RT HON LORD ROOKER AND PROFESSOR HOWARD DALTON

1 NOVEMBER 2006

  Q180  Chairman: But you do not want to pay for them long-term?

  Professor Dalton: No, we do, do not get me wrong. We pay for long-term research where it is necessary. We have paid for long-term research at Rothamsted Research, we have paid for long-term research, as you have heard, at IGER, we have paid for long-term research at IAH in a number of areas and where it is necessary for us to keep programmes going, but very often we have to respond to the short-term policy needs and those short-term policy needs very often mean that we place short-term contracts. At the end of that contract, as we make it clear to everybody in the first instance, that research will stop at that stage. If it produces work which we need to follow up, we will follow it up, but we cannot keep going on for ever on the same projects; it would be a waste of taxpayers' money if we were to do that.

  Q181  Adam Afriyie: So if the British Geological Survey or CEH shut down completely, you would not be concerned about the long-term future of monitoring projects like that?

  Professor Dalton: Of course I would.

  Q182  Adam Afriyie: But you are not financing them or funding them?

  Professor Dalton: We are not funding the British Geological Survey, but we are funding CEH certainly, not a large amount, but the same amount that we put into, for example, BBSRC. We put around £4 million a year into the NERC activities and they work extremely well with us.

  Q183  Adam Afriyie: And you would consider supporting them if they looked like they were going to disappear?

  Professor Dalton: It would depend on what reason they were disappearing. We do not support people just for the sake of supporting them. If they do something that is necessary for us to do, it is important for us in terms of a long-term dataset or if they are doing work, for example, as CEH did very much on the farm-scale evaluations work, very important work for us indeed, yes, we would fund that and yes, we would continue funding it if it was necessary to our policy needs.

  Q184  Chairman: This is the bit I really need to pin you down on. You accept that there are certain long-term datasets that it is essential for the Government, for Defra to maintain. My question, and perhaps, Lord Rooker, you can respond to this, is: how do you in fact maintain the long-term financing of that? Could you ring-fence it so that in fact that was a given as far as the institutes were concerned or are you not prepared to go that far?

  Lord Rooker: The short answer to that has to be no. We do not do that for our own agencies, and let us be absolutely clear about this. If you take our overall research budget of roughly £150 million, £30 million goes into the universities on contracts, some short, some long—

  Q185  Chairman: This is long-term datasets that you have agreed and Professor Dalton has agreed that you have to have in terms of being able to underpin government policy in terms of long-term science.

  Lord Rooker: That is fine, providing it is not seen as though we are a milch cow for the infrastructure payments in terms of core funding irrelevant to the research. Now, it is true that if, for various other reasons, their income streams disappeared from other areas, because they have said they need income from elsewhere and so have our own agencies as well, and they were left only with that long-term, then we would have a real problem because what we have been asked to do from our budget is to prop up an institution which has no other work, no other income stream, but it has some narrow area vital to the Government and to the public sector and a good thing for the public to own and buy. Then you have got some major issue there, but that does not just affect these research institutes, but that affects, as you can imagine, research right across the piece. If the question is whether, if I can put it this way, the infrastructure of particular bodies and institutions, be they universities or research institutes or indeed Defra's own agencies which are subject to these fluctuations, should be maintained in perpetuity simply because of a narrow, long-term, vital piece of work—

  Q186  Chairman: I did not ask about that. I asked about preserving that element which you need, not the whole institute.

  Lord Rooker: Yes, but, with respect, if you take one of our own agencies, something I happen to know, the Central Science Laboratory based in York, that in effect is vital work and all of its income is related to contract and it gets work from all the place, Europe and other government departments. Effectively, around 1 January, before you open the door, it has sort of spent £10-15 million on what it costs to keep it going, but it has to get that money from its research contracts, if you see what I mean. It does not get £10-15 million, as I say, from Defra saying, "By the way, we need you, you are part of us, and here's the bit to open the door". It has to get it from its income stream and that is the way it works with the others. Now, if there is a change in that, in the way that bodies are funded in terms of infrastructure, how do you keep the door open, as it were, that is, with respect, a different issue. As I say, I am not working in a silo, this is not an issue just for Defra, but this cuts right across government; it is the way we fund the public good of science which is best done by the public sector because obviously for a lot of it we also have contracts with private institutions as well.

