Oral evidence: Leaving the EU: implications and opportunities for science and research, HC 502Tuesday 5 July 2016
Oral evidence, 5 July 2016.
Witnesses
Professor Ottoline Leyser CBE FRS, Chair, Royal Society Science Policy Advisory Group, Stuart Pritchard, EU Affairs Manager, Wellcome Trust, and Professor Martin Vetterli, President, National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation, gave evidence.
Chair
Can I welcome you to the panel and thank you for being patient with us while we voted and questioned the first panel? It is very kind of you. Can I particularly welcome Professor Vetterli, who has flown in at very short notice from Switzerland to give us evidence today? It is very kind of him and I am aware of the time constraints that he is on for his flight home. Thank you very much for being here. I am going to start off by asking you the same question that I asked the first panel. Do you think that there are some basic principles that should inform the Government’s way forward as they begin to negotiate an exit agreement, and what do you think those basic principles should be if the best interests of science are to be represented? Can I begin with you, Professor Leyser?
Professor Leyser
Absolutely. I am going to take this question very literally and go to the very basic principles. There is a very broad consensus among the scientific community that science is done by humanity, for humanity; it enriches all our lives by increasing our understanding of the world and provides solutions to some of the most serious problems that we are facing as well as driving prosperity and economic growth. It is absolutely a core pillar of society and needs to be recognised as such. Because of this, it is conducted in a truly transnational context. It moves faster, further and more efficiently if it is run through these transnational collaborations and very dynamic, integrated networks, and the movement of people through these networks brings diversity into science, which is essential for driving high‑quality science. I think, crucially, the transnational way that science works also mitigates against the dangers of the abuse of science, whether that is by nations or corporations, and so there are huge benefits to the international community of scientists for society, and that is the core principle that we need to hold on to. The referendum decision was not about science—it was about a whole range of things. To me, we have to keep our eyes on this prize as scientists and to move forward in a way that protects the extraordinary benefits that science has. This is particularly important for the UK because we have such a strong leadership role in science, such a lot to contribute, that remaining fully engaged in the international community is the primary driver for how we should work going forwards.
Stuart Pritchard
Thank you and thank you for the invitation to come along this afternoon. I would agree with Professor Leyser’s points. The trust is a global charitable foundation and it invests in excellent science wherever it may be. The UK is a great place to do science. We would hope that it continues to be a great place where science can thrive, so it is important for both the Government to provide clarity in the immediate short and longer term about what their vision is but also for the scientific community to organise itself to provide a coherent vision, wherever possible, when you have so many disciplines and priorities. For me, a key thing we need to do jointly is to ensure that there is that vision and put a mechanism in place to identify the priorities for the immediate and short term. That is a much more “process” approach than necessarily the vision that Professor Leyser has pointed out.
Chair
Professor Vetterli, obviously Switzerland has not had an exit negotiation as such, but you have had to deal with the EU response following your recent referendum and your challenges in retaining access to funding frameworks and so on. What would be your advice to a country wanting to maintain the quality and the prominence of its science base during a process like this?
Professor Vetterli
Thank you very much for the invitation. It is an honour to be here. As I understand it, this is a discussion about the divorce, and I can only give the perspective of Switzerland and its relationship to the EU, which is not the story of a divorce but rather an unconsummated union. Switzerland was associated to the EU for about 10 years in the framework programme as a fully associated member, and then we had a vote on a very similar issue, mass immigration, in February 2014, which excluded us from Horizon 2020 for about six months. We have had a partial association since September 2014. This will run out next year exactly on this issue of mass immigration. We have currently access to two instruments: the European Research Council and the Marie Curie programme. These are two excellent instruments of the EU programme, and I want to insist on this. I listened to the first panel and it was about access and influence. The good news about Switzerland is that it is such a small country that it never has any influence, so it is only interested in access. It is also interested in free movement. Because it is so small, we cannot run Swiss science if we do not have free movement. In Switzerland, we had an image problem after the mass immigration vote. Also, in the scientific community, when recruiting people—and just like the UK we recruit all over the world—we had an image problem, and that is a serious problem. My main point is that you want to have access to the competition, and the competition in the world is about major players—that is, North America, Asia and Europe. The competition, for example, within Switzerland, which we had to run for the six months when we were excluded, was a joke, because you cannot run Swiss championships if you can play in the Euro, and I do not have to explain the soccer image to the folks here in the room. So it is not just about money. It is about the quality of the competition. For example, if you take the champions league or the competition in Europe, which is the European Research Council, the universities across Europe rank each other according to their success in the ERC. Even if you replicate a UK competition with all the money you can put on the table, it is just not going to be the real thing. As an anecdote, this morning, just before coming, I had coffee with a professor from one of the major UK universities, and he told me that he was thinking of taking a 50% appointment in an EU country so that he could continue participating in the ERC competition. I also want to say that I totally agree that the UK is a beacon in European science, and so I would be very happy if the UK would of course stay and we could all be a happy family. I want to say that the investment in infrastructures has given rise to great things. You paid into CERN, and it happens to be partly in Switzerland; it produced the Higgs boson, which was a Nobel prize for the UK. It also produced the world wide web, okay, which is probably the best known product of CERN. Research has also produced things like DeepMind, which is a company here in London, but please note: this company was bought by a major US concern, by Google, and that is also a concern. If we are playing in too small a league, we are not going to be able to compete on the world stage. That certainly is the opinion of Switzerland.
