Chemical engineers back physicists in row with Royal Academy of Engineering

The Institution of Chemical Engineers has come down on the side of physicists in the row between the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Physics ahead of October’s Comprehensive Spending Review.

The RAEng wrote to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills earlier this month calling on the government to reconsider its support for fundamental research, and of particle physics in particular, in favour of science that could provide more short-term economic returns.

In a letter sent today to Research Fortnight, signed jointly by David Brown, chief executive of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and Robert Kirby-Harris, chief executive of the Institute of Physics, the government is urged to continue backing basic research.

The text of the letter is as follows:

Sir,

The UK’s future will not be helped by a ‘battle’ for funds between basic research and engineering application: they need each other.

Melvyn Bragg talks science cuts

A few weeks ago I met up with Melvyn Bragg to talk about his appointment as an associate fellow of the Royal Society. Discussions quickly turned to funding cuts, a subject about which he evidently feels very strongly. And he knows who to blame:

“I worry about politicians. Not enough of them are well enough educated in science,” he told me. “I think they have smattering but they’re not sympathetic to what is the most necessary area of our future and probably the liveliest area of our intellectual life. It’s a failure, a political failure on the biggest scale. Thank God for the House of Lords where you’ve got so many great scientists.”

He is also furious at the thought of cutting science just to balance the books. “It’s a sort of declaration of a paralysed mind if the only way to make the cuts that are necessary is to make equal misery for all. That’s easy. A clever thing would be to say, “What is forging ahead? What is essential to the fiscal and intellectual wealth of the country?” Let’s help those because they are going to take us forward. Just slashing everything is madness.”

The full interview features in this week’s Research Fortnight, out today.

Top LibDem slams ‘disastrous’ proposal to merge regulators

Liberal Democrat peer Phil Willis, former head of the Commons Science and Technology Committee, has condemned government plans to merge the research regulation functions of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the Human Tissue Authority.

The Department of Health said on 26 July that the coalition intends to abolish the agencies and create a single body for medical research regulation, also absorbing the National Research Ethics Service. The Care Quality Commission and the Information Centre for Health and Social would take on other functions of the agencies.

Tory health secretary Andrew Lansley said that, subject to Parliamentary approval, eight or ten of his department’s 18 ‘arm’s-length bodies’ would be cut, saving more than £180 million by 2014-15.

But a joint Lords and Commons committee on the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, chaired by Willis, has already considered and rejected a proposal to merge the bodies—in 2007. “We went through this in huge detail,” Willis told Research Fortnight. “There was a total agreement of the joint committee: regulating tissue and embryos are separate functions. The idea that you have a single focus for what are distinct functions would be a retrograde step."

David Cameron, champion of civil liberties, is about to impose a National Identity Number on you

Having killed Labour's plans for a National Identity Card, David Cameron seems to be on the verge of introducing its little brother, a National Identity Number. This is the unavoidable implication of the reports in recent weeks that the government will cancel the UK Census after the one in 2011.

The Census provides vital data for important decisions and social studies but is expensive. And there is another way. The Nordic nations replaced their censuses with data from other government databases years ago. The result? The US, which has a similar system to us, reportedly spends $36 per head on its census while Finland gets the same data for 20 cents per head.

This is the reason why the Office of National Statistics has been working on a Beyond 2011 project. It seems a no brainer. But look a bit deeper and the difficulties and downsides start to mount.

Vince Cable rejects Graduate Tax. REPEAT: VINCE CABLE REJECTS GRADUATE TAX

Mike Baker over at the BBC is reporting today that senior Conservatives are rejecting Vince Cable's proposal for a Graduate Tax.

That's both right and wrong. Right because there is no reason for Conservatives to support a Graduate Tax (as I pointed out here and here). Wrong because it turns out to be a massive over-simplification to say that Cable has in fact proposed a Graduate Tax.

In his big speech on higher education last week, Cable never uttered the phrase "Graduate Tax".  The key part of the speech comes in the midst of a horribly convoluted passage and reads:

"I am interested in looking at the feasibility of changing the system of financing student tuition so that the repayment mechanism is variable graduate contributions tied to earnings".

Given the confused language around here in the speech, I suspect that most readers (like me) have been content to accept the speech's advance billing and to read this as support for a Graduate Tax. How wrong can you be.

Greenish must go, says Oxford physicist

A respected Oxford physicist has called for Philip Greenish, chief executive of the Royal Academy of Engineering, to resign from the UK’s top particle physics funding body.

