MR ED WALLIS

25 APRIL 2007

  Q20  Chris Mole: I know you said it is early days and you have been looking inwards rather than outwards but do you have any sense of the effectiveness of cross-council coordination in areas relevant to environmental science?

  Mr Wallis: I think I have to say no. I am aware it is a problem. I think it is wrong for me to go and see all the Chairmen of the other councils until I really know my own shop. I think I am picking up very quickly. Sir Keith O'Nions has organised meetings later in the year of all chairmen and chief executives, which I think is the normal thing—it is not simply because I have arrived. I think that would be a good start and a good opportunity to meet people. I have been to see Sir John Chisholm, who I did know before, and we did have a good conversation about trying to make sure that we addressed the very issues you talk about, but all I can say to you is that I am aware of the urgent need of doing this. I am aware of your interest. I think it is right and that will flow very quickly into what I am doing.

  Q21  Chris Mole: Are there social areas in which you would like to see NERC work with funders/organisations in other countries to boost international research effort?

  Mr Wallis: We are at the moment looking at BAS. Professor Christopher Rapley has done a superb job. BAS is in very good heart, he has done some great work, but if a leader goes then you do have an opportunity to say, "Well, let's think again." Nick Owens from PML will be taking over. I think he is a good man with a proven record. He has good personal skills. There we have done three things, to answer a bit more of the previous question too. We went to look with university people, a little group, at what the priorities are for the polar regions, because it is polar year. When you went to the Royal Society you tended to think it was Antarctica year, so it would certainly address those issues. What are the priorities—and we must allocate our resources to that—but also it was thought that we could do far more in the international scene. We have set off talking extensively, just, to Canada, but there are other countries. Canada is a good potential partner, in the sense that they do nothing in Antarctica, we do a lot; we do a little in the Arctic, where they do a lot, so it does look as if there could be a good synergy there. But I have said to them, "Look, remember the sort of commercial business model. We are not doing a joint venture with somebody, we are building a relationship and partnership with somebody because, in actual fact, we want to have a partnership and a relationship with a lot of people in various areas. So this direction that was given to the Director of Science and Innovation was to look at this international scene. Which are the countries we can do more extensive work with and interaction with and knowledge sharing or transfer with to make sure we work more effectively? I think a lot will come out of this BAS working group. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

  Q22  Chris Mole: Do you have any views on Research Councils UK?

  Mr Wallis: No, I do not. People say, "Should there be one Research Council or should there be 25 or should there be seven?" I have seen nothing at the moment to say we are crying out for change in this or that, so I do not think it is a fruitful area at the moment, is my opinion. That opinion, of course, could well change.

  Q23  Dr Iddon: We have just launched an inquiry into marine science. We had an excellent visit to Plymouth last week and one of the things we picked up while we were there was that there were tensions between different research councils which inhibited interdisciplinary research, which is what marine science tends to be. Have you picked up that problem yet?

  Mr Wallis: No. I do find there are tensions within NERC, which I do not want to go into today. Those are the only tensions I have picked up. The other research councils seem to be quite arm's length from what I have experienced so far, but in my business career I have always had a good reputation of having very good relationships with others in other countries and other companies, so it would be one of my prime objectives to identify the other councils which are most important to us and try to make sure if there are tensions they are ironed out. Tensions can sometimes be useful, of course, but generally they are negative.

  Q24  Dr Iddon: RCUK was set up originally as an umbrella organisation. It was to try to break the walls down of the silos which are essentially the research councils today. We receive evidence in almost every inquiry that we are doing that these walls are not coming down despite the setting up of Research Councils UK.

  Mr Wallis: Yes. I am aware of the work. I am aware of the problem. Of course, in any big business organisation, even in one of the other companies of which I am chairman, the silos are really quite staggering at times. We have had two people from separate silos bidding for the same business. They only find out when they signed in, where they were making the presentation for business, so silos are not simply a government thing. I need time to look at that but I am aware of the importance of it and I am sure there are things that can be done in multidisciplinary teams and so on. Certainly there are times when these tensions are about turf war: "My job is bigger than your job" and this sort of thing. I think you can work and break those down. I simply need to go back, find out where they are and do something about them. But nobody has actually said that we have a row going on with this lot or that lot or "They won't speak to us."

  Q25  Dr Iddon: I did not say rows. I think it is the problem that sometimes a research outfit does not know whether to go to yourselves or to BBSRC for the funding and would like to go to both actually because the work spreads across both research councils.

