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Science Budget

In this debate on the science budget allocations, I rejoice in the simple fact that under a Labour Government—my Government—the science budget will have doubled in real terms by the financial year 2010-11. We all visit colleges of further education, university and industry—anywhere the science base operates—and we now see some amazing things being done. I say thank goodness for that, because the future of this country relies on added value and our science and innovation. I believe that the two major reviews that have been mentioned, one published by the noble Lord Sainsbury and the other by Sir David Cooksey, have influenced the way in which scientists, and perhaps the Government, have been thinking about the future of science. Nor should we forget that the three national academies have received extremely good settlements. The Royal Academy of Engineering received an increase of 31.5 per cent., the British Academy received an increase of 23.7 per cent. and even the Royal Society received an increase of 18.2 per cent. Those are significant increases. When I was elected to Parliament in 1997, the UK science base that I left was in the doldrums. I remember that every year in my department—the department of chemistry and applied chemistry at the university of Salford—the central library sent us a list of essential journals and publications, and we had to go down the list and decide which of them we would cut out of our research budget. That happened not for one year, but for two or three. Essential posts remained unfilled. No maintenance was done. We did not have the money to replace our nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers. Large instruments across the infrastructure lay unreplaced for decades. That was no way to conduct research in Great Britain. When the research assessment exercise came along, science and engineering departments that carried out applied research suffered badly. Nearly all the departments that relied almost entirely on applied research are now closed—including the three great engineering departments at the university of Salford and even my old department, which was the largest chemistry department in Britain when I taught there. Today, the picture is quite different. The infrastructure in our universities has been improved, in my opinion, beyond recognition since 1997, with huge investments not only in buildings but in other major capital schemes. The instruments that were not bought in 1997 are all there now. There are some superb instruments in some superb departments. I visit the university of Manchester regularly, as I am on the external advisory body of the school of chemistry there. Every time I visit, there are cranes lifting things backwards and forwards and new buildings going up. I visit the laboratories, as I have for decades. I have never seen such state-of-the art laboratories as those I can now see by walking into any science department at that great university. We have pulled ourselves up to be the second in the world, behind only the United States, in the citation ratings for papers published by British scientists. Let us not forget, either, that the Labour Government came to power at a time when we had a job retaining graduates for postgraduate studies. We recognised that problem and one of the first things we did was to increase the remuneration for MSc and PhD students. That remuneration is not brilliant, but it is better than it was—in fact, it is double what it was—under the previous Government. The Government should be congratulated on those significant increases in the UK science research base, not only because of the research grants that they give through the science research councils but because of the major investment to which I just referred. Regrettably—I cannot understand this—the Government are instead under fire, despite all that progress. So what went wrong? Why have the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills and the Minister for Science and Innovation been on the back foot, instead of on the front foot where they should proudly be? The simple explanation, in my opinion, is that the two major reviews that I have just mentioned, combined with the significant shift in research priorities to meet the needs of a modern society, have resulted in significant cuts in some research programmes. Let us not forget that other research programmes have benefited significantly. There has been a significant shift in the Medical Research Council research budget and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council research budget—a shift towards the life sciences, perhaps, and away from the physical sciences. Let us not believe that the money is not there; it is just being moved around. Let us consider the Haldane principle. It was established in 1919 and recommended that non-departmental specific research should be managed through research councils—that is, that decisions on expenditure should be determined by scientists rather than by politicians. Ninety years later, that principle is still in place. Our Select Committee concluded that perhaps it had been breached. In addition to full economic costs, the research councils have had other significant expenditure. The Technology Strategy Board and the Office for Strategic Co-ordination of Health Research have been mentioned, and we should also mention the Energy Technologies Institute. The creation of those three institutes alone has required a considerable shift in funding. We are talking about agreements made by scientists—people in the field—and not entirely by Ministers. However, I do not have time to go into the details. The seven research councils have decided to go for interdisciplinary research like never before, and our Select Committee has pressed them to do so. We have said that we are fed up with the research councils being like seven silos, with the scientists in one silo never talking to those in the other six. They are now beginning to talk to each other. Research Councils UK was established, but it did not really bring that about. I hope that the identification of seven significant areas that will benefit the public, whom we represent, has now been recognised. Some of those areas have already been mentioned. The question is whether the Government have breached the Haldane principle. Our report suggests that they have. The July issue of Chemistry World was published just a few days ago, and I want to cite two articles in it by distinguished gentlemen. The first is by Randal Richards, who is no lightweight in the field of science. He recently retired as director of research and innovation at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and latterly he was its interim chief executive. He wrote a letter to Chemistry World, and I shall quote part of it:"““The six cross-council research themes were identified by the research councils themselves. The fact that some of these themes coincide with public policy challenges identified by the government should not be surprising because they include some major scientific and technological changes that are world wide—sustainable energy and environmental change, for example.””" He rejects the suggestion that the EPSRC, and by extrapolation the other research councils, has failed to conform with the Haldane principle. He reminds us that the research councils were"““pretty quick about reminding government and officials””" when they withdrew end-of-year flexibility resources to the tune of £70 million in the last financial year. According to another article in the same issue of Chemistry World, the former chief scientific adviser to the Government, Professor Sir David King himself, strongly defends the science budget in the 2007 comprehensive spending review. I shall quote just a small part of his article:"““What we're actually talking about is the distribution and the management of the cake, not the size…The priorities of the 21st century are different from the priorities of the…20th century. Historical budgets, and the distribution of money within…research councils, shouldn't be engraved in stone.””" Sir David also suggests that scientists have not been pushed into doing what they do not want to do. He says:"““The bottom line is, it's very difficult. Does there have to be a choice between finding the next fundamental particle by building a bigger and more expensive successor to Cern, versus putting money and the best brains into tackling environmental issues? I think that's a debate that ought to be out in the open—it's not, because people are simply defending their own…corner.””"