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The wait for William Waldegrave’s White Paper on science and technology has,
like the pause before the glass hits the floor, seized the attention of
onlookers. For almost a year, discussion of the future of science in Britain
has seemed to mean nothing more than discussion of the science minister’s
fragile plans. But in fact, Waldegrave’s game is not the only one in town.
Other thinking has been going on, and two strands, from opposite ends of the
political spectrum, are now emerging.

In the Labour Party, Lewis Moonie, the new science spokesman, is trying to
persuade his party to support a Department of Science and Technology to
replace the Department of Trade and Industry. Meanwhile, at the DTI, Edward
Leigh, the minister for technology, has been reviewing his department’s
policies. True to his advance billing as an ardent free marketeer, his
philosophy sounds very different from Waldegrave’s approach. Indeed, it is
often easier to see the daylight between Leigh and Waldegrave than it is
between Waldegrave and Moonie.

On the face of it, it is hard to see Moonie’s appointment as science
spokesman as anything other than a snub to science from the People’s Party.
While Waldegrave is in the real Cabinet, Moonie does not even make the
Shadow Cabinet. And while Moonie’s boss, Marjorie Mowlam, is in the shadow
cabinet, she has shown scant interest in taking science to the dispatch box.

However, Moonie may yet turn out to be the best thing to happen to Labour’s
science policy since Harold Wilson got bored with the white heat of
technology. The reasons are simple. He knows what he is talking about. And
he knows who to talk to.

Moonie, one of the sharpest bridge players in Scot- land, qualified and
worked as a doctor, then became an academic researcher, took jobs in
industry and finally became a policy maker in public health – so he can
claim to have been through the science mill. On the way through the mill he
discovered something which most British scientists have forgotten – the
knack of making money. When he worked at the US pharmaceuticals company
Organon in the 1970s he prompted the research and marketing which turned
Mianserin from an also-ran into Britain’s best-selling antidepressant.

Moonie has also been reading. Now he can outcite most science policy experts
on topics such as technology transfer. When he describes himself as
‘uniquely qualified’ to build bridges between basic research and industry,
you can see what he means. His big idea for the future is a Department of
Science and Technology to replace both the DTI and the Office of Science and
Technology. The new department would aim to harness Britain’s strong
academic research for the benefit of industry. ‘We have this department of
ideas (the OST) and this department for industry (the DTI) and nothing in
between, just a great black hole with all these footling schemes,’ he says.
‘You have to have one central agency.’

‘The OST is in political terms relatively weak. The Tories have not created
a department which is strong enough to push its weight against the other
departments. If you are to have a Department of Science and Technology then
it should be a proper department. The problem is a lack of vision, the
inability of ministers to recognise that there is an underlying structural
problem in our technological competitiveness which can be addressed only by
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What would be wrong with a revamped industry department, invigorated by a
new Labour government? ‘The fact is that the DTI has not done the job. I
question whether it has the ability to do it.’

Moonie is currently a lone voice crying in the Labour wilderness as far as
such a department is concerned. But he is at least sure of a full hearing
from the Labour leader. Moonie is an old friend and political ally of John
Smith, another Scot, and Smith’s preferred partner on his frequent treks up
Scotland’s Munros.

The new department would provide the technological infrastructure which
Moonie thinks is missing from Britain. Noninterventionist in spirit, the DST
would nevertheless work with industry and academia on an overall national
strategy. Though Moonie would deny it, all this sounds very like the ‘much
closer relationship’ which Waldegrave says he wants the government to forge
with industry and universities – a relationship to be governed by the
government’s first national strategy for science since the early 1970s. Like
Moonie, Waldegrave is convinced of the need for a ‘coherent national
overview’. But is Leigh?

This is what the minister for technology says: ‘We cannot have some
national plan. That does not work. You cannot have politicians or civil
servants – or even businessmen I suspect – just deciding that we will go for
X or Y technologies as a nation. You cannot have a national strategy.’

It would be wrong to suggest that Leigh thinks the government has no role.
And on topics such as near-market research, he is less ideologically
hidebound than some of his predecessors. But he is clearly not talking the
same language as his fellow ministers over at the OST. And the differences
in language reflect differences in philosophy.

When Leigh, a barrister who had the independence of mind to be both
anti-CND and anti-Trident in the early 1980s, arrived at the DTI the
question was not what he would do, but what he would stop. He had impeccable
Thatcherite credentials – membership of the No-Turning-Back group, a history
of attacking trade unions and a touch of Euro-scepticism – and was seen as
a right-wing watchdog who would bark loudly if Michael Heseltine tried to
turn the DTI into an instrument for intervening in industry.

As it happens, the government’s empty coffers have thwarted Heseltine’s
ambitions anyway. These days Leigh gives the impression less of a watch-dog
than of a rather clever labrador who is confident that he has found the
best way through the woods.’ There is a lot you can do with getting the tax
regime right, having a competitive currency, having low interest rates,’
he says. ‘These things are probably more important, but I am not
responsible for the economy, I am only responsible for the DTI’s innovation
budget. There is very little that I and my civil servants can do. We are
obviously going to be on the periphery. But what little we can do, we will.
We can act as a lever.’

Underlying this minimalist approach to the job is an analysis of Britain’s
problems which is strikingly similar to that of Waldegrave and Moonie.
‘Clearly there is no problem with our inventiveness as a nation, but there
appears to be a tremendous problem – which may have existed for the past
hundred years – in translating that inventiveness into commercial
exploitation. There must be a role for the DTI in addressing this problem.’

It seems that left, right and centre are agreed on the problem. But after a
year of debate, the question remains of how to tackle it.