LORD SAINSBURY OF TURVILLE

19 OCTOBER 2005

  Q1 Chairman: Could I first of all thank you, Lord Sainsbury, for coming before the Select Committee to answer our friendly and helpful questions, and indeed to thank members of the public for also joining us this morning. Can I say that the process is that we have given Lord Sainsbury a series of questions which we would ask him to give the briefest of responses to before members of the Committee then take up supplementary questioning. I am going to read the question out so people know exactly what the question was, we will ask Lord Sainsbury to respond and then we will get into the questioning. I hope that is okay. The first area is about new nuclear build and the question is: when will the Government publish proposals on new nuclear build in the UK?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: The Prime Minister recently announced that we will be reviewing our energy policy next year. That is part of our general policy to focus on climate change, reliability of energy supplies and affordability to the customer and, of course, that will include an assessment of civil nuclear power.

  Q2  Mr Newmark: I guess my first question has to do with what has changed in your mind since before the Election to persuade the Government to tackle this issue now? For example, have there been significant improvements in the technology of nuclear reactors just to make them more economically viable?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Well, I think the issue is to what extent have things changed since the energy policy report of 2003. I think a number of things are changing, as will always be the case in this. I believe strongly that the absolutely fundamental point of energy policy is that you keep the options open and you review it constantly in the light of changes in technology, changes (in the case of nuclear) in the safety of nuclear stations, and also costs. I think it is a good moment to come back to those issues, given the changes in prices and other factors.

  Q3  Chairman: Can you give us a specific change?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Clearly we are getting closer to a solution on the question of waste, which I think is absolutely fundamental if there is going to be a change on that. I think there is a change on how quickly we can get into renewables and then also the question of how far do you want to go on renewables before it becomes tremendously expensive. If you go much above 20% on renewables it is quite clear that costs go up dramatically so that is going to affect one's view about how much further one can go on renewables.

  Q4  Adam Afriyie: As a relatively new Member, it seems to me there is a lot of dithering going on. I cannot see how it can take seven or eight years or even since the White Paper two and a half years to make a decision in principle on the general future of nuclear energy in Britain. Why is the Government dithering so much on this?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: We have not dithered. We have made a very clear decision in that Energy White Paper on what that decision was. We said then we would review it in due course and we are now reviewing it. There is no dithering. We made a very clear decision in 2003 that we would not change our policy but we would keep that option open.

  Q5  Adam Afriyie: Could you refresh our memories as to what that decision was, that you would proceed with nuclear?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: No, it was that we would not be changing our policy, we would not be pursuing nuclear but we would keep the nuclear option open so that if we wanted to come back to it we had the skills and research being done to make that possible.

  Adam Afriyie: It does not sound like a decision.

  Q6  Dr Turner: Can I just take up the assumption you have just stated that if renewables exceeded 20% of the mix, the costs would start to escalate too much.

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: That is wind. I should have said that would be if it was wind.

  Q7  Dr Turner: Right, because you must agree it is potentially a totally different proposition if marine renewables come to the fore?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Yes.

  Q8  Dr Turner: Right, so it is not set in stone then that there is an upper limit to the contribution that renewables can make?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: No, it would be simply where you have variability and if the variability within wind means above 20%, it begins to get much more expensive.

  Q9  Dr Turner: So long as you have scarcity and unpredictability. However, if you have marine resources which have a much higher load factor and which are totally predictable, then they can fulfil the same role that nuclear has traditionally done in providing reliable base loads (that is reliable if they do not have an outage)?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Absolutely, but as at the moment the main renewable source which is within the realms of being economically feasible—and this might change quite quickly—is wind.

  Q10  Dr Turner: Is it not also fair to say that the timescale in which marine renewables will, I hope, come to pass at sufficient level and economic viability is not very different from even the most optimistic timescale that it would take to deploy the alleged ten nuclear reactors?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I think that is probably right. We do not know what is the timeframe on tidal so they are both likely to be in that kind of timeframe.

