UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 470-iii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

Science and Technology committee

Investigating the Oceans

Wednesday 13 June 2007

MR IAN GALLETT, DR LESLEY THOMPSON, DR RALPH RAYNER
and MR RICHARD BURT

Evidence heard in Public Questions 254 - 367

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Science and Technology Committee

on Wednesday 13 June 2007

Members present

Mr Phil Willis, in the Chair

Linda Gilroy

Dr Brian Iddon

Chris Mole

Dr Bob Spink

Dr Desmond Turner

________________

Witnesses: Mr Ian Gallett, Executive Secretary, Society for Underwater Technology (SUT), Dr Lesley Thompson, Director, Research and Innovation, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Dr Ralph Rayner, Vice President, Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST), and Mr Richard Burt, Member, Executive Committee, Association of Marine Scientific Industries (AMSI), gave evidence.

Chairman: Good morning to our witnesses this morning in this evidence session of the major inquiry this Committee has undertaken in investigating the oceans. We welcome this morning Mr Richard Burt, a member of the Executive Committee of the Association of Marine Scientific Industries, Mr Ian Gallett, the Executive Secretary of the Society of Underwater Technology, Dr Ralph Rayner, the Vice President of the Institute of Marine Engineering Science and Technology, and Dr Lesley Thompson, the acting Director for the Research and Innovation directorate of the Physical Sciences Research Council. Welcome to you all.

Linda Gilroy: Before you begin, Chairman, may I declare an interest. I am an honorary officer for the Society of Maritime Industries of which some of these organisations are or may be members.

Q254 Chairman: Thank you very much. I would like to start with a question to Mr Burt, Mr Gallett and Dr Rayner. The European Marine Strategy Green Paper was really quite pessimistic about the decline in maritime science and marine science generally. What is your assessment of the UK's position in marine science and technology in that sector?

Dr Rayner: Is that addressed specifically to the position in Europe?

Q255 Chairman: Both. If across Europe the Green Paper is saying that things are declining, are they declining in the UK?

Dr Rayner: I would say not declining and, at a European level, I would say that operational oceanography is now very alive and well. The moves to coordinate particularly operational oceanography in Europe are well developed and are progressing quite effectively.

Mr Gallett: I would agree with that. On the fisheries side we are probably quite strong as well. We certainly are getting support in our activities from the European Union itself with the developing across European activities and offshore fish farming, for instance.

Q256 Chairman: So, as far as the UK's position within Europe, we are very strong in maritime science.

Mr Gallett: Yes.

Mr Burt: I would totally agree. I think there has been a significant change from individual scientific programmes to coordinating programmes towards operation oceanography. As Dr Rayner says, I think that has been achieved quite well. We have to implement and take that through and I think marine science, in support of operation oceanography, is underpinning quite well.

Q257 Chairman: Mr Gallett, how would you characterise the role of the private sector funding in marine science? We are finding it difficult to get a handle on how much is spent in that area. Can the three of you enlighten us on that?

Dr Rayner: I am not particularly well placed to answer that question but I also find it very difficult to decide how it all fits together. One of the problems I have specifically is understanding the role of the agencies. When the agencies were first privatised, if I may put it that way, when they started having training funds and so forth, they moved from being government bodies which we understood and they are now stalled, in my mind, somewhere in limbo between a proper private organisation and being a government body still.

Q258 Chairman: Can you throw any light on the private sector's contribution in funding terms?

Dr Rayner: The private sector acts as a conduit in respect of linking what happens in research and operational observations to specific uses - so very much as an intermediate user of data and information to create services. It is not really directly engaged in the funding of marine scientific research; it is a recipient of the benefits of that research and the benefits of data and information that are collected from public funds and a user of that information to create secondary products. It is more a flow in the direction of creating useful and useable products for particular sectors than as a sponsor directly of research activity.

Q259 Chairman: Where are the growing trends, then, Dr Burt in this area?

Mr Burt: From the industry perspective, there are two main areas. The one to which Dr Rayner has alluded is the added-value product: once you have gathered scientific information, oceanographic data, what you do to give added value for UK industry. But right at the front end, the initial end, is the technology, the instrumentation that you require to gather the data in the first place. You see UK industry dividing into those two aspects. It is very important, I think, at the front end, for academic and UK government agencies to be able to link with the industry in the early days for pull through. In many cases industry has developed technologies that it thinks the customer needs, and that is not necessarily appropriate, or, indeed, has allied with technologies being developed in centres of excellence in ----

Q260 Chairman: I am sorry, are you saying the industry is developing these technologies that they think the customer wants.

Mr Burt: That is certainly one aspect and the other aspect is working alongside the centres of excellence, where technologies have been developed in the laboratories and the government institutes, and pulling those through. But the disadvantage with the current system is that, more often than not, (a) there is no mechanism to enable early engagement between industry and the centres of excellence, and (b) there are really no formal funding mechanisms to take that through. It is often a question of industry assuming it is making the right liaisons in the first place, and that is down to industry's initiative, and then hoping that it carries the right ones through to the market-place.

Q261 Chairman: Whose role is it to do that coordination? Is it industry's role? Is it the Government's role?

Mr Burt: At the moment it is happening through industry initiatives. Industry is very much looking for the Government to give better links and clarification across agencies because, more often than not, there may well be a technology in one agency that would be very applicable to use by others where commercial products are needed and that cross-agency link is certainly unclear.

Q262 Chairman: Mr Gallett, in terms of looking at the oceans, traditionally things like fishing have been the main exploitation of the oceans. Whilst you have said that fishing was in reasonably rude health - which was a comment you made earlier, as far as the UK is concerned and its competitiveness with Europe - where are the new areas of exploitation of the oceans that we are looking at?

Mr Gallett: If you are talking about industrial exploitation, I think there are several areas. The first one is oil and gas. That is a very strong area and it is one of the things that has often been neglected from a view of a marine world. Most of the UK expertise lies in sub-sea technology. We are now operating, not in the UK itself but using UK people, UK firms, UK expertise, in over 2,000 metres of water, where you are putting a well-head, effectively, on the sea floor and connecting it up which is a major task in that sort of water beds. The area that I see growing dramatically is offshore fish farming. We have recently run a conference, for instance, in Malta on that particular subject. I think it is one of the growth areas. There is agreement around the world, there is a recognition, that the world is going to be short of protein in the near future. There are no more wild fisheries or very little to exploit - in fact those are declining in general terms. The land production of protein is also maximised at the moment. One great thought there is that a lot of it will now become offshore fish farming, where you do not have a lot of problems with detritus and the other problems that are familiar with farmed salmon, for instance, in lochs and fiords.

Q263 Chairman: Do you have anything to add, Dr Rayner?

Dr Rayner: Renewable energy is probably one area that should be included. Offshore sources of renewable energy, marine sources generally.

Q264 Chairman: Is this using the ocean itself, using tidal power?

Dr Rayner: Using tidal power, using wave power, using tidal stream, using the temperature differentials in the ocean, not necessarily as a direct source of power but there are now schemes using cold water from the oceans as an aid to cooling buildings, for example. There are lots of areas which are open for exploitation.

Q265 Chairman: Mr Burt, are there new areas of exploitation of the oceans? Nobody has mentioned health, for instance. I thought that might have been an area using marine products for health and for chemicals.

Mr Burt: There are significant unknowns in the oceans which could be exploited for the health industry. It is very early days and it is really just feasibility studies at this stage.

Mr Gallett: Marine bio-technology is another area of great interest. Some of the mechanisms in the ocean are still unknown but quite a lot of them have perhaps usefulness in the bio-technology area. The main link considered in that is that the source will be the marine bodies but not in great volume. Once you have extracted what you need from it, you can then grow that in a laboratory. In terms of a large-scale resource, probably not; but in terms of new ideas for marine bio-technology, certainly.

