---

Science Budget

I hear what my hon. Friend says. It is the job of a Select Committee to examine carefully the evidence that is put before it, to make clear recommendations, and to expect both the Government and any organisation that is criticised to put matters to rights. A systematic review is taking place, agreed between the DIUS and the STFC's leadership and its chief executive. I am content to wait until that review has been completed and the Government have responded, so we can see whether the community—which has without doubt been damaged—can have its confidence restored. It is easy to call for people to resign: it is far more difficult to resolve the problems within an organisation. I hope that my hon. Friend will be content with that response. In addition to the review, the STFC has appointed a communications director from outside the organisation, which is something that our report recommended. There were a number of areas of particular concern that were brought to our attention and which we highlighted in our report. The first concerned the future of the Daresbury laboratory. It appeared to us—and it was confirmed when we visited Daresbury—that the campus was being prepared as a technology business park rather than a world class science centre. Other hon. Members will wish to add their impressions of the visit, but we are encouraged that the STFC has announced that key research activities, such as ALICE— accelerators and lasers in combined experiments—and EMMA, or the electron model with many applications, will continue at Daresbury. Although the STFC has always said publicly that it is committed to Daresbury, the decisions to retain ALICE and EMMA, and the acknowledgement that it will take some time to rebuild the science capacity there, are welcome both in terms of Daresbury's future and as a vindication of the serious concerns that we raised in our report. The astronomy technology centre in Edinburgh was a second area of serious concern for the Committee. Here the future is less clear. The STFC wanted to close the centre, but has now opened negotiations with the university of Edinburgh to take it on. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure the House that those negotiations have his blessing and are likely to come to fruition. I also hope that the Scottish Parliament is being encouraged to play a key part in ensuring that we retain that world class facility. I am pleased that our report has also led to other movement. For example, e-MERLIN—which will increase the sensitivity of the existing MERLIN radio telescopes by a factor of 30—is central to the future of an operational Jodrell Bank and, according to one of STFC's peer review panels,"““is guaranteed to lead to major discoveries””." One wonders therefore why it was under threat of having its grant removed. Fortunately, it will now receive some money from the STFC, but the STFC is looking for other partners to share the cost. The programmatic review announced last week resolved to find a way to bring other partners on board to ensure the medium-term future of the programme, but Jodrell Bank is interested in its long-term future, and I hope that the Minister will be able to make some comment about that. A fourth area of concern was solar-terrestrial physics, which appeared on the brink of extinction following the first round of STFC announcements. The only ground-based STP to receive continued support in the near term is the European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association programme—EISCAT—which is an international research organisation operating three incoherent scatter radar systems in northern Scandinavia. It will receive that support only because the UK is legally bound to a multi-year contract. The STFC has declared that it will cease payments to EISCAT in 2011, but EISCAT membership is on a five-year rolling contract. It is now 2008, and it appears that we are tied in until at least 2013, not 2011. The STFC has decided that it wants to leave, but it has not even discussed this with the director of EISCAT or given any formal notice of withdrawal. It is that lack of communication and shoddy handling of key facts that has landed the STFC in real trouble over its future plans. Perhaps the Minister will clarify the position on EISCAT this evening. It is that same lack of communication that appears to be at the heart of the STFC's budget problems. Its inability to communicate properly with its own community will, I hope, be put right in the future. In redressing the balance, the STFC clearly has some difficult times ahead, but the fact that it has listened—albeit belatedly—not only to the Committee, but to its community, is a positive step. We welcome the STFC's willingness to address our criticisms constructively. The fact that it will spend almost £2 billion over the next three years on what is a hugely exciting programme is something that we should now support, instead of raking over old coals. Of course, there have been some losers in the funding round, but there have also been some big winners. Let me now turn to the ability of the Government and Minister to engage with what I always hope will be positive criticism from the Select Committee. The Minister will accept that many members of the Committee are deeply committed to science and do not make criticisms purely for the sake of it. The Government rejected the bulk of our conclusions and recommendations, and we acknowledge that they have every right to do so, but they do not have the right to traduce what the Committee said or to produce a response that was impolite, inaccurate and, at times, incomprehensible. That is unacceptable and should be challenged. The Government were hasty in rejecting our recommendations regarding the transparency of the allocations process, and in particular our suggestion that documents prepared for bilateral negotiations between the Government and the research councils should be published as a matter of course, which goes to the heart of the issue of transparency and communications with the community. The Government rejected the recommendations on two grounds. First, they claimed that some information is commercially confidential—I can understand that—and, secondly, that transparency would put at risk ““candid discussion and robust appraisal”” during the allocation process. The Minister must recognise that those are not sensible rebuttals. Commercial sensitivity did not prevent the release of most of the information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and, if that is an issue, DIUS should be able to release the documents as a matter of course, with steps taken to remove commercially confidential information prior to release. The second concern, that transparency would put candid discussion at risk, simply does not hold. We have not asked to see transcripts of the negotiations, because that would be preposterous, but we have asked for the documents relating to the negotiations so that we can see on what basis the decisions are being made. Keeping the negotiations confidential opens the Government up to accusations that they have inappropriately influenced the decisions that research councils take. That is the most damaging accusation for the relationship between the Government, the research councils and the research community. Accusations that the Government have broken the Haldane principle are already coming from organisations such as CaSE, the Campaign for Science and Engineering, and when such strong organisations make complaints, people sit up and listen, and so should the Government. They cannot simply dismiss those accusations. Will the Minister consider our recommendation that the documents that are prepared by research councils for use in bilaterals with DIUS are published as a matter of course?