PROFESSOR MALCOLM GRANT CBE AND PROFESSOR MIKE SPYER

24 JANUARY 2007

  Q460  Chairman: Okay. I will move on to my colleagues, Professor Grant, but why did UCL win the bid?

  Professor Grant: Could I perhaps draw to your attention the chart that I have tabled for the Committee. This is the study that was done by the RAND Research Corporation for the Department of Health in their recent review of the establishment of comprehensive biomedical research centres.[1] They asked RAND to look at the most highly cited papers in health-related research. I can supply the Committee with the full report but this is the table that I like most.

  Q461 Bob Spink: I am not surprised!

  Professor Grant: And a close examination of it will demonstrate why and I hope, Chairman, will help to answer your question.

  Chairman: My question was not prompted for this—

  Q462  Bob Spink: Could I just add to the question: notwithstanding that report, which is very impressive, what were the crucial advantages that UCL had over Addenbrookes and King's in respect of this bid?

  Professor Grant: I do not want to be too specific but I would argue on two accounts—Addenbrookes is not in London and Addenbrookes is also at the moment home to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, which is a parallel research institute of the MRC. I think the blunt answer that we had in relation to King's was that the share and importance of our investment in the very things that Mike has referred to was quite critical, in other words maintaining chemistry as a fundamental discipline with a double five-starred department in chemistry alongside physics and engineering and the other disciplines that are very strong.

  Chairman: Just finish the significance of your chart and then we will move on.

  Q463  Mr Newmark: We know what it is.

  Professor Grant: It speaks for itself but I would just say that there is a cumulative significance which is perhaps not so obvious, which is if you took with University College London the highly cited papers that came from the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust, University College London Hospitals Trust and Great Ormond Street and so on, you would get an even greater accumulation of the activity which crosses the clinical and into the clinical research and into basic science.

  Q464  Mr Newmark: All I can say is you are lucky Harvard is not there because they would be off the chart on the left somewhere! I can understand totally from your perspective why it makes sense for Mill Hill to be where you are but clearly there is a different perspective which is from the people who are at Mill Hill. I am just curious to hear from you why there seems to be some resistance from some people there for that move and what are the shortcomings to moving, as you see it, from Mill Hill to UCL? I am just trying to understand how you perceive the world from their perspective.

  Professor Grant: I would start by saying that we have had a long and fruitful set of collaborations with scientists at Mill Hill which I think has brought real benefits to both of the institutions. Certainly when the choice was being made about a potential partner, I suspect that the dominant feeling at Mill Hill was that if it had to be with anybody preferably it would be with UCL, but it is the "had to be" and that provides the starting background which is the decision that had been taken by the MRC Council (before this came out as to a choice of selective partner) that they did not see a future for investing in the renewal of Mill Hill on its present site and that is what has lain behind our discussions with them. From our point of view what we have wanted to do throughout is to provide the most attractive intellectual environment possible to attract Mill Hill scientists. There are different generations of scientists—

  Q465  Mr Newmark: Again you are talking about it from your perspective, not from their perspective.

  Professor Grant: That was from their perspective. We want to provide an operating and intellectual environment—

  Q466  Mr Newmark: You have given me some great reasons why they should be here; I am trying to understand why there seems to be this tension, or residual tension at least, and resistance to this move?

  Professor Spyer: I think it is quite natural because the Institute has had a long and very distinguished history. It is a very excellent environment in which to do research. The scientists within that environment have developed very good inter-relationships with one another which are very, very effective and change is always something that is a concern. If we had been in the situation when the discussions began with an absolute certainty of the financial resource to complete the project actually being there and that we could have demonstrated immediately the real advantages (because the advantages that both Professor Grant and I have talked about are less tangible to people who are working in a very comfortable environment) I think the process would have been somewhat different. As it is I think there have been extraordinarily successful interactions between different working groups built up of scientists with common interests between the two institutions, and my own sense is that the reluctance is one of uncertainty more than anything else.

  Q467  Mr Newmark: So there are no practical or physical attributes of Mill Hill which people will point to and say, "No, this is why we have to be here as opposed to in the centre of London," there are no physical reasons?

