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Next week sees the end of the period set by William Walde-grave, minister
for science and technology, for submissions to the Office of Science and
Technology for its forthcoming White Paper. By all accounts, since Waldegrave
sent out the call for submissions in July, he and Bill Stewart, the government’s
Chief Scientific Adviser, have received more documents, reports, letters
and statistics than they can hope to read, let alone digest, before they
sit down to write the White Paper that could create a new future for British
science and technology.

Their task is not going to be made any easier by the fact that they
have few precedents to go by. The last White Paper on science and technology
– the Rothschild report – was written in 1971. And the options are wide
open: Waldegrave has recently talked of the White Paper as a ‘fundamental
review’ and of bidding for new money, rather than restricting his brief
to ‘organisational questions’, as seemed likely a few months ago.

A fundamental review is a much needed prospect which Waldegrave will
now back away from at his peril. Too many people have high expectations
of the White Paper for a narrow review of the organisations administering
the science base to be acceptable; the chief aim must be to examine backing
for science and technology in the context of the continuing decline of
Britain’s economy and its manufacturing base.

Each year, Britain’s competitors make more and more of the world’s high-technology
goods (and install a higher percentage of the technology needed to manufacture
everyday goods more efficiently). Britain is slipping down the league of
high-technology manufacturers. Although it has been said a thousand times
before, the White Paper needs to say it again: Britain must think strategically
about what technologies will ensure that it continues to be ranked among
the wealthy, advanced nations.

To drive this point home, the White Paper should look first of all at
the big picture of Britain’s scientific and technological standing in a
competitive world. Waldegrave may not have any British models for this exercise,
but there is plenty to be learnt from other nations, notably Japan. Each
year, Japan reviews the whole of its research and development across all
government departments and compares it with similar work in other advanced
nations: it assesses the export and import of technology to and from other
nations; measures the number of scientific papers published and how often
they are cited; examines the level of patenting activity in and by other
nations; plots the overall numbers and age of its researchers; charts the
inflow and outflow of researchers; reports the results of surveys carried
out in both Japan and other countries to identify the advanced areas in
which Japan is leading, those where it is lagging and where new opportunities
will arise; analyses the research activities of its leading companies and
their output of high-technology goods against those of other nations; and
assesses technology diffusion into the regions and into small and medium-sized
businesses.

A comprehensive comparison of this type would be unfamiliar to British
government policy makers, but it is essential for two reasons: first, it
would reveal such a gloomy picture that it might persuade the government
of the tremendous urgency of increasing the technological capabilities of
British industry; second, it would help destroy the myth that Britain needs
little more than a few slight adjustments to institutions surviving from
the past.

The White Paper then needs to ask the big questions which the Rothschild
report refused to tackle: how much should British government and industry
be spending on R&D, and how should that spending be split between military
and civil projects? Britain’s expenditure on R&D as a percentage of
GNP now lags behind that of most other advanced nations, but the percentage
spent on military research and development remains higher than in any nation
except the US. Why? If these are the right percentages, the White Paper
should say so. And if they are not, it should say so too. Other nations
have addressed these questions, and in so doing have managed to create government
commitment to long-term support for science and technology.

Discussion of these big issues should lead Waldegrave to an examination
of the major actors on the British science and technology stage. Although
traditionally regarded as an inviolate power, the Ministry of Defence should
come first, for the simple reasons that its raison d’tre has changed dramatically
over the past five years, and it accounts for the biggest chunk (46 per
cent) of all government spending on R&D (see Chart). As pointed out
in ‘Recovering from the Cold War’ (this issue), defence research has been
given little thought in discussions of Britain’s overall R&D capacity.

With changes in world defence requirements and an increasing overlap
of the technologies used in the military and civil sectors, Waldegrave must
now give top priority to ensuring the skills supported by the MoD’s £2.59
billion annual R&D budget are used to help strengthen the civil technology
base. High-performance electronics, lasers, advanced materials, and large-scale
computer simula-tions are obvious areas where defence scientists could be
asked to market their skills to the civil sector – perhaps through research
centres set up within existing defence institutions, but ultimately capable
of independent survival.

To maximise the benefit from these changes, there will have to be more
coordination between the Defence Research Agency and the Department of
Trade and Industry. The OST should create and oversee a national technology
policy, published annually, that will identify technologies vital to Britain’s
long-term future, and help put more sophisticated technology into industry.

The DTI already understands many of the problems that must be tackled
and has its own alphabet soup of programmes – LINK, ATP, GIP, TAL, MPI,
DEMOS, SMART, SPUR, COST, ETIS – to deal with them. But the annual DTI budget
for all the industrial innovation and technology transfer programmes is
a derisory £180 million, and the department has often had to act
furtively lest the government suspect it of engaging in immoral support
for ‘near-market’ research. The new Faraday Centres represent a typically
indecisive addition to this pile of programmes: although excellent in conception,
they do not have the resources to emulate the German Fraunhofer Institutes
upon which they are modelled.