Q266 Chairman: Are you all heavily involved, for instance, in the climate change agenda and in terms of what is happening to the deposits of carbon?

Mr Gallett: Yes, very much so.

Q267 Chairman: Is that a growing part of your business?

Mr Gallett: Yes, I think so. Dr Rayner mentioned renewable energy and I was going to mention that as well. It is the key one, I believe, but also another area of interest is the disposal of carbon into the ground through carbon capture and storage. Most of that would go under the sea - not in the sea but under the sea. That is using the same technologies that the oil and gas community has already developed for developing the UK continental shelf, for instance.

Q268 Chairman: Will we ever get the Peterhead project off the ground?

Mr Gallett: A good question, sir. I do not know. Scotland was very annoyed about that when I was up there a couple of weeks ago.

Q269 Chairman: We will leave that hanging. Dr Thompson, future demand for marine technologies. What do you see in research terms? Where is the demand going to come from and how are you going to meet it?

Dr Thompson: Energy is one area where clearly the marine environment has a big part to play, both in energy generation but also carbon storage. We see that as a really important area. Another area is the whole issue of living with environmental change and how we respond to technology to cope with the environmental changes that will come about. There are big opportunities there but also big challenges. They are really the areas we see as most important. The other area is all about transportation, marine transportation and more energy efficient transportation, which is an area where there is a lot of opportunities to improve the efficiency of transportation. Just look at carbon budgets and how transportation contributes to the carbon loading of the world, then there are big opportunities to look at more efficient marine transportation systems.

Q270 Chairman: How well placed is the UK science base and technology base to do that in research terms?

Dr Thompson: It is always very dangerous to say we are very well placed because you do not necessarily know what is happening around the rest of the world. We have some real strengths in the UK but certainly from an engineering and physical sciences viewpoints we have some concerns. One of the areas we are concerned about is the strength in renewable marine energy. While we do have some strengths, we do not think we have enough diversity in the UK, so that is an area where we have just targeted to form a new research group through the science and innovation awards, which was a funding stream we received from the last spending review settlement. There we are looking to fund three lectureships, three post docs and three students to come together to form a new critical mass centre to increase the diversity of researchers and groups that can tackle some of the challenges in marine renewables.

Q271 Chairman: Will that be a co-located group?

Dr Thompson: It will definitely be a co-located group.

Q272 Chairman: Where?

Dr Thompson: It is currently under competition. There are a number of universities that have been short-listed and we will wait to see where peer review says is the best place.

Q273 Chairman: You cannot give us a hint.

Dr Thompson: I cannot give you a hint, but there are some strong universities short-listed.

Chairman: Excellent. We will move on.

Q274 Dr Turner: 1991 saw the establishment of a committee with one of the worst acronyms I have ever come across: IACMST. What effect has this had on the coordination, organisation and funding of marine science in the UK? Has it produced?

Mr Gallett: The problem to me is that if you go back to 1984, when the Lords Select Committee looked at it and, following that, set up the Coordinating Committee of Marine Science and Technology which had a specific coordinating role, that came out and produced a strategy for marine science. On the date you gave, that ceased operating and was replaced by the Inter-Agency Committee, which had far less teeth, far less ability to coordinate. Its role was more to try to arrange for the ability to coordinate. Within its remit I think it has done extremely well but it did not enforce coordination, which the original committee was intended so to do.

Q275 Dr Turner: It lacks any teeth and it lacks any funding, so it is a talk shop.

Mr Gallett: It does more than that. It has achieved quite a bit.

Q276 Dr Turner: What would you all like to see done to improve coordination of the UK's marine science activities? Do you think the IACMST can play a role in it? What needs to be done to that body to make it effective?

Dr Rayner: I think it needs to have more capacity to effect linkages, to enforce linkages. As Ian Gallett has said, the problem at the moment is that it is representative of the different bodies in government but it has no ability to do anything other than talk about coordination as opposed to drive coordination. If I look at the parallel in the United States, in the United States the equivalent of the IACMST has considerably more ability to drive that coordinating process by virtue of having access to more funds which they can distribute.

Q277 Chairman: Which committee are you talking about?

Dr Rayner: It is called Ocean.US and it is a cross-federal agency body that represents all of the US federal agencies that are engaged in any aspect of the oceans.

Q278 Dr Turner: The issue of coordination and, if you like, the advertisement of a strategy and funding cannot be disconnected, can they?

Dr Rayner: No.

Q279 Dr Turner: If marine scientists acted as a coherent body and said, "Here are the things which you think are vitally important right now" would that increase your case for extra government funding and any other funding that you could lever with it?

Mr Burt: We have seen, with the Oceans 2025 initiative, a very good step in that direction but it was a grassroots initiative. From the perspective of IACMST, the coordination, the teeth and the funding are the key points you have addressed there. I would say, across agency, that it is very tempting to think of marine science and technology as research and technology within the Government but a cross-agency very much needs to bring in the industrial link. It needs to build very clear bridges where industry can be incorporated into that because there may well be cases where industry needs to engage early in some of these programmes.

Q280 Dr Turner: I was going to Oceans 2025 because one of the criticisms that certainly the university sector will make about it is it is not inclusive. It did not include them. It clearly does not include the associated industries. Whereas in the US there is a much more cohesive organisation, it is also much more bottom-up, so that scientists' views are really coming through in terms of priorities. Do we need to do something comparable in the UK. If we did that, could we arrive at a situation where, instead having a sum of all the different parts that are going on, we had something bigger and would get more funding?

Mr Burt: Yes, I totally agree. It needs cross-collaborative engagement and it needs engagement between science and industry. You are absolutely right, an overarching clear way forward is fine, providing it is an efficient structure and just has not grown to too large a compass.

Q281 Dr Turner: What sort of form do you think this will take? We got the distinct impression that one of the reasons why things seem to be going quite well in the States is that it is not done on a top-down basis, like an agency like NASA, but it is very much based on a sort of bottom-up approach that comes together. How do you think we could achieve that in the UK? How would you form this organisation? Would you start with the IACMST and reform it and give it a more powerful remit or would you create an equivalent of a NOAA?

Mr Burt: From an industry perspective, although we know IACMST has lacked teeth, in effect, it has brought the key players together over a number of years - and I do include industry and academia in that area. I think you have the core players there engaged within that organisation, so I would say there is a first pass to look at reorganising that rather than implementing something different.

Q282 Dr Turner: So build on what you have got.

Mr Burt: But change it for what we require today.

Q283 Dr Turner: Does anyone want to add to that?

Dr Rayner: I think you can use the links to the professional societies as well that have a strong role to play in this process. They can help to foster those linkages. One of the problems you have is that, once you start talking about funding for marine science and technology, the beneficiaries of the funding are distributed and they are each vying for their individual sources of funds. There is no collective pot, either at a UK level or indeed at the European level, so there has always been this problem of the marine sector being very diffuse.

Q284 Dr Turner: If it was cohesive, it might be able to argue for a bigger pot.

Dr Rayner: It would but who would be the recipient body for that pot?

Q285 Dr Turner: That is always the problem.

Dr Rayner: That is the problem. You can level the argument but you then have to have clarity as to the way in which those funds would be administered

Dr Thompson: I would like to make a personal comment. Always when you find units of organisation you have to find the right unit for organisation. If you go bottom-up, it has to be something where everybody feels that committing their time is giving them what they need and they get their just return. In my own mind, I am not clear whether an organisation across the whole of marine, if you are trying to do bottom-up, is appropriate, or whether it works in smaller units. An example of a smaller unit with bottom-up organisation is the flood risk management activity, where a whole range of funders and industry and academic groups come together to tackle, as consortiums, some of the issues around flood risk management. That works at a unit where everybody feels they are getting something. If you cover the whole of the marine area and then you look at some of the issues in marines that take energy, there are already other bodies that try to coordinate energy, and so you will end up with interfaces. I think the most important thing is that if you go bottom-up people feel they are making a contribution and they can see some return for their contribution. I am not sure, necessarily, across a diversity of marine, with all the interfaces that marine has, either with other technologies or with other parts of the environment, a single focus on marine would be enough to bring cohesion across the whole of industry, government departments, and the science base. In the UK, people dread - and my own organisation is as guilty of this as anyone - getting entwined in lots of discussion meetings without seeing very positive forward action.