Chair
So we have issues of competition, making sure that we remain global players. In the context of science and research, what do you think is the single most important thing that we need to be protecting or achieving during these exit negotiations? What would be your priorities and how do you think they would relate to models?
Stuart Pritchard
We need to demonstrate that we are open. We had the point about “open for business”, and I think we need to be open-minded and open to mobility. There is more work that needs to be done to explore the point that was discussed with the first panel around freedom of movement for researchers versus the wider population. It is fair to say there is a huge amount of uncertainty in the community at the moment. I do not think it is hysteria. I think it is people who are very worried about their future prospects, and that uncertainty needs to be met with clarity. Some of that uncertainty cannot be met in the short term because we do not know the terms under which UK organisations and researchers can participate in future EU activity, but we should be starting to map out how we can address that uncertainty—it is a very fair thing to be concerned about if you are a researcher—and have that reassurance, that calmness. The Minister Jo Johnson has already sought to try to do that, and it is a very good reflection on him that he has done that so early after the result to try to provide reassurance to the community that he is aware of that. In fact, he has already been in touch with the research commissioner to seek assurances about continuing UK participation in EU programmes. It is a very key part for me that we try to demonstrate that we remain open and that, for example, we provide reassurance. The trust obviously is interested in the life sciences in particular; we have a very successful life sciences sector in the UK. The industry relies on certainty. It wants to know where it is going to make its investment, where it is going to support science, providing certainty on some of the key issues around, for example, what happens when the European Medicines Agency leaves the UK: how does that affect the life sciences industry here and those in the wider ecosystem who work with it? What happens then to the MHRA’s responsibilities and the resources needed to fill the gap? There are a lot of reassurances that need to be provided and a timetable of how that can be done. It would be unfair to place all of that on the Government’s shoulders, but a lot of that should be coming as soon as possible.
Chair
Do you have anything to add, Professor Leyser?
Professor Leyser
I would agree that, essentially to me, there are two priority tiers, the first of which is absolutely illustrated very strongly by Jo Johnson’s very public announcement of the importance of science in the forthcoming negotiations and that the UK is open for visitors. Your piece in The Guardian today was very much a welcome contribution in that space. There are specific things that could be done. I realise that they may not be politically possible, but it would be possible, at least in theory, to guarantee that all currently open EU‑funded grants would be financially secure regardless of the terms of exit. That could be done straightaway. I do not think it would be very expensive. I realise there are going to be serious financial constraints going forward, but none the less that could happen and it would send a very strong message. Similarly, there has been a lot of discussion about non‑UK EU nationals currently working in the UK and what guarantees can be provided to them. Certainly in a science context, it would be great if we were able to guarantee the security of those people in their roles in the UK. Specific things could be done, but a continuation of these more general statements about the importance of science is very important, and that feeds through into the establishment of clear mechanisms for negotiation. The previous panel emphasised this a lot, where it was really clear that science was a voice at the table. We have talked a lot about the importance of having that science voice at the table in the context of the policy for science, but that voice can also play a very important role in the science policy that will also be a necessary part of the negotiations as we go forward, particularly in the areas of some of these regulations.
Carol Monaghan
Could I touch on that a bit more? Jo Johnson said last week that we were going to be pushing ahead with the Higher Education and Research Bill. Since this involves the UK’s research funding and governance—well, governance of English universities—is this the right time, do you think, to push on with this Bill, given that it is going to lead to further uncertainty in the HE sector, Professor Leyser?
