PROFESSOR JULIA GOODFELLOW CBE, PROFESSOR COLIN BLAKEMORE AND PROFESSOR ALAN THORPE

28 JUNE 2006

  Q80  Dr Harris: In your research institutes you have a captive population of people that you can survey for whether they are happy or not as PhD students. Have you got good survey data asking them what they think about their lot in life?

  Professor Goodfellow: Most of them have university partners and they may well spend a lot of time in the university as well; they may not spend all their time in the institute.

  Professor Thorpe: Are you talking about students?

  Professor Goodfellow: PhD students.

  Q81  Dr Harris: When you were asked earlier about staff and where they went you gave us some reassuring anecdotes, a few people had found jobs. I just thought there was a big opportunity with your staff to ask them where they are going when they go. We cannot base recommendations on you saying that you know of a few people who have got university places.

  Professor Goodfellow: When people start you can survey them but even then people do not always get a hundred% response to surveys as you are aware. When people leave it is then very hard to get responses and some of them may well take redundancy and not do anything for three months or so while they think about what they are doing. It can be hard to follow them afterwards.

  Q82  Dr Harris: Are there published surveys? Are you attempting to follow up?

  Professor Goodfellow: Yes.

  Q83  Dr Harris: There are published surveys.

  Professor Thorpe: In some of our institutes we do staff surveys on a number of things including their views on working in institutes et cetera and also we do attempt to collate statistics on where our staff go to.

  Q84  Dr Harris: Would you be willing to send us those surveys.

  Professor Thorpe: I would.

  Professor Goodfellow: Yes, we will send information to you.

  Q85  Dr Harris: One other thing on an earlier question, Colin Blakemore made the point about multi-disciplinary research and he was speaking very much from an MRC perspective where his view was very clearly that there is a good argument that these things are best done in universities. It did not strike me that that was necessarily your view. Is it your view? Do you agree with Lord Sainsbury basically and I will quote what he said because I think it is a key question, indeed I think it was what prompted us to do this inquiry. He said, "There is a well considered view internationally that separate research institutes have the disadvantage that they become obviously specialised science institutions and in today's multi-disciplinary world basic research increasingly should be done in a multi-disciplinary environment like universities." Do your institutes agree?

  Professor Goodfellow: I agree that research should be done in a multi-disciplinary environment with inter-disciplinary research, ie real connections between them. However, that can be done in an institute and has been done in an institute. If you look at Rothamsted research you have John Pickett FRS Chemist who is working there and who has given evidence to this Committee before, and you have statistics. They generated GenStat which is a major statistical package for the UK, because they needed it for their research. I think there are strengths in the institutes where it can be said, "I do need somebody like this to do the research I want to do," but there are equally strengths in the universities as well.

  Q86  Dr Harris: He said universities; you are saying universities and large institutes.

  Professor Goodfellow: Absolutely, yes.

  Q87  Dr Harris: Turning to the management of RCIs, do you think that RCIs themselves have enough representation on Research Council management structures?

  Professor Thorpe: I have mentioned that NERC has an executive board which actually draws together the directors that are in head office and also our major research institute directors in an executive board role to manage NERC as a whole. In terms of our science advisory panels then there are a significant number of research institute scientists who are on there but they are on those panels by virtue of their scientific disciplines and knowledge. In terms of council, we do not have our institute directors on council because our council members are there to be independent and obviously our research centre directors have particular strong vested interest in their particular areas.

  Q88  Dr Harris: No-one is independent. University people—present company excepted—will be interested in universities.

  Professor Goodfellow: But Councils do not set a budget for Oxford University or London University or any other universities whereas they do set the budgets for the institutes.

  Q89  Chairman: Could I ask you this, Julia, as a rider to Evan's question, where you have members of your board who also have influential positions on university boards and the question comes up about where do you allocate funding, either through direct competition or in fact protected budgets for research institutes, is there not a bias towards actually putting the money into universities in terms of competition?

