Introduction

14. The OSI's quinquennial review of the Grant Awarding Research Councils in 2001 contained a brief analysis of the role played by the Research Councils as the providers of research through their RCIs. It concluded that there were "sound policy reasons for establishing and retaining" institutes but that "the strategic case for institutes needs .. to be clearly justified in each case".[7] The review suggested criteria which define the variety of purposes for institutes:

Criteria which define the variety of purposes for institutes: i.  provide a national capability and source of advice to Government; ii.  create a critical mass of research capability, effort and expertise; to provide enhanced research productivity, visibility, exploitability; or rapidly to strengthen an underdeveloped area; iii.  foster co-ordinated and co-operative multidisciplinary approaches to a research area; iv.  encourage a long-term research vision and strategy; v.  enable long-term survey, monitoring and data management activities underpinned by research; vi.  provide a full-time research-centred environment; vii.  open up scientific career paths and opportunities which may not be available within university or faculty structures; viii.  develop and provide facilities and services; and ix.  allow greater investment in capital equipment and the skills of support staff, because of the more stable environment.[8]

The Research Councils accepted these criteria at the time and described them in evidence to us as "a useful framework for describing the role of the RCIs and how they contribute to the UK research and skills base", although the Councils prefaced this with the caveat that not all the criteria would necessarily apply to all types of RCI, in particular those embedded in universities with university-employed staff.[9] With this caution in mind, we find these criteria a useful starting point for examining the role of RCIs.

Contribution to the research base

15. The range of research areas covered by RCIs across all Research Councils is quite striking, including as it does the British Antarctic Survey, the Institute for Animal Health, the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the UK Astronomy Technology Centre, as well as a large number of centres specialising in economics or the arts and humanities.[10] What they have in common is that they have been established to fulfil a specific, clearly identified need and that they have, or should have, a strongly-defined research mission. Evidence from one RCI, Rothamsted Research, described this as "the mission-driven, programme-focussed nature of institute research whose strategy is long term and well defined in pursuit of goals that are linked to users' needs in a variety of sectors."[11] The type of mission can vary. The Biosciences Federation usefully divided RCIs into two camps: first, those whose mission is intended to deliver exceptionally high quality science within internationally competitive fields, which "has the potential to contribute to the health and wealth of the United Kingdom"; and, second, those which aim at ensuring that "the UK has the facilities, skills and expertise to work in a particular area".[12] These latter institutes may not have the glamour of the first category but both can be characterised as performing a unique role in the UK research base, a term that we heard again and again throughout this inquiry.

16. What sets RCIs apart from other research bodies is a structure which encourages the development of a critical mass of expertise in their given areas. Because the RCIs have core funding, guaranteed over a period, and they also have the power to develop their own strategy within the terms set out by their parent Council, individual institutes are able to take a long term and innovative approach to their work programmes. Moreover, as dedicated research centres, they foster a culture in which the focus is on furthering knowledge and developing expertise, rather than on teaching or adapting their programmes to suit short-term research grants. As one university told us, RCIs "should provide an environment for long-term, high quality research projects that allow the best people to concentrate on their research".[13] Similarly, the MRC regarded RCIs as "flag ship, leading entities in the UK, with a critical mass of individuals able to focus full-time on vital long term research [...] acting as magnets for high-quality people in the field".[14]