Professor Leyser
This is a very controversial issue. I have heard arguments on both sides. There is a feeling that further instability would be a problem, but there is also a strong argument that stalling things sends entirely the wrong message about the way that the Government are now working. The Bill is complex because there is the teaching part, and there is really a major revolution in the way teaching is organised in the higher education sector. That part, in my experience, is much more controversial than the research part. In the context of what we are talking about today, if it is properly done, the institution of UKRI could provide exactly the kind of mechanism we need to gather the voice of science together from across the country and feed that into the policy arena and back out into the scientific community. So, in principle, that body could be crucial in the discussions going forward if it is implemented properly in the spirit of the Nurse review.
Carol Monaghan
I heard it called “You‑Cry”, but maybe that is what we are all doing at the moment; I do not know. If I could push you a bit more on this, this is an organisation that has been set up and I suppose is carrying the hopes of the scientific community just now as we enter potential negotiations. Do you think it will be able to influence a debate on our relationship with the EU?
Professor Leyser
UK Research and Innovation has not been set up fully; it is very much in the process of being set up. As I say, if we get the right calibre of people on to that committee—the recommendations from the Nurse review were precisely to provide a forum for exactly the kind of integrated voice that we need for UK science in this kind of crucial negotiation going forward—it has the potential to be absolutely spot on what we need right now.
Carol Monaghan
Stuart Pritchard, do you have any further comments?
Stuart Pritchard
I would agree with that. The devil will inevitably be in the detail, but if there is strong leadership it has the potential to reinforce the scientific community’s voice in future negotiations. Again, it is beholden on us as a scientific community to support that negotiation by co‑ordinating and having a clear set of priorities. We are a member of the Association of Medical Research Charities; the patient voice is also important in this debate. There are large aspects of European Union research that support the needs of patients, so there will be an opportunity as well to have that patient voice in the discussion.
Carol Monaghan
As has already been said in the previous panel, speed is of the essence here, getting this institute or organisation, whatever we are going to call it, set up very quickly so that it can play a full role. Do you feel that we have a handle on that?
Professor Leyser
It is an interesting question in the context of the White Paper. As I say, there is a feeling that that research side of the White Paper is better developed and it would be easier to implement that effectively. There is a concern if the entire White Paper gets rushed through without proper scrutiny and really detailed debate, both within the community and within Parliament, that it could wind up suboptimal across the piece, particularly in the teaching context. Some careful thought needs to go on in terms of how to take that Bill forward in a way that maximises the benefits for the immediate opportunities and concerns of the research community in the European context without dragging with it perhaps less well thought-through aspects associated with the teaching side.
Carol Monaghan
Thank you. I am presuming, Professor Vetterli, that you do not have comments on this, but possibly you do; it is a UK‑specific question.
Professor Vetterli
It sounds like an interesting debate, but no.
Carol Monaghan
Stuart Pritchard, do you have any final comments or are you happy to leave it at that?
Stuart Pritchard
A good summary is not to rush it and to find the right balance.
Graham Stringer
What are the prospects of continuing in the Horizon 2020 programme? How important is it? You heard the previous panel say that what we should be aiming for is an enhanced associate country status. Do you think that is realistic? There are three questions there.
Professor Leyser
My understanding is that we are in Horizon 2020, and so with Horizon 2020 there is not specifically an issue. It is Horizon 2030, or whatever, where things really become a concern, although I suppose it is possible, depending on how the exit negotiations go, that that current agreement could be broken. That is one thing that needs to be discussed at the negotiating table. The essence of your question is how important it is that we have access to those European funding mechanisms, and I think this point has been covered quite extensively by the previous panel. I would say certainly the zeros on the cheques are important, but more important is the complementary nature of those funding mechanisms that are not mirrored in a lot of the UK‑based funding mechanisms, particularly in terms of funding for collaboration and funding for mobility. For example, there is this excellent Marie Curie scheme that was mentioned earlier, where very junior researchers get their own fellowship to move between countries in the European Union and push forward a project of their own. There is essentially nothing like that in the UK, with the possible exception of the Henry Dale fellowships, which are very specifically focused in the biomedical community. So it is not just about money. It is about the way in which that money is spent to create these really important networks that are the lifeblood of science. It is all about people. We can write papers and everybody can read them as much as they like. In the end, the way science works is this diversity of people, of ideas, interacting, and you build this network early in your career and that survives for the whole of your career. You know that person; they know that person: it is that informal flow of information that really drives science.
Graham Stringer
The third question—whether it is 2020 or 2030—is whether it is realistic to get an enhanced associate status.
Professor Leyser
I am an optimist. I do not see why not, but that is down to the negotiation, and, as I said at the beginning, although I think the vision of the scientific community is very much that science should be woven into the very fabric of society and policy, and very much at the table, we appreciate that there are other priorities and there will be compromises.
