yes, much has to be done. This Select Committee report shows how, in one major area of public spending, we could do better with the resources the Chancellor has been able to provide. I congratulate the committee very much and I hope that the Government will see their way to implement the recommendations, including recommendation 4.