PROFESSOR SIR KEITH O'NIONS

20 JUNE 2007

  Q240  Chairman: The other comment that we have received is that sometimes the speed of response, because of the way in which we evaluate research programmes, does not allow you to make the sorts of more immediate responses to international collaborations, and therefore we lose opportunity. Are you aware of that, and is there anything we can do about that?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Yes, I am, and I think that it is a fair comment to some extent. There are two responses to that, looking to the future. There is the one I have pointed to, the vision I have for more financial flexibility in the way in which the Research Councils plan strategically, such that they are able to earmark money and respond quickly. The second thing is—no doubt you have encountered this problem in the inquiry—there is always a risk of double jeopardy. Our Research Councils are working quite hard to develop memoranda with other countries that clearly avoid double jeopardy. Double jeopardy can put enormous time delays in things, and we have numerous examples of them; e.g. funding is available in the UK but the funding source in China is still held up. We have numerous examples of that sort. The only way we can deal with them is by better MOUs and understandings with other organisations.

  Q241  Dr Harris: Do you think that we are held back, in terms of creating international partnerships, by the lack of mobility of UK researchers—for example, language skills? There is a separate question about what you could do about that, but I would be interested in your view on it.

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I do not have an analysis of it, but my instinct says that we are not seriously held back, given that English has become pretty much the lingua franca of science. I think that in many organisations around the world one can use English. There are some cultural issues that may impinge on this. Historically, it has been quite difficult to get enough UK people to go to Japan, for example, where there has been a greater uptake and willingness of Japanese to come here. I think that does have something to do with language and culture. It may not affect their ability to communicate with scientists in the lab and do the research; it is the broader difficulty in some countries of surviving in everyday life without foreign language ability.

  Q242  Dr Harris: You say that English is the lingua franca of science, but it is more appealing to UK scientists to go abroad if they think that they will be able to communicate with the non-scientists that they come across, and even some of the scientists. Do you speak foreign languages yourself fluently?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: None well; a couple very badly.

  Q243  Dr Harris: I am interested in the European angle. There was a debate a couple of days ago in this House, looking at the implications of the Green Paper from the Commission on the European Research Area. Do you think there are particular things that the UK has to do to grasp the opportunities set out in that vision, in order to make sure that our people are as mobile and able to take advantage of levered-in funding through the ERA as other countries?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Are you again thinking in terms of language skills here?

  Q244  Dr Harris: I am just talking generally. Moving on from language skills, what about the mobility of young scientists and the ability for them to be able to be funded abroad?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I think that there are a great number of things in place across the Research Councils and across the Academies that do encourage mobility, and I think that the UK community is highly mobile actually. I believe that the evidence you have had from the Research Councils shows that—and they are rather different—each Research Council does have various schemes to promote mobility, mobility in research, to give the opportunity for people to travel. The Royal Society has had a very effective system of grants for conferences and laboratory visits internationally. I think that we have been rather well-off in that area in the UK, even though it is quite disparate perhaps in how it is handled across seven different Research Councils and the Academies.

  Q245  Dr Harris: Do you think that we are pretty mobile because in many of the research disciplines we are pretty male?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: We are ... ?

  Q246  Dr Harris: We are pretty male. So if women were better represented in some of the physical sciences, you might find the mobility of scientists restricted because of the failure for there to be mechanisms and funding to enhance mobility of people with caring responsibilities or families.

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I am not aware of serious gender difficulties at the early career stages, PhDs, post-doctoral, early career.

  Q247  Dr Harris: I will send some of my constituents to your house to tell you about it!

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Please do. You may have a specific example, but I am not aware of any study or analysis—and I am not saying that you are incorrect. I am just not aware of any study showing that, if you take an area where women are extremely active in science—in the medical and biomedical sciences—is there any significant difference in the mobility, in terms of conferences and so on. There are other sorts of difficulties, further on in career for women, where we still have quite a long way to go to sort that out in universities and research institutes, but I do not think it is at the earlier career stage—but that may be my lack of awareness.

  Q248  Dr Harris: I note your response.

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: You may be sending your constituents to my front door!

  Q249  Dr Harris: Maybe one day this Committee will look into this.

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: It would be a good thing.

  Q250  Dr Harris: I think that it would be a good thing too. Finally, the EU Framework Programme—how important is that, do you think, in dictating UK strategy?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Very. The EU Framework has been immensely important. It would be responsible for a large part of the increase of multi-authored international papers, because most of the Framework Programme has funded multiple-country contracts. The amount of money in the Framework, €50 billion, the amount of money that is likely to go into the European Research Council, will have increasing impact on what we are doing and how we should align ourselves in the UK.

  Q251  Dr Iddon: Sir Keith, how has the Global Science and Innovation Forum developed UK international research activity, in your opinion?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I think that for the first time it brought together around one table all of those responsible for international activities in science, including DfID. It has helped us get a much better understanding of what we do. I am not sure there was anybody who could reel off all of the activities that we were involved in internationally across Research Councils, other government departments, and so on. I think that has been hugely beneficial. It has pointed the way forward in a number of areas, in which there have already been responses. For example, one of the things that came out very early on was the need for the Research Councils to improve the interface they have with other countries. Not that there was poor science going on, but the interface was not as fluid as was desirable or indeed what other countries have achieved. There is the establishment of the RCUK offices. There is the one in Washington later on this year, almost a one-stop shop if you like, co-located with the FCO science and UKTI staff. There will be one in Beijing later this year, and the ambassador in Delhi has been very helpful in trying to establish one there early next year. I would say that has come out of GSIF, plus considerations of branding—which sounds the sort of thing you may not do in science. We have many fellowships across the system, which we do not sell as a single brand—as something comparable perhaps to a Humboldt Fellowship. Having some branding of international fellowships from the Royal Society to Research Councils, therefore, will be helpful and give greater clarity to what is available in the UK to people in other countries. I would say that it has set us off in the right direction, including the much stronger relationships now between international development funding and our Research Councils. There is a grouping that has been formed as a result of that which I think will produce much better alignment. I therefore think that it has been wholly positive.