Graham Stringer
Do you see any particular areas of science that are at risk because of the decision to leave the European Union?
Professor Leyser
Again, it would be difficult to point to very specific areas of science. I would say that, in general, across science in the UK, because of the really excellent work of the biomedical research charities, the biomedical funding stream is in a very different place from virtually the whole of the rest of science. Some of these European mechanisms—for example, the European Research Council funding—have had a massive impact on the rest of science in comparison to the biomedical area. I am not suggesting that the biomedics will be fine so we should not worry about them, but, none the less, it is a huge issue that some of these key mechanisms will disappear, potentially.
Chair
Professer Vetterli, do you want to answer on any of those questions?
Graham Stringer
Before you do, can I ask one specifically to you about the Swiss experience of associate states? When you were in the Horizon 2020 programme, did you lose the rights to intellectual property or did you keep them while you were in those programmes?
Professor Vetterli
I think these are almost orthogonal issues because intellectual property is handled differently in single-investigator grants, where the investigator keeps the IP versus where, in networked research, it is always a very complicated issue, which I do not think is clearly settled, not just in the EU programmes but also in other programmes. If I had to pick choices, when we had the partial association, we decided in Switzerland to keep the European Research Council, because that is the champion’s league of research, and it is extremely important in Switzerland to attract the top‑notch researchers to Swiss universities. As you probably know, in the ERC, if you look at the top 10 ranked universities, they are either from England, Switzerland or Israel, and I think there is one maybe from Europe. Clearly, we are very competitive and that is why we want to have access to this. The other one I totally agree with is the promotion of young talent, because in some sense the science of tomorrow is done by the people who choose now to pursue a postdoc and an academic career, and they need funding to be independent very early. If we do not have schemes for this, we are going to lose a generation. The other thing is that the UK is one of the countries in Europe that has an open academic system, unlike many of the continental European countries. Switzerland also has an open academic system where we do not look at the passport of people that we recruit, and this, I think, is what makes the excellence here in the UK and also in Switzerland.
Chair
Just to follow up on a couple of those points, Professer Vetterli, you have described the Swiss model as an “unconsummated union”, you are coming to an end date of the current negotiation arising from the referendum, and you are going to have to make a decision about where you go from here. From our perspective, it would be quite interesting for us to understand what you, as a science community in Switzerland, are saying about how well your current situation has been working and what you are asking for in what is going forward. What are your key priorities and why?
Professor Vetterli
We want the cake and to eat it too, of course, which means—
Chair
Join the club.
Professor Vetterli
—we would like free movement of talent without free movement of persons. We have heard this before, but this sounds like something that is the quadrature of the circle. What we do in Switzerland from the science and innovation and business community is to explain that high-quality science is what drives innovation and therefore the economic machine. For this, we need to have access to talent, and that means free movement of persons or association with the EU under terms to be negotiated, especially for Switzerland, which is completely subcritical from the size. If we did not have access to international talent, the quality would gradually disappear.
Chair
Can I also go on to ask about the decisions that Switzerland has made about regulatory frameworks, because, as I understand it, you have a lot of your own regulatory frameworks in a number of areas, including clinical trials, and you still have a very large pharmaceutical industry in Switzerland. Can I try to get a sense of how having independent Swiss regulatory frameworks has influenced your international collaborations, especially between Switzerland and the EU, obviously, because we have been told that it would be necessary for us to mirror EU regulations?
Professor Vetterli
This is a very good question. I would not like to give a wrong answer because it is quite technical. We have a division that does clinical trials. I would rather ask and give you a precise answer in writing.
Chair
Thank you very much. It would also be helpful, when you are gathering that information, for us to understand about the financial and bureaucratic burden of running two systems alongside, because we assume that industry/Government have to co‑operate with the national regulatory system as well as an EU regulatory system if they want to access that market. It would be very helpful for us to understand how that works in practice.
Professor Vetterli
Okay.
Chair
Thank you very much.
Derek Thomas
Can I come back to a point that was made earlier by Professor Leyser? You said there would be serious financial constraints. Can you unpack that a bit in terms of how you were judging that or why you said that?
Professor Leyser
Serious financial constraints—I meant for the UK, but, okay, I suppose it depends. I am not the Governor of the Bank of England, but he tells us that we might be heading into even more fiscally constrained times than the times we have been in. Obviously, those are choices for you to make, not me—outside the ballot box—but if the country continues to work under an austerity‑type regime, there are constraints and you have to prioritise where to put the money. Obviously, I would say we should put more into science and to providing rapidly those guarantees that I spoke about to stabilise the uncertainty in the community, but I appreciate that there are other demands on that money.
