10 NOVEMBER 2003

LORD SAINSBURY OF TURVILLE, PROFESSOR SIR DAVID KING AND DR JOHN TAYLOR

  Q20  Dr Murrison: There are 114 scientists who recently wrote to The Times to complain at the way that the debate had been managed. I was wondering whether you empathised with those scientists or whether you felt that they were out of order?

  Professor Sir David King: Far be it from me to say they were out of order, but their comments were directed at that one strand, the GM debate strand. I am in the middle now of drawing together the GM science review to look at what the GM debate raised in terms of what further science we can bring to those questions. I am not going to comment myself on the GM debate until we have finished reporting, but my response to that has been published last week in The Guardian. My response in general was to say that I felt the letter was misdirected at the Prime Minister. It seemed to indicate that the Prime Minister was not supportive of science and that the exodus, as it was labelled, of GM scientists from this country was something to be laid at his door. I think the very fact of organising these three strands, of making an essentially big investment of government time and effort in the way we have dealt with it, indicates how important it was seen to be in government but also it must be seen that the government was neither taking a pro-GM or an anti-GM stance. That would be wholly to simplify our response. As you know, the way we might simplify it is by saying that case by case is how this has to be dealt with.

  Q21  Chairman: Do you not think your answer in The Guardian though was saying more than anything how well British science was doing? It did not address all the strands of the GM debate as such, where your first paragraph started off as a reaction to the 114, which was quite specific. Then you went on to tell us how well we were doing and a bit about the science of the GM debate but nothing much about GM in the context of international agricultural policy, global photosynthesis and all of those issues that are bigger visions where GM might fit in. You did not have any view on that.

  Professor Sir David King: My view on that I have just expressed and I hope I can clarify that by saying I do think that the GM science review report, part one—and we are now preparing part two—does carry the whole debate onto a new plane. I do think this is ground breaking so if you are asking me are we in a better position now I think I have answered that very clearly. I believe we are.

  Q22  Dr Murrison: Do you think that debates of this sort are likely to be hijacked by special interest groups in the context of the GM debate? It has been said that perhaps the green lobby has had an undue bearing upon this. Clearly, they are interested in the subject. If you do think that, what steps can you take to moderate the opinions expressed so that you produce a balanced report at the end of the day?

  Professor Sir David King: I am going to back-track from your question and point out the response of the strategy report which is in essence whether or not farmers grow GMs is not only a question of European Union and government decision making; it is also a question of whether they will see the commercial value in doing this. Whether you have a commercial value or not is going to depend on what the consumer thinks. Since the NGOs that you are referring to have big sway with the consumers, whether they are minority groups or not, they are groups whose views need to be addressed.

  Q23  Dr Murrison: They are not representative in any way. They are pressure groups. Whether one agrees with the green lobby or not, one has to accept that they have had a weighty bearing on this debate and we need to have a balanced report or view expressed. The question is how do we go about balancing that to reflect the views of what one might call the moderate, mainstream majority.

  Professor Sir David King: I agree that is the question and once we have all got the answer let us proceed down that route.

  Q24  Dr Murrison: Can you think of any other similar debates perhaps in the scientific arena that might be addressed in the way that we have addressed the debate on GM?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Could I make a comment on your original question which is what should we be learning from these different debates? What we should be learning is that it is extremely important, very early on in these situations, to consider these questions and indeed it is very important for scientists to be concerned very early on with the issues of whether there are particular ethical, health or environmental impacts which come from new technologies. It was because we had done that thinking early on that, for example, in the stem cell debate, we have a much more balanced and sensible debate in this country probably than anywhere else in the world. That can be attributed to the extraordinarily good work which was done on in-vitro fertilisation by Baroness Warnock, going back now 20 years. That is why in the context where nanotechnology was raised as an issue I asked the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering to do the work, to look at whether there are ethical, health or environmental issues there which would require new regulation or legislation which currently does not exist. That is to me about learning the lessons of the past. You need to do these things upstream and not wait until they impact on the public, because the public will be very concerned if they feel these things have not been thought through by the scientists, particularly early on.

  Q25  Dr Murrison: I think probably in a tangential way you are answering my last question. I was wondering whether you saw any other fields that might be approached in the same way that we approached the debate on GM.

  Professor Sir David King: Nanotechnology would be one. The basic answer is that you want to be on the front foot, not on the back foot. The government and the public might have been in a better position on GMs if we had discussed this 15 years ago.

  Q26  Chairman: What is the essential problem, do you think? Why did we not discuss it? Where is the essential weakness in the whole process of the government, public and science interactions?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: We have learned. It was not as clear 15 years ago that in these particular situations you do need to think very carefully early on. That is one of the things we have learned from these debates.