  Mr Wallis: Yes.

  Chairman: This is particularly key in the universities as well, where they are searching those research grants.

  Q26  Linda Gilroy: Just to conclude on that, the impression we got was that in some instances people from the marine science point of view could get knocked back by two research councils because each said that the other would be the lead one.

  Mr Wallis: Yes.

  Q27  Linda Gilroy: You touched earlier on the relationship with other government departments and said, if I remember correctly, that it will come out in the wash as part of the process emerging from the review. Do you have any preliminary views on the relationship between science and government in policy development? Do you think they should have more of a role in dictating the areas of research that NERC should conduct?

  Mr Wallis: I do not think they should ever be put in the role as a dictator, but the money does come from them and they do have expertise. In part of the process of taking the plan and the whole structure of the funding forward, I think there needs to be a very helpful dialogue there. Let us be very frank, the relationships between NERC and OSI have not always been that good. We all know that. It is history to go into it, so let us forget that. I think everybody would say now that they are vastly improved and I think Alan Thorpe is one of the prime reasons for that. To me, particularly having come from my background, I have been working extremely hard to have the very best relationship with government because it can get very difficult if you do not. I feel that we have to work on that. I was told at BAS last Friday, "You know, we don't talk enough to the other government departments." This was a throwaway line. Of course, I have written it in my pad and I have the name of the guy who said it. You cannot always address these things at meetings, so I shall be back to him to say, "What did you really mean." We have government department people on the council and they are very good and they do perform very well, but I think it is at the lower levels where we need to improve it. This is an area of fertile ground.

  Q28  Linda Gilroy: I take it you would think that is important.

  Mr Wallis: Absolutely. I think I need to be able to say to you that our important relationships are with these other research councils or these government departments—and, by the way, we do know the people and we do talk to them and it does work. That is the position I have to get myself in.

  Q29  Linda Gilroy: That is the external communications. What about the internal communications with the different science communities to which NERC relates, do you think that is an area that can be improved? Do you have a particular contribution to make to that?

  Mr Wallis: I am faced with a dilemma there. I have never seen so much paper flying around the system in my life. Maybe the best way we could support the planet would be to stop all these people doing any work at all, because then we would save a huge amount of trees. It is clear to me that a huge amount of information flies about. Whether people do not read it, whether it is not effective I am not really sure, but there are certainly silos. That term has come up. We certainly do have some robber barons. One often leads to the other or from the other. We do need to break those down and both Alan and I are determined to try to do that. I am now on a trip to go to each centre. I have been to Southampton and BAS and I have talked to CEH in Swindon but I now need to go to Wallingford and Lancaster and all the other places. These are the sorts of questions I will be asking them, so I think I will probably get a better idea of just how effective it is and what we might do about it.

  Q30  Chairman: And with the broader research communities outside the centres as well.

  Mr Wallis: Yes. You see, knowledge "transfer" is a word that is on a lot of people's lips, and yet we would not be having this discussion if it was effective. Clearly something is not working well somewhere.

  Q31  Linda Gilroy: Again, looking outwards—and we have touched on one or two aspects of this—how can NERC improve links with national and international science funding and policy agencies?

  Mr Wallis: I cannot give you a worthwhile answer to that, I am afraid. Again, I am very reliant on going through this strategy very, very carefully and I think that will bring me up-to-date with so many areas, including that one. I can see the need for it, because, as I said before, the resources are limited and the problem is a huge one.

  Q32  Linda Gilroy: But, again, something you would attach importance to.

  Mr Wallis: Yes.

  Q33  Linda Gilroy: I am new to this Committee and one of the things which strikes me right away is how our science communities interact all the time.

  Mr Wallis: Yes.

  Q34  Linda Gilroy: So getting synergy.

  Mr Wallis: Yes, I have seen, as I said earlier, huge informal interaction. How good it is formally, I do not know.

  Q35  Chairman: Currently, £370 million is spent by NERC of government money. We still have the spending review and the science budget is clearly an important part of that. What would you like to see prioritised in the science budget? Is there any area where you feel there is gross under-funding from what you have seen of NERC so far?

