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Post-doctoral Scientific Careers

I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss a matter of importance to the present and future success of the United Kingdom science base. I note that the Hansard record is not full of previous debates on the topic. I am pleased that you are in the Chair, Mr. Gale, as I know that you take an active interest in all matters relating to the future of the UK science base. I also welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the hon. Member for Brent, North (Barry Gardiner). The Minister for Science and Innovation, Lord Sainsbury, sits in the House of Lords, so it is the role of the hon. Gentleman, who is also a Department of Trade and Industry Minister, to substitute for him in this place, which he does ably. It seems as though it was only the other day that we were discussing scientific publications and open access in another Adjournment debate. The people we are discussing—post-doctoral researchers or post-doctoral students—are scientists who have got a good result in their degree, which has enabled them to get funding for and then to complete a doctorate, and the majority of whom have gone on to work in what is called contract research. There are tens of thousands of them and they are some of the brightest people our higher education system has produced. They have the potential to help to make great discoveries through science, pure research and applied; through the application of experimental techniques and the basic knowledge taught to them at university during their degree courses and doctorates; through interactions with other people in their laboratories and work areas as well as internationally through collaborations and conferences; and through their reading. It is my contention that they feel undervalued and that we are not making the best use of them, because many of them are leaving. That is not a new concern. In fairness, it must be said that the Government have recognised the problem, as have the higher education funding councils, research funders, and the Wellcome Trust and other charities that are members of the Association of Medical Research Charities. The questions now are: has enough been done, are the initiatives working, and do the Government have mechanisms in place to determine whether the initiatives are working? I shall set out what post-doctoral researchers hold the problems to be, examine some of the initiatives that have been put in place, question how well we are measuring the outcomes, and then address what next steps the Government can take—or help to catalyse, because responsibility in this area does not lie with Government alone, although the Government have an important role, as they are the major source of public funding for schemes and have a role in quality assurance in science and in personnel and human resource policies. I am grateful to the individual post-doctoral researchers who have told me their views. In my roles as Liberal Democrat science spokesman and as a member of the Science and Technology Committee, I visit institutions and I take the opportunity to ask to meet with post-doctoral researchers on a group basis, without senior management or heads of department being present. Heads of department usually provide excellent hospitality on such visits and they tell us about their strategies and the progress that is being made, but, speaking as one who is particularly interested in the careers of scientists, I believe that there is no substitute for asking them individually and in groups, and in the absence of their bosses, what they really think of their lot. One of the questions I wish to discuss is to what extent the high-level bodies that look at research careers are directly in touch with the views of the people who are affected. Post-doctoral researchers, whether they have jobs in rigorously selective research departments of high reputation or in other research departments also doing excellent work, report their concerns to me. The concerns are not specific to the departments that may be seen to be struggling in terms of the research assessment exercise, or to those who feel that they are not the brightest and the best of a very bright and effective group of people. We are talking about some of the top people who are still not happy, who are leaving and who are encouraging people not to stay in this role. I am grateful to Cancer Research UK in particular, to Universities UK and to the British Heart Foundation for their briefings. I pay tribute to the work of people in the Wellcome Trust such as its director, Mark Walport, who has looked into this issue, and those who have served in the Research Careers Initiative, particularly Professor Sir Gareth Roberts, whom I was pleased to meet just last week at the Association for Science Education conference in Reading. He has gone beyond the call of duty in what he has sought to do. He has not only taken the thorny crown of dealing with the research assessment exercise which has a bearing on this subject, but, with his report ““SET for Success””, he looked at the supply of scientists to the UK science base and then chaired the Research Careers Initiative and the Research Careers Committee of the Research Funders' Forum, which flowed out of it. I pay tribute to his work and I was pleased to have the opportunity, albeit brief, to talk to him in advance of this debate. Cancer Research UK describes the position well. It says that post-doctoral researchers are a valuable asset to UK research but that the lack of job security and clear career structure is a disincentive for scientists to stay in research. Let me explain what the real issue is. We are talking about people who have completed their undergraduate training, accumulating debt on the way. The Minister knows that I think that that is a flawed policy because it deters people who could benefit from it from going into higher education. In particular it deters those who graduate with debt, particularly those from debt-averse backgrounds, from going into less well-paid public sector jobs, which are highly valuable to this country's economy and certainly as valuable as better paid jobs in the City and in industry. Those people emerge from university with debts and they then do doctorates. I acknowledge that the stipend for doctorates has been increased, which I welcome, but it is also not sufficient to enable them to even think about living independently. They then go on to get three-year contracts which do not pay well compared with the earnings of people who are likely to be as bright as them, but who took their degrees in other subjects and are now working in the private sector. The people we are discussing are often earning between £20,000 and £30,000 three, four or five years after getting their doctorates. We are talking about people in their late twenties and early thirties who may still be in debt from their student days and who have no prospect of being able to buy a house on their own or even with their partners. They are stuck with the prospect, particularly in high living cost areas such as my constituency, Cambridge and London, of sharing a house, just as they did in their student days. When people ask them whether they would encourage others to go into their career, they often reply, ““What career? There is no career. There is a job. There is a pretty poor salary. It has been improved recently and there are some career development opportunities. There may be sources of more advice but fundamentally things have not changed.”” Post-doctoral researchers play a crucial role in UK academic research and losing people of their valuable experience is a real problem. Let us consider what happens if someone with great experience of how a lab works and the experimental techniques in the broad area in which the work is being undertaken leaves because his funding runs out. The university cannot retain him because it has not been able to attract the grant that it requires to keep on an experienced person, or it is more likely to receive funding if within the grant application it substitutes an experienced post-doctoral salary for a more junior post-doctoral salary even though the junior