  Professor Goodfellow: At council level there is a vigorous debate—as there should be—on the balance of funding between institutes and universities and that debate goes on. Of course people have views. There are a number of academic members of council but I think there are an equal number of non-university people on councils from other government departments from industry.

  Q90  Dr Harris: The data here says that the committee members of BBSRC show that overall only a little over 8% of strategy panels and committees are made up with RCIs representatives.

  Professor Goodfellow: At council we, like NERC, do not have anybody on it from a member of an institute because we are making formal decisions about how much funding they are going to get.

  Q91  Chairman: You do have members from the universities.

  Professor Goodfellow: Yes, we have members from the universities but the council is not making a decision about how much money goes to an individual university. They are making decisions about how much core money—core strategic grant—goes to a specific institute.

  Q92  Dr Harris: You do understand our point that we are making here that if the split is 60/40 and the 40 is universities, I have not yet met a single university academic who does not want more responsive funding available from research councils.

  Professor Goodfellow: You can see the balance, you have the figures which show how much core strategic grant has gone up, they had a big increase last time and you can look at the responsive mode. A balance has to be reached. The 8% is on the committees that are giving out money in specific projects and that is done through an appointments board and I think that would be one institute person per committee.

  Professor Thorpe: I think you have to look at the evidence and talk to some council members from universities. I find that a lot of them are very strong advocates—in NERC anyway—of our research centre institutes. Look at the amount of expenditure that NERC makes on its institutes relative to what it spends in universities. I think we spend more in our institutes.

  Q93  Dr Harris: That is not the right metric. The point I am making—I am very keen to make this point—is that whatever the actual funding is (which is historic and might change) it is either the case that there is pressure within that decision making body for more money to be biddable for by universities as well as research institutes or it is seen to be the case from within the research institutes that they have no voice even if they do not have a vote—plenty of people with direct financial interests do not have a vote but can actually participate in the debate—so you either have pressure to move one way or perception of pressure to move one way and you know (or do you know?) that many university people think that research institutes are feather bedded and therefore believe that they should compete equally with universities and vice versa. Do you accept that that is an argument because you have not really addressed that point?

  Professor Goodfellow: I think we try and make the decision making process as transparent as we can and to limit the vested interest as best we can. I think there are university people in our council who are very positive about work that is going on in our institutes and they recognise that to deliver the strategy there are areas which the universities are not in, do not want to be in and they recognise it needs to be delivered for the UK and we put the money into institutes.

  Professor Thorpe: They have a vested interest in the facilities in the institutes being in existence as I have mentioned. I think all of our institutes provide facilities and capabilities that the universities use to deliver their research so there is a strong dependency and a strong interest in having a healthy research base for the NERC group of institutes.

  Q94  Dr Turner: Various comments have been made about the governance of Research Council Institutes; can you tell us what efforts you both make to ensure that best practice is shared between the institutes? How do you respond to the calls that some people make for RCUK to take a lead in this, in determining overall best practice?

  Professor Thorpe: In terms of governance NERC has quite a range of governance models that we are using for our institutes ranging from so called wholly owned institutes through to centres that are under contract in universities involving companies limited by guarantee with charitable status. Over the years there have been changes made to governance where advantages have been seen. We were talking earlier about the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, which relatively recently—perhaps three or four years ago—made a transition to become a CLG in terms of its NERC governance. We actually operate a range of governance models and it is something that we visit quite regularly to examine what is best for that institute. The Costigan review of governance pointed, for example in NERC's case, to the British Geological Survey where there was the potential for other governance models to be looked at and we will certainly look at that to see if there are advantages in delivering the mission of BGS. I think NERC has shown over the years a willingness to change governance where it is seen to be advantageous.

