INTRODUCTION
1. Our Committee is appointed by the House of Commons
to examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Office
of Science and Technology (OST) and its associated public bodies.[1]
These associated public bodies are not clearly defined; the Non-Departmental
Public Bodies associated with the OST are, strictly, sponsored
by its parent Department, the Department of Trade and Industry
(DTI) rather than by OST itself. We have taken the term to cover
the seven Research Councils and the Council for Science and Technology,
and (in part) the Human Genetics Commission and the Agriculture
and Environment Biotechnology Commission.[2]
2. As part of our scrutiny of the Research Councils,
we are holding a rolling programme of scrutiny sessions with individual
Research Councils, with the objective of calling in all the Research
Councils over the course of the Parliament. In December 2002 we
published our first Research Council scrutiny report on the Work
of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC).[3]
We decided that the next Research Council to receive our attention
should be the Medical Research Council (MRC) and announced this
on 15 September 2002, highlighting the UK Stem Cell Bank and the
UK Biobank as particular areas of concern and inviting submissions
from interested parties. A distinct section on the Biobank appears
at the end of the report. We held an oral evidence session on
4 December 2002 with the Chief Executive, Professor Sir George
Radda, and the Director of Corporate Affairs, Mrs Jane Lee.
3. We have received 15 memoranda from various parties
relating to our scrutiny of the MRC. In addition the Committee
and the Chairman have received confidential correspondence from
a number of MRC-funded researchers wishing to make their views
known, but who have been unwilling to jeopardise further funding
by submitting formal evidence to the inquiry. These views have
been taken into account, as appropriate.
ORIGINS AND OBJECTIVES
4. The MRC is the oldest UK Research Council, established
in 1913, and is based in central London. It is the principal public
sector funder of basic and applied research relevant to medicine.
Its mission is to:
- encourage and support high quality research with
the aim of maintaining and improving human health;
- train skilled people, and advance and disseminate
knowledge and technology to help meet national needs for health,
quality of life and economic competitiveness; and
- promote public engagement with medical research.
INCOME AND EXPENDITURE
5. The MRC's expenditure on research was £400
million in 200102, making it the largest public funder of
biomedical research. (The Wellcome Trust, a private charity is
larger, with research support reaching £482 million in 2001-02[4]).
As well as its Parliamentary grant-in-aid, the MRC has income
from other sources, principally from other Government Departments,
from a private fund (built up from private donations) and from
its commercial fund, which is the income from exploitation of
its intellectual property.
Table 1: MRC income between 1997-98 and
2001-02 (£million).