Q286 Dr Turner: That is fair enough. We have quite enough talk shops and different funding pockets as it is. That is one of our problems. We need to do a bit of amalgamation but not necessarily forced amalgamation.

Dr Thompson: I think that is the very interesting thing, if you want to go bottom-up, how you get units that self-assemble because they feel self-interest, rather than being forced down. I think that is sometimes an uncomfortable marriage. We have some examples where we have got self-assembly of self-interested groups and we pull together a consortium of funders, a consortium of companies and of academics to work on specific areas. One area, I would say, is flood risk management. Another area is SuperGen Marine Consortium, where we have industry, NERC, EPSRC, the Environment Agency, the Department of Trade and Industry and a number of academic groups working together for common purpose and making sure that there is a short transfer of any technology that comes out quickly to companies who will shorten the innovation cycle.

Q287 Dr Turner: SuperGen was essentially a government initiative, was it not?

Dr Thompson: SuperGen was our initiative but it has not stayed as an EPSRC initiatives, it has managed to brigade a consortium of funding partners, a consortium of industry who have come in and added their funding and, now it is on its super round, it has also added on additional academic partners to give what we need for a marine consortium in energy generation.

Q288 Chairman: Dr Rayner, did you want to come in?

Dr Rayner: I wanted to comment on the way in which funding mechanisms can engender cooperation. If I look at what is happening at a European level in terms of operational oceanography, the GMES programme in Europe and the moves towards creating a pan-European capability in operational oceanography have very much been fostered by the fact that there is a fund being administered through the framework programme which is bringing together all of the parties. It is the existence of the funding that caused them to come together and, having come together, they are starting to work as a coherent pan-European group (that is, industry, academia and government laboratories working in a team) which is progressively becoming more integrated, but it took the existence of the pot of funding, partial funding, to cause that to happen.

Q289 Linda Gilroy: We have begun to touch on knowledge transfer and I would like to take that a bit forward and ask you to share with us your thoughts on the mechanisms to facilitate marine technology development and their commercialisation. Are they working and how could they be improved?

Mr Burt: From a UK perspective it is quite interesting. First of all, we have to identify where the technologies are. There are many, many technologies being developed in marine science and technology centres in the UK often for extreme applications. Very few of them are what I would call commercial products or capable of being commercially exploited. From the industry perspective we have to do a number of things. We have to identify technology by which we can economically evolve into a product which can then be sold commercially around the world and make money for UK industry but, also, we have to produce the products that the marine science and technology organisations do require. That is two different things. From an operational oceanographic point of view, you are looking for sensor technologies, for example, which have to last for long, long periods of time in the environment, doing a number of things with very little human interaction but always giving you good data. That is a clear link into applications for operational oceanography in climate change. But if you are looking at some of the basic research that is being undertaken in the laboratories here to pump-prime that activity, then the type of instrumentation they require is different. The first part of the jigsaw is where we have to identify technologies. From the UK perspective, from UK company, we have to look at worldwide technologies, just not UK technologies. There may well be something applicable in the US or in Japan that is at a very early development stage which we could licence or enter into an agreement to pull through, so, although the added value is eventually there for UK industry, UK marine science, perhaps, does not benefit because it has not developed that instrumentation route. The financial mechanisms to make that happen are poor, to say the least. There are very little opportunities to get significant funding to pull through technology to the market place. There are DTI schemes, there are NERC schemes, but when we lay these alongside, for example, US schemes, then I think the UK is poorly placed. There are a number of US schemes which are geared to early innovation, fully funded schemes for small spin-out companies to bring product through to the market-place. If we sit here today and look at where the competition is against UK industry, many of our competitors are in the US and many of those have developed into companies using third-party funding, and often 100 per cent third-party funding, to bring them to market-place with a technology and begin trading. In the UK, even if we embark upon the most generous of DTI schemes, it contributes very, very little, if anything, as you enter production and bring products to a commercial realisation, so there are significant overheads for the UK to have to recoup once it starts to sell product. If your competition has no overheads to recoup, you are immediately at a significant disadvantage. I think the funding schemes within the UK to enable technology to pull through are not as advantageous as they could be with competition. The other means of funding is through European schemes, through the framework schemes, but that then fosters collaboration. Collaboration can be good for scientific programmes, technology programmes, and ensuring appropriate technologies are brought to the market-place for that, but it is not always appropriate to collaborate with potential competitors commercially. Single-funded schemes out of a European perspective are not really there, so we have to come back again to look at the UK situation for funding, which again is at a disadvantage to overseas.

Q290 Dr Spink: But you do accept that the sort of funding that they enjoy in the United States would not be possible with EU regulations in this country.

Mr Burt: Yes. But commercially the outcome is to disadvantage us.

Dr Spink: We understand that.

Q291 Linda Gilroy: Mr Rayner, the institute has been very critical, particularly in respect of small and medium enterprises - which very often are what we are talking about, of course. In your evidence you have said that it is not only ineffective and excessively bureaucratic but, also, it can damage existing businesses with unfair competition.

Dr Rayner: There are three separate elements there. The marine science and technology industry area is a series of small, niche markets. It is not a very large pooled market, so companies tend to specialise in a very narrow niche and what is really required for small companies is helping them to exploit that niche on a wider geographical basis and helping them to create new technologies into those global niche markets.

Q292 Linda Gilroy: Have you seen any good examples of where that happens in the UK? Are any of the science parks, for instance, developed ----

Dr Rayner: There is really very little activity directed towards helping small companies to broaden their geographical market. I would go back to something that Richard Burt said about the equivalent position in the United States. In the United States, government agencies, and particularly NOAA, are quite engaged in supporting the activities of small companies in penetrating export markets. It is not surprising, because NOAA is part of the Department of Commerce, that it has a very specific commercial imperative and you will quite often see small, niche American companies being supported in promoting their products by NOAA as a government body. I cannot think of any examples of an equivalent position in the UK.

Q293 Linda Gilroy: Have you seen any evidence of that happening at regional development agency level?

Dr Rayner: Not really, no.

Q294 Linda Gilroy: Or through the science parks? I can think of some, in Plymouth, for instance, fairly modest, where the Tamar Science Park responded at the time to assist some people who lost some of their funding during the NERC streamlining. Do you have any contact with the science parks?

Dr Rayner: A little. I think the difficulty here is making it highly targets, picking niches - and I know this is a very interventionist approach

Q295 Linda Gilroy: The one I am thinking of was a niche area.

Dr Rayner: You pick a niche and foster it and then promote it widely internationally. It is very difficult for small companies to do that in their own right. It is very beneficial if they can be supported in doing that - and I do not necessarily mean financial support; I mean support in terms of proximity to markets and making their products and services more widely known.

Q296 Linda Gilroy: Are there ways in which you can think we need to change? Is it a NOAA type organisation or something more at that sort of regional level of economic activity?

Dr Rayner: I think it should be national rather than regional. I find it very difficult to see how it would work at a regional level when you are trying primarily to promote into export markets. That is something that really should be driven at a national level.

Q297 Linda Gilroy: I would comment on that, Chairman, before moving on, that the South West Regional Development Agency has an office in China, so a lot of the activities are happening at that level. Mr Gallett, would you like to comment on that?

Mr Gallett: It is not a main area of interest. I would only note on the regional side that there does seem to be more money available north of the border. Certainly Grampian Enterprise and Scottish Enterprise between them seem to be rather more generous in their support of small companies, particularly in the Aberdeen area with which I am quite familiar.

