Definitions of R & D : report with evidence.
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. Science and Technology Committee.
- Date:
- 1990
Licence: Open Government Licence
Credit: Definitions of R & D : report with evidence. Source: Wellcome Collection.
91/148 (page 89)
![[Chairman contd.] question. We start off, as you know, with staff coming up with the concept for, let us say, a piece of equipment which will have a particular range and rate of fire and a particular accuracy. That is then worked up into a Staff Target. One then sets in train a Feasibility Study to assess the extent to which the concept is feasible. The next stage is a Project Definition, which normally lasts about two years or so, and is a very important element of the process, before moving to Full Development. These three stages—Feasibility Study, Project Definition and Full Development—roughly match some of the American categories: for instance, Exploratory Development, which is one of the their categories, embraces elements of our Feasibility Study, although it also encompasses work which would precede formulation of the Staff Target. There is some overlap and some similarity, although it is not identical. That is on the development side. On the research side, again, there are similarities between the way the Americans categorise their research and the way we categorise ours. We have eight categories. Exploratory Development, to take an example, appears roughly to encompass work which we designate as category 2 work—that is to say work of immediate and ongoing relevance to existing projects—but also category 4, which is applied research specifically aimed at likely procurement options. I suspect if one looked at the way the Germans or the French or other allies categorised their research and development one could find similar overlaps and similar failure to align. I think what does emerge is that the general approach both to procurement and to research is not dissimilar from the American approach. Having said that, our view is that the American categorisation does not bear directly on the question your Committee, my Lord Chairman, is chiefly pre-occupied with, that is the distinction between innovative and non-innovative research. In sum we do not see any advantage in adopting either the US approach or, for that matter, that of any other allied country. Lord Flowers 263. Does that mean you do not have any confidence in the categorisation that other countries make, and do not have any confidence in comparisons made between our categories and theirs? (Mr Nicholls) No, my Lord, I do not with respect make that point. What I am saying is that, for various historical reasons, if you like, we categorise development and research the way we do and other countries do it in a different way but it does not follow that any particular approach to categorisation is necessarily wrong. Chairman 264. Do you say in the case of, say, Italy and Germany where their defence R&D is very much more integrated with their government-supported civil R&D that therefore comparisons of defence R&D expenditure by Germany, Italy (France is a bit different) and ourselves is really not a good comparison because some of their defence R&D is hidden in the civil R&D, which makes the civil R&D look larger and defence R&D look smaller? (Mr Nicholls) It certainly makes it more difficult. Lord Flowers] It is not a question of whether we do it right and they do it wrong, but whether we do it the same way or do it a comparable way, so that we can make comparisons that are meaningful. It seems to me all this harping on that we do it right is only making it more difficult to have confidence in any comparisons. I have no doubt that the Americans harp on the fact that they do it right and the French ditto. Chairman 265. It brings us back to why you want R&D figures at all. People want them as an indication of something, an indication of comparisons, and I get back to my original point. Do you feel that the figures which are now available and published in OECD figures for instance—because of the differences in the way we carry out our defence R&D almost totally separate from civil R&D, whereas other countries, and Germany is a very good example, integrate them—distort the whole picture? Would it not therefore be a good thing if we tried and changed our system so we got a true comparison? (Mr Mumford) 1 would certainly agree—as indeed the ACOST study recognised—that international comparisons do need to be treated with great caution. They use the phrase “they are fragile’, and I think we agree with that. On the other hand, they are put together by OECD who I imagine do an honest job in producing data which is at least broadly comparable. The second part of your question is whether we should not seek to separate civil and defence R&D? 266. That is a further question, I did not raise that but it is a question I have in mind. Would it not make the whole thing simpler if we did not lump defence R&D with civil R&D so when people were looking at these things the whole picture was not confused by this enormous sum which you claim really to be Frascati development and a great many other people think is not. It does distort the whole figure. (Mr Mumford) We would still for our own internal MOD purposes wish to classify expenditure in various broad groupings as part of our control mechanisms. I am not sure I feel competent to express a view on aggregation or disaggregation. (Mr Humphries) The point you have hit upon, that they do things differently in other countries, is really that the statistics tend to reflect the policies towards defence research in those countries. The German situation is that they do support a lot of development of ideas which will later be exploited for defence purposes on a civil ticket. That is their policy to do it that way. We try to attach a true expenditure to the defence objective which it is geared to. It would really mean you would have to take one country’s statistics and deliberately try and extract from them something which was not included in them to get a comparable basis. They are actually chosen to reflect the country’s policy. 267. Some people have suggested in order to get a truer picture you should look at it from the point of](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32218540_0091.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
