PROFESSOR SIR DAVID KING AND PROFESSOR JANET FINCH

2 JULY 2007

  Q40  Chris Mole: Take that one away. I just wanted to look, Professor Finch, at a comment in CST's paper that came to us which we have touched on, around the differences of approach and standards in some areas of social science compared with natural and physical sciences. It came under the applicability of the code in your paper. Should we be worried that there are significant differences in approach and standards? Does that mean that some of them are lesser? Does the code afford an opportunity to get a consistent approach across the different disciplines?

  Professor Finch: There are differences across disciplines and differences across different types of research and the key difference, I guess, is where research touches directly on human subjects. There is then a spectrum within research that is directly concerned with human subjects. At one end of the spectrum is what you would regard very much as scientific research of the biomedical sort and I have already made some comments about the actions that are being taken by universities themselves and by research funders to address some of those issues. If we move down the spectrum to social science research, which is about human subjects but not about biomedical issues, that raises a whole different range of challenges into which actually a great deal of thought has gone and a number of different not only codes of practice but also actual mechanisms are in place to ensure that research gets funded only if the ethical issues have been very carefully thought through. For example, if it is an ESRC funded project, the peer review process kicks in before the funding is agreed so that when a proposal is being reviewed with a view to funding it, that peer review process includes a review of the ethical issues involved in the research were it to be funded and the peer reviewers are invited to comment on what the proposers of the research have said about the ethical issues and about how they are going to deal with them. The whole question of ethics is way up front and it is not only dealt with at the point when the research has been done and the publications are coming out, but it very much concerned with the way in which the research is going to be done and the ESRC will require the university which is going to hold the grant to guarantee that what has been said about ethical practice is actually carried out. A lot of safeguards are built into that, just because it is such a difficult and a challenging area when social science research is being done with human subjects. Some social science research is relatively easy to deal with in ethical terms, for example the sort of social science research which involves the secondary analysis of large datasets that have been produced by the Office for National Statistics. It is a secondary analysis there and the ethical issues are relatively limited usually. Where social science research involves collecting original data from human subjects individually or collectively, then there are very complex issues which have to be dealt with and mechanisms are definitely already in place there that go well beyond individual codes of practice that rely on scientists to deal with them. These are complex and sensitive areas where I believe nothing can ever be 100% guaranteed, but all the players in that game are very well aware of them.

  Q41  Dr Iddon: My perception is that the Council for Science and Technology, the CST, has a fairly low profile in the science community. Am I wrong? If I am right, does it matter?

  Professor Finch: We have not undertaken a survey in the science community to find out about the profile, so I suppose on one level I have to bow to your knowledge there. The CST's role is very much to be an independent voice but within the spectrum of Government. Our aim is to be influential within the government arena in the work that we do, but we are not attempting necessarily to be a very high profile media body. I suppose that it will depend which scientists, if we are talking about how high a profile we have amongst scientists. We have done a number of studies which some scientists would know about if they happened to be in that area, but we are not aiming to achieve major media coverage for everything we do.

  Professor Sir David King: It is fair to say that the council, since its reformulation, has kept a low public profile and has concentrated on giving advice to Government and at the same time the advice has been put into the public domain. It is not kept out of the public domain but it is essentially seeing its role as advising Government. The result is the perception as you have it.

  Q42  Dr Iddon: You have this interesting co-chairing arrangement on developing and discussing advice and then, in your case Sir David, on presenting it to Government, discussing how to present it to Government. Why did you choose that structure and is it working?

  Professor Sir David King: Since I was at least in large part responsible for that choice, the reason was because of the feeling that the previous Council for Science and Technology needed to establish its own voice. If a member of Government whether the Minister for Science, Chief Scientific Adviser or indeed the Prime Minister were to chair the council and the council then could not have its own chair with its own meetings, then it would not be able to be proactive, but would be always put into a reactive mode. The sense was that with a co-chair system, either one or the other would chair the meeting at any point in time but when, for example Janet is in the chair, then it is very much seen to be proactive from the council side. When I am in the chair, it would be very much the other way round, that this is a concern of the Government and this is where Government is looking for advice. That was the reasoning. Of course there is a lot of overlap between those; often the distinction will disappear in practice.

  Professor Finch: I have only been the independent co-chair since March of this year so I guess I am still learning how this is all working and of course I have experience of being on the council as a member before March. So far it is a rather good arrangement because it does mean that the members of the council, who are all very distinguished people, can have confidence that they do have an independent voice and that I, as the independent co-chair, represent that independent voice. It has worked very productively, not just comfortably, but very productively, because it has enabled us to have that input to government which is respected as an independent input.

  Q43  Dr Iddon: The Government receives a lot of advice across Government. What can you tell the Committee is distinctive about the CST?

  Professor Sir David King: The advice derives from a group of people who are of very high standing but covering an interesting range. We have venture capitalists, we have people running large companies, we have leading vice-chancellors and we have a chief executive of a major non-governmental funding body. It brings together a unique breadth covering the areas of science, technology, innovation and wealth creation. In that sense it adds an enormous amount to Government.

  Q44  Dr Iddon: Independent evaluation of advisory committees is all the fashion, as you know. Have you been independently monitored in any way to date?

  Professor Sir David King: The last review was the quinquennial review at which we revised the structure to produce the current system.

  Q45  Dr Iddon: So that resulted in a reorganisation. Have you met the new Prime Minister yet in your capacity as joint chairs?

  Professor Sir David King: I have not met him in his capacity.

  Professor Finch: It is fairly early days. We have had regular meetings with the previous Prime Minister and we have obviously requested a meeting with the new Prime Minister and we would very much hope to meet him in the near future. We are conscious of the pressures on his diary.

  Q46  Dr Iddon: Are you hopeful that he will welcome the existence of the CST? Indeed, does he already know about the existence of the CST?

  Professor Sir David King: When the CST was formed in its current form after the quinquennial review, the Prime Minister and the then Chancellor met all members in Number 10 and that was a very clear indication that each of them welcomed the new formation of the CST.

  Dr Iddon: We look forward to hearing about your first meeting with the new Prime Minister.

  Q47  Chairman: Sir David, may I just throw you a final question. We would not have expected you to have met the new Prime Minister, given the problems he has had over the weekend, but there is a new departmental structure into which science is going and given the fact that this afternoon we are talking really about research efforts and the three Rs and the code that you have so strongly put forward today to the Committee as being the basis for that ethical framework in terms of research, do you think that the new departmental structure is likely to support the high standards that we currently see in terms of research ethics or do you think there will be downgrading of the place of science in the eyes of scientists, parliamentarians and the public?

  Professor Sir David King: Pulling together post-19 education with the work of the Office for Science and Innovation, as it was, can only strengthen the work that we are currently discussing and I would suggest other angles of our work as well. The innovation agenda covers the private sector, as has come into our discussion. We now have the universities represented within our department and of course the science base. So science research funding and the running of the universities have all been brought very rationally into a single department. I look forward very much to seeing what emerges from it and I feel very encouraged by the early signs.

  Chairman: On that very positive note—and I am glad you have had an opportunity to put that on the record—could we thank Professor Sir David King and Professor Janet Finch very much indeed for being our witnesses this afternoon.