Q298 Linda Gilroy: Do any of you have familiarity with Wales? I have heard anecdotally that that may be true in Wales as well.

Mr Gallett: I do not have any knowledge about it.

Dr Thompson: It is clearly an area of great concern to us. If we are developing technology and the UK is not making best use of it, then that is a concern for all of us. Within the resources we have, we work very hard to make sure that, where it is appropriate, there are good contacts with companies, so certainly 40 per cent of the research portfolio we support is collaboration with industry. It is harder for small companies to collaborate with the science base, although that does not mean it does not happen. It happens when people have made the right contacts. Increasingly, we are trying to use our own time and effort to try to make sure we go directly to companies and try to look for intermediates that give us the leverage to have those dialogues, to make companies aware of some support they can get through engagement with the science base, but it is much harder than going to talk to the universities that we have, so it takes a lot more time and a lot more resource and, increasingly, finding ways we can work together on some of those things, particularly with things like regional development agencies, is becoming very high on our agenda. We have just reorganised our own internal structures so that we have a defined point of contact with every regional development agency devolved authority and through that agency we are trying to find ways that we can jointly promote companies working in the science base, as well as doing lots of things on a national level working with the DTI.

Q299 Linda Gilroy: It sounds a bit bureaucratic and like quite hard work at the moment.

Dr Thompson: It is hard work.

Q300 Linda Gilroy: Do you agree with the comment made that more of this should be driven from the top down?

Dr Thompson: I think the regional agenda is quite an interesting one, particularly as regional development agencies are no longer looking necessarily to source the science they need from their particularly local area but because they want to compete globally. That is a very interesting new dynamic in the UK, so we want to work to support it, but I think we are all learning as we go along at the moment. I would not claim that there is an easy mechanism but we all just have to put our shoulder to the grindstone and work at it.

Linda Gilroy: We have mentioned comparisons with the United States but are there any other international comparisons which perhaps might show the way ahead?

Q301 Chairman: Could I come in here because I am getting increasingly depressed this morning. You said in your evidence, Dr Rayner, that the Government is spending £100 million to create spin-off companies and it is ineffective. That is a very, very strong statement to make. We want to see some evidence of that.

Dr Rayner: First of all, it is not my comment. What you are seeing is a collection of comments from the membership of IMarEST.

Q302 Dr Spink: Are you withdrawing from it?

Dr Rayner: I am not withdrawing from it.

Q303 Chairman: You are the Vice President of this organisation.

Dr Rayner: I am, yes,

Q304 Chairman: So you are disassociating yourself from it.

Dr Rayner: No.

Q305 Chairman: Come on, dig the dirt.

Dr Rayner: The problem is making that funding much more targeted at some of these small niche markets and connecting it to companies, small niche companies in the UK that are active in those markets. In some cases, elements of that funding have been internalised.

Q306 Chairman: What does that mean?

Dr Rayner: I mean that it has been used to foster the creation of spin-off companies which are very closely linked to academic institutions and to government laboratories. It has not necessarily found its way to established SMEs.

Q307 Chairman: SMEs were once spin-off companies, were they not?

Dr Rayner: They were in some cases, yes, but not in the marine science and technology sector. Very few of the companies acted in the marine science and technology sector were spin-off companies.

Q308 Chairman: I am now confused. If we are talking about small emerging companies.

Dr Rayner: They need support.

Q309 Chairman: They need support but you are saying that if they get support the established SMEs do not get the support. Why do we want two lots of support?

Dr Rayner: We want to foster our existing SMEs in niche markets and help them to broaden their penetration of global markets. As I mentioned earlier, it is a collection of small, niche market sectors and we have in the UK a small number of SMEs active in those niche sectors. They are competing with small to medium sized companies in other parts of the world and the market that they are serving is a global market. It is very difficult for companies of that size effectively to create a position in a global market because they are very small scale. The funding should be directed, I believe, towards helping to foster that process, so creating the avenues from academic and institutional research to establish new products and then helping to link the industries, the small industries that are developing those products, to wider export markets.

Q310 Linda Gilroy: Is the support more of how to develop the business plan and marketing plan rather than on the development of the science?

Dr Rayner: Penetration of markets is where the gap is. For a large company, that is relatively straightforward because they already have the established infrastructure to achieve that. They have the local offices; they have the proximity to markets. For small businesses working in niche markets, that is not the case. For a small business to go into a new export market is a very, very significant expenditure. They certainly cannot contemplate doing that on a global scale.

Q311 Linda Gilroy: One of the things you refer to is an unfairness because of the way it works at the moment as between those that emerge from academic and government laboratory settings. What sorts of small businesses that are not supported in that way are struggling to make those leaps into their market?

Dr Rayner: I would say that most of the small businesses engaged in this area in the UK have rarely, if ever, received any support in this area.

Linda Gilroy: What kinds of things are they? I can only think of examples from my experience as a constituency MP of things that have worked and are about to work and therefore it is difficult to know what is not happening.

Q312 Chairman: You are not giving us any examples at all.

Mr Burt: Perhaps I might answer the question from a different perspective. To spin-out companies, SMEs from academia, it is but one important mechanism. The core route is technology transfer from academia to market-place. One route is spinning out SMEs. Another route is to enable that technology transfer to the existing SME base. The existing SME base, as Dr Rayner says, is very small and very niche. If you looked at marine science and technology, and I exclude oil and offshore at this stage, there is probably less than ten or 12 companies in the UK. That is as a result of 40/50 years of marine scientific research. Those companies have matured and are very well placed to identify production engineer technologies and achieve market penetration to a degree. Certainly penetrating new markets would require assistance. If you take the other model, whereby you identify technology in an academic environment and spin out an SME with it, invariably you spin out an SME primarily based on the science engineers involved in that product. As they move across to industry, they suddenly realise they have no skills in production engineering, no skills in marketing, market penetration and all that goes with the company profile, so they would be asking for different styles of funding from that which an existing SME would. I think there are two different cases there, but the prime driver is: What is the best route for me to bring in technology to the market-place? It can go either of two ways.

Q313 Chairman: Could we hear from Dr Thompson, because this is your job.

Dr Thompson: It is our job. Certainly, as a research council, we work both with the university spin-outs but we also work with existing companies. It is hard to work with small and medium enterprises because they are trying to keep going for tomorrow but there are some really good examples of companies that still work for the science base that are not huge companies. I am not a technical expert in this area but I am trying to pull in some areas. Guidance Technology Limited, which is a company which deals with how you can moor next to an oil rig, started off from quite a small company but it still very strongly engages with the science base. When it has a problem, it goes and tries to find somebody, not necessarily somebody whom they know, but who knows somebody who can help. They have just had a recent link with Liverpool that has really opened up new markets for them, but that is a company that is attuned and will ask questions. The real issue for the UK is how you can support people to go and do that more often - and that is time consuming. How do you support that? We are trying to use our offices to do it but clearly organisations, like all of us sitting here today, have a duty of care to try to make sure there is that natural ebb and flow of information between the science base and industry. The other thing that industry gives is some really important challenges. If you give the challenges back to researchers, they can lead to some really interesting research. It is not about a one-way flow; it is about pulling it back as well. That is how we absolutely get the ecosystem right in the UK but it does mean a concerted effort in supporting these companies. It is hard, if you are a small company, to go and spend an hour in a university. You are not going to unless you have the support from your regional development agencies, you know what a research council is and you know a way you can get help. The mechanisms are there but it is putting the energy into making sure you can get it going. Working with regional development agencies that have identified particular priority areas is probably a smarter way of going than just blitzing all the SMEs, but clearly you cannot pick off all of the areas in the UK that might need support and then do it all to all of them in one go.

Q314 Chairman: I am less depressed now. Perhaps we could move on.

Dr Thompson: I am not depressed.