  Professor Goodfellow: The last review of BBSRC governance in the mid-nineties put them all on the same model, made them all companies limited by guarantee with charitable status. That means there is a tension between how much BBSRC can tell separate companies and charity trustees to actually do. We also have a group which meets regularly once every three months with all the institute directors and we do talk about internal governance and we have pushed changes in their own governing bodies in terms of advertising for members, nomination committees and things like that in line with modern governance. We have been pushing them on that where we can but they are separate companies and they reporting to the charity commissioners in their own right. We did recognise that this model was far from perfect and we did ask for the OSI to do a review. The Costigan report as far as we were concerned still left some questions unanswered so we have asked Brian Follett and a group of people including two chairs of our institute governing bodies to take this forward, to come up with four or five different models, the pros and cons, what it would look like. They are doing that at the moment and there is a consultation that has just gone out and they will be reporting to council in October. We are certainly going away from one size fits all models and we will be looking at the appropriate governance for the science and the relationships they may have so if they wish to move closer to the university they may well move away from BBSRC and from the current model.

  Q95  Dr Turner: Is it too soon to ask if you have got any feedback from Sir Brian Follett that you can share with us?

  Professor Goodfellow: He is looking at a range of models. He is looking at everything from coming right in and being like the MRC, which means they may no longer be a charity, no longer have separate money, all their finances would come through BBSRC, where they would have to pay VAT, and there would be Treasury financial controls—that is one model—all the way through to being completely independent. Again there are problems there as to whether they could employ the staff because at the moment although they are separate companies BBSRC is the employer and has all employer liability. Can these governing bodies really act as independent companies, really take on the employment liability? I would say I have serious doubts about that model being viable—we would lose the science. Above all we do not want to lose the science as a result of this review. They are looking at a range of things between those two. I think the institute governing bodies will come back to us with their preferred model and then we will have a negotiation between council and them. We may well agree in many cases on the way forward.

  Q96  Chairman: Timescale?

  Professor Goodfellow: The first report to council in October. We are hoping to get some specific input from institutes on the deferred governance model by December. If we agree I think we can make decisions by December. If we have a disagreement then we have an annual meeting where the director comes to council with the chair of the governing body in February and we would have time to talk about it then. I would hope that in spring next year we would be well on the way. I think this is a case where we do need time because a lot of people do need to think about it and we need to bring the governing bodies on board with us in that.

  Q97  Chairman: Alan, could we ask you what progress is being made with the re-organisation of CEH? What factors made you change your original proposal?

  Professor Thorpe: Council made an original statement of intent in December last year and there was then a period of consultation. We referred earlier to the fact that we had a significant number of inputs to that consultation. The council met in early March to consider those consultation inputs. The council felt that there were a number of areas particularly ones we have referred to in terms of long term monitoring and bio-diversity where it wanted to strengthen its original proposals and so it made a decision on 8 March to allocate an increased budget relative to the original proposals to CEH and also set a higher external commissioned research income target. That has involved a change such that 40 posts that were originally at risk have been saved. There was a significant change in the decision relative to the original statement of intent but at that point the decision was taken and since then we have started our transitional integration project for the restructuring which will take something like three to four years to complete.

  Q98  Chairman: When we met you informally one of the concerns of our Committee was how do you preserve strategic science. One of the criticisms, I think it is fair to say, from our Committee's point of view is that the science plan was not up front. Could you tell us now what areas of science will actually be lost as a result of the restructuring and in terms of the extra £5 million you have, how much of that will go in competitive bids rather than go to the institutes?

  Professor Thorpe: As well as the £16.3 million per year in 2004-05 prices that NERC has allocated for core budget for CEH we have also allocated this £2 million a year initiative—ecology and hydrology funding initiative—which is for collaborative projects between universities and CEH. CEH will win a proportion, perhaps 50% of that money. I think that is the overall funding that has been allocated and the concern about the monitoring and bio-diversity has been addressed. You asked about the science plan.

  Q99  Chairman: Yes, what is going to be lost really?

  Professor Thorpe: The first comment I would make is that we are looking at a forward looking programme so there are areas of research but of course there are new priorities, and so what we looked at in this review for the restructuring is the future science that CEH is going to be delivering.