Oral evidence: Legacy—Parliament 2010–15, HC 758Wednesday 28 January 2015

Oral evidence, 28 January 2015.

Witness

Professor Sir Mark Walport, Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Government Office for Science, gave evidence.

Chair

Sir Mark, welcome back for what, bearing unforeseen circumstances and those unknown unknowns, might well be our last formal meeting with you. We want to cover some of the ground that we discussed before in terms of our previous reports as part of our Legacy report to the House. I want to start with a question to which I am certain I know the answer from you, but, just to get it firmly on the record, I presume we agree that scientific advice to the Government should be independent.

Sir Mark Walport

Yes.

Chair

Can you define what you think makes that advice independent?

Sir Mark Walport

It is significantly in the quality of the individual. In other words, it is the independent-mindedness of the individual that matters at least as much as where they have come from, because I can suspect some of the drift of your question, Chair. Clearly, strong independent advice can come from outside Government altogether, which is why the role of the national academies is so important. It is why the role of the learned societies is so important, it is why universities are important and it is why advice from industry is important. But, of course, wherever you come from, you have some kind of affiliation, and so it is important to understand what that is. I also believe that scientific advice can come from people who have had a career in the civil service. Indeed, a great deal of the excellent scientific advice that I am able to transmit to Government comes from scientists in organisations such as the Met Office, the Dstl or many of the other organisations. It is in the quality of the advice, the independent-mindedness of the individual and their ability to speak in an untrammelled fashion. Those are the key criteria.

Chair

You did not touch on the process. We have talked before about the code of practices that exists.

Sir Mark Walport

Yes. In a sense, that codifies those criteria.

Chair

The Prime Minister has been on record—it was for something that I, unusually for a Labour politician, praised him—of accepting that chief scientists should be able to give advice clearly and not then be used as a whipping post if the Government decide to go somewhere else.

Sir Mark Walport

I think that is true. It has been made clear to me by the Prime Minister and by other politicians that what they expect from me is independent advice, but of course that does not alter the fact that I am also subject to the civil service code.

Chair

Of course.

Sir Mark Walport

So I am not going to criticise Government outside, because that is against the code.

Chair

In an ideal world, is there anything that you would change about the current structure and provision of scientific advice to Government?

Sir Mark Walport

The structure is not the issue. It is the function that matters. As you know, there are different sorts of scientific advisory councils and there are different types of scientific advisers in Government Departments. The challenge is always to improve the quality and the quantity. Some Departments are more open to it than others. It is a constant drive to raise the game. In terms of the actual structural arrangements, fundamentally, they work quite well.

Chair

Notwithstanding the vacancies in the light of your remarks, do you think that you have a stronger team of Government chief scientists than when you started?

Sir Mark Walport

I don’t want in any sense to be critical of the legacy. I inherited a very strong team and it remains very strong. From my perspective, it is somewhat stronger, but that is subjective. My predecessors did a very good job in inculcating a culture in Government that it is normal to have a chief scientist. I, constantly, strive to make sure that when we appoint new chief scientists they are the best possible appointees.

Chair

In a previous meeting we discussed the number of one-to-one meetings that you had had with the Prime Minister; I think it was two last year or something like that. Obviously you want to ensure, as part of your function, that scientific evidence is at the heart of Government policy making. Do you think that you or your successor ought to have more such meetings?

Sir Mark Walport

I have as much access as I need to do my job well, Chair. I know that if I need to see the Prime Minister I will be able to do so. I see the Prime Minister much more often in relatively small meetings around a table, where I have the opportunity to provide input. I have a very, very strong relationship with my permanent secretary colleagues, which is also very important, and with the Cabinet Secretary in particular. Although the relationship with the Prime Minister is paramount, it is the ability to meet Ministers in general. I am satisfied that, if you look at the breadth of my interactions with senior members of the Government, I have what I need to do the job well and they know how to find me.

Chair

I take it from that that nobody has ever said to you, “No, you can’t have a meeting.”

Sir Mark Walport

Correct—no one has ever said that.

Chair

And that is how it should remain.

Sir Mark Walport

Yes.

Stephen Metcalfe

Changing track, I would like to talk a little about the horizon scanning programme, if I may. The Horizon Scanning programme team recently published a couple of papers, which were “Emerging Technologies: Big Data” and the other one was “Resource Nationalism”, which resembled our report on strategically important metals a few years ago. Are these not, really, current issues rather than horizon issues?

