111. At the end of this inquiry the first question which must be answered is: what does the picture revealed both in Forward Look and the evidence submitted to us say about the effectiveness with which decisions on publicly funded R&D are monitored and drawn together within a coherent strategy reflecting overall Government priorities? The Government's overarching objective for SET is "to ensure that a sufficient level of investment is being achieved and, equally important, that public funding is being used effectively.".[112] The OST, with the CSA at its head, was supposed to bring this key message home to departments and to ensure that it ran like a thread through all policy decisions. Sadly, whilst Ministers and senior officials claim to uphold the importance of these objectives, the evidence suggests otherwise. Indeed, the example of MAFF, one of our two case studies, gives us cause for serious concern in this regard.

112. On the question of overall SET funding patterns, we share, as we have already indicated, the misgivings of witnesses representing the science community over the decline in expenditure by civil departments. It is true that this is part of a long-term trend dating back to the early 1990s, but its continuation following the last CSR meant that the welcome increase in investment through the dual support system only served to widen the spending gap further between civil departments and the science base. The possible consequences of this development, if it continues unchecked, bear repeating. Firstly, a further erosion of civil departmental R&D, even as part of a growing total for publicly funded investment, sends out the wrong signals about where the Government sees the main research effort being made in future. But more specifically, it runs counter to Ministers' professed wish to encourage evidence-based policy decisions. Secondly, the uncertainty it creates about future funding for individual projects (and for the institutions who may depend on them for their viability) jeopardises the health of the science base—another supposed concern of Ministers. Thirdly, as industry increasingly withdraws from certain areas of basic research, the question arises as to who will be left to fill the gaps. The Science Budget, even at its higher level of funding, is already stretched and cannot be expected to take up the strain.

113. The impact of such funding decisions feeds through into individual departments in a way which, if the MAFF example is typical, has alarming implications for Government science policy as a whole. MAFF is responsible for a farming industry which—even allowing for over-use of the term—is acknowledged to be in crisis. This Report is not the occasion to rehearse the details: suffice to say by way of background that in the last few years farm incomes have dropped steeply (more than outweighing the increases of the early 90s); most sectors face extremely difficult market conditions; and confidence on the part of the industry is historically low. This pessimism is mirrored by an erosion of public confidence in agriculture which has been fuelled by a succession of public health scandals ranging from food poisoning outbreaks to the mishandling of public concern over GM foods and the debacle over BSE.

114. Yet at this highly sensitive juncture, when common sense would suggest the need for basic research was never greater, MAFF has cut its R&D budget in real terms by 7.5% over the CSR period, and by 10% over the lifetime of the current Parliament. Any excuse for such short-sightedness which may have existed before the BSE problem arose can no longer hold good. To argue, as did both the Minister and the Chief Scientist, that BSE-related R&D has been protected misses the point. That is vital research aimed, amongst other things, at establishing more firmly the pathology and epidemiology of the disease, but whose importance has become clear only after the event. It is not so much a question of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted as of fitting security devices to prevent a further break-in.

115. By definition, however, if BSE-related R&D has been protected within a diminished budget, other areas must have suffered. Since no one can know where the next BSE-type problem will occur, the Ministry cannot be sure that it is not cutting back on research in precisely the wrong areas. Research cannot be turned on and off like a tap: it depends on the availability of skilled and highly motivated scientists and on well-equipped facilities, which in turn depend on secure long-term funding. The kind of basic research which has suffered as a result of MAFF's squeeze on its R&D budget is unlikely to be carried out by anyone else. It will certainly not be done by the agriculture industry itself in its present straitened circumstances —still less by individual farmers.

116. Given all this, we were extremely disappointed with the response by the Minister to the concerns we had raised with him. His disarming admission that the Ministry had been subject to "a particularly tough settlement" in the 1998 CSR and that this had "left us some way short of our needs" conveniently placed the blame on his predecessor but otherwise did not advance the debate. We were especially shocked to learn, however, that not only had the cuts bitten too deep (which we already suspected) but they had been made in flat opposition to the recommendations of a working group set up by the Ministry as part of the 1998 CSR to consider the adequacy of its R&D programme. As we have indicated, the group had in fact recommended that spending should be increased by up to £8 million annually in order to focus on what it had identified as the key areas of research.[113]

117. Faced with this strong advice, the decision to proceed with cuts on the grounds that R&D was "the largest single element of our discretionary programme expenditure"—as the Minister put it—is all the more incomprehensible and regrettable. It also belies the Minister's stated commitment to the health of the science base. (That objective is being further undermined, according to our witnesses, by the growing reliance on the use of short-term contracts for research and the resulting uncertainty and damaging effect on career prospects. Departments appear resigned to this development as a financial and commercial imperative. The DETR does not, to our surprise, even collect information centrally on contract durations).

