DAY ONE - 7 JULY 2004
Ladies and gentlemen I sorry to be little late starting, Malcolm is on route along with Dave Buckeridge and Anna Bradley and expects to be here for around 2 when we will begin the research agendas item. So I am starting by matters of report and the paper with updates from Defra devolved administration. I shall first of all say welcome to everyone and will say we are very pleased we are here in Aberdeen and start by extending our thanks to Jeff Maxwell and to Maggie Gill, who is a director of the research institute here, for hosting us, thank you very much for having us. Matters of report, first of all apologies have been received from Ed Dart, Matthew Freeman, Judith Hann, Rosie Hails, John Gilliland and Robin Grove-White. To update you on something we reported at the last meeting, John Gilliland's campaign to become a Northern Ireland MEP was not, I am afraid, successful although he did receive a very impressive share of votes, I have never fully understood the single transferable vote system, but I understand 21% of people voted for him in some way or other, which I think a very creditable performance and it is good news for us, of course, because it means John can continue as a Commission Member and he has a very good reason for not being here today and that he is collecting his OBE at Buckingham Palace. So congratulations again to John.
Minutes of the previous meeting, comments from members have been incorporated and the new version of the minutes will be circulated shortly. The accessible guide - sorry I’m just going reach across and wave one for anyone who hasn't seen and clocked it- and I think this looks extremely good and I think it’s a very good read so congratulations to the Secretariat for pulling this together. This has now been printed. You should have all been sent a copy and it will go to all our stakeholders, but more copies are available for any mailing list or personal distributions you wish to do and Paul says it will be a sign of success of if we have to have it re-printed.
And Efra Select Committee: Malcolm gave evidence to the Efra Select Committee on 24 May as part of their sub-committee's enquiry on the GM planting regime, concentrating on coexistence, and we expect the sub-committee's report to be published tomorrow and if we can we will try and get it on line and get earliest notice of that.
Next a review of BBSRC-funded research relevant to crop science was published in April. Amongst other things the review recommends that BBSRC will seek to develop a strategy for research on non-food uses of crops, thus chiming with our proposed work stream, and should establish a national plant breeding initiative in partnership with other founders to promote public good plant breeding, so very much along the lines that we have been developing our work stream and, of course, the work the research agendas group have been in, in communication with BBSRC.
Next following off of the Animals report, it’s been some time, but the Farm Animal Welfare Council or FAWC have now published their report on the welfare implications of animal breeding and breeding technologies in commercial agriculture. That was published on 30 June. In light of the AEBC's recommendations in Animals and Biotechnology FAWC recommended that a non-statutory standing committee should be set up to evaluate a new and existing breeding technologies as well as consider the welfare and ethical problems arising from livestock breeding programmes. And FAWC advised that the Committee report to them and it become known as FAWC Animal Breeding Committee or otherwise FAWC ABC - yet more confusing acronyms - with its reports being published as FAWC reports, but a formal of response to our report to the AEBC from FAWC along with CAWC, which is the Companion Animal Welfare Council, and APC, the Animal Procedures Committee, is expected soon. Do we know how soon?
No, I think the three bodies were meeting on 30th of June or soon after.
To decide, okay. The Treasury is expected to announce its ten-year science innovation framework on 12 July at the same time as the spending review 2004 announcement.
That concludes matters of report. The next item is update from Defra and devolved administrations. And we have been very kindly provided with paper 04/10 which is an update from Defra and from Scottish Executive and Northern Ireland and the Welsh Assembly and we are not proposing to go through this in detail although we do have Alison Douglas who is from the Scottish Executive who is also on this occasion answering any questions of clarification on what's going on in Defra also there's Liz McCullough from Northern Ireland, so I don't know if there are immediate questions for clarification or whether it would be best to take up any discussions about the detail of what is in this paper with perhaps with Liz and Alison separately in the margins.
What might be quite helpful at this juncture is to say since they have very kindly provided this paper is to say whether you feel this is a helpful way to be updated or whether there are other formats in which we could do that. Are there any comments along those lines?
SUE MAYER
I thought it was extremely helpful and I really welcomed it personally and I mean the only other thing we possibly do is if there are any issues that any of the administrations want to raise with us, any particular time to enlarge upon we should give them the opportunity to do so.
Possibly as part of the beginning agenda item like this at the beginning of the meeting. Are there any other comments on that?
Julie, there are of course separate statements with regard to the way in which each of the administrations are handling the question of coexistence and there is an assurance that this is being done as a firm and close association with each other. Is there an intention at the end to actually pull that together as one document for the UK or will there be actually separate documents for each of the administrations?
Right, I have to ask Alison.
I think given that a (INDISTINCT) particularly in Scotland that Scottish Ministers probably want to do a separate consultation. Scotland's understanding is that a other administrations would also want to undertaken a separate consultations and but obviously we want to ensure that the systems, whatever systems we come up with are compatible given that the issues are cross border and also the underpinning science in terms of what separation distances are going to deliver. We are trying to ensure that we are all, we are all, you know using the same, same basic evidence and that’s where the work that our inspectorate has been doing in terms of this literature review that’s actually being helpful in looking at what the evidence is from different and different separation distances in all the mechanisms so, so that we are conscious that there is a need to, to get the whole thing together, but that given the devolved competence we need to look at whether we legislate at a Scottish level etc.
Okay, are there any further questions on the basis of that…but can we send a message back that this is a helpful thing to have in this form and that it may be, and then you can have this sort of thing in advance of meetings and may be the members want to raise a particular questions and we can ask for specific feedback? Okay thank you very much… [Malcolm Grant arrives] …Malcolm are you alright?
I am indeed.
We have got to the beginning of our item on research agendas work stream and to begin with Sue giving an update on whether the work stream has got to and then we are going into presentations with our guests.
Well shall we welcome our guests, some of whom I have recognised, and we are delighted that you have taken the time to lend your expertise to us and we really are looking forward to an interesting session. I am just worried that there is behind us in here, let me know if you can't hear and perhaps feel free to shift the seating arrangements a bit better. I am going to ask Sue to introduce the sessions and then we will ask our guests starting with Mike Foulis to lead us through some of the interesting issues. Sue.
Thanks, first of all I am a poor second for our champion who is away at a conference and I am just going to just give a little bit of extra background to what's been going on since the last Commission meeting and you've got a paper which details that. But I will just pick out three areas to highlight some of the background to and that is the work that we have done on developing our engagement with the public group and with stakeholders; the case studies; and the information gathering work that’s been going on and ongoing - and to give you an idea of what we think we will be doing next after our discussion this afternoon. So, at the last Commission meeting, if you remember, we talked about having in similar way to the animals and biotechnology work a public reference group which would work alongside the Commission to look at the research agendas, science and research agenda work. And we'd also talked at that time of having perhaps a group of younger scientists and also perhaps some other groups. We have developed that idea more now and the intention is that these will be, if you like, seen as separate, slightly separate stream so the public work with the public reference group will be to test to find out from the group that we have their views and prospects, but to then test our work against them as we carry on through the work stream. But separately from that to try and access as well as our normal stakeholder groups perhaps through some of our conventional mechanisms at meetings and a paper consultation to try and access some of the groups in a bit more detail and we have settled on three groups. One is the younger scientists as we discussed before to find out their perspectives on how they see science research agendas being set, what their expectations are from that and what needs they think it meeting and also if you like to go on down the chain of how that science is going to be used in terms of agriculture and environmental protection; to talk to farmers and other land managers so that might be foresters, for example, people doing other forms of estate management and asking them what they see about science research agenda whether it is meeting their needs, how they think it is being set so on so forth. And the third group, and we did have some discussion on this, at the moment we feel that it should be people who are involved in giving advice to land managers who might be charged with helping implement some of the environmental schemes, for example, who are translating, if you like, a knowledge from that is coming out from some of the science streams in two practical forms. I think that that was what we felt was the best shape of the three groups and although we did have some discussion about whether that third group should be retailers or other representative of the food chain and but I think we have settled on and it would be interesting to gather peoples views on that. At the moment we feel that it should be advisers from agencies and departments from policy advice.