Derek Thomas
I picked that up because, if your community is saying there would or will be, that is talking us down and threatening the very work that you are trying to preserve because we do not know that is true; it may be or it may be not. We just do not know. Can I take you to any specific research areas that would disproportionately suffer if the freedom of movement across the European Union was curtailed and any areas where you think research might be improved or opened up if we have easier movement across the rest of the world? Can you think of examples where research may—
Professor Leyser
As I say, research is all about people, and despite the fact that there are wonderful ways to collaborate with people—we can meet people by Skype these days—we still are very committed to the scientific conference. It is those face‑to‑face conversations at a conference, the lab visits and the time you spend working in another country as a young researcher—that networking—that are crucial to the whole fabric of the scientific enterprise. I do not think I would say there are particular disciplines that would suffer. The whole of science would definitely be less effective, work less well, if it were more difficult for people to move around in general. Of course, at the moment we, for example, manage to collaborate successfully with the US without complete freedom of movement and so on and so forth. So I am not saying that it is impossible to generate a system where we have sufficient freedom of movement to support the scientific enterprise outside the EU, whatever arrangements we have in the long run, but it is undoubtedly the case that the really low administrative burden—the real ease of movement— is helpful. We all of us have way too much work to do, and any extra time we have to spend filling out forms, or whatever, is not good. There is a lot of discussion, I would say, about the extent to which the arrangements we have within European countries disproportionately somehow prioritise or bias the situation into collaboration with those countries in contrast to other countries. I do not think that is the case. I think that scientists will collaborate with the best people for their project wherever they happen to be found, but it is way easier to do that if you happen to have access to a collaborative funding mechanism and complete freedom of movement with other countries; it helps; it makes it easier, and you can spend more time on your science and less time on applying for a visa just to go to a conference. I do not see those things as being in conflict—that we have bureaucracy with some countries but not with other countries.
Stuart Pritchard
Can I add to that? Some very important points have been made there. The value of the UK environment is the diversity of funding that we have and the EU component is part of that, but I do not think we should get too hung up on the funding aspect, important as it is for a lot of research organisations. It is precisely this collaboration and mobility. There is not some doomsday scenario that suddenly scientists are going to stop talking to each other, but when Brexit occurs, exactly as Professor Leyser said, that additional complexity may make the UK less competitive for some potential international collaboration. We should not get too hung up on the funding point, important as it is. There is that much more valuable collaborative consideration as well, and it is just “the death by a thousand cuts” that we need to think about.
Derek Thomas
Thank you for that. UK scientists and researchers move freely around the European Union. If, for some reason, the European Union countries decide they do not want that any longer and UK researchers and scientists had to remain in the UK or go outside European Union countries, what actual impact would that have on the UK? I am not suggesting I would advocate that, but what impact would that have on the UK?
Stuart Pritchard
It is a very difficult hypothetical to answer, but the point has been made about collaboration in science being so critical, and anything that hinders that mobility or collaboration is going to be detrimental to the UK and its science base. As part of any future negotiation, we need to make sure that we are thinking very carefully about how this mobility issue is handled because it is the lifeblood of science: that is both in terms of the ability of our researchers to go within the EU but also the potential perception that the UK is less open. We will lose out on global collaborations if people feel the UK is in some way constraining itself by either restricting mobility or not allowing a better negotiation for mobility. We have to be very careful about the perception that this might present to the rest of the world.
Derek Thomas
Professer Vetterli, to what extent have the free movement issues affected Switzerland’s science relationship with the EU? Have any aspects of Switzerland’s science been handicapped by restrictions on free movement?
Professor Vetterli
Fortunately, thanks to smart negotiation, we were only out in the cold for six months. Six months is a short time, and I think we will survive that hiccup. If we get kicked out in 2017, which is not unlikely, it will be a major blow, potentially, because, as a science hub, we will be less attractive. Also, to answer a related question, “Which scientific fields will be hurt?”, I have the opinion that the fast‑moving fields are the ones where you are most dependent on free movement of persons. If you took all the fields related to computer science, machine learning and so on—I mentioned it earlier—these are the fields where, for example, in Switzerland we do not have the talent. When Google doubles the size of its research site in Zurich, they import people from all over. That is part of being excellent, and that is part of why Google is in Zurich and not somewhere else. It is not going to be a sort of sundown from one day to the next. It is about exactly this attractiveness factor, the fact that researchers go where the good science is: they like to move; they do not like paperwork.
