PROFESSOR COLIN BLAKEMORE, PROFESSOR IAN DIAMOND, PROFESSOR KEITH MASON AND DR RANDAL RICHARDS

9 MAY 2007

  Q80  Chris Mole: Is that going to be a problem as we go forward with institutes and universities not wanting to bid into Framework Programmes?

  Professor Diamond: That has been something that has been said by some universities, that researchers are not encouraged with the overheads that are paid to make that a particular priority because clearly the levels of overheads which are paid will not cover the entire costs of the research.

  Q81  Chairman: Do we now have an agreement from the Treasury that we do not in fact take funds back if in fact researchers get European grants?

  Professor Blakemore: The cap on the receipt of European funding has been removed.

  Professor Diamond: And we are very pleased about that.

  Q82  Chris Mole: I was quite interested, Professor Blakemore, where we were going with the Framework thematic priorities. You were talking about the influence that the national councils might have on the development of that overall set of priorities. Presumably it is the Commission and the Parliament that get to comment in Brussels on that shape of that? It looks a little as though it might be historically industrially driven, which has been a feature of Framework funding.

  Professor Diamond: I think there is every evidence of that historically and indeed it has only been in relatively recent Framework Programmes that, for example, the social science or indeed some of the more emerging areas of the economy have been acknowledged at all. I echo what Colin has said, there is a real need to engage those people who are thinking a lot about science horizon scanning in the development of areas such as that, and through some of the collaborations that virtually all research councils have had with their sister research councils in Europe there are examples of programmes jointly which can be developed through sensible horizon scanning across Europe, and I think there is a need for more in that in development of the Framework Programmes.

  Q83  Chris Mole: The EIT is another institute that has come out of the Lisbon Process. What are your views on the European Institute of Technology? Are you supportive or is a waste of time and effort?

  Dr Richards: It needs clarification.

  Q84  Chris Mole: Is that a yes?

  Dr Richards: It is a definite maybe. There are too many issues that unresolved there. Particularly recently the leading German energy producer, Aon, has said it does not want anything to do with it, which is a bit disturbing. So it is really not clear enough for me to say yes or no, I would just like to see more definition. It is not going to be like MIT, so its business model is not at all clear.

  Q85  Chairman: The 2.4 billion that was going to be allocated to the European Institute of Technology, where is that money?

  Dr Richards: I cannot answer that question. I guess the Commission might be holding it still somewhere.

  Q86  Chairman: It seems to be a huge pot of money which is available, which is not going to be used for what appears to be very, very useful purposes.

  Dr Richards: That is how it appears at the moment and that is why we would like more clarification on the issue.

  Professor Diamond: I would not demur from that statement from the Chair.

  Professor Blakemore: The EIT is aimed at improving facilitating knowledge transfer within Europe and that is unimpeachable—it is motherhood and apple pie. It is very hard to mobilise general objections. But there have been many objections to the specific business plan and structure of the EIT. One example is the fact that the Assembly of EUROHORCs, representing about 80 funding organisations across Europe, including all of the major funding organisations, issued a pretty strongly critical statement to the Commission about the details of the structure of the business case for the EIT. I hope that there is still time to go back and reanalyse how best to achieve the objective that we all sign up to of improving the mechanisms of knowledge transfer and innovation.

  Q87  Chris Mole: I am sorry to come back to the thematic priorities again because I do not think I have quite got to the bottom of how you mesh your priorities with what is in Framework 7, or are you saying that because it is only 6% of the research funding across Europe that that is not an issue, you just go with the flow?

  Professor Blakemore: Of course the advisory meetings are an opportunity to comment on the themes and particularly on the scale of the funding devoted to particular schemes. The panel I am on has actually been quite effective in shifting the balance of funding. Of course we are responsive then to the new opportunities which are offered through the identification of thematic areas and would reflect them to some extent in our own strategy or the advice that we give to our own researchers.

  Q88  Linda Gilroy: Earlier several of you stressed the importance of attracting students into the country but I want to ask a few questions about outward mobility of researchers and their careers. Was the concern reflected in the 2004 report funded by HFCE—and I do not know if some of you funded that research as well—justified; what are you doing about it; what sort of priority are you giving to enabling researchers to move about in international communities as a priority?

  Professor Diamond: Many of us have schemes which enable junior researchers in particular to spend time in laboratories or in major institutes overseas. So, for example, AHRC and ESRC have a joint programme with the US Library of Congress, which enables UK researchers to spend time there, and also then to visit major institutions. So we try to make those opportunities happen. Clearly there are issues for UK going to other countries which are nothing to do with research councils—they often revolve around language, which has always been an issue for the UK in terms of any joint agreement to enable interaction with other countries.

  Dr Richards: We have schemes that enable junior researchers to go overseas. One in particular, in the life sciences interface area they are required to spend 18 months of a three-year grant period abroad in a foreign laboratory and to bring that knowledge back to the UK. We try to encourage people to be as mobile as possible.

  Q89  Linda Gilroy: In terms of priority, you have just said in one scheme, but how is that rated compared to the very strong theme that was emerging earlier of the importance to UK science of attracting people who will then go away and become ambassadors and have networks and links? Does it not work the other way around as well? It sounds as though it is rather a low border of priority that is being attached to that.

  Dr Richards: Of course it works the other way as well and certainly our advanced research fellows, which I think is the area you are looking at, can have the opportunity, can use their funding to go and visit other laboratories and to engage in collaborations, build collaborations—they are not prevented from doing it. We set out what they can do but we put no limits, no real boundaries on it—it is for them to explore their abilities to the full.