The second thing, which we progressed, is the case studies and at the moment we are looking at four of these. And these are intended to give some actuality to the more abstract issues that we feel we will be tangling with across. And there probably will be cross cutting themes, which go across these different case studies. So we have plant breeding, looking at this issue of whether a shift from public to privately funded crop research, what impact that has had, whether it has neglected certain crops. With soil science we are going to be looking at whether there has been or not a move away from one area of science to the benefit of another area, perhaps to the detriment of soil science whether that is real or not. Whether there are, and how if that has happened or if there were certain techniques that had been used and studied? How that's evolved and what the consequences might be to that? And a cross-disciplinary research that’s been a theme of that has been trying to be encouraged through research agendas for a long time. So to look at both at how that has happened in the past and also as we are going forward trying to get sustainable agriculture. How that might work? How it should work? And the difficulties that are going to take place. And finally, because at our last Commission meeting we did talk about this issue which I think many people felt was important was when how the UK funded research the extent to which it could be directed towards the needs of the developing countries. And so that was the fourth case study.
The other area of work, which has being progressing and is almost in total thanks to the efforts of Paul and Tonima is bringing together and collating work that exists. The first part of our, hopefully our first product, on how science research agendas are set, what things are place in at the moment so that we have that basic knowledge upon which we will then be able to build the rest of work. And I think we are meeting again, I think its next, the week after next is our next sub-group meeting, we will of course be taking forward now the public and stakeholder engagement work. We are hoping that should be now ready to go out for tender. We are hoping that the first interviews from having got the tenders will be during the first in August, that we will be making decisions in the second week of August with aspiration that, I suppose, we are practically speaking that that work will actually start now in September. So, obviously, the core group will be interacting with that work as it goes on. Starting to put some flesh on the bones of the other works in substance. And one issue, which we will be talking about, is also the scope of biotechnology. We have been quite clear that it is just not GM that we are talking about, but everything wider. We just need to come up with a nicer definition and to get the Commission to agree on what we mean by this scope, this broader scope of biotechnology.
CHAIRMAN
Okay, thank you very much Sue. We are going to proceed now into what I would regard as valuable conversations with our four guests this afternoon whom we have invited and to talk to us. But, we thought rather than having a general conversation we would structure this in a certain way which is to invite each of them in turn, first to talk to us for a few minutes on some overall themes and then secondly, to open up after each guest to some questions from the members of the core group just to the point of clarification or development on how to be prepared. And then a second half of general questions from the core group and other members of the Commission. Then when we have heard all of our four witnesses this afternoon and we'll continue with discussion around the table by the Commission, to which all of our experts are of course invited to attend. We are already quite demanding in terms of time. The first of our guest this afternoon Mike Foulis is the Head of the Environment Group in the Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department. And Mike I know you've got a wide range of responsibilities, in fact, the widest possible range of responsibilities in this job, which you have held since September 2001. What we would perhaps like to explore with you in the first instance, is to help us have some overview on how SEERAD’s research agendas are actually set, particularly in, in the biotechnology area. And secondly, some idea of the work of the Agricultural Biological Research Group within SEERAD and of the Environment Research Team. So may I invite you to kick off and we’ll then have an opportunity for further discussion.
I thought I would try and answer your four questions if that’s alright. And what I'll be saying will be mainly about the Department's role in funding biotechnology research which is mainly through the SABRIs and we have the good fortune of having two current and one former director of those institutions in the room so I am looking forward to being corrected and kept right. At the end I'll maybe say just a little about what we do in my own bit of the organisation on our research agenda which is much smaller, much less money, but possibly of interest. Some figures: we fork out about £43 million a year to support the eight bodies that we fund. Most of that goes into core support for these organisations, but about 15% is in something called the “flexible fund” and which is meant to be directed particularly at policy-relevant research and allows link up with other funders. One of the key drivers - while I was looking at what Howard Dalton said at the previous session and I guess there are a lot of similarities, of course, there are two differences which I'd like to touch on but like Defra our research agenda is policy driven or at least a touch policy driven and we make various efforts to ensure that somehow or other it does bear some resemblance to what it is that we think that we are paying for. The two distinctions though are: one, we also see ourselves as having a responsibility to sustain part of the science base in Scotland and that part of the science base represented by those institutions I was talking about, research institutes, and research institutes have a particular missions in science. So they exist for a purpose. And the other difference probably is that I guess we are slightly more closer to economic development. So we see part of our role in supporting the science base as contributing to the Executive's broader goals for the development of the Scottish economy, for development of knowledge economy and so spin out and connections with Scottish Enterprise and I happen to know in the Scottish Enterprise an ex worker who had worked in turn for us.
Now you would not be surprised to learn that we have a strategy and it’s mainly through this strategy that we try to achieve the alignment between our goals and the activities of the Institutions. The existing strategy came in ‘99 just shortly before devolution actually when it was endorsed by Ministers, we are just in the point in consulting in a new strategy which will mark some shifts and because we haven't published the thing, I can't say a huge amount about it, but I'll try and give some direction which way we are going. The strategy identified five end-user categories and the reason for this I guess is that the we are quite keen on the research we do - as you show - So we are quite keen that it's connected up to a user somewhere. And, if I can find it, these five end use categories were: sustainable agriculture - livestock; sustainable agriculture - crops; food, human health and nutrition, environment and bio-industries and bio-industries obviously interesting in what we are talking about.
We don't fund near market research, we stopped doing that in 1980. We want the research to be relevant to somebody out there amongst those five groups I talked about and we want it to address public and environmental good. So not for individuals or particular businesses - we are interested in broader objectives sectors of the economy, that sort of thing.
How do we take attitudes, aspirations and government policy priorities into account? Mainly through up to now a traditional policy development process. We consulted on the strategy before it was produced. Our Ministers consider it and have political input and we published it. We have quite active engagement with all the interest groups that we can think of and speak to in amongst the various agricultural communities, industry, NGOs and scientists. Anybody we can engage with and how well does it tie up with government policy as well. Sitting at the Government end, its never a quite, never quite there, but the fact that the large part of what we doing is trying to sustain science base alters the nature of the your consideration of what's been done. And within the strategy it’s also true I guess, and I stand really to be contradicted here, that the agenda is pretty heavily influenced by the missions of these institutes that we are talking about because Research Institutes exist because they have a mission and are not just doing what the researchers fancy doing at that time. And the evolution of those missions is to a significant extent the responsibility of the director and their boards. Say if Maggie was saying she decided that she wanted to get out of land use and get into sport science something like that then I dare say you would have a conversation with people like the Department, but there is still, and you can contradict me please, quite a task of determining where the mission goes and how it moves forward and the responsibility lies fairly significantly in the institutions themselves. And those missions changed, for instance, some of the, some of the SABRIs have moved pretty heavily in the human health field. And that's not something which is directly relevant to the funding the Department’s policy interest, but it is relevant to the Executive’s interest.
We are going to consult on a new strategy. There's been a great deal of process of consultation and discussion debate. We are going on with that. As I say, you want to see what it says when it comes out, but broadly it’s likely to suggest that we continue trend of shifting away from direct production related agricultural research towards more environmental sustainability-related research and it’s probably going to suggest taking a more strategic approach to the identification of priorities and to commissioning work and may be borrowing a few tools out of the research councils to put right that sort of thing.
