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Post-doctoral Scientific Careers

: Mr. O'Hara, anyone reading Hansard may be confused about why I address you in the Chair, but the quick change that was done in the hot seat while the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) was speaking has brought you to it and I am glad to see you there supervising the remainder of this afternoon's debate. I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the subject of post-doctoral scientific careers and for the way in which he based his contribution on the experience of conducting his own research among the researchers. He spoke with great candour and I shall try to respond in the same vein. The Government attach importance to this subject, which is particularly significant if we are to realise the UK-wide and European-wide targets that depend so much on having enough well trained scientists. If the UK is to have a supply of highly motivated and well trained post-doctoral scientists, it is essential that their career options are attractive. The Government's determination to achieve that has been evident in the last two spending review commitments. For example, one key theme of the 2004 spending review allocations was the importance of strengthening the health of the engineering and physical science disciplines. The £10 billion allocation of funding for the period between 2005 and 2008 aims to lay the foundations by improving the health of key disciplines. The hon. Gentleman introduced one perhaps contentious note when he spoke about student fees and the legacy of debt that they leave. I trust that he acknowledges that whereas under the old regime post-doctoral students would face a requirement to pay back 9p in every pound that they earned over £10,000, under the new regime the threshold is raised to £15,000. Year on year, while they are doing their post-doctoral studies, the chances are that they will be at least £450 better off and less likely to have to repay the debt in the first place. I shall not dwell on that point, because the hon. Gentleman made a great many important comments to which I want to respond. The Government have already taken steps to improve the attractiveness of careers in science and to maintain the future supply of skilled people by enthusing schoolchildren about science and careers in that field. In recent years we have made a number of changes that have improved the attractiveness of research careers generally and the conditions for those engaged in them. Those changes stem from the review, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, carried out by Sir Gareth Roberts on the supply of people with science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills. The ““SET for Success”” review brought to wide attention the key issues that affect post-doctoral and other research staff in universities and their impact on the recruitment and retention of those individuals. Issues included a lack of a clear career structure, uncertain career prospects, unsatisfactory training and increasingly uncompetitive salaries. Although universities and research organisations are the employers of post-doctoral scientists, the Government, through the research councils, have introduced a series of measures designed to encourage employers to improve the attractiveness of research careers and to support the training and development offered by universities and research organisations. The Government have provided £185 million of new money up until 2007–08 to introduce the so-called Roberts measures. They are aimed at not only post-doctoral researchers, but at PhD students, who have benefited enormously from them. Specifically, research council PhD students, who comprise about one third of the total, receive a stipend of at least £12,000, tax-free. That represents a tangible increase in their remuneration, which has almost doubled since 1998, and it improves the attractiveness of further study to those who have the capacity to go on with it. That is at least one way in which the Government have attempted to address the problem, on which the hon. Gentleman commented, of people feeling under-valued. Research council PhD students also receive two weeks of training in transferable skills every year—another issue mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. That has already had an impact on attitudes to such training in UK universities, and universities are actively participating in the sharing of good practice. Measures are also being developed in consultation with the sector to evaluate the impact of that additional training on the employability of PhD graduates. For post-doctoral researchers, funding has increased research council salaries in areas that experience recruitment and retention difficulties. Research council researchers are also now provided with career development training through that funding. In addition, a new academic fellowship scheme has been developed to provide 1,000 new fellowships over five years. The schemes aim to provide more stable and attractive routes into academic careers, for which the hon. Gentleman was calling. As part of the process of assessing the effectiveness of these measures, the research councils have commissioned a study to monitor the impact of increased funding for post-doctoral salaries on the higher education employment culture. They are particularly interested in the impact that that aspect of the funding has had on the employment practices of universities and research organisations. With regard to the other measures aimed at post-doctoral researchers, the academic fellowships scheme has had a positive impact, and at least two universities have effectively cloned the scheme for the recruitment of their academic staff. The scheme has a clear structure that aims towards an academic career and includes outreach work into schools and teaching duties. That clear structure tackles the concern that the post-doctoral researcher has no identifiable career path. The scheme was launched in March 2004, and 398 fellows are now in place. If their performance is satisfactory, those fellows will be given a permanent academic post at the end of the five-year fellowship. The funding for skills training for post-doctoral researchers has enabled universities to expand considerably their training and support for post-doctoral researchers and to provide them with opportunities to develop broader professional skills. That step change in the training and support provided to post-doctoral researchers in universities allows them to explore the full range of their responsibilities as scientists, including commercial awareness and sensitivity to public concerns about the advancement of science. The training focuses on a researcher functioning in a variety of research environments and therefore equips them with broad experiences that they can apply to a range of research problems. In addition to that training, the research councils operate targeted schemes that provide researchers with broader training, including public engagement training, and grants for public engagement activities. Further changes in recent years have had positive impacts on post-doctoral researchers in the university sector. One such change was the introduction of the fixed-term employee regulations in 2002, which the hon. Gentleman outlined. Under the regulations, from July 2006, when a researchers contract is renewed, those with more than four years' fixed-term employment will have to be considered for permanent employment. The use of short-term contracts is a fundamental issue that affects the recruitment and retention of researchers in the university research sector. Placing the risks and uncertainties created by short-term funding on to the researchers makes it difficult for them to plan their lives and careers. It is not uncommon for researchers to work without pay while they are waiting for the outcome of grant applications, yet such dedication to their profession is often taken for granted by their employees. The fixed-term regulations should deal with many of these issues by encouraging universities to move away from over-reliance on the use of fixed-term contracts. They will need to be far more proactive in the management and development of their post-doctoral researchers. Some employers have already taken steps to reduce the use of fixed-term contracts. Research council institutes, for example, have already introduced guidelines to ensure that fixed-term contracts are used only in very limited circumstances—for example, when specialist skills are required in the short term. The reliance on fixed-term contracts in the higher education sector is also being challenged through other initiatives. For example, the introduction of the full economic costing of university research now means that universities can include so-called bridging funds as an indirect cost in grant applications to research councils. That allows them to continue the employment of a researcher while grant applications are pending, so although the fixed-term regulations require universities to provide proper redundancy procedures, full economic costing of research allows universities to build contingency funds to manage the redundancy of their permanent researchers should it become necessary. The fixed-term regulations are also likely to have an impact on the mobility of researchers. At present, while such mobility is very beneficial generally to the development of research, it can also be viewed as being enforced in some instances. Those who are less mobile, perhaps because of family commitments, could be disadvantaged, as the hon. Gentleman described very succinctly. The regulations should, however, help in that researchers will be able to take control of their careers. They will be able to seek out further career moves as and when it suits them, rather than having relocations forced on them because a contract ends. Salaries are also seen to affect the attractiveness of careers in research. Although most researchers often cite their interest in their subject area as the prime reason for undertaking such careers, the role of pay cannot be overlooked.