Q315 Dr Iddon: Professor Thompson, considering the importance of the oceans concerning climate change, in particular, but earth systems in general, do you think the current level of funding by EPSRC for marine science is adequate?

Dr Thompson: I do not think there is any area in EPSRC's remit where I would ever answer our level of funding is adequate. Within the resources we have, we do the best we can to support high quality science and engineering within our remit and we work hard to try to increase leverage, so working with NERC and working with companies to make sure there is additional funding. Looking to the future, we are concerned that there is an opportunity for working on living with environmental change and that is part of the bid that all of the research councils will be putting into the Office of Science and Innovation for increased funding to enable us to invest more money into that area that is opening up with the development of new technology, with modelling science. Looking to the future, we think that is an important area for investment but we are halfway through the allocation of the science settlement and, until we know how that is stacked, we cannot tell you whether we can afford to invest in it or not. But we think it is an important area, and it is a high priority, going forward, for increased funding across research councils.

Q316 Dr Iddon: I have some figures here for 2006-07 and for the two years after that. For the year 2008-09 it shows there is a decline in funding. Is that a temporary figure?

Dr Thompson: It is not a decline in funding. The figures you have are the figures when we submitted the evidence. Clearly for 2008-09 we are currently agreeing new grant proposals that we will fund and that will add to the number. Significant parts of that funding, something like 70 per cent, is through responsive mode. How that will stack up as eventual expenditure, I cannot tell you, so I am much happier to say the figures you have for 2006-07 and 2007-08 are firm figures. For 2008-09 there will be additional grants agreed and additional expenditure put out. It is certainly not an intentional decline and, already, looking at things in the pipeline, I think you will see it go up to the 2007-08 level and it could increase beyond that.

Q317 Dr Iddon: I am sure the Committee is pleased to hear that but, nevertheless, at around £3 million of the £650 million total budget, approximately, it is less than half a per cent, is it not?

Dr Thompson: It is less than half a per cent. It is the money that we are investing in this area, but other priorities come in and that is our current expenditure level. Ideally we would like to be able to invest more money but we have to use taxpayers' money wisely and that is our current level of expenditure on research. In addition to that, we support training in universities and there is probably an additional £0.5 million a year going into supporting masters courses. But that is our research expenditure currently.

Q318 Dr Iddon: We have been talking about supporting innovation and technology and transferring that knowledge. Are you able to put a figure on how much you spend on that at EPSRC or is that difficult?

Dr Thompson: Given the space in which engineering and physical sciences works, separating out knowledge transfer into a separate funding pot does not do it for us, so our research expenditure includes expenditure on KT because it is embedded in everything we do. For instance, I can tell you that a significant number of the grants that make up those values already have collaboration with industry, which adds money to it, so we do not have separate funding schemes. We try to ensure that research and KT happen naturally in trying to encourage it, rather than having a separate pot of money that you access when you have decided you have to have a good KT idea, because it just does not work like that in engineering and physical sciences space. A project was recently approved at Southampton University looking at sensors in partnership with NERC that will go out into the marine environment and sample the water but also sample the marine biological population. That already has three companies working on that project, so we hope that will shorten the innovation circle because they are there watching over the shoulders of the academics. As soon as they see something that they can go and take value and make a new product from, they will be in there exploiting it. That is how we prefer to see it happen.

Q319 Dr Iddon: By the nature of the marine environment quite a lot of the research you have to fund is applied in nature.

Dr Thompson: Yes.

Q320 Dr Iddon: How do you determine the balance between the pure research and the applied research?

Dr Thompson: We do not ever determine that balance in that way. The way we manage our funding levels is that we divide up engineering and physical sciences into a number of technical programmes (so physics, mathematical science, engineering) and the council every year decides a budget that it wants to invest in each of those technical areas. Then, given that 70 per cent of the portfolio is responsive, it depends on the ideas coming in from the academic community that pass quality peer review that we can then afford to fund. So we do not determine it in the way you are suggesting.

Q321 Dr Iddon: It has become very obvious to us that quite a considerable amount of marine science is database collecting. It is absolutely essential to learn about all the earth system.

Dr Thompson: Yes.

Q322 Dr Iddon: Is there a case, because of that, do you think for the EPSRC to put more money into core funding to support those kinds of programmes?

Dr Thompson: With respect, understanding the earth systems is very much the remit of NERC but we have worked with NERC on some areas that would help with that, so the whole E-science programme, which was about how you shared information, how you mined data, was a joint activity with a very strong interaction between EPSRC and NERC. But collecting data to understand earth systems is very firmly footprinted in NERC.

Q323 Dr Iddon: That was just an example.

Dr Thompson: Yes. Clearly we have a very big programme in information and communications technology and a lot of the people that are engaged in that research have strong connections to people in other research environments. This recent project we funded at Southampton comes out of electronic engineering but it is to be able to measure things in the marine environment. That is a joint venture and joint funding between EPSRC and NERC. We provide the underlying knowledge base to do smart information collecting and researching and things, but colleting data from the marine environment when it is to understand earth systems is very much NERC. I would have to look at specific projects. It is very difficult to generalise this discussion - and I am not trying to be obtuse.

Q324 Dr Iddon: You have mentioned NERC but of course some of your programmes are collaborative with BBSRC and of course the Office of Science and Innovation are also important in all of this.

Dr Thompson: Yes.

Q325 Dr Iddon: And many of the marine science programmes are interdisciplinary in nature. How often do you come together with OSI and research councils to discuss future programmes in marine science?

Dr Thompson: I am a member of the Research Directors Group which meets every month. That is all the research directors from all the research councils. The best part of the job we do then is talking about new science opportunities. It is not talking about worrying about small things. We do that monthly and we look at new science opportunities. Clearly, in the run-up to a comprehensive spending review, we have been working very closely together to identify the clearest opportunities for the UK both in terms of scientific excellence but also in terms of ensuring we are tightly linked into better exploitation opportunities to put forward the programme of joint research activities. Energy is clearly a high priority across all councils. Living with environmental change, a high priority. The digital economy, a high priority - because if you just look at how the whole world is changing by the revolution in ITT, we clearly have to make sure that is closely coupled to the economy. Nano-technology is the other example and ageing and healthy living. They are five examples of where we think it is important to have a large thematic programme. Clearly research opportunities come up all the time from one-to-one dialogues with researchers and so making sure that researchers can come in and can receive a level playing field, whether they are working in core physics or at the interface with BBSRC or another research council, is critically important to us. I spent five years of my life working with BBSRC as EPSRC developed its life-science interface, which was about making sure there was not a gap but wherever possible there were funding overlaps, and understanding where the gaps were and how we might address that to make sure the environment was right for science in the UK. It is second nature now to work with other research councils because the problems of the world do not neatly fit into our administrative structures.

Q326 Dr Iddon: Are you aware that some of the academics make a criticism that where they are doing this kind of interdisciplinary work, sometimes they find it difficult to make the grant applications. They make them for BBSRC and they bounce back and feel that is a NERC opportunity. What are we going to do about that?

Dr Thompson: One of the problems we suffer is people remember past experiences much more strongly than the current situation. If somebody has been hovered between two research councils in the past, they will have a much stronger belief set about that than they will about the current funding environment. For a number of years now, and it was renewed last year, there is a funding agreement across all the research councils which clearly articulates, if you have a research idea across any research council's remit or across two or more, how we will handle those proposals. For EPSRC I watch what happens to cross-council proposals very, very carefully because I think it is important that the UK community does not suffer if it works at an interface. Colleagues in the same position as me in the other research councils do likewise. I think the situation has got much better but clearly we have to be ever vigilant. The other issue we have to then address is the attitude of peer reviewers, because every penny that we invest is invested through peer review judgments and there is nothing worse than somebody who peer reviews, when they write a proposal, being this very broad-minded person, who becomes this very narrow-minded person when they review it who says - and I have to be careful what I say - "This is not good chemistry, so I am going to dismiss it." Encouraging people to be open-minded in the peer review process as well as us making sure we try to provide a level playing field is an absolutely critical thing, going forward.