How well does it work? Well the strategy review process was designed to answer that question and the fact that it is coming up with changes suggest that conclusion was that we can improve how this process works. We can make it more fitted to what requirements of the day are. And also to the ever changing and ever challenging requirements for sustaining research institutes, you know, it’s not an easy thing do.
Interestingly, given the line of commenting I was picking up from the record of the area and the meeting about the agri-business or biotech companies over-dominating research agenda, the people who ran our programmes and who are responsible for the reaching of the end users have found that they haven't really managed to engage with the ag-biotech industry effectively at all. So although they didn't return the calls there was enough money to make it interesting, but phoned to get in touch but that, that's one, one conclusion that came for me.
What are the implications for research and development? I think, well, maybe one or two possibly implications. One, another driver is evidence based policy making, we are more interested in that so we were more interested in funding research institutions. The evidence we need to develop our policies. And also, I think, another theme coming out is the need for more cross science or inter- disciplinary work and Maggie is developing a social science element here and that's an example of the sort of themes which are coming, I think.
And, finally, in our, in my own neck of the woods in environment, we have about £2.5m for various sources to spend, almost none of it on ag-biotech. But, it's interesting, in this purpose it's interesting, one we are trying to be more strategic when we publish our research prospectus each year. We are trying to identify themes rather than simply procuring market projects, but basically what we do is we buy the research that we think will give us the evidence that we need to deliver our responsibilities and we have to be quite clever in a way we do that because a lot of issues we deal are global or national so at the minute we are not looking to answer all the questions ourselves, but we are trying to focus in the things that would not be answered unless we ask the question, that’s at all. Thank you.
CHAIRMAN
Thank you very much. I am now going to move back to Sue and Phil and Jeff, I am sorry, and Jeff, to explore these issues with you further.
Thanks, Mike. If I might just lead off. I mean, one of the comments that you made, you said sitting at the Government end, we never quite get there. I am just wondering what you meant by that and perhaps you might like to link that with the fact that you your Departmen, have set up a particular group to satisfy your needs when we have the ABRG funding portfolio research which certainly from the information that we have covers a significant amount might had categorised as being the environment?
On first point, I was thinking of being a customer for policy relevant research and the definition of what was policy relevant, seemed to lie with the person producing the research rather than the owner of the policy. Now its getting better and the work that went into the strategy which came in ‘99 as we have taken that quite a long way down the road. But, actually I started my government career in research and I am, you know, I have, I have quite high expectations of the power of good research and the influence it can have on policy. And, you know, I feel that a lot of the time we will not, we are not hitting the levels that we could and we can, I mean the main reason improve this to is that the direction we are going, I guess, in that we are, we are more disciplined in what we commission and we put more effort into, we are more demanding customer and we put more effort into using the output and, you know, I think can improve in all those areas. And, privately, we have our own arrangement, it’s historical, logically we'd have won big part and we will not moving, but part of the issue, I guess, is that the big part was we will be quite heavily directed at SABRIs and quite a lot of our requirements can be made by SABRIs.
I don't know what SABRIs are?
Sorry, I should have explained that. Scottish Agricultural and Biological Research Institutes. If, in fact, I'll give you a list, shall I?
Macaulay, Mordun, Rowett, SCRI, Hannah.
That's right. We also fund the Scottish Agricultural College, The Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh, which is an international dimension to this work, interestingly and Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland.
CHAIRMAN
Thank you Jeff
Well if we follow that up, I mean its not easy from what you've told us as to how we answer the question, how the research agenda is finally set? Who is actually taking the decision? As to what gets done where?
Well, there is no one person taking decision on everything at every level. The Ministers set strategy by approving the document that's produced for them. And then following from that the Institutes have to deliver their role as set out in the strategy. There are calls to control mechanisms like visiting groups which go round four year cycle, I think it is, to make sure that the work that has been done is of the right quality and decides who's good and its in the right sort of areas. We have people in the ABRG who run the flexible fund element of the programme, who manage that and look at the all the work that has been done. As you will know yourself, there isn't one person taking all the decisions.
Well, I was going to ask one follow up, but that's it. From what you've said is there a lot more autonomy or a lot, there's a lot more shaping of what research gets done inside those institutes, then saying would happen in the ones in England, for example, under. Is that, is that the case?
I don't know what happens in England sufficiently to make a comparison, but, you know, you get a different view if you ask the directors that question, but my view is that there is a fair amount of autonomy and that flows an important part of our mission which is supporting the science base through those institutes with a mission.
Can we just interpose the question to Professor Hillman to what proportion the turnover on a research budget comes from SEERAD?
SCRI its about two thirds.
Could I just while I've got them, hopefully, here. Could I just ask you Mike the extent to which in setting the research agenda you are liaising with your counterparts in England and Wales?
We are trying to do that. It's probably more important for us to liaise with them and it's for them to liaise with us. They are bigger then we are. (INDISTINCT). And we also try to maintain links particularly with BBSRC. And there are a various collaborative link arrangements and it is an environmental research funding forum we are involved with, so we, we try engagement as much we can with the other research funders to make sure that the work is properly directed and there are long standing mandate arrangements in the UK and that particular crops are studied and dealt with, for instance, in Scotland and as those that are dealt with in England. And The Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh divides the world of opportunity with Kew. It does China, Kew does Central and Southern America, for instance.
A follow on with the BBSRC links, some of the money, research money in Scotland comes from BBSRC….John is shaking his head.
Well, it might have been for universities and for Roslin, but we don't get money, I understand directly from BBSRC is earmarked by SEERAD but it undergoes the BBSRC scrutiny.
Okay. So it goes through the BBSRC sift selection process? When is the grant…
Its granted if a research council has an appropriate theme.
Okay. So that in a sense addresses Malcolm's question to some extent in that the research policy, part of research policy is set by BBSRC in that respect? It has to go through the BBSRC selection process but the money comes from SEERAD?
Yes, there is an influence, yeah. Although, it’s a declining influence from as it was a year and a half ago because fewer people from the Scottish Institute are on the BBSRC's committee. There's clearly a difference.
CHAIRMAN
Can I just get this clear: that Scottish SEERAD money is hypotheticated to Scottish Research Institutions but it goes through BBSRC sift and selection committee.
What well, our core funding with institutes goes directly to the institutes, yes but the 15% is for flexible fund which is open competition and I think we are talking something different here.
JOHN HILLMAN
There are various initiatives which we can apply for
CHAIRMAN
Right, so the core funding goes straight to the institutes and then there is the 15% competitive element but the institutes can also apply obviously for competitive research funding from various sources including BBSRC?
JOHN HILLMAN
No, no we can't as far as I know, I mean that it hasn't changed but in fact Maggie can correct we can't apply directly for research council funding it has to be with the agreement of SEERAD.
You can apply for each research council slightly differently and we can actually apply directly for EPSRC research funding. Not for BBSRC, not for NERC except on (INDISTINCT) grounds and not for ESRC.
CHAIRMAN
This is useful clarification but it's probably getting us away from the theme. We are just trying to understand who sets the agenda as it were on the agro-environment, that’s been very helpful. What I propose to do, unless there are any questions from our core team is that we move on to the next speaker and then we will come back for the more open discussions with all our speakers if that’s alright. So shall we cross over to Northern Ireland and Alistair Carson and who is the Project Leader at the Science Service with DARD based at the Ag-Research Institute at Hillsborough and also a member of staff at Queens University at Belfast for those who are not aware of the acronym and currently on secondment in a Policy Development position within DARD. So Alistair, welcome, and we would like to invite you for your comments to cover again as with Mike an overview of how research into biotechnology is funded in Northern Ireland and how research agendas are set in the area. Some explanation of the process of change since O’Hare.
