LORD SAINSBURY OF TURVILLE

20 JUNE 2006

  Q200  Dr Iddon: I know I have pressed you on this before and I press you on it again. After all the information that has been coming through in the last few months, would you accept now that the change to the 1.7 to 1 ratio between science and the arts and humanities was a mistake and we should go back to 2 to 1 as it was previously?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My view would be strongly that we really do now need proper costing systems and to make judgments based on that. Clearly in the context it is not clear we are covering them properly. I have concerns about whether it was right to make that decision.

  Q201  Dr Iddon: You mentioned the closure of chemistry departments, and the South and South-East have suffered considerably in the last years. When HEFCE were in front of us giving evidence a few months ago, they admitted they did not have the power to intervene in the autonomy of universities to prevent the closure of departments in regions where those departments are seen by industry and commerce to be essential. Do you think that HEFCE should be given powers to intervene in the closure of departments which are essential to the economy in different regions, and not just science departments?

  Q202  Chairman: Could I add to that, if not HEFCE, do you think somebody else should be, particularly in your own department?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: No. I personally strongly support the idea of the autonomy of universities in this. If anything, we want to increase the independence of universities and force them to make decisions about their research, and so on, on an independent basis. This is where I would come back to the question about the proper costing of teaching courses. I believe if there is a flow of students coming through and you receive proper funding for teaching, then universities will provide those courses because it is very much part of what a research-based university should be about. Unless there was a really extraordinary situation where there were a lot of students coming through and no courses for them, I do not think one should intervene. We are not in that situation. There are 73 departments of chemistry teaching students, so that is about 46 students a year per university. It seems very difficult to make a case we have too few courses. The key issue is, are they getting enough money for this teaching so they are not under pressure to close the departments in order to save money.

  Q203  Adam Afriyie: What is the point of HEFCE if it has no power to intervene?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: HEFCE is there to allocate the money to universities.

  Q204  Adam Afriyie: It is just a funding mechanism.

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: It actually does rather more than that. As a whole one wants to, if anything, make HEFCE more about allocation of funds and less about micro-managing of universities. If you start saying "You, university, have to run this course", then you take away quite a bit of the financial responsibility of the university for its own finances.

  Q205  Dr Iddon: We would challenge you on the 73 chemistry departments. There might be 73 departments teaching chemistry within them but they are not chemistry departments. My figure would be nearer 44 chemistry departments at the moment, but we will leave that in the air.

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My figure was simply the Higher Education Statistics Agency figure. I agree it is chemistry departments which have more than 20 students.

  Q206  Dr Iddon: My final question is do you think the government has an analysis of how many science students from the different disciplines that we have to support our knowledge-based economy for the next 10 years? Has any analysis been done by consultation with industry on this figure?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: I think the answer is no. It is an incredibly difficult figure to actually produce. You have to remember that in most of the science subjects the number of undergraduates or graduates that then go into the subject area is on average about 60%. The problems are rather more specific to particular subjects and particular parts of this, but I think the answer is no. To be quite frank, to get a real understanding of the number of people doing science and how that is changing is also quite difficult, and that is why we produced a paper in the office of Science and Innovation which tried to bring some clarity to what was happening on the student numbers. They are going up very fast on STEM subjects generally. The question is what is the balance between the different subjects, and is the growth coming in the right places.

  Q207  Chairman: I am very much aware you have given us your allocated time but I wonder if I could finally ask you about the PPARC Large Facilities Council and when a decision on the future arrangement for Large Facilities will be announced?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: The consultation period on whether to bring together the UK interests in large scale research facilities under a single council ended on the 16 June. We are analysing the responses now and are looking to reach a decision soon.

  Q208  Chairman: What are the main messages coming to you from the community?

  Lord Sainsbury of Turville: We need to have analysed all the responses, and as you would guess quite a lot of responses came on 16 June which was the end date. As a whole, there is quite a lot of enthusiasm for bringing together PPARC and CCLRC. That is as much as one can say at this point.

  Chairman: We thank you very much for this session.