Q327 Chris Mole: When the Committee visited some businesses in the marine engineering field in the States it was very clear that there was significant US navy funding. What is the role of the RN in funding engineering and science in this area?

Mr Gallett: Obviously the MOD would be funding rather than the Royal Navy itself. When you go to the States it is very striking how much the US Navy is involved at the ground level. From my own experience of the Navy, which is now ten years out of date, we were never quite so close to that. I did work in MOD at times and we worked quite hard to get areas we thought were beneficial to the RN to get those research activities funded but my own experience at the moment is that there is not that much funding around for the sort of things the Navy would probably like.

Q328 Chris Mole: Do they deal with the work themselves if they need it done?

Mr Gallett: Or it just does not get done. As I say, my knowledge of this is somewhat outdated now, I am afraid.

Mr Burt: I do work with the Navy on oceanographic aspects. Certainly the Navy procure oceanographic systems and marine science systems for their own target area of environmental knowledge rather than doing marine science. A few years ago, certainly, there was more marine science and technology undertaken by the MOD and placed with small and medium sized enterprises externally. That really has stopped now. Most of the contractual work that appears from the MOD relating to marine science and technology is in support of environmental mitigation: acoustics and mammals and things like that, and very little is done in what I would call the science of instrumentation for example. If you put acoustics to one side, which is very much a Navy remit, then there is very, very little done outside. Certainly companies I am aware of in the past had a lot more work from that aspect of the Navy than they do now. In fact, we see more innovation for instrumentation, for example, coming out of areas of homeland security than we do from the MOD.

Mr Gallett: Perhaps I could add one more thing. One of the areas in which I am concerned at the moment is autonomous underwater vehicles. These are underwater robots. One of their roles will be to measure the oceans but they are also being used now by all companies to do pipeline survey and do the survey beforehand. From the military point of view, they have a great interest in that for mine clearance and mine hunting. Lots of the funding for that, as far as I can see, has dropped dramatically off over the last few years. Certainly QinetiQ did have quite a bit of funding going through and there is quite an operation still at Bincleaves but some of the activities in which I was engaged through the SUT, my society, have fallen away dramatically and it seems to be from lack of funding.

Dr Thompson: We do not have any direct funding that I can see on our research grant portfolio with the Navy but we do have joint funding with the Defence Procurement Agency.

Q329 Chairman: Could I pick up on Mr Gallett's comment about autonomous underwater vehicles and ask you, Dr Thompson, whilst we understand response mode funding - and thank you very much for your comments about the peer review going across interdisciplinary projects which I thought that was a very useful comment to make - do you ever at any time drive the technology? When we were at MIT we saw superb examples of technologies coming together and being driven, if you like, by research which are not only spin-offs but procurement in private sector companies as part and parcel of really quite sophisticated autonomous underwater vehicles. What do you do in that area, rather than waiting for things to come to you?

Dr Thompson: In areas where we think there is a gap in the portfolio or opportunity, where they are not coming in in the volume or in the type of proposal that we like, we take intervention action.

Q330 Chairman: Could you give me some examples?

Dr Thompson: Four years ago we decided that the whole area of wired and wireless sensor systems was an area where the UK had strengths but we were not pulling those strengths together. We have now invested £16 million in funding large, collaborative projects in partnership with industry in the whole area of wired and wireless network systems, of which some in the marine environment could have come in but did not. We then identified there was a gap. We thought there was a need to stimulate more research more in autonomous systems in the UK, so we issued a call to try to establish an interdisciplinary resource consortia in autonomous systems. Unfortunately, when the proposal came forward through peer review it was deemed of not satisfactory quality to be funded, so we took the judgment not to fund it, but now we are working on additional ways and other approaches we can take to try to stimulate more research in autonomous systems in the UK. That is working very closely with defence, because there is already a Defence Technology Centre set up in autonomous systems. We really wanted to put to the two together, so they were complementary, to add even more capability in the UK rather than competing with each other. Unfortunately that one was not funded but I am more comfortable with wanting to take an intervention, deciding the quality is not sufficient and not funding it than funding second-rate research because the competition on our funds is too great.

Q331 Chris Mole: Could I ask all of you what you think the skill shortages are in the marine science and technology sector. What are your concerns for the impact of this, going forward?

Mr Gallett: From the oil and gas industry's perspective there is a huge skill shortage worldwide, not just in the UK. Certainly in all the developments that are happening around the world - bearing in mind this is very much a global industry, it is not just specifically to the UK - there is a crying shortage for skilled engineers.

Mr Burt: From an oceanographic SME, when you look at the companies that we have been discussing this morning, this dozen or so marine science and technology companies, very, very few are employers of what I would call marine science graduates. If you look at the type of products and instrumentation that people develop, then the requirement is for electronic engineers, software, embedded software, display software programmers and design engineers. Certainly, if you move towards the added-value product side, in terms of data and data display and added-value products, then there will be more of a call for marine science oceanographers in that role.

Dr Thompson: I think there is an area where we did identify a skills shortage in the UK and that was marine energy. That is an area where we tried to take intervention action. We continue to monitor the portfolio. We have a general concern at the number of kids that want to come in and do engineering and physical sciences and that naturally has a consequent knock-on to the people that the UK will be producing in the future. That is a much bigger issue for this Committee here today.

Q332 Chris Mole: Does EPSRC have a specific dialogue with the industry marine sector about the health and future needs of the marine science sector?

Dr Thompson: We spend a lot of time talking to lots of people about skills requirements. It is one of the hardest areas in which to identify needs, so even my own organisation could not tell you the sorts of people we are likely to want to employ in ten years time. Because the market we are in is PhD, whilst there is a PhD training, trying to get companies to give you their needs is very hard. They can identify specific skill shortages and we work on that to try to address that. We have a whole programme of industrially relevant PhD training called the engineering doctorate. We are looking at refreshing the engineering doctorate and clearly part of the dialogue is with industry as to their shortage areas. If we identify shortage areas, we will focus on those areas, but quite a lot of our training is given to universities to try to identify where they have shortages. Certainly we have a number of universities which are running masters courses in marine technology areas in response to employers coming along and saying, "We need masters training in x, y or z. There are five courses running currently. In Southampton there is one in coastal engineering for climate change which is looking forward. In Newcastle there is a masters' course for marine technology. There are people being trained. Whether they are sufficient and of the right volume is a problem we worry about all the time.

Mr Gallett: A lot of the students undertaking courses do not come from the UK. They are very much worldwide. If you look at the Cranfield course, which is a pure masters' course, there are at least five French students on the current course of about 25 people, and about another five Nigerians.

Q333 Chris Mole: Do other members of the panel think the IACMST is well placed to examine future needs of the skills base for marine science and technology?

Dr Rayner: It has not historically had a strong role in looking at skills requirements. I think you would have to find a way of more actively engaging industry if you were going to go down that route. Yes, if you could create that structure, it would be a good place to start.

Q334 Chris Mole: Is there not a risk that the industry is just sitting around twiddling its thumbs complaining that nobody is turning up?

Dr Rayner: I do not think the industry is doing that at all. I think the industries in this sector are actively seeking to recruit anywhere they can and often outside of the UK, in countries that are generating the skill base in engineering, with numerate scientists, because they have to. They have to fill those positions. But there certainly is not a body that is looking specifically at that issue for the marine science area.

Mr Gallett: Or in the engineering area. The other thing I would say about IACMST is they have certainly funded my society in the past to provide a careers pamphlet for children. We have had that quite a long time and we have kept it going. We run quite a large scale careers thing for people in marine science and technology engineering.

Q335 Chris Mole: Is there a case for teaching more about marine science in what I think we all recognise is a very crowded curriculum already?