  Q27  Chairman: Who needs to think early on?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Both government and scientists. I do not think this is purely an issue for government because there is an extremely important role for scientists early on to think very hard about the scientific basis of these particular issues I have been talking about. There is not much point in having a debate on nanotechnology unless someone has very seriously thought about what are the environmental impacts, because otherwise one just has a debate which is not based on any credible science. It is very important that the scientists come in early to try to reach a consensus about the actual science.

  Professor Sir David King: Could I back up what Lord Sainsbury has just said by reminding you that BBSRC met in 1994 to discuss GMs in relation to possible public responses and did pinpoint this as an area where some sort of public debate was required, but this was not picked up at the time. This underlines the point that the scientific community needs to draw attention to this but the political system needs to follow through as well.

  Dr Taylor: Another example is the current activity going on under Foresight, looking at the future research on cognitive systems between brain science, neuroscience, on the one hand, and artificial cognitive systems on the other.

  Q28  Chairman: What do you think of issues like, for example, the man and woman on the terraces who would say, "What is the point of putting something on Mars on Christmas day and all the money that has gone into that?"? How would you justify that to them, if they knew?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: The man or woman in the street, you will discover, on Christmas morning if this thing lands and works is very enthusiastic about it because people see this as an exciting area of science. There is the basic question that you always have to answer, which is when you are doing basic science what is the justification for it? There I think you have to say to people, "The issue is, if you want downstream the benefits of science which everyone can see, you have to understand you will not get those unless you put in the research and the money to understanding the basic science of any area, because you will not get the applied research unless you know the fundamental science."

  Q29  Chairman: If you were teaching an `A' level class and they asked you, "What was the whole thing about getting on the moon, Neil Armstrong and all that? What advantages did that bring to human kind?" what would you say?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I would say none whatsoever. It was a purely political gesture.

  Q30  Chairman: It cost a lot of money.

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: It cost a lot of money and it may have captured the imagination of people but its scientific validity is negligible.

  Q31  Chairman: Mars is not going to be like that. We will wait and see.

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: There is a real scientific issue with Mars and this is space exploration which will really answer questions. The point I was making about a man in space is that it is an extremely expensive way, in most cases, of answering scientific questions. That will become increasingly clear in the future. Space exploration done by robotic means, which is what we are quite good at in this country, is a much better way of doing it.

  Q32  Chairman: Let us talk about research contracts. You will know this Committee put out a report which was welcomed by many people, not least the thousands of research contractors up and down this country. Do you think much has happened since we raised those issues and the media picked up on them? Do you think we have too many research contractors or too few?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I think it is undoubtedly true that we have too many people on contracts for research. That goes back a long way to periods when people were very uncertain about the funding of universities. If you look over the last 20 years at the numbers of people teaching and doing research at universities, the entire increase has been picked up in terms of contract research staff. I do not think that is an efficient way to do it. It was done by vice-chancellors because it gave them flexibility. It has taken a lot of time to wean people away from that kind of approach, but the European Directive will probably make it inevitable that we do move away. We are greatly helped by that Directive.

  Q33  Chairman: If you were in front of an audience of research contractors and they said, "What has changed since you became Minister?" what would you say is different and will make their future lives or contracts better? The European Directive?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: The European Directive is bound to make a difference.

  Q34  Chairman: It is one we are going to obey, is it?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: We obey all of them. That is sometimes the problem.

  Q35  Chairman: We are very slow in responding to some of them.

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: This one is very important and we will. I think that will make a huge difference. The work that Gareth Roberts and others have done already on this at least has made certain that vice-chancellors and others are aware of this issue. There has been some movement to try and move away from this, although it is not as quick as I would like.

  Q36  Chairman: There is not a graph which shows me over 10 or 15 years how the research contract numbers are going to go down in Gareth Roberts's report, or have I missed it? Somebody has to say there are too many and we are going to move it that way. A government obsessed with targets seems very reluctant to have a target in this area. Why is that?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I think it would be very difficult to establish exactly what level it should be at.

  Q37  Chairman: That is what you are paid for. You are paid to make that judgment, are you not, as to where we should be taking it? You are not paid, I know, but if you were.

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I do not think that would alter my sense of what I should be doing. As a whole, I am not certain how you would make that calculation because it is to do with flexibility and so on. I have no hesitation in saying it is far too high and we should try to bring it down. I have no doubt it will just have to come down because of the European Directive.

  Q38  Chairman: You do accept there is a suspicion in that community who want to go into that arena of scientific endeavour without showing positively where it is going to be that they might be discouraged from taking up a career?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Yes. There are all sorts of issues here on top of it being a career directive, but we have to get it down, for sure.

  Q39  Chairman: The £12,000 that was put into recruitment was very welcome. It was a huge sea change and recognised the problem. Has it made any difference to recruitment? Have you measured that yet? Are we getting them queuing up?

  Dr Taylor: I do not think we have data that you can ascribe to the change in that.