Sir Mark Walport

The answer is that they are a bit of both. I will make a general statement and then a specific statement in response to your question. The general statement is that the embeddedness of horizon scanning in Government has changed very significantly since I started in post. In response to your work and others, and I pay particular tribute to the review that Jon Day did, horizon scanning is very well joined-up in Government now. The Cabinet Secretary has his advisory group, of which most of the permanent secretaries are members. Jon Day and I chair a committee with the acronym of GOSH—Government horizon scanning oversight group—which is a case where the words were altered in order to fit the acronym, but leave that aside. The serious point is that that is a good committee and it brings together the senior officials across the spectrum. We are having joint events on a very regular basis; so the scale of horizon scanning has increased. We are bringing in outsiders; we have had a series of two-hour seminars over lunch on a variety of topics. An example is tackling risky behaviour in children and young people, and the future of trust, and they have been summarised in recent web outputs from the programme. The quantity and engagement have increased. On the futures work, there is also a lot of other futures work that is going on. For example, through the work of GO-Science, we are conducting major foresight projects on the future of cities, and the question then is 2065 and an interim of 2040. So it is 25 years from this year and 50 years. We are doing work in response to Lord Filkin’s review on the future of ageing. So we are doing a lot of very far-sighted work as well. Horizon scanning has got to be a mixture of scanning short-term horizons and long-term horizons. We have discussed the semantics of this here before, but there is a lot of very forward-looking work going on. There are many outputs from the cities and the ageing programmes. The easiest way to find them is to look at the website of the Government Office for Science, where we have numerous papers. We have had seminars in 19 cities around the UK. I am going to Cambridge this evening to do an event in partnership with Prospect Magazine, asking the question of what Cambridge will look like in 2065. That stimulated foresight work in cities around the UK. The scale and scope of horizon scanning is very broad. It attacks a lot of issues. More importantly, the transmission mechanisms within Government for the work are much more effective than they used to be. In the case of both ageing and foresight, there is now an internal Government directors’ group that I chair in one case and co-chair in another to look at what the implications of this work are for Government policy.

Stephen Metcalfe

Thank you. The criticism that you are not being imaginative enough in what you decide to look at you would refute.

Sir Mark Walport

Yes.

Stephen Metcalfe

Can you take us through the process of how you, or the group perhaps, identify issues that should be looked at and how you decide whether you should look at them at the 20-year term, the 10-year term or the 50-year term?

Sir Mark Walport

Ultimately, that crystallises in the meeting that the Cabinet Secretary chairs—CSAG—but the answer is that we talk to a lot of people. As it were, we horizon scan ourselves to see what the horizons are. As we have discussed in this Committee before, a great deal of horizon scanning goes on outside Government. It is very important not simply to duplicate work that is done. The bottom line is that we consult widely, and, at the end of the day, of course, the horizon scanning that needs to be done needs to have a customer within Government as well. That is a criterion as well. Ultimately, there is no point in doing it if there is not someone on the receiving side of Government as well.

Stephen Metcalfe

That is an interesting point. That, therefore, requires someone to have identified what they might do with your research.

Sir Mark Walport

No, not necessarily; no, I don’t think so. It is to have identified that there are scanning horizons that are relevant to Government issues. We don’t know what the answer is before we start.

Stephen Metcalfe

No; okay. But there must be issues that a Government should need to know about but do not necessarily have a Government client at the point at which you start to investigate that or scan the horizon.

Sir Mark Walport

Yes and no. The model for foresight programmes goes back a very long way. They have always had sponsor Ministers. While not every single horizon scanning programme has an individual ministerial sponsor—Oliver Letwin is the Minister who has the very broad interest in this and responsibility—one of the things I have learned during my first almost two years now is that it is very important to think about not only outside Government but also inside Government in terms of making sure that there is a customer for the work you do, because, otherwise, the right piece of work at the wrong time can have no impact.

Stephen Metcalfe

That is something we may want to explore again later. Was the analysis for the papers that were published in December last year completed in 2013?

Sir Mark Walport

I would need to check the precise dates. Things, wherever possible, should be published and as soon as possible.

Stephen Metcalfe

Yes, that would be the point. If you are horizon scanning—and we know that science changes rapidly—if something is completed in 2013 and we are reading about it and discussing it in 2014 or 2015, that is quite a big gap. I would be interested to know if there was any particular reason for that, or is it just the slow-turning wheels of Government?

Sir Mark Walport

I think the latter, yes.

Stephen Metcalfe

So we need to find a way of oiling those wheels.

Sir Mark Walport

I am always keen to oil the wheels.

Stephen Metcalfe

Absolutely; very good. You have talked about the way the recommendations in the papers are then communicated across Government. You have talked a little bit about some of the work you are already working on. You have talked about how you identify some of those projects—that you need a Government customer.

Sir Mark Walport

Yes, but also widespread external consultation. We do talk to a lot of people.

Stephen Metcalfe

Both inside Government and outside, to make sure—

Sir Mark Walport

Absolutely. The process for the foresight programmes is to have a lead expert group with an external chair. Sir Alan Wilson chairs the future of cities work, and Professor Sarah Harper, from Oxford, chairs the ageing work.

