Science in UK Government – Mind the Gap

Allan Sudlow is Relationships Manager for Science, Technology and Medicine at the British Library

For those concerned about the future of science in the UK under the new Government, it’s almost certainly a case of waiting and worrying, but we should not be passive.  This was the undercurrent to a recent debate – Science in UK Government: Where’s the Evidence – between Evan Harris (former Liberal Democrat MP and Science Spokesman) and Mark Henderson (Science Editor for the Times) as part of the TalkScience series at the British Library.

Are politicians on board?

Harris noted that the large influx of new MPs will be thinking about constituency issues rather than science as they find their feet in the new Parliament. He added that as well as getting to grips with their new roles, the high turn-over of MPs was likely to lead to a loss of confidence as well as knowledge about how to challenge complex science policy issues. The Science and Technology Select Committee under the previous Government built up significant experience and expertise which was brought to bear on key policy issues through its evidence check sessions. With the Committee retaining only one MP from the previous Parliament, Harris thinks it will be sometime before the Committee is again in a position to pinpoint and tackle scientific policy issues in this way.

Its clear that despite the best efforts of the Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology to provide briefings on key science issues and hosting a ‘science induction’ session for the new Parliament, the lack of uptake at such events signals that science is currently just not on the radar of most MPs, and unlikely to be for some time. It was made clear in David Willetts first major speech as Science Minister that there is likely to be a significant gap before any real engagement with MPs leads to new policy decisions on science matters. His speech announced a one-year delay to the implementation of the Research Excellence Framework and made clear that setting new science policy would have to wait until the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) had concluded.

Challenging times

This is inevitably a let down given the mood in the run-up to the General Election. As Mark Henderson noted, we had well-attended cross-party debates on science issues, key reports on the future of UK Science from the Council for Science and Technology and the Royal Society, grass-roots campaigns on issues such as libel reform in science and the significant efforts of the Campaign for Science & Engineering in keeping science on the agenda through direct engagement with Party Leaders and MPs.

With the media focus now on the impending spending cuts across the public sector as a whole, the challenge remains to translate those pre-election efforts on highlighting science into a strategy to plug the gap between now and the announcement on the CSR in October. Harris sees this as a long-term challange that goes beyond this Autumn and is sustained throughout the next five year term.  It requires coordination of effort through channels such as the Science Vote and – crucially – better engagement with print and broadcast media to ensure that Ministers and MPs are put under the public spotlight on key issues in science whenever the opportunity arises. It’s notable that higher profile Select Committee discussions on issues such as homeopathy, disclosure of climate research data and the treatment of independent scientific advice provided to Government paralleled public media stories.

Where’s the evidence?

The TalkScience debate also explored what David Willetts actually meant when in his Royal Institution speech when he alluded to the opportunities for science in a coalition government given ‘the premium now attached to reason and evidence’. Evan Harris agrees that additional scrutiny from coalition partners should encourage more robust evidence gathering and considers the willingness of Parliament to adopt more scientific approach to evidence synthesis – particularly the use of statistics – as paramount. That’s all for the better however, as Mark Henderson pointed out; the primary research that has fed into Government policy-making in the past has sometimes been flawed, so the rigour of approach has to be there from the outset as well as during the synthesis.

Future cuts to science funding seem inevitable and the debate examined whether the preferential targeting of funds either to specific research areas or through specific individuals – a mooted move to a scientific elite – would represent a sensible strategy. Picking winners isn’t easy; if the Government takes this or a different approach to cutting funding, the longer term effects of reducing the number of publicly-funded scientists in the UK needs to be considered, particularly in relation to capacity for research excellence and innovation in the future.

A podcast of the debate will be available soon on the British Library’s TalkScience pages. Our colleagues the Research Information Network, who co-sponsored this TalkScience, have recently published a free guide for scientists to gain a better understanding of those structures responsible for research funding and policy within Government.