Dr Rayner: Yes. It does not receive much attention in the curriculum, certainly not as a science, so there is little awareness amongst school children about the sector. I would very much like to see that position changed. I think there needs to be much stronger awareness of the issues surrounding climate change and the critical role of the oceans in the climate.

Q336 Dr Spink: Following on from what you have said, Dr Rayner, given the public perception of the importance of the oceans in driving climate change, do you think EPSRC's priority, by putting one half of a per cent of their budget in that area, is a problem? Do you think they should readdress their prioritisation?

Dr Rayner: I do not think it is the role of the EPSRC that needs to be looked at here. Indeed, I think one of the issues here is not primarily a research issue; it is more of an operational issue. In one of the earlier comments, a distinction was made between pure and applied research. There is a further area in oceanography and marine science that I think is critically important that is not being addressed and should not be addressed necessarily by the research councils and that is the whole area of operational observations. How do you observe the oceans on a sufficient scale and density to address some of the questions?

Q337 Chairman: If it is not the research councils doing that, who should be doing it?

Dr Rayner: That is the difficulty. It is not clear where that role should lie.

Q338 Chairman: Who do you think it should lie with?

Dr Rayner: It possibly could lie with an existing operational body like the Met Office. To some extent, the Met Office already does occupy, in part, that role. I would go so far as to say those sorts of observations are so critical to understanding climate change that they should be regarded more as critical infrastructure in which nationally and globally we need to engage in effectively. Perhaps we do need a new body, perhaps at a European level, to engage in that whole area.

Q339 Dr Spink: That leads me neatly into datasets observation. Of course they are important not just for climate change but for fish stock management and the commercial exploitation of minerals and so on and so forth. I am coming on to datasets. The Oceans 2025 mission statement reveals that we face three closely related challenges. They say that the first is to know the rules of ocean behaviour. The second is to be aware of what is happening: we need to keep track of the many changes that are already occurring. The third is basically to find knowledge-based solutions based on the first two, which are the datasets. That establishes, I hope, the importance of the global datasets, not just for this country, of course, but for the world. First of all, which are the most important gaps in our knowledge of the oceans on which we are trying to establish data?

Mr Burt: The gaps really are going to be twofold. One is the long-term datasets for climate change and certainly the gaps in specific parameters are going to be geographically dependent. In some areas certain parameters will be more important than others. The second aspect is the technology that can enable you to fill those gaps.

Q340 Dr Spink: Which are the geographical areas where you think there are gaps at the moment?

Mr Burt: For example, if you are making deep ocean measurements for long-term climate change monitoring, there are going to be different types of measurements you would make, for example, in coasts and regional cities. There has been a significant targeting at the moment for the deep ocean programmes, the TOGA programme, the ARGO programmes, which are building upon long-term datasets, which is good. Certainly there are gaps in biological oceanography. There is a lot of emphasis on physical oceanographic datasets, which are very, very important, but, once those are becoming established, how the biology varies upon that is very, very important and that clearly leads to two areas. One is CO₂ uptake - which everybody is very keen to look at these days - and resulting ocean certification. Both of those are very early in their stages of knowledge.

Mr Gallett: I think there are two issues here. One is gaps in types of observation, so areas where, perhaps, sensor technology is not capable of making observations we would like to make, and then there is the issue of lack of continuity in routine observations. I think oceanography is going through a fundamental transition with the science at the moment, in that operational oceanography is a relatively new activity and there are huge problems with continuity of observations. Most observations in the oceans have their origin in research projects and research projects are generally short lived, so we get snapshots of the way the ocean behaves from a particular perspective and then that snapshot may cease. I see the biggest problem here is how do you ensure that certain key observations are made continuously and made consistently. This is not research. It may underpin research but it is not research. It is a fundamentally different activity and it needs to be managed and operated in a different way. At the moment in the UK, and I would say at an international level also, the mechanisms properly to underpin the funding of those regular routine observations are not well established and so what tends to happen is that we have a stop-go sort of situation. We will have some observation capability in place, whether it is space based or in situ within the oceans, and then that observational base will suddenly reach the end of its life and there has been no attention paid to proper continuity. Clearly, if we do not get the basic long-term observation correctly undertaken we will not be able to understand properly the way in which the oceans drive climate. That is one half of the equation. The other half, as Richard has said, is that there are gaps in terms of the types of observation that we are able to make and they are embedded in the research area because there are some things we would like to be able to observe routinely that we cannot observe routinely at the moment because the technologies to do so are not sufficiently developed. There are two different areas here that I think need to be addressed. One is bringing up to speed the technologies that are needed to fill gaps in the types of parameters that are being measured. The other is creating mechanisms at a national and a global level which properly ensure the continuity of routine observation of the oceans.

Mr Gallett: One of the other things that we do suffer from is that we have packets of data scattered around the place. Quite often they are not being joined up, they are not being utilised. The MOD has quite a lot of data that it is very unhappy to release because perhaps it might reveal operational activities of vessels. I do not know to what extent in recent times those have been looked at again but there is an awful lot of data being held by the MOD through their hydrographic office in areas which probably other people have not been working on. There are other packets around in some of the other research places as well that have not been brought into the fold.

Q341 Dr Spink: Added to the problem of inadequate funding and technical knowledge and a lack of coordination, you would say, is protectionism - probably for fairly sound security reasons.

Mr Gallett: Yes.

Q342 Dr Spink: What do you think is the significance of the Global Ocean Observing System?

Mr Burt: From a scientific point of view, it is very well proven, and I think its significance is very clear. Also there are two other key aspects. It is global, so that it does act as an overarching coordinating activity for marine science and technology, but, also, from a commercial aspect for companies that will participate in it. Again, that is companies from developing technologies to giving added value to data products. There is one interesting aspect of the Global Ocean Observing System which is yet to be addressed. We have alluded to that today. That is the significant change in the technologies that are needed to achieve the data products that you require. If you were to look around at worldwide technologies, instrumentation products that are being used for Global Ocean Observing Systems, they all invariably have their roots in scientific programmes. A simple instrument for measuring temperature in the oceans, salinity in the oceans, have all come out of their roots from scientific programmes, where a scientist may take some equipment to sea and make a measurement. Very few, if any, are designed for what we would call long-term operational deployments. At the moment you have a very large number of observing systems using scientific equipment and then a significant part of their budget, for example, would go towards maintaining that system. It is a little bit like having a very, very expensive racing car you want to use a few days a week. It is so expensive to maintain. Whereas the technology input required is to develop instrumentation and technologies that will last for many months or years in the ocean environment and report good data continuously. That may be seen as a very good topic for research, but if you then sit and think about how many different oceanographic regimes there are around the world, all inputting to a Global Ocean Observing System, it gives you an idea of the size of the project. For example, if you wish to measure a given parameter in the Thames Estuary or in the Solent, you may use a totally different technology for the same parameter from that you would use in the Arctic or in the surf zone or in the middle of the Pacific. There is a huge opportunity for assessing the types of different technologies that you require and applying those to the most suitable regime, even though at the end of the day they are all giving you the same information: the temperature is X. There is a significant opportunity and it is an opportunity that is not being addressed at all. The European aspect of the Global Ocean Observing System, EuroGOOS, has identified this many years ago as a technology gap that is required to be filled and it has looked, within the European context, at where it can obtain this information. It cannot fund initiatives but it can identify and act was a catalyst to try to get things done. Certainly up to this stage, it has not been successful in doing that. Many, many workshops and discussions that I have been involved in directly have tried to achieve this technology gap in trying to fill it but at the moment the consensus is still that we continue to use scientific instruments and maybe adapt, whereas in the long term adapting is too expensive. You need to design again from the grassroots.

Q343 Dr Spink: We saw in the United States a couple of weeks ago instruments that were dropped in the ocean and left there to operate over a number of years, a decade perhaps, that bob up from time to time, release their data and go back down. Is that technology not shared around the world for everyone to use?