  Professor Spyer: I would say that the primary issue around which this has been argued is in terms of providing the appropriate animal facility because at Mill Hill they have a remarkable facility. It is quite clear that that has been an area that has caused considerable concern for the staff at Mill Hill. I think to some degree they have under-estimated the level of support that they have from UCL and UCL staff in terms of the animal facilities because we have been supporting their case with the MRC very strongly that we would not want any diminution in the facility that will ultimately be in the new NIMR, so I think it has been issues related to—

  Q468  Mr Newmark: Just from conversations I have had they do not seem to have bought that argument, at least some of the people I have spoken to, dealing with that last issue that you mention.

  Professor Spyer: Sure, and I think your point is a good one and I think it is true because we still do not have a final plan, but most certainly the discussions that I am involved in within the project board have centred very heavily on being able to assure ourselves that there will be a facility equivalent to that which is at Mill Hill now.

  Dr Turner: Of course what you set out describing was essentially the vision of the task force and also something rather akin to what you may have heard Sir David Cooksey setting out in his vision of co-located translational research, but the hard fact is that the original proposal met with a very hard rock in the form of the Treasury which made as big a hole in it as that ship that is beached on Lyme Bay at the moment. There is considerable doubt in many minds, including mine, as to whether it is physically possible to achieve that vision within the physical constraints of the National Temperance site, which cannot really be described as colocation because although it is not as far distance in miles as Mill Hill is from UC, in practice you are not exactly going to walk from the National Temperance Hospital or another part of the UC campus just for a cup of coffee and a chat with a colleague; it is just not on. The ideal model is not achievable and the money required to fulfil the ideal model is not achievable, therefore the Treasury has demanded that other options should be explored. You Professor Spyer are involved in work with the MRC; can you tell us something about these options. Do any of them retain the critical mass including not only the animal facilities, the NIMR facilities but the level four containment facilities which are essential to MRC's present commitments? Are you working up options that can fulfil all of those without reducing the size of the Institute and are you considering other options which actually can achieve the same vision based on Mill Hill with other rather more original ways of approaching the problem?

  Q469  Chairman: Before you answer the second part of Dr Turner's question, I am anxious that you address his conclusion on the first part which is that you cannot achieve those things on that Temperance site because I think that is quite crucial to the whole thrust that you made, Professor Grant, about this inter-relationship of different scientists and different disciplines on the whole of your site. Will they have coffee or tea?

  Professor Spyer: I think the Project board and Steering group of MRC have been considering all of the issues that you have raised, quite naturally. I believe that the favoured option at the present time can meet the objectives that you have laid out, that can produce an environment that does actually provide facilities for an equivalent number of scientists that are currently engaged in work at NIMR partly through, as Professor Grant explained in his introduction, the fact that we are also offering within UCL additional space and facilities for the new NIMR other than simply within the new building that will go up. On the basis of that I think we do have a favoured option now that will meet the requirements as laid out by OSI and Treasury. We have looked at a series of other options involving far smaller expenditure that I do not think do provide an opportunity for meeting the objectives that have been set, but most certainly there is now on the table an option at a level of funding which I think will be acceptable to Treasury that will meet those objectives. I am going very carefully because I know that the discussions of the Steering group are being presented in outline to MRC Council within the next few days and I need to be rather careful about confidentiality, so I am responding in a rather general way to you in that regard.

  Q470  Dr Turner: I appreciate that but would it be fair to assume that there is a minimum level of capital available below which, taking into consideration the extreme physical constraints of sites available to you in central London and around your campus, it neither works for the MRC nor adds significant benefit to UCL and that a completely different approach might be the answer if you are faced with that situation?

  Professor Spyer: Certainly there would have to be a financial point at which the vision that the MRC has (which is a vision that UCL endorses) could not be achieved and at that stage then yes, of course, other options would need to be looked at.

  Q471  Chairman: Would you be prepared to look at those other options as an institution?

  Professor Spyer: We have looked at those options in regard of whether or not those options meet the vision that we have.

  Q472  Chairman: We are interested in that central vision. That is our job as a Committee to make sure that we enhance British science and British medical science.

  Professor Spyer: I think that is absolutely the core for UCL's enthusiasm for being involved in the option. The vision is one not simply because of the Cooksey Report but the way in which we have been thinking and developing our strategy in terms of biomedical research over the last five to ten years, so we do believe in the strategy and vision that has come from MRC.