Stephen Metcalfe

Looking at the pipeline of issues that you have identified, is there anything that is not on there at the moment that you think should be, which has slipped through the grate?

Sir Mark Walport

If you take the scope of the technologies work that we have been doing—we might return to the time horizon, because in terms of policy impacts, if you are looking at 2065, you have to read back to the nearer term if you are going to necessarily effect Government policy—we have a mixture of much more long term, where the immediate implications for policy are less, compared with areas such as emerging technologies, where the policy implications have been immediate and the impacts have been now. On emerging technologies, there have been a great many activities, including seminars in each Government Department at official level, usually attended by a permanent secretary, where we have discussed the impact of, for example, in DEFRA, the opportunities for remote monitoring. There is very active discussion around the emerging technologies, which is having an impact on, if not Government policy, how Departments do their work and how they deliver their services. To specifically answer your question, I don’t think there are any huge gaps, but I am always open to input.

Stephen Metcalfe

This Committee recently did a one-off session on mitochondrial donation. Science is advancing very rapidly and getting to the point where, perhaps, we could have designer babies. Is that something—

Sir Mark Walport

That is an unfortunate terminology, if I may say so.

Stephen Metcalfe

It may well be, but it is possible.

Sir Mark Walport

This is an active area where there has been parliamentary discussion recently. It is a very good example where there is adaptive regulation, so the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority have been able to conduct a public debate. They have acted as a regulator who discusses with the public and Parliament. There have been votes. This, in a sense, is less horizon scanning than the hearing now. This is an area that I know about because of my previous life at the Wellcome Trust. We are at a point now where scientists at Newcastle, for example, are in a position, potentially, to offer prevention to families who have, in the past, had children with devastating mitochondrial diseases. I really do refute the concept that these are designer babies.

Stephen Metcalfe

I agree with that and I would support the technology in terms of how it is currently being framed for medical reasons, but the technology can be used for other things. With horizon scanning of the technology, what about the social impact of that further down the road and in other countries where we have no control where you do, genuinely, have problems arising, perhaps?

Sir Mark Walport

I would refer you to the annual report that I did on innovation and risk. You make the very important point that innovation in and of itself can often be used for both good purposes and bad purposes. That goes back to fire, in the first place. Imagine a discussion about electricity, where you have this stuff that comes out of plugs, and if you put your finger in them it will make you drop dead. The answer is that engineering and technology provides the innovation. It is for democracy, in the case of the UK, to decide how we use the technologies. The area you have picked of mitochondrial disease is a very good example where, clearly, there is the potential to use genetic engineering for purposes that many people would find unacceptable or disagreeable. That is why we have Parliament, that is why we have you, and you are able to make those decisions on our behalf.

Stephen Metcalfe

I have one final question, just for clarity. Are you saying that horizon scanning wouldn’t look at the social impact but only the technical?

Sir Mark Walport

No. Horizon scanning looks at all of the implications. Going back to another discussion, it is why the social sciences and humanities are very much part of the sciences. If you look at the report on innovation and risk, there is a large social science component to that.

Stephen Metcalfe

Did the Government, through their horizon scanning programme, see things like social media taking the role that they have now in society?

Sir Mark Walport

It is something that is certainly discussed. Societies around the world are questioning social media, which, of course, enables everyone to have a voice of a sort they did not have before, and what the implications are for governance in all varieties of models of governance. These are important questions. It turns on another area of technology, which is that new technology brings unanticipated consequences as well. We are seeing unanticipated consequences in relation to the internet where what humans have, effectively, done is created a new, ungoverned technological space, where the internet is not subject to individual national sovereignty, in much the same way as outer space is not subject to sovereignty. Is that a subject for horizon scanning? Absolutely, it is. Some of this is considered, for example, in the report on “The Internet of Things”, which the Prime Minister commissioned.

Stephen Metcalfe

That brings me right back to my very first point, which is, do we need to be more imaginative in the way we select the topics for horizon scanning?

Sir Mark Walport

I don’t know whether we need to be more imaginative, but we need to be imaginative—and you can always be more imaginative.

Stephen Mosley

Since we did our report into scientific advice in emergencies in 2010, we have seen scientific advisory groups in emergencies set up on three occasions: for Fukushima, the winter floods and Ebola.

Sir Mark Walport

Yes; correct.

Stephen Mosley

In 2012 we also saw the Enhanced SAGE Guidance being published. With that new guidance, could you tell us who is responsible for ensuring that SAGE complies with that guidance and what does that involve?

