RT HON LORD ROOKER AND PROFESSOR HOWARD DALTON

1 NOVEMBER 2006

  Q200  Dr Harris: But I thought we had established that it was.

  Professor Dalton: Can I ask how you have managed to establish that BBSRC losing 200 posts is down to Defra? Could you tell me because I do not understand that?

  Q201  Dr Harris: Well, I will ask you the question. You accept that there was a moratorium which prevented the expected overall flows of new commissioned projects, and you have said this earlier, going to research councils, including some of the ones that we had before us previously. Is it not logical that, had that moratorium not happened, there would have been the flow of new research contracts and the renewal of others, not the cutting off of things which were cut off as I am not claiming anything was cut off which had started, and, as a result of the non-arrival of those extensions or those new contracts, there have been redundancies because you cannot pay people to do nothing? I think that is what we would like you to accept.

  Professor Dalton: I do not know if that is absolutely true, that redundancies have occurred as a result of Defra's moratorium exactly. Professor Shirley gave a fairly important response to one of the questions you asked a bit earlier on about that, that they do tend to use their core strategic grant in order to be able to support the infrastructure that is necessary in order to continue the research ethos that they have. Now, what we are talking about here is not contracting to do a piece of work at a particular time, but to give you an indication that sooner or later we will be doing that because if a grant has been approved, the mere fact that we are not funding it on day one, but actually funding it on day 90 or something is what we are really talking about. Of course we are not happy about being able to hold a moratorium, we are not really saying that a moratorium is the best thing to do, but we do have a responsibility not to overspend in the Department and that is why the moratorium has been brought about. I do not know if it leads to redundancies. It is all to do with management within the research councils. Do not forget that it is also true, I might add, with everything we are funding, so it is not just the research councils, but it is also our own agencies as well.

  Q202  Dr Harris: But we are interested in the research councils today, so would it be fair to say that if the research councils tell us that, due to this moratorium and, therefore, the non-arrival of the planned budget which was published, the research budget of the Department not arriving, there have been redundancies and the people who have been made redundant say it is because of that and you say that you do not know, it is reasonable for us to conclude, on the balance of the evidence, that it is as a result of that moratorium that there have been redundancies? What evidence do we have which would lead us to another conclusion?

  Lord Rooker: With respect, I would like to see the evidence on which that question is based. I have seen nothing which has crossed my desk and I have met some of these bodies. It is true, I have concentrated more, in the short time I have been there, on Defra's laboratories because there is a programme of change going on in the laboratories, including closing one and a merger, so there is change going on in our own institutions which, it is true, I have spent more time on, but I would like to see that evidence. Nothing has crossed my desk which indicates in any way, shape or form that anything that is happening in those research institutes has been as a direct result of Defra reneging on any of its promises. I have seen nothing where there is a direct link at all and I would like to see the evidence. That is the only way in which I can base my answer.

  Q203  Chairman: Well, it is not our role as a committee, as you know better than I do as a new Chairman, to interfere or best-guess the management structures within the organisation.

  Lord Rooker: Sure.

  Q204  Chairman: Our concern is about how we preserve the science—

  Lord Rooker: Absolutely.

  Q205  Chairman: —and how we make sure that the Government has access to world-class science when it needs it rather than having to recreate it, so that is the reason for that rather than trying to score points in terms of redundancies or anything else.

  Lord Rooker: With respect, I am not making that point and I cast no aspersions, but there is a difference of opinion, let us get it clear, between Defra and BBSRC because this issue is raised about the research council institutes, the public sector research, the RIPSS study. If you fund more than 15% of another body, there seems to be some indication in recommendation 2 that you have got a duty to carry on doing it. Now, in this case we do fund 40% of the Institute of Grassland, 20% of Rothamsted and roughly 20% of the IAH. Our view on this is that we must be in a position of agreeing their programmes, not simply just because we pay more than 15% that it is going to flow into their core. Now, there is a dispute of opinion between BBSRC and Defra on what I think is this recommendation or the interpretation of recommendation 2 and I make that absolutely clear because that is where we are coming from as we want programmes agreed because that is what we pay for, programmes.

  Q206  Chairman: It is fundamental to our inquiry.

  Lord Rooker: Of course.

  Q207  Dr Iddon: Defra's Deputy CSA told Research Fortnight last September that there is "an interaction between us and BBSRC headquarters which I don't think is an easy relationship. We are looking at ourselves as a policy business; their remit is to advance science. The BBSRC still tends to think of the funds that were transferred to us", and that is following the Rothschild Inquiry of 1972, "as `their money' which we are supposed to give back to them". Now, Professor Dalton, you said you have a very close working relationship with the BBSRC, but there do, especially from that quote which I have given you, appear to be some tensions.