  Q11  Anne Snelgrove: Just very briefly I wanted to press you a little further on changes that have happened in the past few years that have made possible the recent statement, as you said, by the Prime Minister to look into new build. I ought to declare an interest here in that I worked for the nuclear industry for three years. Surely one of the issues at stake which the Government has got to have a handle on is the structure of the nuclear industry, in particular bringing in the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency to drive down costs in the industry. Has that made a difference, do you feel, to the way that the industry could be prepared for new build?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Well, that clearly is going to give us better information on the cost of decommissioning and that obviously has to be one of the considerations in the nuclear new build, what is the overall lifetime cost of that option, so to that extent, yes, it gives us further information about the cost side.

  Q12  Mr Newmark: Is the Government prepared to put more funding into nuclear fission R&D?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: What we have been doing is increasing that. It was run down very badly and we have now started bringing that figure up in a whole series of ways. We have got the research councils' Towards a Sustainable Energy Economy initiative, that is £6 million has been made available over four years to keep the nuclear option open, and we are also putting money into UK participation in international research on the advance reactor systems, including Generation Four, through the international forum JIF, so we are moving that up. Of course there is debate as to whether we are yet at the right level or whether we should be putting more in.

  Q13  Chairman: Lord Sainsbury, is not the reality of what you have said this morning that you have told us that absolutely nothing new has happened since three years ago when the Energy Review took place, that the reason the Prime Minister is looking at the nuclear option is that renewables will not fill the gap and that by the time our coal-fired power stations go out of operation the Government has got to find a new energy source and the only one on the table is nuclear?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I think things have changed. One of the issues of course is a key issue here—and this has not changed but perhaps there is more focus on it now—and that is as we go on down the current course two things will become clear. One is that by 2020 we will have run down our nuclear power stations, which are currently producing 20% of our electricity. My own judgment is it is difficult to see any way that renewables will have got to 20% by 2020. It is not impossible but it is going to be very unlikely. So over the first 20 years of this policy of dealing with climate change we would have made no indent into the problem. We would probably, if anything, have gone backwards. So I think that is a consideration. Then I think there is the consideration, where again perhaps there is more focus on, are we really certain about energy security when we go to 60 or 70% of our requirements coming in the form of gas into this country? I think those are two strategic issues which have to be very important in any consideration of the Energy Review. The point of doing a review is one asks those questions and tries to find what is the right strategy.

  Q14  Chairman: I suspect we will come back to this in future sessions but we are interested in the issue of scientific publications and the way in which the Government is going to lead in that area. What is the Office of Science and Technology's view of the Research Council UK's proposed policy on scientific publications?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Well, as far as the question of the "author pays" model or "subscriber pays" model our view is that neither of these models is clearly better than the other. We think there are advantages and disadvantages of both models and so our approach is that we should have a level playing field as between those two publishing models. As far as RCUK's policy is concerned their latest consultation closed on 31 August. I think the policy they have put forward did require some further development on it. The issue here is what they said effectively is we want you to publish it as soon as you can, subject to reaching agreement with the publishers as to when that would be. That seems to me to put researchers in an impossible position, ie, every individual researcher has got to start negotiating with the publisher as to what that means. I urged them and the publishers to get together to see if they can formulate a policy as to what that in practice means. Those discussions are taking place and I hope we will soon reach agreement on that.

  Q15  Dr Iddon: Lord Sainsbury, you must sometimes feel a bit like King Canute on this issue in that the Wellcome Trust is acquiring a repository now, Liverpool University is certainly going in that direction, and a lot of organisations now are welcoming open access publishing, whatever model is chosen. Do you not think the Government ought to take a much stronger lead on this and have you had any conversations internationally on this particular issue because things are happening abroad which might wash over you eventually?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: First of all, I think King Canute is a much maligned figure because he was the person who said "if I sit here and I command the waves to go back they will not", so he was rather a good guy. I do not feel at all like him. If you look at this internationally and in this country, I think we have seen a peak in the enthusiasm for open access publishing and a fall-off in people putting forward proposals for it because some of the difficulties and costs are now becoming clear. The question of institutional repositories is a slightly different one because I think there is a role for institutional repositories, but in rather specific circumstances, which is there is a whole series of fields of research where the people like publishing their papers and what they are doing before they send them to the journals, and this is a very good way of communication between research communities. The question here is what is the requirement or the desire for people to publish them alongside publishing them in the actual journals? I think that is for individual universities to decide for themselves as to whether that is a cost that they think is justified subject to whatever agreement is reached with the publishers on what is the proper thing to do.

