Volume 1

Setting priorities for publicly funded research : 3rd report of session 2009-10. / Science and Technology Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. Science and Technology Committee.
Date:
2010
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Setting priorities for publicly funded research : 3rd report of session 2009-10. / Science and Technology Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    lasted well over a year, by which time things had kind of changed! I made a fairly early commitment to change this. In fact, one of the things I have been very pleased with is that I started a review of the reviews and seeing what was wrong with them, because everybody was saying that this is ridiculous and far too long; and we commissioned a consultant who then produced a report that came to the Heads of Analysis Group, which has the Chief Economist, the Chief Statistician, the Chief Scientist—myself—the Chief Social Scientist; and we looked at this consultant’s report and made recommendations about how scientific reviews should occur in future. In summary, first the suggestion was that they have got to be shortened and would need to have much higher level input from external advisers and consultants to look at how they were going, and to make certain that these were essentially mandatory. The “mandatory” was significantly resisted, as you might imagine; but I am glad to say that the Civil Service Board decided about three weeks ago to agree to my proposal that all departments that had not had a review should have a mandatory review. So I now have in place a programme which will review all departments which have not had a review; that is 11 departments we are going to be reviewing, including big ones like the Ministry of Defence. We will finish that programme by March 2011, so we will have done them all. The idea then is that there will be follow-ups and assessments going on. In addition to the departments, we have done reviews of some of the agencies, the Food Standards Agency and the security services. The latter is obviously one that is not public—but all reviews that we are making will be public documents and will be available on our website and published. That is the intention and has been the practice. The latest one we did of an agency was the Food Standards Agency, which was published about three or four weeks ago. That process of transparency is really important. In terms of how effective the reviews are, I would have to say that the early very long and very, very detailed reviews had probably success that was not quite commensurate with the investment and the amount of time it had taken. I felt there was some progress. For example, I alluded earlier to the recommendation to Defra that they should have significantly more social science. I think that some practices were changed on the basis of some of the early reviews. The ones I was aware of and more familiar with were the Defra one, because I was Chair of the Advisory Council of Defra, and then the ones that I have inherited since I took the position. In the Department of Health, we had a very extensive discussion with the Department of Health as we finalised the review. I think a lot of the recommendations we came to were almost accepted at the time. That process will be ongoing, and I am hoping to see where that leads subsequently. I have high hopes for it, and I think they can be important, and we will at least have done all of the departments by 2011. The concern I have is that these reviews were taking well over a year and there are 17 departments, which would kind of outlast me; so I am sufficiently egocentric to decide that I would really like to do a review of all of them before I leave the job! Chairman: There are two areas left that we would like to talk about. One is very specific and a matter of significant concern to us, as I think to you as well, on pandemic flu, and there are some specific questions on that. Then there is a broader issue about the tensions between priorities in science and the so-called Haldane Principle and whether these are compatible. I wonder if we could take the pandemic flu questions now and then perhaps go out on a big broad note of the Haldane Principle! Q26 Lord Jenkin of Roding: I am a co-opted member of the Committee for the purpose of pandemic flu, and I have been listening to you for the last hour with fascination. What strikes me of course is that your style seems to be very different