  Professor Dalton: Well, there are. There are tensions largely because of that particular perception. That is a real problem in that sense. What BBSRC's perception of what the Rothschild allocation was is entirely up to them. That does cause us from time to time a difficulty. They believe that money is theirs and, therefore, they want to get it back. What we are trying to do in a sense, post-Rothschild, is to try and do all the sort of science that is necessary in order to be able to meet our policy objectives in the customer/contractor relationship that has been developed post-Rothschild. Bear in mind that if you read the Rothschild Report carefully, it indicates there that that arrangement was supposed to be a three-year temporary arrangement and it was going to be re-evaluated thereafter, so if you go back and read it carefully, as I did the other day, that never happened; that stayed and stayed for ever. The important point, I think, we need to bear in mind is that we do have, to be honest, a very good working relationship with the research councils and the BBSRC at a whole variety of different levels and that relationship that we have is extremely important in trying to align what the BBSRC research institutes are doing for us, what they expect from us and also, very importantly, how all of this fits in with our own Evidence and Innovation Strategy, in which they have had a very important part to play. Do not forget, that Evidence and Innovation Strategy which we have been producing, when I first joined Defra, there was no Science Innovation Strategy, but what we did within the first or second year was to produce what we called a `Science Innovation Strategy' which engaged with the research councils and let them know precisely what we were trying to do over a three-year period. They were consulted and they had input to it. Thereafter, we changed it from `Science Innovation' to what we call the `Evidence and Innovation Strategy' and in that Evidence and Innovation Strategy, we have engaged very widely with all of our stakeholders, with the research councils, they have all been privy to this, we have already been talking about it to them, and they have actually come back and told us precisely what they think is good and what is bad about it. There was a pretty extensive engagement. Despite what you might have heard, there was because I have seen all the written responses from them. Now, that has been very important in helping to cement, understand and develop the relationships with us, but it is not always going to be perfect. I have to accept the fact that there are times when the research councils want to do one set of things and we want to do another. As I said earlier on, the way in which they do research is somewhat different from what goes on, for example, in our agencies. There are many overlaps, but there are many differences as well and it is just a question of trying to organise it in such a way that they do the right sort of things for us and we actually let them know precisely what we want from them and what the long-term strategy might well be.

  Q208  Dr Iddon: That came out very clearly from the previous group of witnesses this morning, that the problem appears to be future planning and I think you personally are working hard with the BBSRC, according to Julia Goodfellow, to get some sort of long-term strategy developed. Is that correct?

  Professor Dalton: Yes, that is absolutely right. Yes, the relationships are pretty good. I think everybody seems to think they are not, but they are in fact very good. We sit on each other's committees, as I mentioned earlier on. They sit on many of my committees, we have one-to-one meetings, I have a lot of meetings with the research council chief executives on a regular basis and we do discuss high-level strategy and long-term strategy. We do not always necessarily get down to the nitty-gritty detail at those meetings, that is often left to my science co-ordinators and the chief executives of the research council institutes who do meet frequently, and we are trying to draw up a memorandum of understanding with BBSRC and the research council institutes right now in order to be able to advance that. There is one little, tiny sticking point and the one which Lord Rooker referred to, this belief that the research councils and BBSRC have that we have a sort of long-term obligation to put money into their pot which they are allowed to use in any way they like. We are happy to fund them so long as we agree a research strategy and if that research strategy is agreed, we will put money into them so long as it leads to a necessary development of our own policy needs, and they are, they are very good at doing much of that.

  Q209  Dr Iddon: The research councils do appear to be a pull in at least two ways, one in the direction of the universities and one in the direction of the institutes of course.

  Professor Dalton: That is right.

  Q210  Dr Iddon: There is a tension there obviously. Would you like to see any changes in the way the institutes are funded? Do you think the money going through the research councils is the right route or should they be funded in another way?

  Professor Dalton: I think the way in which the research councils are currently funded is quite satisfactory and it does give a pretty good support for the sort of areas of research that we all need. We have different needs and the research councils do support much of what we want. The way in which they fund their own research council institutes is fine as far as I am concerned. Their core strategic grant which they give them allows them to develop their research infrastructure and to develop their research programmes and that is fine. They also have to compete with universities and with the other research institutes for money from the research councils themselves and that is fine. It has raised their game and it has made them highly competitive in a number of different areas. They also compete for money from us and we are delighted to be able to support them when they can deliver the best research and the research that we need, and I think there is no reason, as far as I can see, to want to change that dramatically at this stage.

  Q211  Bob Spink: I think most of my questions have actually been covered previously, but I wonder if you could put a little meat on what the difficulties actually are in reaching agreement with BBSRC and RIPSS, that is the Research Council Institute and Public Sector Research Establishment Sustainability Study, just to get it on the record.

  Lord Rooker: I referred to it previously, but I stopped reading it out half-way through the title!