Sir Mark Walport

Ultimately, it is my responsibility because I chair SAGE. I came in after it had been established by my predecessor. In some senses, you would need to ask others what they think about it because I am rather parti pris. It seems to me that it is a mechanism that does work very effectively. We have very close communication between my team, the Government Office for Science and the Civil Contingencies Secretariat. We rehearse on a regular basis. We have substantial input into the National Risk Assessment. We are always discussing how it could be used more effectively. The National Risk Assessment itself is much closer to central Government than it has been. We are constantly trying to identify people who have the potential to help so that we know in advance, although you can never anticipate the precise details of an emergency. In my experience, it worked well. We brought in independent experts during the flooding. It worked well, indirectly, as a peer-review mechanism. I suppose it was slightly different from SAGE formerly, but we held a meeting at the request of No. 10 to bring in international experts on flood management, who essentially peer-reviewed what the UK was doing, so from the Netherlands and the United States. It is a mechanism that works pretty well.

Stephen Mosley

As to the SAGE that met in 2013-14 to look at the winter floods, were any lessons learned from that SAGE? Was any assessment made and were any lessons carried forward into the SAGE that was set up for Ebola?

Sir Mark Walport

Again, you probably need to ask others, but I think it worked very well during the flooding. In a sense, the lesson was that it is a model that works well. You always need to rehearse as well, and that is very important, but we have been doing that and we will continue to rehearse SAGE. I don’t know that there were any lessons learned per se that meant it was different for Ebola. Flexibility is quite an important aspect of this, so the SAGEs that we have conducted around Ebola I have co-chaired with Sally Davies, because she is a very senior colleague who has been absolutely at the coal face of managing the Ebola emergency. In that case, I worked by co-chairing SAGE with her. In the case of flooding, I chaired it on my own. We will always, to some extent, adapt SAGE to the circumstances of the emergency, and that is quite important.

Chair

Just to be clear on that, in the GO-Science 2013-14 annual report there is reference to the flooding event, and it says: “The SAGE Secretariat performed well during this crisis, although lessons have been learned to improve mechanisms for future events.” What were those lessons?

Sir Mark Walport

I will need to write to you about those because I can’t remember them off the top of my head. This is serious. They would have been small lessons rather than big ones.

Stephen Mosley

The most recent one you have held has been on Ebola that you co-chaired. When was a decision taken to call those meetings, because it seemed to be very much when it started appearing on the TV news and we have had warnings of the danger of Ebola for a good many years? We have had it suggested that, maybe, that SAGE should have met quite a bit earlier than it did.

Sir Mark Walport

The first thing to say is that it met as the crisis ramped up. There are lessons for the whole world in terms of the early recognition of the epidemic, which happened much later than it should have done. People didn’t realise early on that it was likely to ramp up, but I don’t think that SAGE was, in any sense, out of kilter with the rest of the response. There is a whole different question, and the President of the World Bank raised it yesterday, about the preparedness of the populations of global nations to pandemic infection. If you look at the National Risk Register, it is at the top right—in other words, likelihood and impact. Pandemic infection is pretty much at the top right, together with space weather, which is there with somewhat less impact but again with quite a high likelihood. The big challenge is whether we could be more effectively prepared in terms of vaccination, because, in principle, it is possible to develop a vaccine for Ebola, but you have seen that there was a market failure beforehand so we did not have a vaccine when we needed it. Of course, it happened to be Ebola. It could have been a variety of other haemorrhagic viral diseases as well.

Stephen Mosley

The Ebola SAGE group met seven months ago. The minutes have not yet been published. Are we expecting them soon?

Sir Mark Walport

The minutes will be published. The purpose of SAGE is to advise Cobra during an emergency, and publishing minutes in the thick of battle, if I may put it like that, is not the top priority.

Stephen Mosley

I can understand that. The Enhanced SAGE Guidance says that SAGE papers and products should be published in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act.

Sir Mark Walport

They will be. The answer is that we do plan to publish them, and that is for transparency, but I would defend the fact that I don’t think they should be published during the event.

Stephen Mosley

I can understand that. At the moment, you only publish the minutes. What about any other products or papers that are produced by SAGE? They are not currently published, are they?

Sir Mark Walport

The minutes are the summary of the discussion, and that is the appropriate thing to do. We are not concealing anything.

Stephen Mosley

I am sure that other papers were produced and discussed at those meetings. Do you think that they should be published?

Sir Mark Walport

Some of them will be published by other routes, because we are receiving privileged advice, for example, in order to enable the modelling of the likely trajectory of the epidemic. The answer is that a lot of that material will come into the public domain by other routes as well.

Stephen Mosley

Finally, just looking ahead to the next Parliament, it is accepted good practice that scientific and technical advice is always reviewed to reflect the latest evidence and lessons learned. In the future, in the next Parliament, can our successor Committee expect the Government to review the operation of SAGEs in light of the three SAGEs that we have had in this Parliament?