118. The unsatisfactory position in MAFF reflects the political weakness of the department in its negotiations with the Treasury over the last CSR. But it also speaks to a serious institutional and administrative deficiency within MAFF's decision-making structure. Because the department had been landed with an inadequate CSR settlement, sacrificial cuts in discretionary spending had to be found across the board, so that R&D programmes—although supposedly "ring-fenced"[114]— had no choice but to take their share (indeed more than their share). There was no one within the department to stand up for science as an essential adjunct to evidence-based policy-making and to argue against the short-sightedness of paring back the R&D budget.

119. In the light of this sorry state of affairs we are tempted to remark that "the two cultures" are alive and well in MAFF. The Chief Scientist, as the official responsible for promoting the importance of R&D, no doubt does his best. But his voice in the senior counsels of the department is muffled by his subordination to the Permanent Secretary and by his lack of an automatic right of access to the CSA (except through the CSAC which meets only four times a year). This sporadic pattern of meetings is hardly commensurate with the "frequent contact"claimed by the Minister.[115] For his part, the Permanent Secretary, although notionally in overall charge of MAFF's science policy (he chairs the R&D Committee), simply has too much else on his plate to be able realistically to give those matters the attention they deserve amid the clamour of competing priorities.

120. We would observe, on the basis of our two case studies, that the situation which has arisen in MAFF would be far less likely to occur at the DETR. This is because under that Department's decentralised system of decision-making it is for individual policy directorates to determine what share of any reduction in programme budgets should be borne by R&D. We believe that this comparison should give pause for thought to MAFF, the OST and the CSA. It may be, as the CST suggested in its July 1999 Report, that a standard template for decision-making across all departments would be inappropriate. All the same, we hope that the OST will reflect on the contrasting pictures at MAFF and the DETR and examine what lessons can be learned for the future. Our comments in this paragraph do not detract from criticisms of the DETR's research administration that we have identified elsewhere.[116]

121. If the example of MAFF indicates shortcomings in the department's own structures and procedures, it also reveals failures on the part of the OST and the CSA to adopt a sufficiently pro-active stance, to uphold the primacy of scientific evidence in policy-making and to champion the cause of the science base. We acknowledge that, in this regard, all the witnesses who spoke on behalf of the Government made the right noises in their evidence to us. The CSA went out of his way to single out MAFF (along with the MOD) for his particular concern so far as the declining profile of R&D expenditure was concerned. But we agree with those other witnesses who saw no evidence of any serious intervention by the CSA or the OST at any point in the process leading up to the cuts in MAFF's R&D budget when such a démarche might have been effective. This reluctance to act at a formative stage (as opposed to conducting a review after the event) is perhaps less surprising when viewed in the light of the revealing remark by the Chief Scientist at the DETR, to which we alluded earlier[117]. Asked for examples of adjustments to R&D expenditure priorities following representations from the CSA, Dr Fisk replied that there were no such instances and that, in any case, "we would have treated such an event as signalling a breakdown in our working methods.".[118]

122. Far from adopting this supine posture, OST and the CSA are supposed to be at the hub of the machinery of Government, the engine driving forward science policy and ensuring that it permeates all levels of policy-making. As the 1993 White Paper put it: "The Office's rôle is to act as the mechanism for developing and co-ordinating Government policy on science and technology both nationally and internationally;....... to help ensure an adequate supply of well trained and skilled scientists and engineers for the science and engineering base and the wider economy; and to ensure that Government expenditure on science and technology is targeted to make the maximum contribution to our national economic performance and quality of life.".[119]

123. It is inconceivable that an OST (or a CSA) which was living up to the ideals embodied in the 1993 White Paper could have allowed the cuts in MAFF's research budget to pass without, at the very least, a major fuss and perhaps even a threatened resignation. This emphatically does not mean that the OST and the CSA should be determining, still less running, individual departmental R&D programmes. But they should be prepared to ask awkward questions and, if necessary, make a nuisance of themselves until they receive satisfactory answers.