17. A further advantage of the RCI structure is that the institutes are able to maintain expertise in unfashionable areas of study. This can mean both disciplines which are no longer so attractive to students and hence to university departments, and basic strategic science which underpins more exciting research projects. In the first case, Defra identified "the provision of continuity and alignment of research with strategic priorities without necessarily following scientific fashion" as "one of the important strengths of the RCIs" and a major reason why the institutes are a "crucial component of the UK science and engineering base".[15] BBSRC institutes in particular presented their credentials as sustaining "UK scientific expertise in some nationally important scientific disciplines that have been eroded in the UK academic sector under the influence of universities' need to satisfy a student-led market economy".[16] In the case of basic science, this work includes long-term environmental monitoring, surveys and maintenance of databases, such as the 160 years old dataset held at Rothamsted Research.[17] Although in itself it may not represent cutting-edge science, the information generated through such work is vital to furthering knowledge in many areas. The Chief Executive of CEH, Professor Thorpe, told us that their "core business is in monitoring and survey and in undertaking large-scale experiments", pointing to the farm-scale trials for genetically modified crops as a key example of how important this work could be.[18] It should be noted that the institutes also have skills and vast experience in applied research based on these surveys. In the environmental field, the Environment Agency regarded "the ability to place the monitoring data in context through experimental work and to integrate data from different sources to produce a holistic view of the environment" as "equally important" to gathering the data in the first place.[19]

18. The aspect of the RCI system highlighted by RCUK as "one feature that all [institutes] share" was "their potential to foster multi- and inter-disciplinary research".[20] RCUK explained that this derived from their distinctive relationship with the Research Councils: "the provision of stable, longer-term funding signals a strategic commitment to a particular set of research challenges and gives research teams the time and access to skills and resources to build collaborations and the flexibility and freedom to pursue novel ideas".[21] Evidence from individual Research Councils and from people who worked in the institutes themselves supported this contention. For example, the Chief Executive of NERC thought that his institutes were "hot-beds of multi-disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity": "all our institutes have actually quite a mixture of disciplines because of their mission and strategic nature of environmental science, so nearly all of them will have physicists, chemists, biologists, mathematicians within each institute".[22] In the context of medical sciences, Dr Robin Lovell-Badge from the MRC-owned NIMR thought that "one reason why multidisciplinary institutes, such as the NIMR, are successful is the cross-fertilisation of ideas and techniques that occur between scientists working on often very different topics."[23] He explained that "this requires that there be no barriers which is easy to achieve in an institute with one main common source of funding and a flat management structure".[24] Professor Goodfellow, Chief Executive of BBSRC, put forward a similar argument that the institutes were able to excel in multidisciplinary science "because there is usually a strategic objective for them [and they] can bring any discipline they want to bear on it and they appoint what staff they want, unlike a university department where if you are in a specific discipline you need to be able to teach that discipline".[25]

19. This emphasis on fostering multidisciplinarity can add to the value of particular institutes working in specialised, underpopulated areas, as in the case of Rothamsted Research whose director told us that "certainly within the UK, possibly the world, we are the one place where the mathematical, biological and physical sciences are integrated in support of … farmed land."[26] It can also be the driver behind the very establishment of an institute. For example, the concept of multi-disciplinarity is at the heart of the remit of centres like the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, which is the offspring of three Research Councils.

Contribution to skills and training

20. As we have seen above, part of the justification for RCIs is that they should "provide a full-time research-centred environment".[27] Most of the organisations and individuals who gave evidence were keen to stress the advantages of this for skills and training. For example, for those employed by the RCIs, there is the opportunity to work in front-line research. Guy Dodson, formerly of NIMR, compared this to universities where "research scientists too often face a crushing load of teaching and administration that forces them into management of a research team rather than working at a bench".[28] RCIs also offer staff and students unique facilities and often unique locations in which to pursue particular lines of scientific inquiry. The Chief Executive of NERC argued that students and researchers found research centres "really good places to work"[29] and cited the example of the British Antarctic Survey which gave students the chance to use "unique facilities" and to "work in an environment where there is a strong number of people working in the same research area".[30] Similarly, the directors of BBSRC institutes were keen to stress the value of training within RCIs, which they argued arose from the structure of the research environment as well as from the subject under study. The director of Rothamsted Research considered that "we are one of the few places where people can get firm postgraduate training: field-based integrated into laboratory-based training in the postgraduate context" and that "we have a training environment and … a long-term perspective that gives people the opportunity to develop worthwhile and far-reaching scientific careers".[31]

