Technology foresight : first report. Volume II, Minutes of evidence and appendices / Science and Technology Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Science and Technology
Date:
1995
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Technology foresight : first report. Volume II, Minutes of evidence and appendices / Science and Technology Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    42/204 (page 32)
    24 October 1995] [Sir Gerard Vaughan Cont] 55. Agreed. (Mr Taylor) And, Sir Gerard, the point I was about to make was that this raises a very interesting question, which may well be the subject for another day, about the relationship between centres of excellence and centres of study, and the spin-off areas of teaching and distribution of the knowledge. Because, clearly, we have to look at the challenges which are facing our very best centres, in terms of access to the latest equipment, not only for research purposes but, of course, one of the factors we must never forget is that one of the objectives of universities is to teach our bright young people and then for them to go out into the wide world, particularly into industry. (Mr Lang) If I could just add, Chairman, I hope that the first few words of my colleague, my Honourable Friend’s remarks, were caught by your microphones. He did not say that it was the purpose of the Forward Look to disguise problems: he said that it was not the purpose to disguise. I just sense that might not have been picked up. (Mr Taylor) If I was ambiguous I will repeat it. I absolutely think the Forward Look needs to be clear about where the weaknesses are as well as where the strengths are. (Mr Lang) But it is important for the Funding Councils and the Research Councils to look at the infrastructural issues, and that is what we look to them to do. Chairman 56. But you would agree, would you not, President, that it is part of the DTI’s role in life to, in fact, secure a favourable climate for innovation anyhow? (Mr Lang) Oh, indeed, yes. 57. And that is, indeed, one of your prime objectives and may involve pursuing issues with other Government Departments: perhaps you would care to comment on that? (Mr Lang) Yes, indeed. As _ part of the restructuring process, we have strengthened the innovation side within DTI and that is something that we seek to inject into Government thinking as a whole through, for example, the Competitiveness White Paper and through the other work of that unit. 58. Could I ask you a question, to Sir John at this point. You have suggested, I think, several areas in which improvements to the science base need to be made and, might we ask, is it going to be necessary to concentrate scientific effort in order to ensure resources are not too thinly spread, under the present circumstances; if so, in which areas should the UK be content to be less than world class, but provided it has the expertise to pick up the technology developed in other countries? (Sir John Cadogan) It is extremely important that we recognise which of the key areas of science and engineering are crucial to the competitiveness of the nation. Science and technology have to be at the heart of anything to do with competitiveness, which incidentally is why I thoroughly approve of the OST being in the competitiveness arena. I think it is crazy to have science and technology separated from competitiveness. We cannot be super in everything but we do know the-areas where we are good and we know the areas where we would want to be better; what we would hope to do is to see that the underpinning science and engineering base is strong in those areas. But you do not do it just by throwing money at it; if you do not have good people with good ideas they do not get the money. It is quite a tricky problem; it is the chicken and the egg. We do have certain areas where we have islands of excellence, but they are not very large islands. Those are the areas where, of course, we look for good ideas and good suggestions coming forward so they can be supported. Let us say that widgetry is the latest thing; if you do not have any widget-makers in the country you just do not put $10 million into it; getting good people is the important thing. Sir Trevor Skeet 59. It is quite right that we should not spend the money over too broad a field. You want £40 million for Foresight Challenge and £70 million for the DTI to support innovation and Foresight. Had it occurred to you that a lot of money is being spent on CERN now, which would pay for some of these bills, and also the ESA, which I regard as being important but others do not, also consumed a lot, and you cannot generate further money; do you have to take it from these other accounts? (Sir John Cadogan) You have very nicely illustrated the problems that come with my post, because we have CERN and ESA, who together, in two cheques, consume £110 million. Now, we are in ESA and we are in CERN, I say nothing for the moment about the quality of the science or—why do I not say it, the science is outstanding in these areas, terrific—but the point is we are in there by treaty, but we are in there, and it is right that this country should participate in these great experiments. What is problematical for us, of course, is that if you choose to be in a great experiment, which is located in Geneva and you pay in Swiss francs, you are at the mercy of changes in currency. Now, a year ago, you will recall that we had a tremendous negotiation with CERN about reducing their costs, so that we could get the same science for less money, and we were successful, and that saving went straight into the science base. Mr Batiste 60. Yes, but in these negotiations with the European Union on funding (Sir John Cadogan) It is not actually the European Union, CERN and ESA; CERN 61. Yes, but I must raise it because I want to come to ESA in a second, separately, because I think they are interconnected in rather important ways. We seem to face a constant difficulty in that we have priorities that we would set in the UK and we have the first layer of priorities to see to what extent those same priorities are shared within Europe, and therefore a proportion of European funding reinforces the priority areas that i tie