  Q252  Dr Iddon: Are you suggesting by what you have just said that there is quite a lot of collaboration now with DfID?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: The Research Councils are collaborating with DfID research and development, yes. You may have some of the details of that in the submission from the Research Councils, but I am very happy to give you any additional information we have on that.

  Q253  Dr Iddon: Sir Keith, what is your role in GSIF?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: A.N. Other! I am a member of GSIF and I participate as one of the members. Clearly, with the budget responsibilities I have, I am in a fairly strong position to nudge the system forward on the back of GSIF recommendations.

  Q254  Dr Iddon: Are you aware that there has been some criticism made in the evidence we have received about the low profile of GSIF and also the FCO network? Professor Palmer of Warwick University, for example, has said that GSIF is "so low-profile that it is just not visible to academics and research supporters in universities", and the same gentleman has also been critical of the low profile of FCO networks. It appears that the people who should know just do not know about these matters. How can we increase the profile of both?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I think that is a fair remark. GSIF does not have any executive function. It is rather like Funders' Forum, which brings together the Research Councils, the charities, and so on. I do not think that its profile has been strong externally. It has not done what Funders' Forum has done and had town meetings, put minutes on a website, and so on; but I suspect you would find people who say that the profile of Funders' Forum is somewhat below the radar. The strength of these organisations is what people go off and do, on the basis of their considerations. If GSIF is going to have an ongoing role, then the way in which its profile would be increased would be by having, following Funders' Forum, an open meeting once a year with stakeholders, putting minutes on the website and engaging more in that way.

  Q255  Dr Turner: Has anybody assessed the effectiveness of OSI's activities in the international context? For instance, how important in this area are the high-level links, such as visits by yourself or Sir David King?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: It is very difficult to quantify the value of visits, but you know how much you lose if you do not make them. Obviously, responsibility for an international dimension is very central to Dave King's role; to cement relationships internationally and to develop them. I think that is extremely important. In my own role, I tend to make international visits where I think that there are real things that the UK needs to understand from another country, or where deals are to be made. For example, I was in the United States not many weeks ago. We signed an agreement with NASA on a collaborative arrangement for technology development. That was a specific purpose. I also spent time in southern California. I was particularly interested in understanding the way in which universities there engage with the business community in knowledge transfer, how venture capitalists came in. The University of San Diego has a system called CONNECT, which has been extremely effective in developing the biotechnology industry in southern California. Something like that has been enormously valuable to OSI and how we think about the future in knowledge transfer. I think that has been my role—and I could roll off another series of visits, but they are of similar ilk.

  Q256  Dr Turner: The Year of Science—a lot of people seem to think that it has been quite successful. What benefits have you seen from it? How do you think we will follow it up and sustain the effort?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: The key point is the second one. I think that it has been successful in profile-raising all over the place. We have very successfully raised our profile in China. I made a visit to China not very long ago. It is quite easy to wind up the system and increase the profile; the challenge is always in sustaining it, because sustaining it usually requires investment and requires a number of organisations to be making these connections.

  Q257  Dr Turner: Who do you think should be responsible for that?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Primarily, the responsibility has to be with those organisations that have the resources to develop this. For us, I think that is principally the Research Councils and the Academies. The stimulus and some of the winding-up can come from within government or a government department; but to get any continuity of this, any continuity of funding, or that sort of flexibility of funding that I alluded to right at the beginning, that has to be part of the planning horizon of Research Councils and the Academies. In detail, it requires a lot of experience and knowledge of the research areas and the research opportunities, and that largely is not in government; it is largely there in the universities, the institutes and the Research Councils.

  Q258  Dr Turner: What evidence do you have that the overall level of government funding is sufficient for OSI to be effective internationally?

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: I do not think that being effective, or more effective internationally than even we are at the moment, is a matter of money. I think that we are sufficiently well resourced to do that. Going back again to my first point, I think that it is a matter of having a very clear strategic approach and flexibility in financial planning, in Research Councils and elsewhere, to deal with it. Fundamentally, however, I do not think there is a real problem of money. Almost half of everything that we do already has an international dimension; so it is not that we need a very large increment of additional money to be international. That is actually already there. I think that it is a matter of strategy, coherence and flexibility in planning.

  Q259  Dr Turner: One issue that was raised with us by the CCLRC in its dying days was that the Government was not being sufficiently proactive to ensure that international facilities were hosted in the UK, thereby British science achieving the benefits of that.

  Professor Sir Keith O'Nions: Some people do hold those views. I actually disagree with them quite profoundly. I think that the UK has been extremely sensible in the way in which it has approached an area which is becoming increasingly international and increasingly costly. The formation of a Large Facilities Road Map in 2002 has been an example the UK has set which Europe has followed with ESFRI—there is an ESFRI Road Map with 30-odd potential programmes in it. Aligning the UK road map and the European Road Map is the next task. The CCLRC's advice on a specific area that was of interest to it, on neutron sources, was that we should be looking for a European strategy—which I think is right. My view, therefore, is that we have the correct approach to this. These are very expensive facilities, and you need to have very clearly thought-out reasons for those situations where you will invest probably 50% of the capital and ongoing costs and host them in the UK, rather than contribute to an international source. I think that an ad hoc approach to this is very risky.