Thanks very much. I am going to show that I’m a scientist at heart by using a power point presentation just to guide me through you if this is okay. Thanks very much Mr Chairman and good afternoon everyone. I am delighted to be invited over to the Commission and in fact a particular thanks to Paul and to the Secretariat for the excellent arrangements that they have made in getting me here. As the Chairman said I am a livestock development scientist apart heart. I nearly said I was was on holiday in policy development, but I am on a secondment to the policy development role within our organisation and for the next 5 to 10 minutes I hope to give you some feel for setting research agendas from a DARD perspective, that’s Department of Agriculture Rural Development for Northern Ireland. I will give you an overview of the changes that are happening in our organisation from a research perspective.
I hope to touch on the four questions as Mike addressed, the four questions as I go through the presentation trying to look at the key drivers behind our agriculture research. Secondly, a quick look at the mechanisms which we hope exist to ensure public attitudes and aspirations have taken into account and Government policy priorities. Some comments in how well mechanisms work and merely a personal view of what the implications of the above research and development are.
So first of all, looking at the key drivers behind our research agenda. And first of all a couple of sentences on the industry itself our industry. It is a key industry in our economy - agriculture including fisheries and forestry are accounted by 2.5% of gross value added to our economy and about 4.5% of employment, that’s primary agriculture. So you can see there is much more important relevantly in relative terms than GB. We have a grass-based industry and two thirds of our agriculture is from our three main enterprises milk, beef and lamb.
Main feature of our industry is that we have a relatively small owner occupied family farms. Tenancies aren't a feature of our industry, 99% of farms are owner occupied. Relatively small sized - average about 35 hectares and 70% of those farms are in less favoured areas. The industry itself as we all know has gone through a period of rapid change and a major feature of how industry has changed is, yes farms size has increased for those producers who are in farming full-time, but part-time farming is a major feature of our industry, 43% of farmers in Northern Ireland are part-time and that’s 43% out of a total 34,000 farmers or 28,000 holdings.
Food and drink sector, again it is an important contributor to our economy 2½% of GVA and 2½% employment and 17% of all our manufacturing skills are from the food and sector. That’s largely from a processing of milk, beef and lamb in line with what our industry is based. So you can see adding the agriculture industry, food processing industry, that’s 5% GVA and 7% of employment.
Looking at research agendas and what's driving them and what's the aim of our organisation itself for the department. It’s sustainable economy growth in the countryside by assisting a sustainable development of the agri-food, fisheries and forestry sectors by being pro-active and responsive to the needs of customer for safe and wholesome food, welfare of animals and conservation and enhancement of the environment. That's an overall departmental aim.
Other than that there is our four strategic priorities. The programme for Government in Northern Ireland sets out the priorities and plans for the Government this year and beyond and in this Government programme four strategic priorities are set for DARD.
Firstly, to carry out work to help improve the economic performance of the agri-food industry. Secondly, to protect the public, owners and property. That’s in terms of the public and food safety and for animals from animal welfare perspective property from flood defence. Our third priority to conserve and enhance the rural environment and fourthly to strengthen the economy a social infrastructure of disadvantaged rural areas.
This is our current structure in our organisation. Just to give you a quick overview before I go into the changes that will be happening. Most of agriculture rural development, unfortunately we haven't got a devolved Minister at the minute, but a our Minister of Agriculture and Rural development and all our Permanent Secretaries with Deputy Secretaries heading off various divisions. You can see in terms of research and development that’s headed off by a Chief Scientific Officer, a Dr George Mackleroy, and that’s where the division that I sit in is. In mainstream civil service, although I am with policy service delivery side and the veterinary service. Couple of agencies on farm service and rivers agencies, but this overall structure will be changing over the next couple of years.
The science service, which is the division that research and development is carried out within, has a mission to support the strategic and policy aims of DARD and to assist the sustainable development of the Northern Ireland agri-food industry through excellence and analytical and diagnostic services, education, research and technology transfer. We have got an integrated role which Malcolm touched on in terms of my own role and people carrying out research and that we are multifunctional, I guess that is a key EU word now. But, we have an integrated approach, in terms of our of overall efforts about 30% of overall efforts of the division are going into research and development at the minute. 50% of the work is carried out as statutory and the other 20% is involved technology transfer and education. To give you an example of this, my role, which is carrying out research and development at the Agricultural Research Institute of Northern Ireland, which is a non-departmental public body core funded by DARD. But, I am a member of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, I teach at the Queens University of Belfast and I am a staff member there because of legislation which was known as the Queens Act which meant that all under-graduate, post-graduate teaching was carried out by DARD members of staff so we have a dual role. And thirdly, technology transfer which we have put up very high in our priorities. I think that’s one of our features in terms of research and development as it might in technology transfer and the fact that those people are involved in research are actively involved in technology transfer directly.
The aim of the science service from which Michael's touching on from Scottish perspective is to assist the formulation and development of policies. Implementation of those policies comes before our other services that we are providing in terms of analytical and surveillance regimes.
Just a quick word on the ranges of services that we provide which are geared towards making the long-term strategic requirements for the Government and the agri-food sector in Northern Ireland. Currently we have about 200 research and development programmes ongoing as I said previously about 30% of our overall efforts is for research and development, 50% statutory surveillance and testing, 20% technology transfer and teaching. Of the research that are carried out 10% could be so categorised as a basic R&D and probably 10% at the other end in terms of more development research working and that’s an area that I would be more actively involved and a lot of our more development research works is actually now carried right into the industry and on farming as such, has been a major development and our research programmes and from a personal perspective much of my research which is carried out on commercial farms with underpinning research carried out at our Agricultural Research Institute. So there's 80% that remains a mixture of strategic and applied research and about 10% on either end. Thirty percent of the projects are funded by DARD, 40% by the other UK departments. Just over 20% by the EU and 12% by the private sector.
I think for couple of minutes, just to touch if that would be okay on the mechanisms to ensure public attitudes and aspirations and Government policy priorities are taken into account in setting research agendas. We have a range of stakeholders and we are realising the science service that we have a range of stakeholders view to take into account when setting research agendas.
This is an overview of how things work at the minute. But, basically highlight in our current system the Project Leader - we are really central to the whole process, right from the initiation of the research. The Project Leader plays a key role in actually initiating research programmes. Within overall policy framework which has been clearly set out and DARD service delivery agreement. The Project Leader we have direct contact with stakeholders and we are responsible for that liaison and consulting the stakeholders and drawing up research proposals. These research proposals have to include a full economic appraisal and guide in line with Treasury Guidelines. We have a statutory quality impact assessment and to do to make sure we are holding equal opportunities and targeting social need. The programmes that will be developed, again under this overall policy umbrella, and then it goes to our Chief Scientific Officer for evaluation. They are sent out to the relevant policy division to make sure the research programme which is proposed if it gets clearance from the Chief Scientific Officer is in line with the policy agenda, which is being sent. Those comments then go back to the Chief Scientific Officer for final assessment by the Chief Scientific Officer. That’s where things stand currently.