Derek Thomas
You may have already answered this, but do you have immigration or visa policies that give higher priority to scientists and researchers in Switzerland, or are you aware of any models like that?
Professor Vetterli
Switzerland being a complicated country, our quotas are handled by cantons, and, again, I do not have the exact answer because there might be differences between cantons.
Victoria Borwick
I appreciate that we did touch on this in the earlier panel and you were here, but we are again very interested to go back to the elements or aspects of EU membership that help our science and research—the free movement of people, the access to markets, the regulation and the funding mechanisms—and we are particularly interested in research collaboration, because we know that, often, the UK are partners in many different aspects, either of the research or investment at some stage. I would welcome your views on which aspects you think are the most important and how we should maintain it. The point is—and I think the Chair said this herself—we are not going to get an identical model to other countries, but we are seeking to make sure we have a good list of asks here. If you think there are points that should be reinforced, something that we may have missed or an emphasis point, we ask you to give us the benefit of your guidance so that we can put a good list of asks together.
Stuart Pritchard
It is early days, obviously, and the science community is coming to terms with “What next?” Science is a very broad community and, as has been mentioned, we include social sciences and humanities in that. We cannot all speak for the science community, but there is starting to be a coalescing around the need to set out what key activities would need to be prioritised. We have touched on collaboration and funding. Regulation is a very important one. There is an enormous job of work to be done in terms of understanding what the change in regulation might need to be for the UK to retain participation in the single market, however that might look. If you think about something that is relevant to the Wellcome Trust—the data protection regulation—that is not currently on the statute in the UK. It is in the process of being transposed. If we were to have a different set of regulations from those in the EU, it may well prevent us being able to participate in large‑scale health data research projects, for example, and that would extremely limit the work that the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire does as the largest genomics institute in Europe. There are some very important reflections and analyses that we all need to do in terms of where the priorities are and what things need to be focused on. In terms of EU regulation, it is very much a scalpel rather than a sword that we need to have in terms of unpicking where the UK should retain EU regulation and where there might be the need for change. One key area is what happens to things that are to some extent in legislative limbo. We could add to that, for example, the clinical trials regulation, which is not yet fully transposed.
Victoria Borwick
Does anyone have anything to add to that?
Professor Leyser
I would point to three reports that the Royal Society put out leading up to the referendum about these three areas that are emerging as the key issues, one of which is collaboration, one of which is funding and one of which is regulation. There are lots of details and specific examples there. Obviously, the Royal Society would be happy to contribute specifics to that going forward. The big picture that I keep zooming back to is none the less where we should keep our eyes: we would like to remain fully engaged members of the international scientific community, and that requires being fully engaged. What can I say?
Victoria Borwick
No problem. Professer Vetterli, do you have any comments on that one?
Professor Vetterli
My only comment is to say that the Royal Society invented modern western science 350 years ago, so it would be really too bad that you will not be part of European science.
Victoria Borwick
Professor Vetterli, could you enlighten us as to which factors have been most important for Switzerland in developing their research collaboration? Is that again done on a canton basis or on a country‑wide basis?
Professor Vetterli
No. Research funding in Switzerland is done by the federal government. The Swiss National Science Foundation is a broad funding agency that covers several agencies that you have in the UK, and there is an innovation agency that is also a federal agency. Then there is a system of cantonal universities and a system of federal institutes of technology. That is how it is run.
Victoria Borwick
The Chair and the Committee are very keen to continue to promote science, otherwise we would not be sitting here asking you these questions. We welcome the guidance you are going to give us, and I have no doubt you will send us some more afterwards, but if you have any particular views on what the Government could do—and you may say that is a political point—in the exit negotiation to keep international confidence in the UK, we would welcome your views on that.
Stuart Pritchard
We have several points on the clarity and the certainty. One key issue now that people are starting to discuss is evidence in policy. It was touched upon earlier in terms of the referendum campaign and opinion polling showing that trust in experts, whether they are scientists, academics, or whoever, is now diminishing. So, as a community, we need to understand what it is that we can do to try to reinforce the use of evidence in policy making and explain that to the public better, because clearly there has not been the cut‑through that the science community might have hoped for. One key area it would be useful for both the community and the Government to touch upon is “Where now?”, for evidence in policy and what we can do to explain how it is generated, how it is used and how it can be reinforced.