Sir Mark Walport

Yes. It is the job of any well-functioning committee to review its own function from time to time. The extent of external review depends on the perceptions of the performance, but, yes, we constantly do review SAGE.

Mr Heath

Can I just go back to Ebola for a moment? I guess this would apply to any major communicable disease that we are talking about, be it human, animal, plant or whatever. Do we have sufficient intelligence on a global scale so that we can recognise sufficiently early the prospect or dangers of clinical disease that will affect us?

Sir Mark Walport

The answer to that has always got to be that we are always going to need to do better. Of course, we have very much better intelligence than we have ever had in the history of humanity. The most dangerous infections are always the infections that have jumped from one species to another; so, in this case, with Ebola, it is from bats to humans. This is a question about the functioning of organisations such as the WHO Centers for Disease Control, which has global activity, and Public Health England. The tools for doing this are much more sophisticated than they were, and it is an area in which social media has started to be quite important as well because it has been used, for example, to try and anticipate and measure the spread of a flu pandemic—and it does it quite successfully. Can we do better? Yes. Is there a magic bullet? No, I don’t think there is, because a lot of these infections do crop up in quite remote places. We have no sovereignty in a lot of the parts of the world where infections arise. I think the global community is much more collaborative. We learn from each episode. Of course, each infection is sui generis; they are all slightly different. We have had the experience of SARS; we have had the experience of a flu pandemic recently, which, fortunately, was not as severe as it might have been; and now we have had the extremely unpleasant experience of Ebola in West Africa.

Mr Heath

It does seem to vary. Remembering my own ministerial experience, I found that I had good intelligence about animal disease. I knew where classical swine fever was happening, but I had appalling intelligence about Chalara fraxinea. Ash dieback was, clearly, advancing across Europe, and nobody was making any attempt to map its process or to find appropriate responses.

Sir Mark Walport

Yes. You raise an interesting question. One of the things that I have done in partnership with Ian Boyd during the past year is to review the evidence capability needs specifically for DEFRA. You can divide infections into the ones you know about, that you can observe and are spreading. It was not, frankly, that it was not known by specialists in the plant health community that ash dieback was around—Chalara—and that it was spreading. That was a failure of communication. Important lessons have been learned from that, and, if you were to explore what went on in DEFRA now, it is very much better. It is not really horizon scanning. It is just scanning of what is out there now in terms of the infectious threats. There are an enormous number of infectious threats in both animal and plant disease. It does raise interesting questions about how humans move species around the planet, which we have done on an extraordinary scale. So, yes, we need very good horizon scanning on the things we know about. Many of these pandemic infections we don’t know about in the same way. Ebola popping up in West Africa was the first time it had happened. It was a long way from where it would be. Could it have been anticipated? That is a possibility, yes, but, of course, there are many other infections that fall into that category as well.

Mr Heath

Yes. It would not have been impossible to have had a contingency against haemorrhagic viruses of some kind, whether it was Ebola or not.

Sir Mark Walport

Yes, but each haemorrhagic fever is different in the sense that there will be no common vaccine, for example. It is a very important question that there will be, rightly, a lot of global debate about, but there is not a simple single solution.

Mr Heath

Is part of the analysis also identifying capacity within our country for dealing with it?

Sir Mark Walport

Yes.

Mr Heath

I will give you a couple of examples. There appears to be a squeeze on taxonomy as a discipline. It is quite an important element of disease control. Yet we see taxonomists becoming an ever-smaller group. Another example is entomologists who have knowledge of pathologies. It is very difficult to recruit people into the research establishments who have those particular skills. Do you see it as part of your job to identify those areas where there may be capacity gaps and take steps to fill them?

Sir Mark Walport

Yes is the answer, where there are capacity gaps that are important for Government policy. I might slightly disagree with you about taxonomy, because taxonomy has become unbelievably interesting again recently. Now that there is a whole field of molecular taxonomy, there are ways of classifying the organisms that inhabit the planet in ways that were never possible before. If you like, there is a new breed of taxonomists. Taxonomists are now the molecular geneticists. A great deal of the work that goes on is very interesting and it tells you fascinating things. The field of infectious diseases has been an enormous beneficiary of new taxonomists. Traditional taxonomists may be endangered, but taxonomy, in its broadest sense, is flourishing. I fully agree with you that there are important areas of science where there remain capacity issues. There is a limit to what Government can do, even though we often hear it said that Governments should do this or that.

Mr Heath

They could try not to close down specialist units.

Sir Mark Walport

Those are not decisions made by Government a lot of the time. They are made by research councils and the people who control research funding. Those are, as you know, arm’s length bodies.