21. From a national perspective, the RCIs perform a vital role in maintaining the skills base in certain key areas by attracting students and postgraduates into their institutes. The Biosciences Federation identified a "significant role [for the RCIs] in providing training for PhD students and for developing postdocs due to long-term research in unfashionable disciplines".[32] They saw this role as increasing in importance in the context of "retaining and developing the UK skills base in many aspects of applied biology".[33] The Research Councils also emphasised the contribution made by their centres to the national skills base by hosting students. PPARC, for instance, told us that 300 PhD students had used its RCIs in the last three years, benefiting from access to PPARC's facilities and from the opportunity "to work with scientists from other countries".[34]

22. We have received some criticism of the training provided by RCIs, which centres upon their size, compared to the larger universities, and to their specialised nature. The University of Leeds considered that "RCIs do not have the infrastructure of large, research-led faculties within universities to train at [PhD] level where there are large numbers of PhD students, MSc and Undergraduate modules on offer and where systems have been put in place to ensure the generic skills training of PhD students".[35] The University also pointed out that "RCIs tend to have small student cohorts, thereby students miss out to some degree on important interactions".[36] When this was put to those responsible for training in RCIs, we were reminded that much of their training was done in conjunction with universities. Professor Goodfellow, Chief Executive of BBSRC, explained that their RCIs had joint training programmes with universities, and the Director of one of them, the Institute for Grassland and Environmental Research, told us bluntly that "we cannot do training unless we are linked to universities".[37] The memoranda submitted by the Research Councils contained many examples of these interactions.[38]

Importance of RCIs to Government

23. The RCIs are publicly-funded and publicly-owned and it is perhaps a reflection of that fact that led the quinquennial review of the Research Councils in 2001 to put at the top of its list of criteria underpinning their existence: "to provide a national capability and source of advice to Government".[39] This is the role which makes a crucial distinction between RCIs and other research bodies in that they are specifically intended to provide facilities and research to underpin public policy. The memorandum submitted by RCUK underlined this emphasis on their "national" importance by beginning its description of the strengths of RCIs with "delivery of world-class research in areas of national strategic importance, the provision of cutting-edge national and international facilities, ability to respond to national emergencies [and] providing expertise advice to aid policy-making" [40] These four characteristics together make up a highly valuable national resource, and we were given examples to illustrate the contribution of RCIs to Government and public policy in each of these ways.

• First, as we have seen earlier, the RCIs have clearly-defined missions and are designed to meet strategic needs. Perhaps few areas at the moment could be as globally important as that of climate change, where an institute was identified by the Government and the Research Councils as the best way to ensure the innovative and concentrated research effort that was needed to tackle this issue. The Tyndall Centre has been highly praised for the quality of its science.[41]
• Secondly, national and international facilities, unique to RCIs, are provided by all the Research Councils, and range from the datasets maintained by BBSRC and NERC institutes to the astronomical instruments owned by PPARC. These facilities are made available to other researchers and, in cases such as those facilities run by the Institute for Animal Health, they form a vital part of the infrastructure for Government testing and investigations.
• Thirdly, the speed of response of the RCIs to national emergencies was raised by several witnesses, including the University of Leeds.[42] The most commonly cited examples were of animal disease outbreaks, such as foot and mouth or avian flu. Central to the ability of the RCIs to redirect their staff and programmes to meet urgent requests from Government is the autonomy of the director of an institute within the stable environment created by long-term core funding. University researchers on typical three-year grants would not be able to change focus in this way.
• Fourthly, in responding to our questions about whether RCIs are the best place to conduct policy-driven research, the Chief Executive of MRC pointed to the relationship between the Research Council and the institutes and explained that "it is certainly—potentially anyway—easier to imagine focusing a request for a policy-driven need within the institute system because it is more easily accessible, questions can be asked directly, the details of the facilities and staff available are more directly known to the Research Council than … the university sector."[43] It may also be that the RCIs are the only ones with the core facilities and skills sets to carry out specialised work. For example, the field trials for GM crops were carried out by a consortium of institutes, including Rothamsted Research who rightly claimed that those trials "were vital in informing UK and EU policy on GM crops".[44]