Professor Leyser
I would like to add to that. That is right, but one of the most striking things that comes out of the referendum result is how frustrated and disenfranchised people feel. I think that is a wake‑up call for us to come out of our ivory towers—or climb down Big Ben, or whatever it is—and get out there and engage with people. It is not just explaining to people; it is engaging with people and understanding what they want and what their priorities are. I can tell you that of course I am going to say that my priority is lots of money for science, please, but I do not think that is the point. The point is the priorities for the country. I am sure science will have a really important role to play in that, but we need to ask a wide range of people what those priorities should be.
Victoria Borwick
One of the other surveys and investigations we are doing is communication of science, and in a way you have just summed that up. There are a lot of people who feel disenfranchised and do not feel involved, and maybe if we managed to explain to them why it is so important we would have seen a different result. A good, valuable lesson to us is how important the communication of what everyone is doing is to the work that we are doing. My final question is: how can the Government ensure that the UK remains a credible partner and location for international research collaboration? Do you have any advice or tips for us? Are there any particular things as to which you say, “Yes, if you did that, it might keep people over here”?
Professor Leyser
I would reiterate the points we made previously that there are things that you could do immediately that would be a very public signal that we still very much wanted to be a fully signed‑up member of the global scientific community, which would be guaranteeing those EU grants and guaranteeing the rights for scientists to remain in the UK. A lot of it is now in this very uncertain period about people and their feelings of insecurity, and anything you can do to put your policies where your mouth is about the importance of science is going to make a very positive contribution to reassure people that we are still here and we still want to participate.
Victoria Borwick
All my questions have been covered.
Chris Green
Professor Leyser, over 100 UK national research facilities receive support from the European Union to provide access to European Union researchers. What scope is there for keeping such arrangements in place after we leave the European Union?
Professor Leyser
Like my colleagues, I will probably at this point refer you to the Royal Society reports on the funding. These are very complicated things. There are lots of these different facilities. They all have slightly different arrangements. Some of them are fully related to the European Union; some of them are completely independent of the European Union. It is very difficult to come up with a unified answer to that question because there is not one. Again, the big principle should be that it is more than “business as usual”; it is “welcome to the scientific community” to make the best use of those facilities. Similarly, we would want to continue to make use of the facilities that are outside the UK because that is how science works and that is the most efficient way to do science. We do not want a situation where we are duplicating facilities because we no longer have access to existing facilities.
Chris Green
So we would want to negotiate continued access across the European Union for EU scientists to come here and for British scientists to go there. We appreciate there is a huge amount of complexity to it, but it would be in the EU’s interests and Britain’s interests to ensure that we have a great working relationship going forward.
Professor Leyser
Absolutely. Precisely because the scientific community is a community, the scientists based in non‑UK countries in the European Union would certainly want to help us to maintain the collaborations that we have built up over the years.
Chris Green
One concern emerging from this is for more clarity. If the Government viewing those two options on the referendum, one of them being to leave the European Union—that is what the British people have now chosen—had had more preparation so that there was a clearer plan upon Brexit, that would give you that reassurance, because so much of what you have been saying today is that reassurance is so important.
Stuart Pritchard
We are in uncharted territory. I know this Committee in its life sciences report called for contingency planning by the Government, and the aftermath of the referendum vote is taking up an enormous amount of the Government’s time; so, to some extent, we have to be patient as the dust settles. I do not think we should necessarily panic into having to provide clear answers on everything immediately. We need to provide reassurance that somebody has a plan, that there is some control over the next steps and that people are being grown up about the next stages and having reasonable conversations with the right people. The Minister has been in touch with the Commission already. I would like to think that what can happen in the next stages is that a framework or timetable can be set out that helps people to understand what the Government are trying to do and what they are looking for others to help them to do.
Chris Green
I suppose, in terms of certainty, on Monday there was an urgent question in the House about the future of EU citizens in the United Kingdom post-Brexit. That was a huge concern for people, as it was articulated in the debate, that perhaps the EU citizens remaining in the UK might be part of a bargaining chip for the strategy post-Brexit for our relationship with the EU. Did you hear about that debate or have you any concerns about EU nationals remaining here and perhaps British nationals remaining in the EU?
Professor Leyser
I absolutely heard about that debate, and I think it is absolutely not the way we should be proceeding—to use people’s lives as bargaining chips in a broader political landscape. I do not think that is a constructive way to arrive at a negotiation table either. This is me speaking as a person now, not to do with my Royal Society remit. I think, more generally, a clear plan would certainly be a good thing, and, again, I would stress that part of that has to be, yes, there was a majority in favour of Brexit, but we need to know also, going into the negotiation, why that was. It is possible that you could negotiate a Brexit deal that would not satisfy the wants of the people who voted for Brexit, and that would be an extraordinarily pointless activity. If the idea is to give the majority of people in the referendum what they wanted, you need to know what they want.
