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.

    89/148 (page 87)
    [Lord Chorley contd.] 247. That is my worry. (Mr Lomas) We do our best to go into as much detail as we can to make sure they are truly development contracts, bearing in mind these blocks cover not only the innovative element as such but all the supporting activities which are necessary to make the development contracts operative. So, as I said earlier, in the Frascati manual we do include things like security services for the research establishments, storage use and repair to equipment, which in themselves could not be called innovative but are necessary expenditure to support the research or development. That may be the key difference between our figures and industries’ figures. I have no idea how they put theirs together but ours accord to the strict definition of Frascati and include those items. 248. But you have not yet sat down with British Aerospace, for the sake of argument, around a table just to try and identify where the differences are? You may be right but the fact is there is a huge difference of view, and I do not see how you are going to sort it out without getting down into detail with them and seeing what the differences are. To add a supplementary question: it would be interesting to know, and you have mentioned you are studying the thing, what sort of things are emerging out of the study and when you are likely to complete it? (Mr Lomas) Basically we are directing it into two parts. First of all, the intramural research and development, and we are looking very closely at the internal accounting systems of the research establishments and their successor organisations to see what can be extracted to separate out any non- Frascati elements that may be in our figures, and conversely identify any which are not in our figures. So it may be we actually add to our figures in some cases and subtract in others if we find greater information available. That is one area on the intramural R&D. On the extramural, we are first of all looking much more closely at the contracts and the project offices of the major projects to see what elements we may be able to identify from MOD staff of non-Frascati R&D and also Frascati elements which are counted as production in other cases. So we are taking internal MOD knowledge, and it is rather hoped we can talk to industry and see whether we can come to some view from their point of what is Frascati and what is not in the contracts we have let to industry. This is a very long-term process unfortunately and the results will not be available — Lord Gregson 249. I find it rather strange you are talking in the future tense. The DIC nominated Ivan Yates to sit down and look at this but as far as I can see there has been no report back to NDIC but that is going on. You are supposed to have a working party looking at this, are you not? (Mr Mumford) We have had some informal contacts with British Aerospace. 250. Why talk about it in the future tense? (Mr Mumford) 1 think Mr Lomas was talking about some more structured, systematic research which we are contemplating. We have had some exchanges with Ivan Yates and the British Aerospace staff but he had in mind some rather more detailed and systematic studies which are clearly going to be necessary. Lord Kearton 251. You are spending roughly speaking £2.25 billion a year? (Mr Mumford) Yes. 252. How much of that actually results in anything? Do you have anything over the years to say that of this pre-production stuff we did 20 per cent or thereabouts finally led to something in production? What is the percentage over the years? Any idea? (Mr Lomas) | do not think that is part of our figures. We can look at individual projects and say certain projects have resulted in weapon systems but we cannot within a project say how many times it had to be repeated before they got it right. Sosome of that development research would have led up blind alleyways and teams have had to retreat before they came to the fruitful part. 253. One tends to get one’s information from Select Committees in the other place, but MOD has started many things which have not come to fruition. I wondered if you kept a running total of the total percentage of R&D which results finally in usable hardware? (Mr Lomas) 1 am not aware of anything. 254. The impression is that it would be a pretty low figure. (Mr Humphries ) Something we are doing about it, which should be bringing data more into line in that respect, is that in the wake of some of those programmes we did a study to see how we could do better. One of the things we are now determined to do and are building into our process is to get a key technology survey before we spend too much money. We do not want to go into expensive flight trials before we have proved the thing, a trial in a captive balloon might suffice. By that means we are getting away from a lot of the supporting expenses like the cost of operating an expensive aeroplane to find out something. We will be finding things out in the cheapest way before we launch into the expensive part of putting it in a real aeroplane or ship. Although we have not got the figures you asked for, things as a result of other policies are moving in that direction, where we do not waste money by doing expensive tests and before we have discovered whether the thing works. Lord Kearton] A lot of the expensive work is not R&D under the Frascati definitions. Some of us have arrived at that feeling. Lord Shackleton 255. You did use the description non-Frascati R&D, which is a negative definition. Have you a definition for that? . (Mr Lomas) That was a slip of the tongue and for that I apologise. I was referring to work which was not calculated to be R&D, which we might have to bring into our figures if we identified it as such. The boundary is drawn in a number of places and some