24. The importance of the RCI sector to the Government and to the public sector more generally in all these ways is readily acknowledged. For example, Professor Sir Keith O'Nions, Director General of Science and Innovation, OSI, in discussing the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and National Institute for Medical Research, told us that "they are crucial to the future of the science programme".[45] Another end-user of the work of RCIs, the Environment Agency was highly complimentary about the work undertaken by the CEH, telling us that "CEH's long experience on a wide range of research topics makes them uniquely able to undertake the type of applied research on which the Environment Agency relies", for example in freshwater science.[46] We conclude that the UK RCI sector makes a highly valued and unique contribution to national scientific capacity.

Comparison with universities

25. The Government's evidence to us defined the role of RCIs against that of universities: "RCIs should not, as a general principle, duplicate the research missions or raison d'etre of HEIs or industry".[47] It continued: "The rationale for such institutes is to provide research capacity for the UK which does not exist in the private sector and which would be difficult for HEIs to sustain on a long term basis, for instance as a result of the sheer size of the investment needed or its long term nature".[48] It is natural to use universities as the best available comparator to the work of RCIs but it is interesting to note the emphasis on the negative aspects of the RCI sector: they should only do what universities cannot do. The implication is that where universities can do particular research, they should be preferred over RCIs. Indeed this is made explicit in the quinquennial review which states that "in reviewing their institutes, Research Councils should always consider whether their work could be done within universities and whether this would be more cost-effective".[49]

26. The quinquennial review also makes the point that the university sector has changed dramatically in the recent past, noting that "universities may be willing to undertake work now which previously they would not have wanted to do".[50] This has led some to suggest that the view of RCIs outlined earlier in this chapter is outmoded. Professor Blakemore told us that "after the war the best science in this country was certainly delivered through Research Council Institutes but what we have seen is a gradual increase in the strength and power of universities and the strategic thinking of universities".[51] Asked about the opinion voiced by Lord Sainsbury, that "basic research increasingly should be done in a multi-disciplinary environment like universities",[52] Professor Blakemore agreed that in the medical field "one has to question whether even very large isolated research institutes can continue to provide sufficient inter-disciplinarity into the future because the demands of the biological sciences in terms of interaction with other scientific disciplines is growing all the time".[53] In addition, he believed that "there are many areas now where the universities are perfectly capable of delivering what institutes and units used to do".[54]

27. Throughout this inquiry we have sought to establish whether the Sainsbury doctrine is correct. We started by asking whether the work could be done in a university as effectively as in an institute. To answer this question it is necessary to compare what is already known about the quality and cost-effectiveness of research in the two types of research centre. Here, we received evidence from the University of Leeds that "it has been shown that, again with important exceptions such as the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB) and John Innes, better research is often done in universities at a lower cost to the Research Councils".[55] However, most witnesses disagreed with this generalisation. For example, on quality, Professor Sir Howard Dalton, Chief Scientific Adviser, Defra, told us that "There is no doubt at all that the quality of the science which the research council [institutes] produce is first class".[56] Data compiled by Research Fortnight in March last year also indicated that certain RCIs have much higher success rates in accessing funding through peer-reviewed grant proposals than universities, with institutes taking six of the top ten places.[57] On cost-effectiveness, we are of the opinion that it will be much easier to judge once the impact of full economic costing is revealed later this year but early indications are that RCIs are competitive on cost grounds.[58]