The White Paper should reverse the present ban on support for ‘near-market’
research and accept that the DTI has too many different, poorly funded schemes.

To boost these programmes and to bring together strengths from different
government departments, OST should place all funds for technology R&D
and technology transfer in one new pot, either directly under the control
of the OST or a new research agency.

A new agency with a clear mandate to coordinate (and fund) research
aimed at improving skills in particular technologies would also help the
research councils and universities define their own roles. What basic researchers
now need above all is a long period of stability and a clear career structure.

STABILITY AND CHANGE

The White Paper should acknowledge that basic researchers have gone
through too many upheavals over the past decade as tenured posts have been
axed, and individual grants increasingly concentrated into short-term project
and programme grants. Despite relative decline, Britain still does get more
out of its basic research – in terms of number of publications and citations,
relative to GNP – than any other country. To help keep remaining skills
intact, the White Paper should back the provision of far more grants lasting
for a minimum period of five years, and should encourage institutions to
provide the personnel development programmes that are common in big companies.
Higher-education institutions must be made to ensure that senior researchers
who fail to see their doctoral students through to completion, or who use
junior researchers as laboratory assistants, are penalised.

An emphasis on stability – rather than change – for basic research should
not prevent an administrative reorganisation of the research councils that
will keep them abreast of changing research boundaries. The Advisory Board
for the Research Councils has sensibly proposed to establish research councils
for biology and biosphere, geosphere, physical and engineering sciences,
astronomy and particle and nuclear science, medical research, and social
science and humanities (This Week, this issue). However, the retention
of some form of reconstituted ABRC makes less sense. Let the OST oversee
the research councils.

Waldegrave should also not be too alarmed by the many voices crying
out against concentrating funds in centres of excellence, and the possibility
that some universities will specialise in teaching. It is a simple consequence
of the government’s wish to increase significantly the number of people
in higher education that not every university scientist will be able to
perform research.

Waldegrave should, however, be extremely cautious about grand schemes
to create a ‘free market’ in research – separating the ‘ownership’ of research
institutes (such as the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory) from their parent
research councils or ministries (the Science and Engineering Research Council
in the RAL’s case) and leaving the institutes to compete for funds wherever
they may be found. Whatever the merits of a free market in principle, Waldegrave
must remember that scientific expertise resides in people. Teams of world-class
researchers are exceedingly hard to build. Any changes should take place
gradually, and free-market dogma ought to be abandoned if it fails to provide
environments in which talent can flourish.

To create a true free market in research would, in any case, require
Waldegrave to tackle also the problem of lack of discriminating consumers
of research. Probably the most serious difficulty facing Britain is that
industry often does not have the innovative capacity to use technology wisely,
a result partly of poor management practices, partly of the high cost of
capital and partly of the lack of scientifically trained people in senior
positions. In Germany, scientists will be found at the top of many manufacturing
companies; in Britain, accountants rule the roost. Although the need for
change is obvious, this last problem must be an embarrassing one for Waldegrave
– Britain’s first minister of science for 20 years is actually an Oxford-trained
classicist.

That gives Waldegrave a double challenge – to understand the nature
of science and technology and to persuade his Cabinet colleagues just how
important investment in R&D is to the future of Britain. The White
Paper is expected in about four months. The time for Waldegrave to start
work on the difficult job of changing the culture of the Cabinet is now.
New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ wishes him well.

The Future of British Science. New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ’s series of reports and
opinion in the run-up to the White Paper has included: ‘Grand designs for
the 21st century’ by William Bown (12 September); ‘Messages for the minister’
by William Bown (3 October); ‘Incentives for a life in science’ by Michael
Atiyah (3 October); ‘What turns teenagers off science and technology?’
by Andy Coghlan (17 October); ‘Laying siege to ivory towers’ by Ian Anderson
(31 October); ‘Revolt of the industrialists’ by Andy Coghlan (31 October);
‘Medicine for a healthy industry’ by Mike Rogers (7 November); ‘Struggling
to keep up appearances’ by Ben Martin (7 November); ‘In search of a single
Europe’ by Michael Posner (14 November); ‘It takes two to tango’ by Howard
Newby (14 November); ‘Spread the word on science’ by Michael Kenward (21
November); ‘German innovation, British imitation’ by William Bown (21 November);
‘Recovering from the Cold War’ by Philip Gummett (this issue). Forthcoming
articles will include an examination of the role of the City, and a look
at techniques for spotting technological trends.