In 2001 we had a review of provision of research and development, education and technology transfer within our organisation and then was headed up by Dr Daniel O'Hare and consequently the report is spoken as in the organisation as the O'Hare Report. How well did the mechanisms work. I thought they worked well. This is a personal view. They allowed research to be a really at the cutting edge in terms of consulting with the industry and leading on research being pro-active. The Panel expressed concerns about the absence of a clear customer-contractor relation in the current arrangements that we have and teaching. Because the decisions about what R&D should be undertaken they considered were often taken by people responsible for their R&D. The review found that industry representatives argued for a stronger voice in determining R&D programmes. And the review argued for more transparency in the system. So as a result of the review a number of changes are happening within our organisation and the major ones that I have outlined here. A new central decision making process will be embedded into our organisation and an independent expert advisory committee will be established. The other changes are that researchers who are members of the University will lose our University link. The relationship between DARD and the Universities will change completely to a customer-contractor basis. So we will lose our University status and the teaching provision put out to tender and that was won actually by Queens University, but it will be under a different arrangement in that they will be hiring people to undertake that research. It will be undertaken by members of the Department of Agricultural and Rural Development Science Service. Establishment of a Non-departmental public body, so the science service will come away from mainstream Government and it will be a non-departmental public body and it will be known as, I may have to get this right, AFBI, which is Agricultural Food and Biosciences Institute. And there will be an introduction of a competitive bidding process for DARD funded R&D.
CHAIRMAN
The AFBI will be free standing?
It will, yes. It will be headed up by Chief Executive and we will move, people within that organisation will move from civil servants to public service. So I'll finish off by just outlining how the research agendas are going to be set in the future. Instead one slide it takes four which outlines the ranges of steps that are in there. It will really be policy driven. Policy will be the customer and we will be very much contractor. Policy will invite comments and contributions on an education R&D and technology strategies from DARD divisions and from the Independent Expert Advisory Board and the Independent Expert Advisory Board may wish to carry out wide consultation on this for providing their comments. Draft strategy will be developed which will go to all Government Department for comment before going to the Minister for clearance for issuing the draft. The Independent Expert Advisory Board will consider a strategy and will consult with the Rural Stakeholders Forum. The Rural Stakeholders Forum is a body which is being set up. A forum for stakeholders with an interest in the countryside in Northern Ireland. There are 55 organisations at the latest count in this forum and this provides a forum for stakeholders to give comments and views on strategic issues to the Minister. And that has been established now for two years and is operating very well. So the Independent Expert Advisory Board will offer their views to DARD on the strategy for research and development and teaching and technology transfer and after a Ministerial approval will go forward for a strategy. Then policy within our organisation will set up the programmes. Research will undergo a commissioning process and research will commissioned itself. So really we’re moving to a customer-contractor basis, which is quite a change in how research agendas are going to be set up within our organisation.
CHAIRMAN
What roughly is the size of the annual budget?
For the overall size at the minute about £7 million is spent on DARD R&D programmes.
Independent 11 members in the Independent Expert Advisory Board, 5 from scientific or education expertise, 1 economist and 5 persons with knowledge of the four pillars underpinning DARD business strategy which I have referred to earlier.
Technology transfer will not be a primary responsibility of this new non-departmental public body. It will be the primary responsibility of the College of Agriculture and Food in Rural Enterprise. This is just to show what we have done in liaison with the College. They are primarily responsibility for technology transfer and considerable liaison is required to ensure cohesive and comprehensive deliver. I have finished there just outlining that our research currently is broad ranging covering a wide range of areas and maybe as I go through we'll have opportunities to discuss the case studies which again are commissioned as well.
CHAIRMAN
Alistair, thank you for that very comprehensive overview. I am going to ask the members of the core group if there are any questions. May I start with Jeff?
Thank you Malcolm. Could I just check with you Alistair when you were talking the technology transfer facility and the organisation that is going to do that is, I understood that as actually going to be within the Agricultural and Food Research Institute?
Yes, that was the recommendation of the O'Hare Report. The Government response to the O'Hare Report. In terms of college education the O'Hare Report said that that should move away from the Department of Agriculture function to the Department of Education, but there was a considerable opposition in the industry and political opposition to that and in the implementation that was undertaken the College remained within the DARD structure. And the technology, the primary technology transfer role was given to the College.
When you were describing the new system of how research agendas might be set, you've got this independent body that sits. How is it going to establish its role and how is it going acquire, if you like, the context in which it could make its decisions?
That context would be set by the policy division within our organisation. The details are still being thrashed out that that will be driven from policy.
So are you saying that it will be derived from DARD?
Well as I understand it at the minute, I will put a caveat in this and say that a lot of this details are being thrashed out, and that the overall responsibility for setting up the Independent Expert Advisory Board is taken on board by policy. Once that board is set up it probably will have enough flexibility and be in its remit that that consultation process will be one of the Board's responsibilities.
Now, obviously a lot of what goes on in terms of agriculture and particular the way you describe Northern Ireland and the impact the agriculture and environment and so on. How does the environment feature in this programme, I mean does the Department of Environment in Northern Ireland have any input to the sort of agenda setting that you've described to us?
Yeah, well I'll say environment because sustainability is embedded in all the policies and I think you can’t isolate any of the work that we are doing from the environment and much of the research that we’re carrying out is multi-disciplinary in approach. Ireland's taking on board the environmental considerations. And there is a close working relationship, and Liz might wanting to comment, between DARD and DOE. At the minute DOE do commission work from science service and that’s undertaken by the University link and that’s how it's undertaken at the minute. A service level agreement will be produced between the new organisation and the Department of Environment in terms of what needs to be carried for the Department of Environment, for example, a lot of surveillance is carried for the Department of Environment on issues such as water quality. At the minute that work would be paid for by the Department of Environment through the University link. University staff that are working in the science service to carry out that function. But, that will change as we lose our University link.
Can I just, can you just explain to me what technology transfer means to you in this context, is it sort of extension work in terms of farmers different from that.
Yeah, technology transfer to me is getting the information from research to the end user whoever that be, primarily producers but can be the processing industry and can be much broader than that at open meetings, but that’s, that’s what I would say as technology transfer.
PHIL DALE
How would blue skies, really innovative research fare in the system where you've got lots of people thinking about potential applications and so on filtering down quite a complex system and that lots of best ideas come from the bottom, so there needs to be way of influencing that process?
I think that’s where we, and I’m taking off my policy hat and putting on a researcher’s hat, need to be lobbying and there are the details are thrashed out because we had very much a system where we could influence, we were responsible to situation where way we are contractor. I think it’s absolutely imperative that ability to do either type of research that are undertaken is allowed under a reasonably wide strategy. But that's always the potential limitation of this type of system.
Is it a recipe for short-termism and sort of three-yearism is in research?
Yeah, I think that would be, that, that is a potential issue and puts a lot of, places a lot of responsibility on the Independent Expert Advisory Board. In my view, that’s a large responsibility.
You've got 5 scientists in that?
Yeah.
And that, that, sorry education as well and technology transfer, so it’s not specifically research, that their expertise has to cover.
Mike said earlier in relation to Scotland that they were interested in funding this market. I wonder if we might have a conversation about what that means when we come to the more general discussion and how there (INDISTINCT). Are there any other questions? Right, well thank you very Alistair and I am going to keep moving on because we've got a opportunity for discussion shortly. We move now to Professor Margaret, or Maggie, Gill. Can we thank you for all of your hospitality.
You are very welcome.
CHAIRMAN
And how good it is to be at the Macaulay after we have heard so much from one our members over the last few years. Thank you so much and may we invite you to talk to us, in particular, because of your role as member of the Scottish Science Advisory Committee, I am interested in something about that as well as our general questions.