28. The range and type of work undertaken by universities and RCIs respectively is also an important aspect of this discussion. As we have seen, RCIs are generally established and supported to provide capacity in areas not covered by universities. As Professor Goodfellow explained of BBSRC institutes, "if you look at the areas of animal health and welfare and sustainable farming and land use which are the predominant area that our institutes do, they are areas in which universities are not the major players".[59] Similarly, Professor Thorpe considered that NERC "look to our institutes to be absolutely cutting edge in providing [capability to do research ie monitoring, datasets, facilities] [...] I suspect it would be rather difficult for universities to do as well by the nature of the structures".[60] Again, Professor Dalton supported the RCIs, arguing that if they disappeared, "it may well be possible to get some of [the policy-driven research] from the universities, but it does not have … the long-term stability that you need in order to be able to develop research programmes and to respond to the various problems that you have".[61] Other witnesses suggested that the ethos of universities would militate against their taking on the long term work of RCIs since they are dependent upon publication in high profile journals and time-limited responsive mode grants.[62]

29. RCIs have unique features and facilities that are not currently available or can readily be created within a university environment, but, given time and a change in funding structures, stewardship of national assets and specialised units could be moved into universities and that the skills, personnel and expertise would then be available from within the HEI sector. As the Biosciences Federation told us the answer to the question "couldn't the work be undertaken in a University?" is "yes": "anything could be undertaken in a University".[63] However, the Federation continue: "the real question is 'would the work be undertaken in a University'?" and "the answer to this question is much less clear and in some cases almost certainly 'no'" because of the strategic nature of institutes and their funding arrangements.[64] Professor Shirley of IAH took a different approach to reach similar conclusions: "You could create it in a university setting but you would end up with an institute. If you want the sense of mission and the sense of continuity, if you want the targeting or if you want the facilities and the ability to maintain them over long periods of time, you need to set in place funding management structures that differ from the 3-year responsive mode grant".[65] This could be done but we have received no evidence at all that universities would want to take on these responsibilities.

30. We have also heard that the discussion should not focus on a division between RCIs and universities but on how to bring them together in structures which might offer more than the traditional stand-alone institutes. Many RCIs are already closely connected with universities in various ways. These range from the sharing of RCI facilities and capabilities by universities to the training links we have highlighted earlier. In addition, there appears to be a trend towards collaborative ventures. NERC, for example, has introduced a policy in recent years of establishing collaborative centres "which are actually places where there are university staff working alongside NERC staff in terms of delivering a central mission".[66] The director of one of these hybrids, the Tyndall Centre, pointed to the advantages of the arrangement in terms of "the potential for a much richer exchange of ideas and cross-fertilisation of ideas", due to the wider community of academics, and the presence of undergraduate and postgraduate students which meant that "the next generation of researchers and academics is being trained alongside the research we are doing".[67]

31. Going further, it is already the case that many RCIs are embedded within universities. This was recognised in the quinquennial review which commented that "the increasing use of co-location of institutes within universities is often beneficial for both, and we encourage this".[68] The MRC have openly espoused the policy that all their institutes should be co-located, seeing this as a trend that is occurring "all around the world", for example in Canada, Singapore and the United States[69] Professor Blakemore identified two advantages of this trend: "one of which is the possibility to extend the range of inter-disciplinary collaboration. The other great advantage is that it brings the special qualities and strengths of the intramural programme to support work in the universities".[70] He was supported in this by the OSI's Sir Keith O'Nions who told us that "in some cases there are very strong arguments for putting these alongside university research and there is probably no better example, frankly, than in medical research".[71] The other Research Councils we asked were more circumspect, reflecting the different nature of their institutes. BBSRC told us that it "encourages close working relations between RCIs and universities wherever this will deliver added value to the UK research base, but does not assume that this must be achieved by embedding RCIs within universities".[72] However, the Council gave us examples where "more formal joint arrangements" were under development with the University of Edinburgh in the case of the Roslin Institute and Welsh universities in the case of IGER. NERC, for its part, argued strongly that "stand-alone centres have demonstrated their ability to support a diversity of skills and multidisciplinary research without the need for co-location or embedding in a university environment."[73] It concluded that "continuing with the present mix of institute models" was the "most appropriate way of meeting NERC's science needs".[74]