  Q16  Dr Iddon: Have you had any conversations with the learned societies? I accept what you have just said that there seems to be a peak but if that peak is reversed and open access publishing—and this is my feeling—does take off, it could wreck some of the learned societies in that they gain a lot of their income from publishing. So I repeat my question: have you had any conversations with the learned societies on this issue?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I have not recently but what I said about RCUK having conversations and discussions with the publishers also includes the learned societies because I think the same issue is here. The basic issue is it is very difficult to have a model which makes sense for the publisher if you say we require people to publish on an alternative basis alongside that. Either you have an alternative kind of publishing or you say there is some agreement whereby a publisher has some period at least when it is not published in another form. I think that is perfectly reasonable while you require the users of publishers to produce the journals and all the mechanics and infrastructure.

  Q17  Chairman: Could we move on to question three, Lord Sainsbury, on avian influenza. What plans OST has to increase expenditure on research and development to combat the threat of avian influenza?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: The OST is obviously heavily involved in central government's contingency planning but that is led by and funded by the Department of Health and Defra. Where we have responsibility obviously is looking longer term where we are, among other things looking at new ways to deliver and develop safe, effective vaccines which can be delivered in short timescales. The Institute of Animal Health and the Roslin Institute are developing a joint research programme into avian flu to build on the scientific expertise in their respective institutes. The MRC has recently issued a highlight notice specifically encouraging high-quality research proposals from the research community on emerging infections with epidemic or pandemic potential. MRC has also reviewed its research needs and opportunities in areas of emerging infections, and that has been facilitated by Professor Andrew McMichael, who is Chairman of the MRC Infection and Immunity Board and Director of the MRC Human Immunology Unit in Oxford. In fact, it was that review which led to the highlight notice.

  Q18  Anne Snelgrove: Experts have been aware of the threat of avian flu for some time. There have been some criticisms of the Government's response in the last few weeks to the expert scientists. Do you think what the Government has done is too little too late?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Again, there are two quite different issues here. One is the contingency planning, and I think questions on that should go to the Department of Health and Defra. In terms of long-term research I think there has been on-going research in this area. We of course have in the MRC a World Influenza Centre at the National Institute of Medical Research, one of the four WHO centres that monitors changes in the influenza virus and indeed advises the WHO on the composition of the influenza vaccine. That of course is a world-class research centre. In fact, they were the people who recently did identify the 1918 flu epidemic being based on avian flu that had mutated. There has been on-going research on this. The question was what more is being done in these current circumstances and it looks to me as if MRC and BBSRC have responded on the long-term things, as well as being heavily involved in the contingency planning and working with countries like China and so on.

  Q19  Dr Turner: Clearly there are some difficulties in producing vaccines to this virus. The first one produced by sanofi-aventis is not very practical because it requires such high doses and there is not enough manufacturing capacity in the world to produce enough vaccine for it to be that useful. Also, to date the virus has not mutated so we do not know the nature of the virus that the human vaccine is needed for. This is a very difficult challenge for immunologists. Have you any inside knowledge of the progress that they are making under these difficult circumstances?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: No, but these are obviously the questions that have been looked at by this research. It is looking at both how you can produce new anti-virals (because as there are problems you need to produce those) and also how you can more quickly produce the vaccines in response to a particular mutation taking place. This is the work that is going on. I am not familiar enough with the details of the research to be able to say what progress they have actually made on that.