EU Membership: UK Science

Lord Krebs Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, and his committee on an excellent and timely report. As the noble Earl hinted, I intend to speak about the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts—ECMWF—as an example of how co-operation with other European countries and hosting European science centres bring great benefit to the UK. I seek reassurance from the Minister, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, has just done, that in spite of Brexit, we as a nation remain committed to hosting such institutions. The Minister of State for Science and Universities said in his evidence to the Select Committee:

“We are already host to a number of important research facilities and we are continuing to develop our networks … We continue to analyse all the opportunities to make more such commitments when they present good value for money”.


The ECMWF was established in 1975 in the UK after an international competition to host a new European institution. It is an intergovernmental institution independent of the European Union. Today it has 22 member states and 12 co-operating states from Europe. Its budget is around £85 million a year, half of which comes from member states and the other half from competitively won research and service contracts. It employs around 300 people located in Reading.

The role of the ECMWF is to advance the science of weather prediction and provide operational weather predictions, out to two weeks ahead, to the national meteorological services of its member states and other weather service providers. It was created to have facilities, such as a supercomputer, that one nation alone could not provide. The ECMWF quickly established itself as the world leader—a position it still holds today, recognised by all in the field. Its forecasting skill is the best in the world. It has become a magnet for atmospheric scientists worldwide to come to the UK to discuss and develop the science of weather, atmospheric pollution and climate projection. It works closely with the Met Office and the two together are seen internationally as a powerful scientific axis in the field of weather and climate. The ECMWF’s supercomputer is the largest in the world devoted to weather science and prediction.

The ECMWF’s accommodation at Shinfield Park in Reading was fully provided by the UK Government as part of the deal to locate it in the UK. But its success and growth mean that it has outgrown the site in Reading both in terms of office space and the computer centre. The governing body—the ECMWF Council—decided that the priority was to rehouse the data centre. As the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, has already said, on 1 March this year, the council made a provisional decision to relocate the data centre to Italy, with the final decision, after contract negotiations, coming in June.

The United Kingdom was not even second in the race to house the new data centre: Finland was the runner-up, with no third choice. Although the United Kingdom Government identified at least three possible sites in the UK for the data centre—near the University of Reading; at Harwell; and in Exeter near the Met Office—the financial input offered by the Government to provide the new facility was derisory and of a different order of magnitude from the Italian offer. I ask the Minister why the UK decided not to mount a competitive bid to house the one of the largest supercomputing facilities in the world for weather and climate. Why is something that was so attractive in 1975 no longer attractive in 2017?

Although it is clearly not ideal to have the computer in a different country from the scientists, it is workable from a purely technical point of view. So why is this a bad outcome for the UK? First, while we have housed the data centre, other countries have been investing in our infrastructure and engineering capacity; in other words, we get leverage. Secondly, this computing capacity enables us to be the hub of a global telecommunications network. Thirdly, it has given us technical know-how and experience in procurement, which has been valuable in the Met Office’s procurement of its new Cray supercomputer. Fourthly, it has been of benefit to the ECMWF to have the computer co-located with the scientists so that they can code in the most efficient way to get the most from the machine. But perhaps most worrying of all, in the longer run, the loss of the data centre from the UK may be a prelude to the loss of the ECMWF itself, if the UK is signalling, by its lack of willingness to invest, a lack of interest in the centre.

There could have been a good news story here for the UK. We could have demonstrated at the time of Brexit that the UK was still committed to collaboration with our European partners, whether in the EU or not. But by letting the ECMWF data centre go from the UK, the Government have given exactly the opposite message. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond by clarifying the Government’s position on the ECMWF and its data centre—either now or perhaps later in writing. I end by paraphrasing Oscar Wilde: to lose one centre may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Krebs Excerpts

Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 15th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)]

My Lords, I give my strong support to the government amendments in this group that allow for larger research councils, including an executive, and make it clear that our research can aim just to advance knowledge. I am very much an applied scientist, but I think it is hugely important that people are able do research that is just about moving forward the frontiers of their subject, even if we may not know for many years whether it has any purpose or practical application. I am delighted to see that such a provision has been included. I thank the Minister for not only listening to the comments of noble Lords and the research and innovation community, but responding to them.

I also add my support to Amendments 164A and 166A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, which would add a senior independent member to each council. I encourage the Minister to adopt that approach among the many other excellent improvements that he has already made.