Chair

The Government control research funding.

Sir Mark Walport

Yes. We had a discussion last week about the review of the research councils.

Mr Heath

I have one last question. Should we be envious of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and want to have something similar here?

Sir Mark Walport

No. We should be proud of our own public health. We are very strong in public health and, in particular, in microbiology. It happened that two of the world experts on Ebola—two of the co-discoverers—are based in the UK. Our science in this area is enormously strong. CDC has a scale that we do not have, but the scale is the US economy. Is it a principle that it is important for the UK to have a very powerful clinical microbiology public health set-up? Yes, I agree with you fully.

Chair

Just pursuing David’s example of taxonomy, where scientific information is collated over long periods of time as well—there are issues around the Met Office, oceanography and all of those other disciplines where long-term datasets have become hugely important—the Government, surely, must have a role to ensure that, in regard to the future needs of the science community and, indeed, in the example that David gave of the Government in an emergency, those data are collected properly.

Sir Mark Walport

Chair, I agree with you absolutely, and one of the great things about the UK is that we have very important archival collections, so the collections of organisations like Kew are very important for taxonomy. We have great archival collections and those are very important to us to understand what goes on. Some of our microbial collections are extremely important because they can tell you about infections in the 1950s, the 1940s and the 1930s. It is very important. It raises, again, the important question for science funding in general, which is the balance between supporting infrastructure and the revenue costs that go with that. Who is going to curate genome sequences? Who is going to curate organisms?

Chair

That can’t be commercialised.

Sir Mark Walport

No, but these are questions for Government science. That is why a strategy for science is important.

Chair

Just sticking on the risk issue, have the Government’s approach to using scientific input and evidence to assess risk changed in the light of Blackett?

Sir Mark Walport

I can only comment in the last two years. To go back to the discussion we were just having, the scientific input into the National Risk Register is at a very high level.

Chair

We know that there have been some changes and we have been very positive about the changes, because some of them came as a result of recommendations that we made. What involvement have you, personally, had in the most recent update to the National Risk Assessment?

Sir Mark Walport

A big review is going on for next year, but I have been quite closely involved in meetings and discussions. I would need to look at my diary to work out all of the individual events, but I have been quite closely involved. I regularly meet Civil Contingencies Secretariat staff. I chair a sub-committee of the National Security Committee on science and technology, which, again, is closely allied to national risk assessments.

Chair

Consequent upon Blackett and the recommendations of this Committee, obviously there have been massive improvements in the web presentation, but have there been other improvements in the way communications occur with the public? I am thinking, particularly, of last year, in the flood events, where I saw news broadcasts with blunt criticisms of Government failing to communicate. Do you think it has got better?

Sir Mark Walport

Again, I do not myself have a personal long-time window over which I could observe change. I do not know if this provides any reassurance, but we have specifically had a SAGE rehearsal around communications alone. We have brought in people with expertise. I cannot go into the details of the scenario here, but the scenario was all about communications. It was not about the science; it was about how we communicated. It is a subject that we do take very seriously. Rehearsal does happen. In terms of SAGE functioning, we have a very clear guideline, because there have been complaints from some quarters about the fact that scientists who are involved in SAGE may, in some way, be gagged from speaking about using their expertise. We have made clear in every SAGE meeting that that is not the case. We expect people who are experts in whatever their subject is to talk to the media. The one thing they must not use is the privileged information that they may have gained in confidence as part of the management of the national emergency, but they should certainly use their expertise to engage.

Chair

I know we have had discussions with some scientists who take the view that, when engaging in SAGE on civil issues, there should be no requirement for them to be committed to the Official Secrets Act.

Sir Mark Walport

It goes back to “in the heat of battle”. There is how you manage something, and then there are people, rightly, in my view, using their expertise to talk to the public. As I say, they should not use privileged information.

Chair

Going right back to the beginning of the process of how the register is compiled, in the light of the very obvious facts that there are events that have occurred that have required the triggering of Cobra and SAGE, are you satisfied that the mechanism for sucking in advice from the science community here in the UK and globally is as strong as it could be in terms of ensuring that all of the available knowns are there for consideration?

Sir Mark Walport

The short answer to that question is that I am satisfied that in the UK we have good processes and that, in the event of emergencies, we have managed to get the experts. But the global question is different, where I am not satisfied at all.

Chair

It seems to me that you and your colleagues, globally, need to be working on issues like this, but also there should be an open mechanism for members of the scientific community who have concerns about things that are absent from the register to make an input. Do you think that could be achieved?

Sir Mark Walport

I can assure you that I receive no shortage of input from people who have scientific views when emergencies are happening. Examples are often good, and I pick the example from Sir John Beddington’s time of Fukushima and the tsunami where, because we had an established mechanism for managing science in emergencies, he was able to assemble a group in very short order that included experts on nuclear power stations, meteorologists and people who monitor plumes, and so was able to provide advice through the British embassy in Tokyo to UK citizens living in Japan that they did not need to evacuate.