  Chairman: Thank you very much. I am sorry to have laboured the point, but it is important to get that covered.

  Q187  Dr Harris: As to the effects of external pressures which, therefore, force research councils to reorganise, and you have what you describe as this "small, but vital stream of work" to you, do you show an interest in ensuring that the reorganisation preserves that or do you think that is a matter just for the research council concerned with no input from your Department or from government?

  Lord Rooker: The answer is that if it is our work, we are funding it, so we are very interested if there are going to be different arrangements because it is in our interests because it is our work that we are paying for and we need the results of it. If there are to be mergers or adjustments in the infrastructure of the research bodies, we would be interested. We are not bystanders. As Professor Dalton said, the whole thing is interlinked.

  Q188  Dr Harris: So what does your interest involve? You are interested, we are all interested, but on that issue what does your interest result in in terms of interventions or actions?

  Professor Dalton: One of the things that is a good example of where we actually get engaged with all of this is certainly through the research councils themselves and, as I said, I sit on both of those and we have had a very interesting development over recent years with CEH, for example. CEH restructured and reorganised itself and one of the things that was quite important in terms of the way in which CEH organised itself, and this is part of the Natural Environment Research Council activities, was it said, "Well, what is important for us to be able to maintain, keep and preserve?" and it asked Defra how important it was. I was involved in all of that and it was quite important for us to recognise that certain areas of research were very important for us to maintain, so biodiversity research, climate change research, both of those were preserved to CEH.

  Q189  Dr Harris: What if they proposed not to do that, what would the Government then do? That is what I am asking.

  Professor Dalton: If they said they were not going to do it?

  Q190  Dr Harris: Yes, despite asking you and your giving them that answer, do you have any instruments or interest by way of action to make them think again or do you say that it is for them?

  Professor Dalton: Making them think again? Well, there is a certain amount of engagement that we do have. It is not as if they are sort of sitting in a different department over there and we do not talk to them. There is an incredible amount of engagement which goes on between the research councils and ourselves at all levels, so in that sense there is a pretty good dialogue going on.

  Q191  Dr Harris: I know there is dialogue, but I am interested to know if people go further than that, if they say that they are going to preserve other areas of international significance because they need to attract grants in that area and the work they are doing for you is a relatively narrow, as Lord Rooker says, but vital piece of work.

  Professor Dalton: I think it is entirely up to them as to how they organise the structure of their organisations. We are in a position of being able to provide and give them information and advice as to what is important for us. If, on the other hand, the research councils decide that it is not for them and they want to go on and do something else, then that is entirely up to them, but we would certainly be active in engaging in trying to persuade them to do otherwise, but I cannot tell them precisely what to do, I am not their master.

  Q192  Dr Harris: That is consistent with the government evidence regarding this which is why I was asking you about it. On this question of cuts, Lord Rooker is very clear that there were no cuts, but the impression out there is that there have been cuts in Defra funding, as you are aware, possibly because the figures reduced for funding. Last year, 2004-05, for the Institute of Animal Health it was £9.6 million from Defra and it is now £8 million in 2005-06, for IGER in 2004-05 it was £8.2 million and it is now £7.1 million and from Defra for the Rothamsted Research Institute it was £6.4 million in 2004-05 and it is now £5.1 million in 2005-06, so that is a reduction year on year in the funding from Defra for those three organisations. In what way is that reduction not a cut?

