Definitions of R & D : report with evidence.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. Science and Technology Committee.
Date:
1990
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Definitions of R & D : report with evidence. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [Continued [Chairman contd.] (Mr Yates) My colleague was remarking that they are almost too long. People really tend best to understand by example and, for instance, just if I may for a second, if you have a new aircraft and are going to have to build 15 of them to develop the whole weapons system, perhaps the first one or two might be regarded as innovative, but with the third, fourth and fifth you might say “‘Let’s forget it, there is a lot of repetition in this”, That is a very crude definition. I would say interpret Frascati to mean the first two, but ignore the rest. Lord Chorley 135. Surely that is what Frascati does say. (Mr Yates) That is so. I am not adding anything to Frascati really. It is simply to help interpret it. 136. They say that in so many words, if I recall the passage. It might not be the sort of book people want to read at bedtime. Would it help if there was child’s guide to case law, examples? (Mr Yates) | think it depends. If you were a large company with a lot of people you might be prepared to have that. If it is a small company, you may find the accountant or whoever it is who has to do it does not want to read through all those cases. Lord Shackleton 137. Do you think the other countries’ figures in OECD are as impaired as, the figures we produce nationally, or do you think they get it right? (Mr Yates) From what I have said the American figures appear by categorisation to be very nearly accurate and directly useful. I would like to ask Dr Stewart to comment on this because he did a very deep analysis of this and tried to make the corrections, and once you have made the corrections he has made, the ultimate figures are right. But it is the sources of funding which is important, as well as the definition. (Dr Stewart) 1 think the basic problem is that the OECD collect these figures without too much examination of the basis on which the figures were provided. They are provided by government departments in each of the countries and, in the same way as we have this problem, if you really want a total by Frascati definition, you have to take every single item and go through it and evaluate it and add them all up; the Ministries of Defence are not really prepared to do that. The second main subject is what is it you want to compare. You have, for example, in comparing the UK with Germany, first of all a complete slice of nuclear work which the Germans do not have. Now do we want to compare total defence R&D or do we want to compare the non-nuclear content of it? The third main point is that each country is very differently organised, generally for historic reasons and for their own particular purposes. Again in the case of Germany, where they have for historical reasons generated an arrangement for R&D which is largely funded by ministries other than the Ministry of Defence, you find a different type of comparison being drawn. Even if you go down to quite specific examples, work which is almost identical in the two countries will be funded by the MOD in this country but will be funded by the Ministry of Research and Technology in Germany under what is nominally a civil heading because it does not appear under the Defence Budget. So it is trying to get rid of all these different approaches to things, to try and get at the comparable data we are really looking for. You are looking at two basic things, one is the innovative part of it, which is where all the germs of the ideas come from, and the second is how you exploit these. When you look at different countries’ industries, we have a complete indigenous industry in this country in many areas—aircraft is one—whereas in Germany they have mainly been involved in collaborative projects in advance technology. So the split between what is the innovative side of the thing and what is the exploitation of it is quite different in the two countries. At the end of the day you have to ask, what is the purpose of the comparison, and you get a very different answer depending on what you want to utilise the data for. Chairman 138. Strategic research is being used increasingly as a term in different fields, and I know the OECD are considering whether or not Frascati should be altered to include strategic research. Do you think there should be a new definition which differentiates between strategic, basic and applied, or is the answer to have different categorisations of applied, or not to have any change at all? (Mr Yates) 1 am inclined to not press for a change myself because I think there are two elements to this. It could be confusing if one had a further set of definitions, and the interface between the sectors of research gives rise to confusion. I believe at the moment the overwhelming problem in the UK is not to get a precise definition of the various types of research, but trying to find out more accurately just how much development is done, or not done, as the case may be. That is the overwhelming priority, frankly. 139. Are there industries or sectors of civil industry which, as it were, commit the same crime as the Ministry of Defence in classifying things as development which have not got much innovative content? Can you compare a field in which the Ministry of Defence is particularly guilty of this and a field outside which is not guilty of it or goes the same way? (Mr Yates) Yes, I think there might be examples. I would be very wary of associating myself with the word “guilty” with regard to the Ministry of Defence! It is perfectly satisfactory for their purposes, what is distorting is when others add them together. I think if there is an element of trials—field trials, say, with drugs which may go on for years— they could well be in this category. I am not going on very great evidence but I suspect the degree of distortion is less than in the case of the Ministry of Defence because by nature the work is smaller, so it is a smaller proportion of their total research and development than the Ministry’s non-innovative R&D is as a proportion of their total R&D. 140. In the civil aircraft field, in developing a civil aircraft, do you not find difficulties in deciding where