Chair

That was an exemplar of good practice and leadership by Sir John and Mike Weightman. That was not the question. I am thinking more of the event that we looked at involving volcanic ash, and endless numbers of volcanologists have asked me since how on earth did it go off the register when it was previously on. It is the input side that I am interested in.

Sir Mark Walport

I will respond in two parts, which is that it is extremely easy to be wise with the retrospectoscope. There is lots of wisdom after the event. I can’t comment because it was before my time on what was and what was not on the register at that time. But we do do quite a lot of work and we speak to our colleagues in the United States about what should be included in the risk register. Each year there is a review of the National Risk Assessment in terms of whether there are new risks or not. It is a very widespread consultation. Is it perfect? I very much doubt it. Are we going to be caught by something we don’t expect? There is always a risk of that, but there is a good process for looking and seeing. I see an important part of my job as being getting out and about, if I can put it that way. These are topics that come up all the time.

Graham Stringer

We are running out of time. I am sorry that I missed the session last week when you discussed the Science and Innovation strategy. Could you tell us how that document was produced, and did you write it or have a major input into it?

Sir Mark Walport

I was asked by Ministers to contribute to it. There was no single author. It was a Government document. It was produced by a team, and, yes, I did have input into it but I would not claim to be the author.

Graham Stringer

In relation to the role of engineers in Government, have you managed to improve their involvement and influence within Government in your time as chief scientific adviser?

Sir Mark Walport

The short answer is that there is an enormous amount of engineering advice in Government. I have a really extensive briefing here on the number of engineers and where they are.

Graham Stringer

That was my next question.

Sir Mark Walport

Maybe I can combine the two. We have distinguished engineers as chief scientists. One of the most recent appointments of a chief scientist is John Loughhead at DECC. He is an extremely distinguished engineer. Going through them, DECC employs around 90 engineering specialists, and most of them are recruited externally and most of them are encouraged to achieve chartered status. The Forestry Commission has 65 engineers. At the DFT there are engineers inside and in places like the Highways Agency.

Graham Stringer

Does your list distinguish between policy and delivery in terms of the engineers?

Sir Mark Walport

These are professional engineers. There are people who have engineering, scientific and all sorts of qualifications who are in policy roles, who don’t necessarily identify themselves as an engineer per se, but there are engineers all over the place, I am pleased to say. I view it as a good thing.

Graham Stringer

We do. Let me ask the question in a slightly different way. Would you say that their influence and importance in Government had improved or changed over the last three or four years?

Sir Mark Walport

Again, it is a very short time horizon to ask about improvement.

Graham Stringer

It is.

Sir Mark Walport

Sir John Perkins’s review was influential, and that was on engineering outside Government. Engineers have a very strong and important position in Government. If you look at many of the challenges that Government Departments face in terms of policy issues, they are around engineering. The Department for Transport is engineering. It is also, of course, the social sciences. That is one of the things I have become very aware of during my 18 months, which is that there is the engineering and then there is people’s behaviour in how they use engineering as well. We need both. But DECC—energy and climate change—is all engineering, as is Transport. A huge amount of work goes on in Government on infrastructure, and engineers play an important part in that.

Graham Stringer

This Committee has been concerned about the appointment of departmental scientific advisers, and we have also been concerned about the tick-box approach to scientific advisers in Departments where somebody takes it on as part of their role. They tick the box and say, “Oh, yes, we’re doing a day a week in this job.” Are you concerned about that kind of approach to departmental scientific advisers?

Sir Mark Walport

I won’t say that I don’t recognise it at all, but it is an exaggeration of the situation as a whole. Most Government Departments have very serious chief scientific adviser input, and that is the majority. There are some Departments where, probably, both you and I would like more scientific input. While my role is to encourage, ultimately I am not accountable and I can’t force Departments to have a chief scientist, but it is a constant discussion. I believe that, on the whole, we are making good progress. Are there a couple of Departments where there is more to do? Yes. There are Departments where we are moving forward.

Graham Stringer

Can I move on to communicating science and communicating climate science? In the report we did on communicating climate science, where we tried to get to a definition on which everybody could agree on what climate change was, I thought the Government’s response was particularly slippery. I would be grateful if you could expand on it a bit. Having accepted that Professors Rapley and Slingo’s definitions were there, the response says: “In this case ‘climate change’ means not just the physical manifestation but also steps taken in the UK and internationally to reduce” greenhouse gas emissions “and other human impacts of the climate.” Why do we need a process as opposed to just a straightforward scientific definition?