I’ll start with the bit about taking down from Mike to how the Institute works and then I'll come on to the Science Advisory Committee. As Mike says in terms of the Institute that we have the strategy which was the 1999 to 2003 strategy and the strategy that’s under review. And one point I want to make is that as research institutes we are judged not only on the quality of our science but also on our ability to transfer knowledge and our end user relevance. So very much looking at what are the drivers and although we have autonomy, as Mike said, it is very much a responsibility of directors to translate the end-users and what their interests are into the strategy that we talked within the Institute. And, I honestly, spent some time on this because I think it’s, it’s important relative to the other players who delivering research within the Scottish context. In terms of our niche then and what we have to take into account in developing our strategy, then we do have, we are a Mission-driven institute rather than the University, which has more freedom to do what they want. But, we are a one of 8 bodies that are sponsored by the Scottish Executive and therefore we have to take into account what the other research organisations are doing, we have take into account what's done by other bodies within Scotland and within the UK. We have to take into account the priorities of our end users and our in-house expertise and obviously the global drivers that are changing environmental science throughout. So in terms of our mission statement just to set the scene as to what we are, then we are straining to be an international leader in research and management of rural land resources for the benefit of people and the environment and it’s important that this is a niche that we can occupy as the Macaulay, and which I think we have been lucky enough to be able to do in the last 10 or so years, which is having socio-economists and we now have the largest cadre of economist. We are 17 socio-economists in the Institute, together with some other social scientists and that’s why we can address this mission of helping people and the environment. So that’s balancing the skills that we have with our mission.
Now I just wanted to diagrammatically show in terms of, and this relates not just to the Macaulay I think, but it’s one of the things that I think is key in terms of trying to map out where different organisations fit into the structure and particularly in relation to Scottish science which I'll come back to. This is an example of how it might be done in relation to agriculture and the environment, its an exercise we undertook 2002 on the UK scale to look at where various bodies sit. Macaulay is highlighted in red just to draw attention to it, not because I think they are any better than anyone else when we change the colour in (INDISTINCT). The size of this particular shapes is strictly irrelevant, its really to say where on the scale, in a sense overall in the UK there is a move perhaps from emphasis on agriculture market to environment and I think Mike alluded to that earlier. So if we were taking it up to 2002 and we were saying that we straddled the agricultural environment and we also straddled the applied and strategic and then we looked ahead and through discussions with these organisations and the names don't really matter, its just saying, just this sort of picture of where different organisations might move to and to see what sort of space, unless you can see from our analysis at that stage, the space at the centre of that was, was in fact getting smaller and therefore, if we are going to fill it, not only do we have to change but we also start overlapping with other organisations. And that I think is quite a key, not only in relation to the Scottish Agricultural and Biological Research Institutes, but also in relation to the Scottish Science Strategy - that was one of the conclusions coming, that in Scotland we are a small country, if you take, I think when they looked at the whole of physics in Scotland it’s smaller or if you put all physicists together that’s smaller than all the physicists in Imperial Colleges Physics Department. So if we are going start competing at the UK level we are not going to be very successful if we do it as institutes alone. And with the Scottish Science Advisory Committee one of the key points was coming up with centres of excellence into whereas in the past that might have been, it might have been expected that people would move in the Scottish context is very possible to get all the Physics Departments so they are now talking about Physics Scotland and putting one submission into the next RAE with all the Physics Departments together. Now if you take that go into agriculture and environmental organisations then very much where we see the future is in relation to these partnerships. And then it becomes very important to map out the agendas for each of these organisations to make sure that they actually fit together.
Just one more point where I am talking about the Scottish Science Committee and the importance of working together and, I think this is an issue worthy of discussion, is that the other Scottish Science Committee talked very much about Universities and their Universities working together SHEFC was Scottish Higher Education Funding Council is very much talking about pooling of resources so Universities and Research Institutes pulling their resources and to their different view to get through this. You can get that spectrum through from the basic to the applied with some, with University Departments doing more of the blue skies and to then but making sure that there is a track through by having partnerships for these organisations and to work together. So where that led to, if you take away and you can look from 2002 to 2005 that the level of an individual institution then we can start to see what our agenda should be relative to other organisations.
Also, you asked about the key drivers that are defining the research that we are actually doing in terms of where institutes come from on those and then we have to look at this sort of global question, global treaties, EU directives and also other changes such as global climate change and how those would fit it with where the Scottish Executive sees that is going and to feed that into out agenda and also the pressures from the public. So where this is put us as an institute is very much seen that we are an institute which integrates science, feeding into the policy development because as you've heard from Mike then that is an area that the Scottish Executive is expecting us to meet, but also that policy, actual delivery of policy is not just about setting the policy, but also about all these people who have to work within those policies and make sure that the objectives that the policy is seeking to achieve are actually achieved. So we see ourselves with a role as an institute in terms of having end users here and end users up here.
In the terms of the mechanisms, what mechanisms do we use for relating these different end users. We have within the Institute someone who is responsible for our end user strategy and very much making sure that we get the balance between these different end users and feeding that in. And if one looks at the larger scale in terms of the Scottish scene then again it does come back to different parts of the funding environment having responsibility for talking to different end users and it also comes back to different parts of the providers of research as fulfilling different issues in relation to delivery on that. So the key headline issues that I would bring out are this. The requirements for the different multiple functions of research are, as Mike referred to wealth creation, the importance of wealth creation, the importance of research feeding into policy and the importance of research in relation to feeding into quality of life. And one of the, perhaps, disappointments in the Scottish Science Committee was a lack of appreciation of the importance of policy feeding, sorry of research feeding into policy, there is a very much a strong driver and on the original committee there were representatives of the business community as well as the representatives of academia, but there were only myself and one other who were representatives from research institutes rather than from the University academic scene and it’s getting that balance on any committee and, I think it was good seeing the Northern Ireland situation where there was a strong recognition of the balance of the different source of people who should be on these committees. Scottish Science Committee had a two-year remit to start with, that has come to an end and there is an advert for new members for the committee. I am now no longer on the committee. They have formed a new committee I believe, but we are not yet certain who is actually going to be on it. Key thing is in getting the terms of did the mechanisms work. I think the mechanism for creating that particular committee was, was not perhaps as effective as it might have been in terms of meeting all the different sorts of needs that research has to, has to deliver to. And the second headline issue I would point to, there is a need for diversity in the research providers, that we do need Universities as I showed in the previous diagram. We need a range of different organisations to be able to deliver the blue sky research following that all the way through into application. I think there is a need for clarity of what purpose between the different research providers in order to be able to commission a range of research and good example of that is the Environmental Research Funders Forum. And the fact that they are discussing how to have a more combined agenda that meets across the needs. And then finally, as I stressed before, the need to the potential benefits of partnership working. I think that’s very much the way for the future to get different organisations setting their agendas by being aware of other research agendas and working together to deliver them. I think in terms of that it is important to look at different types of partnership, I should there some indication of partnerships between different environmental research organisations. I think there is also a need to have partnerships at a local level and for getting efficiency gains and the partnerships at the international level for getting examples of big practice exchange between different organisations. And I'll stop there.
CHAIRMAN
Thank you, and I’ll hand over to Sue
Thanks very much for that. I just want, just start off with one, I suppose a point of clarification, I have understood some of the things you were saying in relation to what Mike was saying about setting the scope of the research agenda. Do you, do you feel that inside this institute that the scientists and yourself have influence on what are questions that in formulating the questions that you then do research or, or not and, and is that the case that you have a lot of influence here, but perhaps more widely inside what research is done and in Scotland, it has less influence. So that was just one to ask you about that and then, and, and secondly, one thing which does seems different about the McCauley is its social science component and I wondered if you could comment on how you feel that makes a difference, I mean how do the, do the social scientists and actual scientists interact and does that make you ask questions differently, does it give you different outcomes that, that may have implications good or bad?