124. We offer one further example of the areas of concern we have voiced in this Report. When the 1998 CSR outcome was announced in July of that year, it included details of the settlement for both the science base and departmental totals covering all expenditure. It was only in December 1998, some five months later, that the specific allocations for R&D for each department were announced. The clear implication was that the departmental R&D budgets were a residual figure left over after everything else had been decided.

125. The introduction of departmental science strategies was recommended by the CST as a means of anchoring short to medium-term decisions on R&D priorities within a long-term framework of objectives. This proposal has been accepted by the Government and is in the process of implementation (though the concept is not entirely novel for all departments). In theory, such a development should, both in terms of robustness and transparency, be an improvement on the present arrangements. We hope therefore that all departments will have published their strategy in time to inform the debate prior to the forthcoming CSR. We are, however, bound to sound a note of caution. MAFF has already had a research strategy, updated on a four year cycle, since the early 1990s. Plainly, this has not prevented exactly the sort of short-term (and, in our view, short-sighted) cuts in individual research programmes in response to budgetary constraints which the adoption of departmental strategies is supposed to avoid. This suggests that, without a strong input from the centre in terms of monitoring and co-ordination, the initiative runs the risk of falling victim to departmental pressures.

126. Before considering our proposals for change in the decision-making arrangements for departmental R&D, we wish to make clear that our previous remarks should not be seen as a blanket criticism of the OST as a whole. The OST's personnel and resources are divided between its functions in relation to transdepartmental co-ordination, on the one hand, and the science base, on the other. We have received no evidence to indicate that the OST performs this latter rôle in anything other than an effective and efficient manner. (The significant increase in the Science Budget secured in the last CSR is partial testimony to that). It is accordingly the OST in its cross-departmental co-ordinating rôle which forms the basis for our recommendations.

IS THERE A CASE FOR MOVING THE OST OUT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY?

127. Where within Government to locate the OST is a question which has never been settled to universal satisfaction. While the OST was in the Cabinet Office it was at least a major part of a Cabinet Minister's portfolio and gained a higher profile. In so far as a consensus exists, it is that placing the Office within the DTI constitutes the least bad option, given the interaction between much of publicly funded R&D and industrial policy and the benefits of siting the agency charged with co-ordination across government within a mainstream policy department. We are not convinced that a further change in the position of the OST in the machinery of Government would produce results which would justify the inevitable upheaval and we accordingly do not make such a recommendation.

SHOULD THERE BE A MINISTRY OF SCIENCE?

128. Nor are we persuaded that to establish a Ministry of Science would be sensible. We agree with Lord Sainsbury that it is important for the end users of research to be the budget-holders and that any attempt to create a central R&D budget would throw up more problems than it would solve.[120]

SHOULD THE OST'S RÔLE BE ENHANCED?

129. We do, however, believe that the co-ordinating rôle of the OST needs to be enhanced, with a clearer and more explicit remit to intervene with departments where this is necessary to protect the integrity of science policy and to bolster the importance of evidence- based decision-making. The personal objectives of the CSA, as head of the OST, should be expanded correspondingly and consideration should be given to providing the CSA with any additional support he may need in order to discharge his co-ordination and monitoring functions more effectively.

CAN THE CSA DO THREE JOBS AT ONCE?

130. It has been suggested that the CSA cannot be expected to fulfil his three rôles (as the Prime Minister's main adviser on science, as the head of the transdepartmental co-ordination effort, and as "Permanent Secretary" of the OST) without one or more of them suffering. We have given this suggestion careful consideration and have concluded that the inter-relationship of the three functions (and in particular the cross-fertilisation between the rôle of advising the Prime Minister and the transdepartmental rôle) probably make it inevitable that the job should be held by one person. But our comments about the possible need for additional support remain valid.

SHOULD THERE BE A MINISTER FOR SCIENCE IN THE CABINET?