Sir Mark Walport

With respect, there are two slightly different issues. The question is how effectively the Government communicate on climate and the potential policy decisions, and whether individuals agree with the content of that communication. They are two slightly different things. On the communication side, I have, literally, just come this morning from the launch of the global 2050 calculator. One of the things that the Government, through DECC, have done, which has been of global importance in the communication of climate change, is to develop the 2050 calculator, which was originally developed for the UK alone. There are now 22 2050 calculators in countries such as China and India, which has had a huge impact. Today, the Secretary of State and the Climate Minister both attended the launch of the 2050 global calculator, which is one of the most powerful communication tools that I can think of in relation to climate. The communication by Government is of a whole range of things. My job is to look at the science itself. The Government’s job is to communicate the things that the Government want to communicate. This is a subject that is taken very seriously and many people think that our communication of climate science was exemplary. If you look at the question—I have it here—which is from the “Public Attitudes to Science” review from 2014, there was a specific question: “How informed do people feel about climate change?”; 78% felt informed and 99%, at least, had heard of the topic, which was the top. Vaccination came next, renewable energy next, animals in research is a little way down, and nuclear power. If you look at it in terms of public communication it is effective, but it is not the role of Government alone to communicate in this area. It is the role of the community as a whole. There is active communication. People will disagree about the individual content of what is said.

Graham Stringer

There is a lot in that answer. The calculator, about which I had a presentation, is very impressive indeed. My point was that, if you decide on a definition of climate change that everybody can agree on, that is usually a good starting base for communicating something clearly and precisely. Why, then, do you need to say next to that that it needs to be accompanied by something which is likely to confuse it? In the Government’s response it says: “However, we believe that this definition needs to be accompanied by a broader statement to cover how the term is commonly used. Climate scientists in DECC are considering the issue and will come up with a suitable formulation…”. I am commenting on what you are saying. I don’t quite understand why that extra is necessary, and has that extra accompanying statement been produced yet?

Sir Mark Walport

We have discussed in the past the semantics of individual words, but, if you look at any dictionary definition, you will mostly find three or four related ways of expressing it. There is no single biblical legislative definition, and all of these things need to be framed. That is all that that is intended to do.

Graham Stringer

Where would members of the public who wanted to learn more about contentious areas of science, such as climate change, GM foods and mitochondrial donation, go to look for the information that the Government produce?

Sir Mark Walport

Again, there is a great deal of research in this area. The research of Nick Pidgeon in Cardiff particularly looks at the public information in relation to climate. As to the more generic question of where people get their scientific information from, that was tackled in the “Public Attitudes to Science” survey. The hierarchy was TV news programmes, other TV programmes, print newspapers, although it depended a bit on your age. Younger people have different sources. If you are 16 to 24, 21% of them will use social networks as opposed to 6% of the people in this room. I should say generically. It’s an age. I can’t be as specific. The short answer is that it is well understood where people get their information from. They get it from a variety of different sources. Personally, I have taken a very active role. As you know, I have done a national tour of open lectures around climate and weather.

Graham Stringer

Often the learned societies are more trusted than Government in these areas. Have you worked particularly with them to get them to communicate the more difficult controversial areas of science since you have been in post?

Sir Mark Walport

I have worked closely with the national academies. Indeed, the Royal Society has worked with the National Academy of Science in the United States to produce a very clear document on climate. So there are many examples where, yes, we do work with national academies.

Graham Stringer

Are there any other areas in these difficult areas?

Sir Mark Walport

The Academy of Medical Science is working on mitochondrial disease, for example, so, yes.

Graham Stringer

Finally, how important do you consider the role of Sciencewise is, and in your view should it continue?

Sir Mark Walport

The public funding of science engagement is important and, therefore, the programme that Sciencewise does is important.

Graham Stringer

So you think it should continue.

Sir Mark Walport

I have not personally done a detailed review. All science funding needs to be scrutinised all the time, so I would need some notice of that question, but on the broad principle of whether the Government as part of their funding should be funding public engagement work, the answer to that is yes.

Chair

Instead of that notice of the question—

Sir Mark Walport

That is not a question I would be able to answer in a very short time, either.

Chair

We have covered a huge amount of ground in the last hour or so, so we are extremely grateful for your time once again. Please pass our thanks on to your colleagues, the departmental chief scientists, for the input they have made over this Parliament as well. Thank you for your attendance this morning.

Sir Mark Walport

May I take the opportunity to thank you, Chair, and the Committee for your work on science, engineering and technology, and indeed the social sciences, if I may say so, because your scrutiny is important? Your inputs are helpful. We do take notice of them. Thank you and my congratulations to you.

Chair

Thank you. Oral evidence: Legacy—Parliament 2010–15, HC 758 39