  Lord Rooker: Simply on the grounds that the flow of contracts has changed. To the best of my knowledge, and I have had this confirmed again, when we have issued research contracts to these bodies, there is usually a time limit on them anyway and there has to be because, otherwise, the things will grow up topsy, so there has to be a time limit, but we have not chopped any of these contracts with any of these bodies earlier than was already planned. Contracts may have come to an end and the flow of new ones has been different because the priorities have changed. Now, that, with respect, is not a cut. They may say, "Oh, there's less money from Defra", that is true, but that is not because we have cut an expected flow of money. They know exactly what is coming and they can programme for it. If they then say, "Oh, we know what's coming and we know the contract's coming to an end, but we think we've got to keep this going. They don't really need this research, but we need their money to keep our infrastructure costs going", and we say, "Sorry", then they have got a cut, but the fact is that their expectations of money from us have been met in full. Therefore, when it has changed up or down, they have known in advance. With respect, you cannot claim that that is a cut.

  Q193  Dr Harris: It was not me using that language. I used the word "reduction", so you would accept that there has been a reduction in the overall funding in the last complete financial year to the year before. I accept what you say, that that is not cutting off supplies which were expected under the contracts, but they are dealing with a reduction in their income from you, so would you accept that?

  Lord Rooker: Yes, that is the ebb and flow of the change in priorities which I explained.

  Q194  Dr Harris: So what about a moratorium on funding because it is considered that there was a moratorium on the funding announced in July 2006? Most people do not consider a moratorium to imply an ebb and flow. It sounds a little more draconian than the ebb and flow of the waves on the shore.

  Lord Rooker: Well, I can assure you that there was a complete moratorium on spending on virtually anything in Defra at that time because, as I have said to my house when I am in receipt of a lot of questions on this on a daily basis, with a new team of ministers when four out of five arrived in May and in late June we were told, "By the way", and I am using round figures, "there is a £200 million hold on this year's budget", and you are dutybound to do something about it. Well, the first thing we did was put a stop on everything just while we had time to look at it and, as a result of that, we have made certain decisions relating to this year, 2006-07, and we hope that by the end of, I can say, this month now because we are now into November, we will be in a position to give advance warning for the 2007-08 budget because there is a knock-on effect here to all of the bodies that are involved in Defra. To that extent, the moratorium was there while we looked urgently over the summer at what we were doing in Defra as to where we could find this £200 million. I repeat, that of the work going on that we were funding, there has been no cut and no early withdrawal of the funding from any of the research institutes or cutting short any contract times.

  Q195  Dr Harris: So the moratorium could just be considered as an unexpected halt in the commissioning of funding of new research in those areas which they would have expected to have been commissioned?

  Lord Rooker: Yes.

  Q196  Dr Harris: I think it is fair to say that and, therefore, you would accept that there have been redundancies partly as a result of that moratorium on the commissioning of new projects which were expected to be commissioned, if I can use the term "commissioned" generally? Would you accept that at least because this is, I think, the point the Chairman was trying to get at in his original question?

  Lord Rooker: Well, not knowing all the detail of what was in the system, anything that we got a contract for or where the money would have been committed has carried on, so I still reject this point that you have heard this morning, that people have been made redundant as a result of Defra cuts and then that transfers over to the Rural Payments Agency and the Single Farm Payment. There is simply no connection whatsoever. We have not cut or cut short a single research contract.

  Q197  Chairman: If it had not been for the problems with the farm payments and you did not have to find the £200 million, is it likely that many of the contracts would have been extended or renewed as far as the institutes are concerned? Yes or no?

  Professor Dalton: I will try and answer that one, I think.

  Q198  Chairman: Yes or no?

  Professor Dalton: The point is that that made no difference to the sort of work we are trying to do. What has happened here is that this is a management problem for finances, nothing to do with the science we are trying to do. We were trying to continue with all the science we need in order to fulfil our policy obligations and that will continue.

  Q199  Chairman: One of the obligations is that 200 scientists have left or are going to leave those three institutes.

  Professor Dalton: That is nothing to do with Defra's organisation of its funding to those institutions at all, nothing at all.

  Lord Rooker: Nothing at all.