Mr Burt: It is a well known programme. All the technology requirement came out of the US and the technology development to meet that came out of the US as well.

Q344 Dr Spink: Hence your earlier comment about the US being more effective in start-up, seed corn funding.

Mr Burt: Absolutely. The US did provide full funding for the manufacturers of the sensor technologies on those particular buoys, to produce instruments which are designed for that use. Certainly at the time of requirements for sensors on those buoys, the American pull-through of technology was far better than it was over here. We had full visibility of it but it was not economic to pull it through.

Q345 Dr Spink: Do you think the UK's participation in the GOOS project and its long-term viability are sound and becoming more secure as we get more political understanding of the need for these datasets or do you think they are at risk in any way because of short-termism?

Dr Rayner: Clearly, the Global Ocean Observing System is an absolutely critical component of the overall earth observation system and there is a well-formulated plan for how the Global Ocean Observing System should be created. Necessarily and by definition it is a global endeavour but it relies on effective participation of individual nations in that routine programme of observations. The UK's participation is not particularly strong. There have been several recent instances, in fact, where the UK has reduced its level of participation. You mentioned the ARGO programme specifically in your earlier comments.

Q346 Dr Spink: In fact there are some people in the industry who believe the UK should double its financial participation in this project.

Dr Rayner: And should engage perhaps at a different level.

Q347 Dr Spink: Would you explain that.

Dr Rayner: At the moment the representation to the Global Ocean Observing System is through IACMST and it is funded through the research councils. I would argue again that it is not a research council function. It is so fundamental to our understanding and routine monitoring of the planet that it should receive much more attention and perhaps be elevated to a different position.

Q348 Dr Spink: An operational department like the Met Office or something.

Dr Rayner: Yes.

Q349 Chris Mole: Who should operate that?

Dr Rayner: At the moment the only organisation I think in the UK is positioned to do that is the UK Met Office. But of course it is not funded to do so.

Q350 Dr Spink: What part has the Marine Climate Change Partnership had to play in addressing the gaps in our scientific knowledge of the oceans?

Mr Burt: In terms of our scientific gaps, I do not know, but, in terms of technology applied to it, I am not aware that we have had any pull-through yet.

Chairman: Is that across the board? Yes. Okay.

Q351 Dr Turner: I would like to ask some brief questions about international collaboration and organisation. There are many international and European organisations involved in the governance of the oceans. Do you feel, Dr Rayner, that the UK is adequately represented at the international level in UNESCO and the other bodies like the IOOC and the International Maritime Organisation?

Dr Rayner: It is certainly represented. I would ask the question of how the position of the UK is determined in some of these bodies. Who briefs representatives? How do they decide what position is taken when they attend those sorts of fora?

Q352 Dr Turner: In other words, should our representation be more forceful?

Dr Rayner: I would say yes, it should be.

Q353 Dr Turner: What impact do you think better representation or more effective representation could have on our own marine science and policy development?

Dr Rayner: It would be more informed by what is going on in other countries and what is going on at a global level.

Q354 Dr Turner: How serious a deficiency do you think this is?

Dr Rayner: I would say it is a relatively serious problem. It is very difficult to understand or even to see if there is a process for how UK position is determined in those bodies.

Q355 Dr Turner: Do you all feel this to any degree?

Mr Gallett: It is outside my field.

Dr Thompson: It is outside mine.

Mr Burt: I would agree totally.

Q356 Dr Turner: There is a European Marine Strategy Green Paper, what impact is that going to have on the UK?

Dr Rayner: If it forms the basis for the Maritime Directive it will have quite a specific impact on the UK, in that the UK will have to enact legislation appropriate to that Directive. Formulated in the right way, it will create some coherence and it will raise this whole issue to a higher level.

Q357 Dr Turner: It is a reasonable expectation that a Green Paper will lead to a Directive. Do you feel that the Green Paper as published is good or bad for us?

Dr Rayner: I think it is good for us.

Q358 Dr Turner: If the Directive follows that, you will be quite happy.

Dr Rayner: Because I think it will create a focus for the maritime sector which is currently lacking.

Q359 Dr Turner: Could I ask you all finally to comment on how well the UK collaborates internationally with the development of marine technologies?

Mr Burt: Let me try to answer that with two examples. One is the well-known European framework programme which, by its necessity, forces collaboration or otherwise you do not participate. Certainly in previous years there has been a significant dip in what I would call SME participation. It was very, very positive and then, as the funding mechanisms became less attractive, fewer and fewer SMEs participated. In the current round now, framework 7, it is a lot better. It is early stages but there is more funding for SMEs at a greater percentage level, which is good, and also there is a stronger role that SMEs are expected to perform within the projects so there is less opportunity to undertake research for research's sake. In collaboration there, you have to outline explicitly how your try pull-through will happen. I think that is good. The second example is if we look across the water - dare I say again - to the United States, to look at what is happening there. There are opportunities for UK companies to license technologies from the US and to develop those - again, coming back to our funding models, perhaps at our expense - but launching them on to the US market, because I think UK companies do as good a job if not a better job at technology pull-through than US companies. Whereas US companies have more opportunity, I think we can do a better job, but it is beholden on the individual companies to go over to find the perfect technologies and bring them back.

Q360 Dr Turner: Do you have any shining examples to show how this has been operating or could operate?

Mr Burt: Yes. I have a very good example. Our particular company has licensed the technology that came out originally from the Brookhaven Laboratory. That was assessed by a number of our US competitors, who deemed that it was too difficult to procure and to bring to market-place. Through our links with the UK laboratories, they identified us as a candidate company, we went over there about five years ago, licensed the technology, brought it over here using our money and, I would say, some DTI money at that stage, managed to bring a product to market-place which is still a world leader and the second generation is about to appear. We are quite happy to enter into royalty agreements and commercial exploitation agreements.

Q361 Chairman: What is the name of that product?

Mr Burt: That particular product is known as FASTtracka.

Q362 Dr Turner: What does that do?

Mr Burt: It is a fast repetition rate fluorimeter for monitoring the photosynthetic reaction of chlorophyll in the water.

Chairman: I thought it was!

Q363 Dr Turner: Being a scientist, you knew instinctively! It can be done but it clearly there was more that could be done.

Mr Burt: Yes, and the initiative rests with the company.

Q364 Dr Turner: It also sounds, from what you are saying, that there are less licensing opportunities arising out of British laboratories than from the US. Is that a fair comment?

Mr Burt: There are an awful lot of opportunities both sides. You certainly see more opportunities of products appearing out of US laboratories now and coming on the market-place than you are in the UK.

Q365 Dr Turner: Is that a function of the scale of US laboratory operations or a difference in approach?

Mr Burt: It is a difference in approach. As I am sure you can imagine, there are many, many technologies being developed which are great for scientific purposes but not suitable for commercial exploitation. The market is not big enough and what have you. Certainly in the US some organisations ... For example, if you look at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research, where the funding is not government at all really - it comes straight out of the Hewlett Packard Foundation and they can spend their money on all sorts of prosaic things where it does not have to be part of a long-term programme - that lab is probably responsible for spawning four, five, six technologies which have appeared on to the market-place in as many years and has achieved significant revenue for those companies.

Q366 Dr Turner: Do you think there will be an advantage to UK plc to mimic these approaches?

Mr Burt: Commercially, I think we either have to mimic or better the approach. We do not want to be disadvantaged.

Q367 Chairman: Thank you very much. Could I ask you for, literally, a one-word answer. In terms of organisation of marine science and its interface with commercial operations, do you feel the equivalent of a NOAA in the UK would be an advantage?

Dr Rayner: Yes.

Mr Burt: Yes.

Mr Gallett: Yes.

Dr Thompson: I am not qualified to comment.

Chairman: On that note, could I thank Richard Burt, Ian Gallett, Ralph Rayner and Lesley Thompson. Thank you very much indeed.