  Professor Dalton: I am delighted you have raised that and I am glad you gave it rather than me in terms of trying to explain the acronym! There is no difficulty, to be absolutely honest. There is a stumbling block and the one which Lord Rooker referred to which is paragraph 2 in the interpretation of the RIPSS Report, as has been referred to by Lord Rooker and as has been referred to by my Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser's response in the Research Fortnight article. I think we have gone over it quite a few times. It is clearly and simply whether or not we should be funding and putting money in in the way the research councils put money into their own research institutes as a core strategic grant or not. We cannot do that. We do not have that flexibility. We are prepared to fund the research councils long-term so long as they deliver the sort of science that we want and, as long as they keep doing that, and in many cases they do, we will continue funding them.

  Q212  Bob Spink: Do you think BBSRC actually allow the RCIs to get on and do their job and give them the funding or do they try and retain a little too much ownership and control because of that funding?

  Professor Dalton: I think you would have to ask them that specifically as I do not think it would be fair for me to comment too much on it, but from my own perception, being on the council of the BBSRC, I think I think they are fairly good at being able to let the research councils develop their own strategies and to develop a strategy which works effectively not only with the universities, but also with government departments as well, so, as far as I can see, it works fairly well.

  Q213  Bob Spink: Why are they sensitive about that then?

  Professor Dalton: I think they are sensitive about it because of again issues of long-term sustainability. I think that is a big issue for everybody. We have issues of long-term sustainability with our research agencies and we do worry that there are not enough resources in the pot in order to keep everything going. If someone were to double my budget, I think that would be fine, I would not have a problem with any of that. We would not be talking about half of this if the money was there, so what we are trying to do is we are trying to manage structures with a budget which is not dramatically increasing. However, having said all that, look at the research councils' budgets from BBSRC. Have you seen the figures between 2002 and 2006? Their budgets have increased dramatically and, as Lord Rooker said, ours have actually stayed fairly static over that period of time, so we do not have the same sort of flexibility that the research councils have in terms of being able to develop a research base, but they are trying very hard to restructure and reorganise themselves to be much more streamlined and to deliver value for money, which I think is really what they are trying to do, and they are doing that right now. I think it was also mentioned that the Follett Report was going to look very closely at the way in which the research councils are using their research institutions effectively.

  Q214  Dr Turner: This question of sustainable funding has been worried to death and I will shake it a little more, if you will bear with me. Clearly the research institutes are of great value to Defra, so you must feel some element of responsibility even if you cannot back it up with money. Would I be right in interpreting the current situation as being that the institutes have a cashflow problem which they have clearly spelt out to us this morning and from you, Jeff, it is quite clear that a part of that cashflow problem is because of your moratorium. Does that mean that over the coming financial year when you plod your way through a moratorium further income streams will be coming through new contracts to the research institutes, so this is a passing glitch?

  Lord Rooker: At the risk of repeating myself, our priorities are not what they were ten years ago.

  Q215  Dr Turner: I appreciate that.

  Lord Rooker: Therefore, because our research is all going out to contract, including to our own agencies, priorities have changed. They have changed in terms that even our agricultural research now is more tuned in to the climate and environmental aspects of food production than the techniques of production, which is old MAFF in a way, so the issues of the natural environment, water quality, sustainable consumption and production and energy and climate change are priority areas that were nothing remotely like that a few years ago. Therefore, we have to work, as Howard says, mainly within our budget and also looking at what our policy priorities are. Our policy priorities cannot be shaped just by the history of what we did in the past and that is what it comes down to.

  Q216  Dr Turner: Absolutely, I quite agree.

  Lord Rooker: We are not the bankers for the research councils, we have to make that absolutely clear.

  Q217  Dr Turner: We are talking about at least two institutes here, IGER and Rothamsted, which are ideally placed to respond to the kind of research which I assume you do want to commission on adaptation to climate change. Am I right?

  Professor Dalton: Absolutely. Hopefully once the moratorium is lifted, the research activities will continue. I do not enjoy having a moratorium, I do not enjoy having to talk to the research council chief executives and saying, "I'm terribly sorry, but we are not going to fund you for a couple of months and that is going to cause some problems". It is an issue for us. I do not like to do it. As a scientist, I want to make sure that there is continuity and that the research teams stay in place. Once the moratorium is lifted, yes, that might all be going back into the research council institutes as soon as possible, I hope, so the simple answer is yes, it will continue once the moratorium is lifted.

  Q218  Dr Turner: Can I just ask out of curiosity, if you contract with a university department a piece of research, the university department will be insisting on full economic costs, yes?

  Professor Dalton: Yes. Well, it depends. As far as Defra is concerned, Defra historically has always paid full economic costs. Even when the BBSRC and the research councils were not, Defra was and still is.

  Q219  Dr Turner: And you would do the same with the research council institutes?

  Professor Dalton: We do the same for the research council institutes.