Stuart Pritchard
Just commenting—
Chair
Can I bring in Professer Vetterli?
Professor Vetterli
I want to add my little experience—my two cents—from going to Brussels, which is that when you meet with the scientists or the people in funding agencies, my counterparts, they all love that Switzerland is within the EU; we are just the great brotherhood of science and it all goes very well, but the minute you say, “Okay, now could we do these deals?”, they say, “Well, this is decided on the 13th floor in this building and that is a floor of politics.” I just want to say that the issue that is at hand, and it comes also to Brexit, is probably a political issue, and at least for Switzerland it was not so easy to try to bargain on the science issues where everybody was agreeing around the table, because there was the 13th floor about politics.
Chris Green
Professor Vetterli, like the UK, Switzerland has research facilities that receive financial support from the EU. Is Switzerland required to provide access to EU researchers to those facilities, and has this issue been treated separately from the issue of access to Horizon 2020?
Professor Vetterli
No, because there we had long‑standing agreements for the access to research infrastructure, which were just going on as if nothing had ever happened.
Chris Green
Thank you.
Chair
I cut you off, I am sorry, Stuart.
Stuart Pritchard
I was just going to make the point that, speaking personally, the uncertainty around many personal friends who are not UK but EU citizens in the UK is quite distressing. From a business continuity point of view—20% of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute’s employees are EU nationals who are not UK—there are a large number of organisations who are going to be asked questions about the status of the EU nationals working there, and that is an important issue to be addressed as soon as possible. In the research community, research institutes and universities will be having similar problems.
Professor Leyser
There are 31,000 non‑UK EU citizens working in research in academia in the UK, and those people are all feeling very anxious and unwelcome.
Chair
Thank you very much. Professer Vetterli, I have a final question to you. We have covered quite a lot of issues, including the 13th floor. Do you have any final big lessons for us as we embark upon this process—any pitfalls you would advise the UK science community and negotiators to avoid as we try to negotiate a good deal for science?
Professor Vetterli
This is sort of delicate to say, but at least the Swiss tried to avoid the sin of arrogance. Even though Swiss science is very good, that is not how we went to Brussels.
Chair
That is excellent advice; well taken. I would like to thank all of you. I am sorry—Jim Dowd.
Jim Dowd
I have one further question, if I may, thank you, although I do not wish to detain everybody. Incidentally, en passant, the issue on EU national status for current EU nationals resident in this country will be the subject of a debate on a motion tomorrow in the House. Hopefully, we will see how that turns out. I certainly hope we do not turn into Uganda. The question I want to put to Mr Pritchard is this. If I understood you correctly—and it is highly likely I did not—you listed a number of things that needed to be taken into consideration in answer to the Chair’s opening question. You said at the end of them—I cannot remember the precise number or the nature of them—that these are mostly, though not only, for Government, about assessing the long term. We have all heard various organisations, both in the science field and in other national activities, who are saying they will have to reassess the future, but surely nobody can do that in the long term. You can put a temporary moratorium or hold on future investment and deployment considerations, but nobody can do anything with any certainty until the Government’s position and the settlement, whatever it might be projected to be, is actually known.
Stuart Pritchard
That is a fair point. It is more about how you indicate that there is control over setting out how things will be dealt with. There are things that we can anticipate are going to happen in the future. For example, as to the new form of Horizon 2020, whatever that might be, we need to think ahead to how the UK will participate in that and how the UK could influence the way it is formulated. At the moment, Horizon 2020 funding is delivered on the basis of excellence. Will that change? We need to be thinking ahead to what could happen potentially. I know it is an imprecise science, but we need to try to map out, if possible, what that could look like and try to anticipate the things that we know are going to change.
Chair
Can I thank all of you for the evidence you have given us today? You have answered all our questions very fully and been very helpful to us. As I said to the first panel, we have been entirely unreasonable in calling you so quickly after the referendum result, but we feel the sense of urgency and anxiety from many in the community and felt that it was important to take quick action, but we do not want that to undermine our rigour. We do hope that, as evidence comes forward to you, you will send that on to us so that we can include that as much as possible in the report that we produce. I would like to close by quoting Stuart Pritchard’s comments—and it is something that I think all of us on the Committee want to emphasise—that UK science, regardless of the outcome, must remain open-minded, open for business and open to mobility. That is a very good message to end on. Thank you very much. Oral evidence: Leaving the EU: implications and opportunities for science and research, HC 502 8