32. Professor O'Nions of OSI assured us that "there is no policy that emanates from us" on embedding RCIs within universities but that he had "been rather supportive of those policies that are coming from the Research Councils in those areas".[75] We believe that NERC is right to value the advantages of having different models to suit different purposes. We agree with the Tyndall Centre that "it would be very inappropriate simply to say there is one organisational model that would satisfy the diverse needs and requirements of scientific research"[76] and we recognise the truth of the director of the IAH's observation that his institute, and by implication, others, "is a unique resource and to establish this from de novo would be hugely expensive and it would take years to reach the state where it is functioning".[77] We have received no evidence to support the view expressed by Lord Sainsbury in January 2006 that basic research should increasingly be done in universities, rather than separate research institutes. We believe that links between RCIs and universities at all levels should be actively encouraged but that each case should be judged on its merits and the form of each institute should follow the needs of the science.

8   Ibid para 3.11  Back

9   Ev 110 Back

10   See evidence 114-7, 124, 128-30, 136-7,143, 150-2 for a full list of RCIs Back

11   Ev 89 Back

12   Ev 99 Back

13   Ev 81 Back

14   Ev 132 Back

15   Ev 171 Back

16   Ev 154 Back

17   Ev 84 Back

18   Q 3 Back

19   Ev 92 Back

20   Ev 110 Back

21   Ibid Back

22   Q 39 Back

23   Ev 87 Back

24   Ibid Back

25   Q 38 Back

26   Q 114 Back

27   Quinquennial Review of the Grant Awarding Research Councils, OSI, 2001, para 3.11, vi, http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/cmsweb/downloads/rcuk/publications/qqr-s2.pdf Back

28   Ev 193 Back

29   Q 64 Back

30   Ibid Back

31   Q 114, Q 139 Back

32   Ev 99 Back

33   Ibid Back

34   Ev 145 Back

35   Ev 81 Back

36   Ibid Back

37   Q 130 Back

38   Ev 109-152 Back

39   Quinquennial Review of the Grant Awarding Research Councils, OSI, 2001, 3.11, http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/cmsweb/downloads/rcuk/publications/qqr-s2.pdf i Back

40   Ev 110 Back

41   Ev 122 Back

42   Ev 81 Back

43   Q 42 Back

44   Ev 89 Back

45   Q 16, Oral evidence taken before the Committee on 17 January 2006, HC (2005-06) 203-i. This transcript is currently available at www.parliament.uk/s&tcom and will be published with the Committee's OSI Scrutiny Report 2006 Back

46   Ev 91-2 Back

47   Ev 78 Back

48   Ibid Back

49   Quinquennial Review of the Grant Awarding Research Councils, OSI, 2001, 3.16, http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/cmsweb/downloads/rcuk/publications/qqr-s2.pdf Back

50   Ibid Back

51   Q 8 Back

52   Q 60, Oral evidence taken before the Committee on 25 January 2006, HC (2005-06) 490-ii. This transcript is currently available at www.parliament.uk/s&tcom and will be published with the Committee's OSI Scrutiny Report 2005-06. Back

53   Q 31 Back

54   Q 8 Back

55   Ev 81 Back

56   Q 176 Back

57   Research Fortnight, 22 March 2006, p 20 Back

58   Q 50 Back

59   Q 44 Back

60   Q 45 Back

61   Q 178 Back

62   Eg. Ev 153 Back

63   Ev 99 Back

64   Ibid Back

65   Q 117 Back

66   Q 8 Back

67   Qq 1-2 Back

68   Quinquennial Review of the Grant Awarding Research Councils, OSI, 2001, 3.16, http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/cmsweb/downloads/rcuk/publications/qqr-s2.pdf Back

69   Q 112, 348 Back

70   Q 31 Back

71   Q 440 Back

72   Ev 162 Back

73   Ev 167 Back

74   Ibid Back

75   Q 440 Back

76   Q 4 Back

77   Q 116 Back