  Professor Diamond: All research students have a grant that goes to the university with their grant, which is to be used, if you like, for their support and many of them are used to attend, for example, international conferences and to be given those sorts of links. In fact for most research students I think it would be the norm so to do. In addition, in my own council if there are any reasons why it is good for a student to visit another country for fieldwork or to collaborate in another institution, then they simply have to write and information is normally given and that is funded.

  Professor Blakemore: All MRC fellowships allow up to two years of work overseas and 12% of awardees take up that opportunity.

  Q90  Linda Gilroy: You have mentioned language skills, should more be done to boost language skills of UK researchers, particular languages? How might that be achieved and is there a role for research councils in that?

  Professor Diamond: I think frankly there is a need. I do not necessarily think that it is something that research councils can do alone. I think the more that is done to improve language skills of people coming right the way through the education system in the UK personally would be very good. Are there things that the UK can do? Yes, there are and AHRC and ESRC together with the funding councils recognised that there was a real need for social scientists across many areas of social science who were working on issues around particular areas of the world and the four areas that were initially mentioned were Japan, China, the Arab world and Central and Eastern Europe—12 different languages—and that is why we put together a major partnership called Language-Based Area Studies, which is funding five centres around the country with large numbers of research students, who will take their PhD over an extra year to enable them not only to become great social scientists but to properly be able to speak the language. Therefore we will, over time, for example, have economists working on the Chinese economy who are able properly to engage with China and understand those issues, or we will have political scientists working on the Arab world who are properly able to understand both the culture and language of Arabic. I think we have to do those things and to be proactive in making them happen, with the language teaching often having to be ab initio because otherwise it simply would not happen.

  Q91  Linda Gilroy: I can understand that in your research council; how does it work in engineering and medicine?

  Dr Richards: In engineering and physical sciences I am afraid the lingua franca is English across the world. People should go abroad to learn the culture—I certainly did when I was a student and post-doc—but the lingua franca is English.

  Q92  Linda Gilroy: So it is not such a pressing issue as far as international collaboration in the engineering sciences. Is the same true in medical?

  Professor Blakemore: It is certainly not a problem, of course, in North America, and increasingly it is not a problem for laboratory working in Europe where the use of English in the laboratory on a daily basis is now just standard. But it is an issue in some parts of the world, especially still in China.

  Q93  Linda Gilroy: Is anything being done to address that?

  Professor Blakemore: I really agree with Ian that I think it is not principally the responsibility of the research councils and this needs to be tackled at a relatively early stage in education where HEIs do, of course, offer the opportunities for language training.

  Q94  Linda Gilroy: Has the Medical Research Council been seeking to influence that agenda and particularly amongst students who might be beginning to specialise in secondary education towards medical careers?

  Professor Blakemore: We have not done so, no.

  Q95  Linda Gilroy: How successful have you found the money follows researchers scheme, which I understand is an initiative developed by something I had not come across until today, which glories in the acronym of EUROHORCs—the European Heads of Research Councils. Is that working from a UK point of view? Has there been much interest from UK researchers and do any of you have plans to extend that scheme outside the EU?

  Professor Blakemore: All research councils have signed up to that scheme and I think it is a very important symbol of the commitment to mobility in Europe to create of a real European research area. I do not know whether I should express delight but the fact is that no one has yet asked to transport their MRC support out of this country, so we do not yet have experience.

  Q96  Chairman: Is it a successful scheme?

  Professor Blakemore: The availability of it I think is important.

  Professor Diamond: It is a scheme which has removed a barrier and therefore it is available, but I do not think it would be for us as research councils to propagate it. There are examples across research councils where a researcher, for example, moves a job and goes to work at a different university in Europe, and then it is not a problem for the money to go with him or her and that has to be a good thing. But it may not be something that is going to be taken up the whole time just simply because people are not dashing about between jobs.

  Dr Richards: Since the agreement has come in in EPSRC nothing has happened. However, prior to that we had a separate agreement with Germany, and I think there were two people in the UK—they were actual German nationals but they had grants here and they moved back to Germany and they took the EPSRC grant with them.

  Q97  Linda Gilroy: But it sounds as if it is pretty minimal in its practical impact at the moment but a useful tool to have.

  Dr Richards: Exactly.

  Professor Mason: As somebody said, it is symbolic, and I think it is very valuable.

  Q98  Linda Gilroy: Are there plans to extend it outside the EU? Is it appropriate to think in those terms? Is anybody thinking in those terms?

  Professor Mason: If a situation arose on a case by case basis we would look favourably on that possibility.

  Professor Diamond: I have to say that the reason it does not exist is probably because demand has not been high. If someone were to come it would be something that would be looked at very sensibly.

  Professor Mason: Certainly in areas of my council I do not think the issue of mobility is really a big issue. I think people tend to move quite readily and they get jobs funded by people abroad.

  Q99  Chairman: I thought that one of the aims of this though, Keith, was to try to support collaborative research so that you would get a grand and you would in fact be able to go to Manheim and be able to do your work there and then come back, and it surprises me that has not been taken up.

  Professor Mason: It has not in my subject area so far. As I say, people do go to Manheim but they get funded locally.

  Professor Diamond: There are often extraneous to research reasons why people do not wish to go and spend long periods of time. Communication is such now that people can collaborate across international boundaries and do so by, for example, using relatively short visits of face to face and a large amount of electronic communication and that can work really very well, and so you do not need to move lock stock and barrel and therefore take the money with you.