person does not share the experience of the person who has done the good work that has enabled the university to renew the grant or explore new areas. In those circumstances, who will be left in the lab to supervise the students? As the Minister knows, the principal investigator is often not around to do the hands-on supervision and training of students. Often, the result will be either demoralised doctoral students or poorly less incisively done science. The role of the laboratory expert with experience must be recognised, cherished and nurtured. I fear that that is not happening at the moment. Despite the initiatives that the Minister will no doubt describe, the position is not getting better. Although I welcome the initiatives, in recent years the proportion of research funding that universities receive in the form of fixed-term grants has gradually increased. The type of funding that promotes short termism has increased, as a result of which the proportion of researchers on short-term contracts has also increased markedly. Currently, more than half of post-doctoral researchers in United Kingdom universities are funded through short-term contracts, and that proportion is increasing. We are now left with a growing number of people who have a lack of job security as a result of working on multiple short-term contracts, which is a strong disincentive for scientists to remain in academia. Researchers can end up spending many years on short-term contracts, each lasting for only two to three years, but as their experience grows they become more expensive to employ, and ultimately they may be priced out of the market in favour of young, less experienced scientists on a lower pay scale. It is a matter of chiefs and indians. I am not arguing that every post-doctoral researcher should be given a job for life and tenure. No one would argue that, but there must be ways to enable the best of the post-doctoral researchers who are not in a position to take on lectureships or principal investigator roles to convert to open-ended contracts. Some people are simply not interested in doing that and are interested only in doing the work that they love. They recognise that that will limit their lifetime earnings, but there must be a way to allow them to convert to open-ended contracts. Another problem engendered by the present culture is that researchers are constantly moving every two to three years; research projects have little continuity and suffer as a consequence, making it less likely that research goals can be reached. I accept that we cannot be too purist about such matters because it is necessary for researchers to be mobile at an early stage in their career if that suits the area that they are exploring. They must be able to look at different groups, try different techniques and have the opportunity to move around. I am not saying that there are no benefits in mobility, but it is not the case that those benefits cannot be achieved—indeed, I believe that they can be best achieved—from the basis of an open-ended contract that people can move from because they have the confidence to put everything into their scientific career without worrying about whether they ought to consider training in something else in order to have some form of career that will give them the job security that they need as they enter their 30s. There is also concern that the training received by post-doctoral researchers on short-term contracts does not meet all their development needs. It often relates specifically to their research fields and does not provide them with transferable skills. I am pleased that there are initiatives to provide a certain number of sessions and funding to go with that to tackle the problem, but has the evaluation been done? I am not the first person to raise the issue. It has been raised in the main outside general parliamentary debate. It has certainly been investigated in Science and Technology Committee reports—there have been Lords and Commons reports into such issues. Sir Gareth Roberts' report ““SET for Success: The supply of people with science, technology, engineering and mathematics stills”” clearly stated several points. It said that research councils and other research sponsors should significantly increase starting salaries for post-doctoral researchers. Some of that has now been done through the initiative in the higher education sector to tackle issues of equal pay for work of equal value, which has generally tended to uplift salaries, but no one could argue that that solved the problem—the difference between people of the same age in different jobs who are and are not clinically qualified is enormous—or that that current post-doctoral research salaries are satisfactory. Sir Gareth also pointed out that unattractive career structures, including short-term contracts and low levels of responsibility, are responsible for deterring postgraduates from pursuing a career in science. The final report of the Research Careers Initiative, which stemmed from the work of Sir Gareth Roberts and his colleagues, recommended that various issues be taken forward by the Research Funders' Forum and dealt with in the promulgation of a new protocol to renew the old protocol on setting higher standards for post-doctoral research. I should like to ask the Minister what point that work has reached, because the timetable set in the report appears to have slipped drastically. No help is found in the minutes of the careers research sub-committee of the Research Funders' Forum, because the only minutes available on the website are of what appears to be the first meeting, held on 1 October 2004. That talks about reporting to the Research Funders' Forum in April 2005, and states that it is intended that work on the replacement for the concordat will be completed by July 2005 and presented to the Research Funders' Forum in autumn 2005. I should like the Minister to tell me what has happened. Finally, I should like to touch on the European working time directive on short-term working. The EU fixed-term contract directive is designed to protect workers by preventing employers from using successive contracts as a means to avoid making employment permanent. To comply, Governments and the member states must introduce measures that specify"““(a) objective reasons for justifying the renewal of such contracts and relationships;""(b) the maximum total duration of successive fixed-time contracts or relationships;—" and—"(c) the number of renewals of such contracts or relationships.””" Crucially, the directive requires that fixed-term workers"““shall not be treated in a less favourable manner . . . because they have a fixed-term contract or relation unless different treatment is justified on objective grounds.””" It is unclear what the impact of that has been in this country. I shall be grateful if the Minister clarifies what work is being done to identify whether—in contrast to what we hear from Cancer Research UK—there has been a move towards universities giving people open-ended contracts funded by the prospect and prediction of grant income, which is one of the key ways forward. Post-doctoral researchers tell me that that directive means only that they get a few hundred pounds in redundancy money; it does not change the situation on the ground. Finally—recognising that we do not have time for a full debate about all the issues—I remind the Minister that one of the key points about the treatment of this group of people is the differential and disproportionate affect that it has on women and ethnic minorities in science. That message runs throughout the reports—it is not directly dealt with, but is certainly referred to in almost every report—and the Government clearly recognise it. If the Government's commitment to promoting science as a career for women and promoting the careers of women in science is to mean anything, they must tackle the problems of short-term contract working, a demoralised work force, and the loss of expertise and the waste of talent and investment that results from people leaving science because of unsatisfactory career prospects for those who are good at science and who would otherwise want to continue. I look forward to the Minister's response.