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Science Budget

I, too, am glad to be able to participate in the debate. It is perhaps rare for Select Committee business and constituency business to collide in quite the way they did for me on the matter of science funding. Since becoming an MP, I have spent a considerable amount of time establishing a relationship with the science community in Durham. That community is reflected in our excellent world-class university, our science learning centre and Framwellgate school, which is to be rebuilt as a science village. I have also wholeheartedly supported the prominence that the Government have given to science, and the recognised and often cited need for us to maintain and enhance the science budget given the many years of Tory neglect. Indeed, the uplift in the budget was needed to keep us internationally competitive in an increasingly global economy. The 2007 comprehensive spending review was flagged up in advance as a very difficult spending round, and so it proved, but I am particularly glad that science funding was protected. As I think the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) mentioned, science funding has doubled in real terms since 1997, having gone from £1.3 billion then to £3.4 billion in 2007-08. The CSR 2007 allocation made provision for a further rise of £4 billion between 2008 and 2011. That is an average increase of 2.7 per cent. a year in real terms over the next three years. I was consoled by the fact that, despite a difficult spending review, science appeared to be protected, and the Government were continuing to support world-class research and sought to drive up the economic benefit that could be derived from investing in science. As the Committee's report points out, the headline figure is a three-year increase in the science budget of 17.4 per cent. As I have said, that reflects a Government commitment to implement the main recommendations of the Cooksey review on health research funding and the Sainsbury review on the role that science and innovation can play in keeping the UK competitive. It is of course true that not all research councils will receive the same percentage of uplift in their budget. As was mentioned, the Medical Research Council will receive a 30 per cent. increase. Nevertheless, overall, even the Science and Technology Facilities Council budget had a planned increase of 13.6 per cent. I will talk a bit more about that percentage later. I therefore felt some consternation and confusion when I started to receive frantic telephone calls from members of the physics community in Durham about the dreadful cuts that would be inflicted on them after April. That appeared to relate to budget cuts that were to be introduced by the STFC and that would affect not only their projects, but programmes supporting students. Something seemed to be going dreadfully wrong, and I had already made up my mind that the matter needed investigation, but news of the impending disastrous cuts had also reached the Science and Technology Committee, and it took the view that we should look into the STFC issues as part of the wider inquiry on science budget allocations. As I am sure that other hon. Members will point out, the inquiry threw up a number of worrying conclusions about the conduct of senior staff at the STFC, the difficulties with the prioritisation process for key awards, the clarity and transparency in decision making, and the issue of whether the whole fiasco and the concern over funding could have been avoided if there had been a slightly better settlement for STFC when it was established and took over from the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council. Despite the depth of the inquiry, we still have not got to the bottom of the extent to which the issue arose from the initial funding problems of STFC, as the Government response was inadequate in that respect. They simply refute allegations made by the Committee, instead of establishing detailed evidence about the funding of CCLRC and PPARC when they were disbanded, and when STFC took over from them. Paragraph 39 of the Committee's report makes that very clear and asks the Government to look into the legacy issues in detail. However, all that the Government do in their response is make it clear that they provided an extra £185 million in excess of the flat cash settlement over the CSR period. We all know that that additional money, welcome though it was, was to fund specific projects and priorities that had already been planned. There is a lack of detail, and I hope and suspect that the Committee will return to the issue, as we need to get to the bottom of the funding allocation and the extent to which it meant that significant programmes would have to be cut. In the Government response, there is a lack of recognition of what it will mean for the STFC when the full economic costs come on board; that will, of course, reduce the distance that research grants can cover. When Professor Mason, the chief executive of the STFC, first appeared before the Committee, it seemed to me that the funding had not been received for all the STFC's commitments. That problem was compounded by a prioritisation of the programmes identified by the STFC; in particular, new areas for growth had been identified. That prioritisation, with subsequent cuts to other parts of the STFC, was the root of the problem and appeared significantly to upset the science community. I know that from my experience in Durham, from a lot of the evidence that the Committee received in its visits, and from witnesses who came before it. The new prioritisation programmes seemed to come from absolutely nowhere, and there had been no real consultation with those likely to be affected. The relationship between the STFC management and at least one key sector of the physics community seemed very weak, and led to a lot of distrust on the part of the academics involved. In particular, there was a view that disproportionate cuts were being made to particle physics. Conclusion 10, which relates to paragraph 46 of the report, summarises that well:"““We welcome STFC's decision to support its major facilities to the extent set out in its Delivery Plan…However, we are concerned that the decision to support the large facilities has come at the expense of research in fields where the UK excels””." Two examples are given: the international linear collider and the Gemini telescopes. Scientists in Durham and elsewhere who are involved in ILC-related work maintain that they were not consulted at all about the STFC decision, and it is the lack of transparency and the poor peer review in setting the priorities for the STFC that the Committee wishes to investigate. Of course, the issue has to some extent been overtaken by last week's report from the STFC on the new priorities. Nevertheless, that was a key issue that the Committee investigated, and some of the Government response was perhaps a little weak. It was apparent that many people did not think that the peer review panel, which was set up to inform the delivery plan, was fully representative of the appropriate scientific community. Confidence in peer review is essential if decisions by research councils are to be seen as legitimate by the relevant academic community. I hope that the STFC has learned from its actions and will do as it has promised and bring on board all members of the academic community who are involved in ensuring that that community has a greater say in the decisions taken. It is clear from the Government's response to the report that peer review is not considered a matter for the Government to get involved in directly because of the Haldane principles. I think that we would all agree that it is not appropriate for the Government to get involved in the day-to-day operation of research councils, or even in prioritisation, but it would have been appropriate for the Government to state that the efficacy of the peer review system and processes at the STFC could be improved in light of the very heavy criticism that we unearthed.