Starting with do we have an influence and do individual scientists have an influence? Yes, they do. One of the difficulties of trying to deliver integrated research is that if you are going to deliver a big picture with everything fitting in and confine that picture, then there does need to be more management than if you could set one question and set people to follow their own direction within that. So we are, we have moved towards more of a focus on two particular policy areas in the McCauley and that confines people to some extent, but still leaves them some freedom within it. So they have freedom to set their own research agendas and we, well we collectively have freedom and the confines are internal in terms of getting sufficient interaction to be able to build up that picture and that also goes on to question about the socio-economists, which is we have built up this cadre of 17 socio-economists. They are people who have chosen to come here because they want to be doing their own discipline and have the ability to be at the cutting edge in their own discipline, but they want to work with natural scientists, they want to work in that natural science context. But, it is very much an iterative process of them finding which sort of areas that they can actually do that because they have to find other natural, they have to find natural scientist with whom they can work in order to be able to add value to each other by doing truly interdisciplinary project. And, I think it was mentioned before about a general trend to more interdisciplinarity addressing complex problems by getting people to work together. And that there is a big transaction cost of achieving that. You can get the multi-disciplinarity of people working in their own fields fairly easily. But, getting people actually working together, setting an agenda, but still giving them the freedom because as scientists, you know, I think that the point was made earlier about scientists, there is going to be a certain freedom of management to them and is getting that balance between giving them enough freedom, but yet getting the added value of getting people working together but there is not way you can make them work together. They have got to have a genuine interest as each other in similar problems. Sorry, I haven't explained that very well.
PHIL DALE
Can I just pick that up? So if scientists here have a really significant breakthrough in some fairly basic research that you can't see a clear route to application, but it kind of is fundamental bit of science that could be useful in a number of different areas. You have the flexibility and presumably within your institute brief to give them that hand.
Yes. You have to keep it in perspective of…
PHIL DALE
That’s on core funding
Yeah. So what I, where we have, we have one or two real stars in terms of scientists who are really innovative or asking cutting edge questions and given that we are dealing with land use generally, there are, there is a fair amount of number of those issues which will eventually lead to some delivery in that aspect. For example, we have someone who is a molecular microbial ecologist, so very much interested in using DNA techniques to type microbes, now he can have his head to develop those techniques because we know they will be applied. They will have a useful application in the future, but also, I think as Mike said, I mean we had someone who is particularly interested in something to with sport turf or something, then there would be a reigning in of those. So our remit gives us, now John may come up with some issues where I think in SCRI people feel more constrained perhaps than in a McCauley because we have a fairly wide remit. So in this it is looking at the remit of the Institute relative what freedom there, there is.
PHIL DALE
I take much of what you've said in terms of multi disciplinary teams and encouraging them to work together when the chemistry is right, it could be brilliant, but you have, at the beginning of your talk you talked about sort of physicists being spread around various parts of Scotland and other disciplines and the exciting thing about being in science is when you can have coffee with people that you, you know, you are together under the same roof and to make it work where people are spread around physically geographically is a big, big effort, very, very big effort.
I think, I think there's a different between the physicists who, not physicists no I don't know much
PHIL DALE
Interdisciplinarity is the principle
but, but, but they, they are not trying in terms of that if it’s excellence, they are striving for delivering excellence in physics and I imagine they work in distinct parts of physics within their own organisations. Talking about interdisciplinary, interdisciplinary we are exactly as you are saying, the benefits are getting people to bump into each other over a coffee and that certainly happens with our socio-economists. Being in a lunch queue they meet someone from another area. We have to expand that being the lunch queues. So we have tried to create an environment where people, and it’s taken a few years to really expose people in all sorts of ways to what else is going on in the institute and to the external drivers and what those, what the issues are. Now, we've also had interactions with the people out of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, which is a NERC funded research institute out of Banchory. And where that has led us to is to develop the concept of an interdisciplinary research centre, we are calling it The Aberdeen Centre for Environmental Sustainability and from the start both ourselves and the people at NERC Council are adamant that it should be a one site, that we should all be brought together in one site to achieve that interdisciplinary. And that will also involve people from the University, so the people from CEH Banchory will be relocated to the MacCaulay site here. The people from the University have to deliver teaching as well, so they will be having hot desks here and will be because, focusing on objectives, the objective is to get the interaction, but trying to transfer the cost of transferring labs and everything else the University people might need here would be too much. But trying to create here a sort of hub where we already have socio-economists and we already have natural scientist working together to build from that to have greater interaction and therefore interdisciplinary. So, yes in terms of interdisciplinary, I think creating centres of excellence there has to be a certainly a focal point, whereas, where something like Physics Scotland it is accepted that there doesn't need to be so much interaction, it is just getting together different groups that are excellent to be able to sell something in terms of excellence.
CHAIRMAN
We are going to have, come back and have a bigger discussion, I think about all of these questions, which are absolutely vital, certainly in my other job. We are all done, right. We are going to move on to John to you. Welcome back to John Hillman, who helped us at several locations in the past. I am sure he is known to many people here, but certainly best known as Director of SCRI.
We call it lots of things.
CHAIRMAN
Yes, I am sure. I mean it is we've known it as an internationally renowned research centre, indeed. I think John we are very interested to learn your views about the research agenda setting process in Scotland from your perspective as the director of the research institute.
Thank you Chairman, ladies and gentlemen for this opportunity to speak to you. I'll focus on what shapes the research agenda specifically in Ag-biotech. I won't extend on into other areas. I'd like to reassure you that we are intellectually unconstrained at SCRI. Taking it from what Sue was saying, wide scope for ag- biotech as well beyond the obsession on GM issues, but I fear that we are fiddling while Rome burns. The key drivers behind the ag-biotech research agenda, I'd put at seven-fold let alone if they’re balanced. First of all there's a technological and conceptual advancements which gene expression diagnostics, GM flow, sequencing, PCR are a major driver. Then we have an existing knowledge guild and scholarship base and a resource base at both in the public sector and the private sector and that's declining at the moment. There's also the public sector driven curiosity-led R&D as well which is how plants, microbes and animals and pests and diseases work. Then there are the market and societal opportunities in both the private sector and the public sector. And private sector, of course, is a generation of competitive intellectual property. In the public sector there is a production high impact publications, peer recognition, RAE and what have you, right through to trying to address these major policies issues like climate change. But, of course, we are in ag-biotech terms a pale shadow of what happens in the US, Canada, Australia and what have you and soon developing rapidly in India and China. We also have a series of appropriate funding and review mechanisms. One of the initiatives is that SCRI was excluded from the Arabidopsis and Caenorhabditis programmes. But, nonetheless internationally there is a lot of camaraderie between scientists and their funders in agreements, lots of international programmes and that works quite well at a cross-scientist level. Another driver is the regulatory mechanisms initially on biohazards done by scientists themselves, but increasingly as knowledge and precautions come in this has extended to monitoring processes, health and safety etc. And then we have a final driver the political and public attitudes, like consultations, media, pressure groups, civil society groups and what have you. All interacting, which affect the ag-biotech research agenda.
Are they balanced? Well, the balance well it’s constantly changing. Initially the drivers were curiosity, the prime driver and wealth creations and after the new markets, new concepts, new products, new processes and what have you now. We have entered a more introvert phase, I would say where monitoring and control related research is replaced to a large extent a cutting edge area and the lesser market opportunities within the UK, in particular in Scotland and there is relatively little IP being generated in wealth creation. There's also a loss of skill and investment base, which is taking place. The interesting thing is, where do we go from here, what's the next step and may be this is perfectly understandable why we are in the current state. Much hinges on the vision of what we have for agriculture, horticulture, forestry, environmental management and this is going to be driven by politicians in the EU and in the UK, but also from food. We haven't spoken much about supermarkets, industrial processors, they are the influential media and there's the general economy, of course that takes place.