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, echo the thanks of the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, to the Minister, the Bill team and the honourable Member for Orpington for the fruitful discussions and for listening to the points we raised at earlier stages of the Bill. I strongly support the government amendments in this group. There are two amendments with my name on them, which have already been discussed: on the establishment of an executive committee of the executive chairs of the research councils. I should declare that I am a former chief executive of the Natural Environment Research Council, so I have first-hand experience of this issue.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brown, and the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, both mentioned the importance of Amendment 181, which sets out that one of the research councils’ objectives is the advancement of knowledge. In fact, I would go further and say that the core objective of research is to advance knowledge. The fruits of that may be to improve the economy or quality of life but, as I said at Second Reading, one can never predict where those fruits will grow. I quoted the words of Nobel Prize winner Andre Geim, saying how important the advancement of knowledge for knowledge’s sake was in helping to promote the well-being of society and of the economy.

Amendment 164A concerns a senior independent member. I would have preferred to have a non-executive chair because I know from my own experience as the chief executive of a research council that it is quite hard to fill the roles of both the chair of the board and the proposer of initiatives to the board, but I understand that for various reasons the Government are not willing to go down that road. The role of the senior independent member who can be a mentor to the executive chair, and in difficult circumstances perhaps chair the board if it wishes to take the executive chair to task, is an important addition.

Also from my own experience, I strongly support the notion of lay members on the council as set out in Amendment 165A. There were occasions when I was the chief executive of the NERC when disputes between the warring factions of the academics—the earth scientists, the oceanographers, the ecologists and the atmospheric scientists—became so severe that I had to call upon the lay members to act as brokers in order to resolve them. I can hear the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, laughing at that remark, so obviously he has seen that kind of phenomenon before. The lay members of the research councils will have a key role to play and we should certainly support their inclusion among the 12 board members.

That is all I want to say at this stage, other than to repeat my thanks to the Minister and to noble Lords on these and other Benches with whom I have worked in trying to improve the Bill; I think we have significantly improved this part of it.

[Lord Broers (CB)]

My Lords, I compliment the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, and the noble Lord, Lord Prior, on their willingness to talk about these issues and on the changes that have been brought about in the Bill. In the end, it has been a very positive experience. I too would like to support Amendments 164A and 166A, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Mendelsohn and Lord Prior, as they resonate with the opinion that I expressed on Report. Those points have reached a satisfactory conclusion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise simply to make two brief points. In doing so, I hope I will be forgiven for taking the opportunity to pay the warmest tribute to, and to express my admiration for, my noble friends Lord Stevenson and Lord Watson for the sterling work they have put in on the Bill on behalf of this side.

There is a great deal of feeling in the research community about the points covered by these amendments. I am sure there is a recognition that a tremendous amount of work has gone into trying to find an acceptable formula of words. It should be put on record that many of those who are involved in the most outstanding research in our universities remain mystified about why the phrase,

“(such as a peer review process)”

should be in brackets. They believe it should, if anything, be in capital letters because they see peer review as essential to the process.

There is some feeling that the word “excellent” should not have disappeared. Quality is, of course, important, but what ultimately matters in the research record of our universities and in its contribution to Britain’s noble standing in the world community for the quality of our research is its emphasis on excellence. As this goes forward it will be essential to keep those two important concerns of the research community in mind. In saying that, I should emphasise that I am involved with three universities and that I was a governor of the LSE for many years and am now an emeritus governor.

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction of these amendments. I shall refer very briefly to Amendments 189, 190 and 191 which are related to the Haldane principle. I am delighted that it is in the Bill. During the passage of the Bill we heard many different views on what the Haldane principle is, whether there is more than one Haldane principle and, indeed, whether it should be called the Willetts principle because one of the key references is the paper by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts.

Cutting to the core of what is involved here, it is about peer review and deciding which individual projects are funded within broad areas. Of course, it is reasonable for Ministers to have broad priorities, just as when the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, was Minister for Universities and Science, he described the eight great technologies that he thought were priorities for this country. However, within those, it should be the peer review system, the practitioners and others who are close to the action, who decide which projects are funded. Although the wording says “quality”, if I were on a peer review committee I would interpret “quality” as including excellence, echoing the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. Therefore I warmly support this amendment.