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Government Science Priorities

It is a privilege to have the opportunity to introduce this short debate on science funding. The matter has come to light in the past week with the announcement that the Government will try to trim £600 million from their budget for higher education and science. I am sure that they will be deluged with proposals from other Members of Parliament to discuss how that will affect their constituencies. I have already seen some strong statements on the bigger picture from the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and other bodies. We have only half an hour, so I shall not deal with that big picture; I want to deal with one specific and narrow aspect, which is how the Government's funding proposals affect one institution—the National Physical Laboratory in my constituency. I shall develop significance of the laboratory in the wider science community. It has approximately 350 of the country's leading scientists—predominantly physicists and mathematicians—and it is the cornerstone of the Government's activity in national measurement. It faces a short-term proposal to remove 10 per cent. of its budget, which Prospect, the trade union representing most of the professional scientists, estimates could involve about 40 professional scientists having to go from core programmes. That may be premature, because we do not yet know how many people will be involved, but the cut in financial and human terms will be substantial, both in an extremely important institution for British science, and for Teddington in my constituency. First, I shall explain a little of the background to show why the matter is important and why it merits special attention. Measurement science is not dramatic or headline-grabbing, but it is at the heart of scientific work. This country has four significant laboratories specialising in different sorts of measurement work, and three happen to be on the same campus in my constituency. They are the National Physical Laboratory, the laboratory of the Government Chemist, which is now part of a privatised unit specialising in chemistry research, and the National Weights and Measures Laboratory. In terms of resources, the National Physical Laboratory accounts for approximately 80 per cent. of national measurement activity. That is crucial, because any applied science, whether for scientific research or industrial purposes, must have a measurement base, whether that involves distance, time, heat or the measurements required by new sciences such as nanotechnology and bioscience. The concept of Greenwich mean time, for example, is actually Teddington mean time, because the laboratory containing the atomic clocks that determine the basic standard of time is there. Measurement is at the core of applied science which, along with engineering, would not exist without a measurement base, and that is what the laboratory provides. It develops and improves measurement techniques, and derives new systems of measurement for new problems, one of which is carbon. Carbon trading must be based on a common denominator of measurement. Secondly, although the National Physical Laboratory is a national institution, it is part of a global network of institutions, and a leading international institution in the measurement of science, or metrology. There are comparable institutions in the United States, including the National Institute for Standards and Technologies, and Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in Germany, but the National Physical Laboratory is recognised as being the leading institution, or certainly among the leading handful of globally important institutions. Those institutions collaborate but also compete, and the laboratories will say that at the very time at which we are embarking on a process of cuts, NIST and PTB should have a massive infusion of resources, because their Governments recognise that if their applied science effort is to improve and expand they must have a strong base for measurement science. Thirdly, we can all argue for more money to be spent on science. As someone who started his adult life with scientific training at university, I believe in science. However, as the Minister will say, there is infinite demand, and resources are limited, so there must be a return for society. The National Physical Laboratory's work and our national effort on measurement generally is striking in its benefit-to-cost ratio. A departmental report from the National Measurement Office, published by the then Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills says that every""additional £6 million spent by Government on measurement technology would deliver up to £410 million of economic impact annually."" Most commercial organisations would die to have such a return with every pound producing £60 of return for society. That is an extraordinary benefit. Grossing up the figures and applying them to the laboratory as a whole, as the laboratory's director did in his presentation to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, shows that about £75 million a year, of which £50 million comes from the Government generates £2 billion a year of economic value. That is an extraordinary multiplier. At the heart of the controversy is the fact that, despite that extraordinary benefit, which the Government themselves have estimated—it is not a self-serving estimate by the people involved—it has been proposed that instead of adding £6 million to generate that benefit, £6 million will be taken away. Two conclusions may be drawn. Perhaps there is something wrong with the Government's measurement, and perhaps the benefits are not real and something is wrong with the calculation. That is possible—I do not know how they arrived at their numbers—but if they are right, an extraordinarily damaging decision is being contemplated. One of those propositions must be true, and I hope that the Minister will address it when he responds. That is the context, but I want to take the argument on by stressing that I want a positive outcome. I am not here to make debating points, to lecture the Government, or to apportion blame. That is not the spirit of this debate, and I want to make several specific points. First, I accept that Government spending must be cut, almost certainly in the Minister's Department. I am not for one minute suggesting that that can be avoided—and I have been outspoken in my capacity as a party spokesman in saying that we must be realistic in facing up to the need for cuts—but the issue is how it is to be done. What is particularly worrying is how the process is being managed. It is worth quoting Brian Bowsher, director of the National Physical Laboratory, who said in his evidence to the House of Lords that""our links with our immediate…BIS colleagues I think are very positive in terms of how we structure the programme. What I am concerned about though is that by the time it gets to them it is difficult to see the evidence base for the reductions and it tends to be, 'We will take ten per cent off everyone'."" That "10 per cent. off everyone" approach by the Department towards the cuts is seriously worrying. Let me reinforce what I said earlier. I fully accept that there must be discipline in public spending, and that there will almost certainly be cuts. However, that must be done rationally and as far as I can establish, at the moment we have a "10 per cent. off everything" approach, which is not efficient, either economically or administratively.