What are the mechanisms to take into account, public attitudes and aspirations and Government priorities? Well at SCRI, I speak as a director, we have no surplus funds, we carry out what work we are commissioned to carry out, in fact this suit is not, is really I've rented this from Oxfam and at midnight it turns into a fig leaf and a MacCaulay visitors badge. Anyway we are reliant on who funds us, of course, and if we take the commissioning process to develop, as Mike was saying, there is a SERAD strategy document, their policy document which is evolving at the moment, but it has quasi research council mode about it. They have a custodianship over the significant portion of the Scottish science base. And so the Ministerial, political and other inputs. But, we as an institute, we have our corporate plan, our business plan, our manpower plan that has a mission and (INDISTINCT) what have you and in that we have our performance indicators, relevance, value for money, quality of science indicators and what have you, which all of you running organisations fully understand and perhaps are a bit depressed by. And then in agreement programme of what we do, we then have a dialogue with our colleagues within SEERAD this ABRG group Agricultural and Biological Research Group. This is when the application of instruments of torture and we come up with an agreed programme, comes out of that. There used to be a priorities board which was an intriguing system, but that was shot down in flames earlier on. And we used to have a lot of involvement with BBSRC, but that has diminished a great deal. And then besides the commissioned work, we have open competition for funding which is public and private and, of course, we have large chunks of EU funding. In describing public attitudes and aspirations its quite difficult defining public, as you know, public and stakeholders in a multi-attitudinal environment in really what we exist, multi-attitudinal and it’s not just Scotland as in UK, EU and global perspective as well. So there's massive shaping goes on and depends what questions we ask. It would be a Holy Grail for us if we got complete buy-in appreciation of what we do. For the Institute as such, multifaceted interaction that we have with the World at large in addition to SEERAD, so we have a friendly society associated. We have got 60 active sponsors funding sponsors of SCRI programme, open days, websites, one of them gets a nearly over a million hits a year. So in the websites we've used lots of events where we have a full-time education officer. Right, we write reviews, those of you who've perused our annual report, it’s a financial report and occasionally we even comment on the AEBC. But we read articles and there's a lot of correspondence taking place and we are aware about hostility towards ag- biotech in various communities and also devour what I heard in Vienna in Christmas at the Cordia(?) Conference. What was referred to as an industry, which was the regulatory industry, the protest industry and the advisory industry which is a new concept for industries. But, make no bones about it, the public sector spend is tight and private sector is declining and there is an increasing degree of competition within the public sector. Initially, of course, there was a phase when the foresight programme did help set the agendas and aided by Delphi and consultation which just worked within the UK as we were involved a great deal with overseas interactions as well. And how well this mechanism work, well its mixed. For understandable reason the commissioning dialogue with SEERAD historically has worked extraordinary well, because North of the border we've avoided unnecessary trauma. It hasn't gone for traumatic changes, it’s been a mission for adaptation and evolution. But, it is very difficult to gauge public perception and what have you, but since 1997 which is just not a matter of a political point, I want to stress this, this is when the date looking at the economics of the situation. That started really where there was a switch off, well switching of resource from cutting edge to more monitoring and regulation and the growth of this so-called industry, I refer to. But, massive disinvestments of Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, Unilever, Axis, Aventis etc. I was just looking down at number of companies who were funding SCRI. Who were actually funding SCRI research and now a whole series of other companies Glaxo Smith-Kline and what have you, that are reviewing their research base within Britain. Massive switch off, absolutely huge. It echoes right through to biotechnology industry, generally.
What implications for R&D is mixed. On the one hand, I've mentioned becoming more introvert rather than extrovert, regulation related rather then wealth creating and disinvestment and what have you. And off-putting for investors and severe problems with retention and recruitment of staff. But, we've had funded these magnificent farm scale evaluation trials which many people don't quite understand from that, from Defra and SEERAD, the gene-flow work, coexistence work and the metabolomics work has regenerated agro-ecology. I've been going through a series of papers which will be hitting literature over the next year. Absolutely stunning new concepts on agro-ecology and speciation. Absolutely dramatic, wonderful, so out of, you know what, I feel as though I've looking at the Tate and Lyle syrup tin you know seeing the flies whizzing around the lion and it’s a wonderful stuff which coming up. Few sentences that to mention about plant breeding, the near market cuts of ‘89 of Chris Barnes and Terry Haggarty. Plant breeding was deemed to be near market even though Terry Haggarty saying, hold on a minute without blackcurrent, it’s 20 to 30 years before some of these crosses hit the market, its that near market? Yes. But, it impacted what was the British Society for Horticulture Research became the Institute for Horticulture Research, became Horticulture Research International and now it’s called Horticulture Research International Warwick. It affected us as well, but there was a period of buoyancy down by the private sector up to about ‘97 then there's been a virtual collapse. British society of plant breeders are in a poor condition, EU plant breeding is in poor condition as well. Seventy per cent of the feed protein in Europe is imported. We don't have the plant breeding technology.
There's also the cost and problems of germ plasm collection and gene banks and pests and disease collections and doing field experiments. There's a loss of agronomic skill. And when I see reference in the text about how do you deal with minor crops? We deal with a number of minor crops and breed them. They are incredibly expensive and there's the interaction with the market and the market for the most part is dictated by supermarket preference and it’s global. But, I mean, at SCRI, we get a ¼ of million a year in plant breeding royalties. We are not doing badly actually in that respect. But, actually I see a great deal of public good in plant breeding not GM I am talking about, I am talking about the whole gamut of plant breeding. It impacts so much in agriculture generally. Soil science, I would've thought the vandalism which was the closure of Scott Russell (INDISTINCT) lab in the 70’s was a major, was a major problem actually. And in ‘87 there was a formation of the Super Institutes of the AFRC and the then MacCaulay Institute for Soil Research converted to this institute here, this magnificent institute. And there was a parallelism with the University Soil Science effort. And frankly, it was tired, there were new imperatives at the time when it was a logical development that took place. It so happens that it has been reactivated by new biotechnological tools, new mathematical tools and what have you, it’s been intellectually reactivated and it’s distinctly on the top of concept of resilience and movement of soils and what have you. For cross disciplinary research what's happened is that’ through biotech and ag-biotech specifically besides maths, physics, chemistry, information technology, bioinformatics and the rest of it, beside all that the generic technology of biotechnology is allowed penetration into the health, nutrition and clinical market, industrial feed stocks through to environmental management and if you'd been in Vienna in December and just listened to these multi-national companies talking about sustainability in the energy and waste and waste exploitation drives that they are doing, absolutely dynamic and ag-biotech is playing a major role. Absolutely stunning role.
For the private sector we might, I've mentioned a few things about private sector but for the developing work what means to these institutes in Scotland specifically, but throughout the UK. I wrote Hillman's analysis of what agriculture would be like in 2050. I noticed it and I said I'll be chasing young women downhill at that time, I'd be 104. But, anyway the point is, the point that I make there is that there is a danger that the UK's influence is declining rapidly in the developing world. Normally agriculture and ag-biotechnology is packaged with a whole range of economic deliverers and there is a long history preceding, but now included in the consultative group developments, with our staff from chair and members of institute boards and review teams internationally. And wide range of crops were involved with, but the interesting question which will come, the strategies which are going to be adopted for the funding the ag-biotech, both private and public of how it will impact with the World at large rather than an introverted behaviour of just say, what's just happening. That's all I've got to say.
Thank you very much John. Phil.
You've raised a lot interesting points which are much more interesting than the questions I've got before me. You started off by saying, talking about our vision and do I, I think I take from what you've said that, we don't have a vision for what agriculture should be like.