  Q473  Dr Turner: You are in discussion with the MRC on evolving options?

  Professor Spyer: That is right.

  Q474  Dr Turner: But in the evolution of the original project NIMR staff were intimately involved. Are NIMR staff still involved in the evolution of the latest set of options?

  Professor Spyer: Yes, there is an acting director in the phase before Professor Sir John Skehel's successor is appointed and that acting director is intimately involved in all of the discussions. On the project board there is a member of NIMR staff and most certainly the acting director is liaising on an on-going basis with all of the divisional directors within NIMR on the forward planning process.

  Q475  Dr Turner: But my understanding is that on the original project board there were several divisional directors of NIMR.

  Professor Spyer: There were two or three additional members of NIMR staff on the project board. Equally, there were several other UCL representatives and I am now the sole UCL representative on the Project board. There is the acting director of NIMR on the Steering group at the present time.

  Q476  Dr Turner: Would either of you like to comment, within the limits of confidentiality obviously, on the project management experience and competence of the MRC to resolve this situation and carry it through?

  Professor Grant: No. I stress again this is an MRC operation. We have been chosen as their favoured partner to help to deliver this. We remain constant to the original vision and I have to say we should not be regarding NIMR as a salami sausage that can somehow be sliced up. It seems to me the big vision is tremendously important in this, this is an organism. I applaud the way that NIMR staff have remained loyal to their institution and have been anxious to try and secure from us an outcome which is to the benefit of British science. We have to through the coming period try to model different options and understand what different alternatives might be but ultimately the objective has to be to demonstrate to the Treasury that there is here a compelling case for the future of British biomedical science.

  Q477  Bob Spink: If you could do it again would you make greater efforts to involve NIMR staff at all levels and to perhaps communicate with all levels of NIMR staff right across the project or do you think that the level of involvement of the NIMR staff with UCL plans has been appropriate at all times?

  Professor Grant: I would commend again the first report of this Select Committee on this project, and nothing demonstrates more clearly the tensions that have emerged within the MRC. Remember, NIMR is an institute within MRC and this is an internal management and leadership issue. We are the chosen partner for carrying it forward and we have been, I think, faced with quite challenging circumstances in which there has been a campaign, outlined fully in your earlier report, amongst NIMR staff to remain where they were but also—and to give full credit to them—to be willing to move to UCL should they be able to be persuaded that that would give them what they had at Mill Hill plus the added advantages of colocation with UCL. I suspect that is the struggling point with the Treasury—the size and the level of investment that is needed to achieve that. It is extremely difficult for the MRC to engage positively with staff at Mill Hill, and equally with UCL, around a project in which their full expectations may not be able to be realised.

  Q478  Chairman: You are indicating though, Professor Grant, that there is a major failure in terms of policy management.

  Professor Grant: I am sorry, I am not going to sit here and be critical of the MRC because I do not think that would be either necessarily true or helpful. They have a far bigger challenge than we have in trying to deliver this which is their project.

  Q479  Dr Iddon: There seems to be a tension, Professor Grant, between certain research councils and their institutes, whether this is a financial tension in the current climate or not we are trying to find out, and the NIMR investigation is just part of a wider investigation that this Committee is doing on the future of research council institutes. Do you see a future for research council institutes or have they had their day?

  Professor Grant: I think I do in the sense that if one looks at the achievements of some of these institutes they are absolutely outstanding. The Laboratory of Molecular Biology, which is the partner or the twin if you like of the NIMR, has a record number of Nobel Prizes. It is not part of Cambridge University, it remains a separate institute but it benefits from its colocation on the Addenbrookes site and its colocation within Cambridge with the research endeavours in Cambridge. So it is an institute that has some of the advantages of colocation without the advantages of full integration and governance. The problems that I think many of the research councils encounter with their institutes are pretty comparable to what presidents of universities encounter with heads of departments within universities except that that is a multi departmental experience with cross-learning between the different parts of the institution and an understanding of what it is that the institution as a whole is trying to achieve. I think it is much more difficult for a research council which may have two, three or four research institutes which are separate physically and geographically and often entirely in areas of specialty to try to manage that as an enterprise as a whole. It is a different governance problem and challenge from that which we have within universities.