New S&T Committee leader reveals his plans

Andrew Miller, Labour MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston, was elected
chairman of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee last week, having previously been a member between 1992 and 1997. He told me that getting better information to parliament and the wider public will be crucial if UK science is to survive the years ahead.

What are your plans for the committee?
I want to focus on two immediate priorities: one is the protection of the UK science base, which, if you read between the lines, needs some protection. That is going to be hugely important for the next couple of years until we can say the worst is over in terms of the recession.
I think David Willetts is being genuine when he says he understands the case for science but we need to make sure that what happens in his department, when translated by vice-chancellors and research councils, doesn’t result in damage to the broader science base.
The other is improving public understanding of some of the big scientific challenges of today.

Which particular areas are of concern?
I worry about commitments to some of the big science projects. Particularly where we are in bed with other nations. We’ve got quite a few people in my own neck of the woods—the University of Liverpool and Daresbury—and in particle physics who are anxious that investment in Cern continues for example. I share their concerns.
Part of the challenge is to communicate to MPs and the broader public what the relevance of that work is. Some of the big science stuff is seen by too many MPs, and too many members of the public, as too distant from them to be relevant and that is a serious challenge. We need to keep the pressure on and the best way to do that is to improve members’ understanding of the relevance  of some of the work that’s going on.

How can the use of science in Parliament be improved?
The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology is now officially a part of the House machinery as a result of the work that I, and some others, did in the 1992 Parliament. Part of the purpose of that was to create a rapid feed of peer-reviewed material for contemporary debates. Its problem, and I say this gently, is that it tends to lag behind the curve and we need to find ways to speed up the process of engagement with Parliament.
Take the recent debate on volcanic ash and aircraft flights. Subjects like that need some fairly urgent scientific briefing but we haven’t really got a mechanism that meets that need at the speed it needs to meet it. We’ve got to find ways of sharpening the tools and making them work more effectively.

Will the coalition change the role of parliamentary committees?
One of the good things that happened in the committee election process is that there didn’t appear to be any influence by the whips. Government and opposition are officially leaving it to the house to choose who they feel are the right people to chair these committees. My fear was that we’d have some old style engineering going on with the whips trying to influence the outcome. We are there to provide the checks and balances and I think there is a recognition that the select committee procedure needs to flourish. I don’t see any attempt by the coalition to impose on me a team of people who would make it impossible to probe the executive.

You were an official at MSF, the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union, now part of Unite. Will the relationship between unions and government change now that Labour is in opposition?
I can’t see any substantial shift back towards the more niche, specialist unions but I can certainly see scientists and engineers wanting to ensure that work that they’ve invested a lot of their time, energy and life into is properly protected. My experience often with scientists is that they are more often interested in protecting the line of research in which they have invested their time rather than their terms and conditions of employment.

You’re not on Twitter, unlike many other MPs. Any plans to change that?
In the run up to the election I had a very straightforward view of some of the newer tools—at a political level, they are great attack tools but they’re not necessarily the smartest tools to use when you are on the back foot. That’s why I didn’t use Twitter when Labour was in government. But I’ve had a Facebook presence for a long time. And I think I was the only MP elected in 1992 who used email. In the year 1992-93, I never once received an email from a constituent. But now electronic communication has substantially overtaken paper.