131. We are especially concerned about the lack of an effective voice for science in the Cabinet. There is, of course, a designated Cabinet Minister, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who is meant to speak on science matters at Cabinet level. We do not see, however, how he can possibly discharge that responsibility properly when science is only one of a vast range of issues within his ministerial portfolio. It is not that science is deliberately neglected by him, rather that it is unreasonable to expect that he can give it full weight against the pressure of so many competing priorities. We believe that this deficiency can only be remedied by the elevation of the post of Minister for Science to Cabinet rank. We would point out that this is scarcely a revolutionary step. There are already precedents, within the last decade, both for a Minister for Science at Cabinet level—albeit one with some other responsibilities, and for a single department containing two Cabinet Ministers.[121]

IS THE MINISTERIAL SCIENCE GROUP WORKING EFFECTIVELY?

132. The MSG was established in 1998 as an informal committee with the objective of promoting a co-ordinated and coherent approach to science and technology policy-making across Government, and with particular responsibility for the Foresight initiative. The Group has been active for only just over a year and it may therefore be too early to reach a judgement on its effectiveness. It was striking, however, that many of our witnesses had no clear idea of what the Group was meant to achieve, still less of what it had achieved in its short existence. We believe that it would give a sharper focus to the Group's work if it took on the rôle of overseeing the OST in its transdepartmental co-ordination and monitoring function and if it acted as a forum in which to resolve any disagreements following an intervention of the sort we have proposed by the CSA vis a vis an individual department over an aspect of its R&D programme.

WHAT CHANGES ARE NEEDED IN THE RÔLE OF DEPARTMENTAL CHIEF SCIENTISTS?

133. These improvements in the cross-departmental arrangements for R&D decision-making must also be matched by corresponding changes at departmental level in the rôle and power of Chief Scientists. The MAFF case study has shown that if science is left to make itself heard in the cacophony of other departmental interests and pressures, it risks being drowned out. Chief Scientists, if the title is to mean anything, must be in charge of, and take responsibility for, the science policy of their department and, within it, R&D priorities. It is simply unrealistic to expect Permanent Secretaries, with the task of running a large and complex department, to do this job. The job description of Chief Scientists, and their equivalents, should be revised to place this responsibility firmly with them. At the same time, bureaucratic conventions about lines of reporting should not stand in the way of allowing Chief Scientists unfettered access to the CSA on matters of departmental concern.

Conclusions and Recommendations

134. A new settlement for science is needed. As Lord Sainsbury told us, a review of government policy towards innovation and science is already under way.[122] It has not yet been decided where, and in what form, the outcome of that review should be published, but a White Paper remains a possibility. We recommend that this opportunity should be taken to issue a White Paper on science which takes the ideals and principles of its 1993 predecessor and translates them into an effective plan of action.

We further recommend that it should take account of the following conclusions to which we have already alluded —

• the OST should remain located within the DTI;

• there is no case for creating a Ministry of Science;

• the co-ordination rôle of the OST and the CSA should be enhanced, with a more explicit remit to intervene, where necessary, with departments;

• the CSA may require additional support to carry out his transdepartmental co-ordination rôle effectively;

• there should be a Minister for Science of Cabinet rank;

• the rôle of the Ministerial Science Group should be clarified and expanded to oversee the OST in its co-ordination rôle and to act as a forum for resolving disagreements;

• the rôle and powers of departmental Chief Scientists need to be clarified and increased, with an automatic right of access to the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser;

• departmental arrangements for decision-making on R&D priorities should be reviewed in order to establish whether more general lessons can be drawn from the different examples of MAFF and the DETR;

• the use of short-term contracts for research should be reviewed to determine whether any benefits in terms of cost-effectiveness are outweighed by the potential damage to the science base;

• the Government must recognise the need to increase the quality and level of competence of SET graduates;

• the long-term decline in funding for departmental SET must be halted and reversed in the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review;

• within its own CSR settlement MAFF should at least restore R&D funding to the level prior to the 1998 CSR and, if possible, implement the recommendation of its own working group for an £8 million annual increase in spending.

113  See para 100. Back

114  Ev. 94. Back

115  See para 102. Back

116  Third Report from the Science and Technology Committee, Session 1999-2000, on The Scientific Advisory System: Diabetes and Driving Licences, HC 206. Back

117  See para 109. Back

118  Ev. p. 102. Back

119  Realising our Potential, Cm. 2250, p. 9.  Back

120  Q. 169. Back

121  The Treasury (Chancellor of the Exchequer and Chief Secretary) and, for a short period earlier in this Parliament, DETR (Secretary of State for the Environment and Minister of Transport). Back

122  Q. 166. Back