  Mr Wallis: I think the deep problem is that when you walk into NERC and say, "Show me last year's business plan and exactly where your funding is going" they sort of go a little embarrassed and you do not get one, because, as I say, the money has been allocated in blocks. I think I shall only know the answer to that question when each of the themes has its own set of priorities of the work that needs to be tackled. At this point in time, it is difficult to see precisely where the priorities are. On two meetings, it seems obvious to me that one of our greatest weaknesses is in the sea. We simply do not know enough about what the deep ocean does. Therefore I was very pleased to see the Oceans 2025 come through because that is aiming at where we ought to be. I did sit at the NERC meeting when that was discussed and approved, but it was a surprise to me that we did not really discuss the science there. The science had been done though everybody said extremely effective mentoring at the SISB level. I intend that if such a programme comes through another time, to make sure I shall go in and sit in on some of these SISB meetings to see whether I feel confident that this mentoring process does work. If it does not work, we have a bit of a problem, because it is easy to criticise these things but you have to have an alternative if you are not happy with it. There are no easy alternatives. I think I would gain a lot of confidence, though, if I did see one of those processes working

  Q36  Chairman: We are struck and I am struck by the comment you have made on two occasions this morning, that so much of the core budget is allocated in blocks to particular centres for infrastructure, which is there whether you like it or not.

  Mr Wallis: Yes.

  Q37  Chairman: If in fact we are going to move to a more interdisciplinary approach, how do you pull the money out of those and how do you create the priorities? That seems to be a bit of a mystery.

  Mr Wallis: If you take the BAS example, I think in the past BAS has been given a block of money. The bulk of that money goes to run its ships, so a lot of it is on logistics, so that is very expensive. When you come down to saying how much of this is allocated to science, you are probably down around 15%, so that is a bit of a shock. The first thing that comes to mind is, "My God, we need to look at the cost of these logistics" because if we could keep the same amount of money coming and reduce the costs of logistics, then we could do more science. The other thing, of course, is that one of the problems with FAB—and why some people do not like FAB—is that FAB would say there is, shall we say, £5 million, for a round number, going to BAS, that would have been given to BAS and that would decide what the science was. Of course, once FAB is in, through SISB and the theme leaders, then there will be a debate through the mentoring processes of the top priorities of work that ought to be done. Is it in the Antarctic? Is it in the Arctic? Is it being done by Canada or Germany or Russia or whoever—China for that matter? Therefore, which one of these, say, 10 priorities are we going to put our money into, and then to say, "We have got these BAS ships but that does not mean to say they have to be BAS scientists on them." We then have to go out and run some form of competition, I would have thought, principally between BAS and the universities, to see who is best equipped to do that. This is the discipline of the FAB process and it is not very popular for that reason. If we did that, I think that would go a long way to answer this question.

  Q38  Chairman: Another area of resource that comes in is through HEFCE and the DfES and funding particularly to universities. Have you had a chance to discuss with people from HEFCE? Have you had a look at the issue of the changes to the research assessment exercise? Has that crossed your desk?

  Mr Wallis: No, not at all. It clearly has to, but not at all.

  Q39  Chairman: In his Pre-Budget Report in 2006 the Chancellor announced that universities would have access to another £60 million for applied research for commercial purposes and it is fairly easy in some of the research councils to see how that money could be spent in terms of pulling research out of universities into wealth creation activity, and, to be fair to the Chancellor, it is something he is very, very keen to see. Again, does the council engage on that? Have you, with your particular expertise, engaged in that as to whether we are going to make some bucks out of all this?

  Mr Wallis: We have not. In a sense, Mr Willis, we are behind the game. If you look historically, we do not know precisely where the money is being spent. We never had a prioritisation list to compare it against. Once we have got our strategy in the FAB process done, we can do that sort of thing. That then puts us in a position where we can really manage it. I think it is really Alan Thorpe's legacy, with my support, to get that there so that you can respond to these things. I am sure, of course, that we will still respond but it will be in a more ad hoc way than it ought to be really.

  Q40  Chairman: Do you feel that this whole issue of wealth creation, if you like the downstream technologies and the downstream science that comes out of that for wealth creation, is going to be an increased priority for you personally?

  Mr Wallis: Yes, it will. The problem is how do we get increased funding? That is about, first of all, how you effectively use what you have got but then what other channels are open to you. We will certainly pursue all the choices that are available to us; I can assure you of that.

  Chairman: On that note may I say, Mr Wallis, that it is hard to believe you have only been in post since January. We thank you enormously for your honesty and the frank way in which you have discussed with us this morning some of your thoughts and ideas. We are very grateful to you for coming along this morning.