Brian Foster, a professor of experimental physics at Oxford, says that Greenish’s position at the Science and Technology Facilities Council, which controls particle physics funding, is untenable since the Academy called on the government to redirect funding away from physics to support engineering.

“Greenish’s position is clearly intolerable,” says Foster. “He’s in the position of being a member of the council of an organisation, all of whose Royal Charter aims he has rubbished.”

Foster, a former chairman of Institute of Physics Nuclear and Particle Physics Division, is the first senior physicist to go on the record on the subject. But many members of the IoP are understood to be furious with RAE members over what they see as a betrayal. Particle physicists are concerned that a member of the academy holds sway on a group that ultimately has control over their funding.

Foster has written to Greenish to warn him that he should either formally distance himself from the document or leave the STFC council.

Commission rejects Council of Ministers' Iter plans

The European Commission has rejected the Council of Ministers’ suggestion that the spiralling costs at Iter, the international fusion research project based in France, should be paid out of the existing EU budget, according to internal documents seen by Research Europe.

“The approach outlined by the Council would not resolve the long-term financing problems of Iter, and would not secure the viability of the project,” reads a statement from the Commission attached to the Council’s conclusions. “Therefore the Commission reserves its position concerning the approval of the project baseline as well as its right to make more appropriate proposals to the budgetary authority.”

On 5 May, the Commission asked member states to provide more money to cover rising costs at Iter. But on 12 July, member states decided that the extra 1.4 billion euros needed for Europe’s contribution to Iter should come out of the existing budget, and singled out the 1a funding line, which includes Framework 7 and innovation funding, as the preferred source.

On 22 July, the European Commission will present a second proposal to diplomats and ministers in Brussels, which could include a plan to share costs between the Commission and member states. A Brussels-based diplomat told Research Europe that the Commission wants the funding arrangements to be finalised during the next Competitiveness Council meeting in November.

Commission to divert 400m euros from FP7 to pay for Iter

More than 400 million euros will have to be diverted from Framework 7 to cover the rising costs of Iter, the international fusion research project, a Commission proposal states.

Finding the money for Iter means that 100m euros will be taken from Framework 7 in 2012, and another 360m euros in 2013, the Commission says. The proposal is an attempt to smooth things over with member states, which are refusing to front the cash needed to keep Iter going. The European contribution to the project is expected to more than double: from 2.7 billion euros agreed in 2006 to around 7bn euros by 2013.

During a Council meeting on 12 July the member states said they would not provide the extra money, and that it should come from the existing EU budget, primarily Framework 7. Europe needs to find an additional 1.4 billion euros to pay for Iter’s construction by 2013, meaning that just under 1bn euros will still have to be found somewhere.

How to read Vince Cable's speech on Higher Education

Vince Cable gave a speech at London South Bank University on Thursday in which he sketched out his approach to universities. What follows below is an annotated version of the speech, with my comments in red.

On his main point of a Graduate Tax, I think you must not take him too seriously at this point. He's flying a kite for which he doesn't have Conservative support. I think the moves towards an open market in higher education are more significant.

***

By Vince Cable

Secretary of State

15 Jul 2010,

---

[Check against delivery]

This is my first attempt to set out my views on the university, and wider, HE sector and my aspirations for it. The background is a very sombre and difficult one, financially. Without doubt the most serious within living memory. David Willetts and I are working together to find a way of dealing with it.

The audience for this speech was senior academics. Willetts has to be namechecked because there is no point Cable pretending to these people that he is solely in command. The day-to-day reality the universities are seeing already is that most discussions of HE policy and policy announcements go through Willetts not Cable. Furthermore, the political reality is that it is Willetts who belongs to the dominant party in the coalition, is regarded as a senior figure there and attends Cabinet by right because of it. So if the question is, "Who is in charge of HE policy?" the answer is, "Not you Vince. But not Willetts on his own either." Which is what Cable has just indicated. [See my piece in Research Fortnight, 2 June 2010 for more ]on the Cable/Willetts dynamics

If we wanted to expand our answer further, we'd remember that by giving the LibDems an opt-out of any vote in Parliament, the coalition agreement has put the Conservatives in the driving seat on student fees and the Browne review. So we could add, "HE policy? It's all up for negotiation within the coalition, but with the Conservatives clearly having a specially dominant position on everything to do with the Browne review."

This should alert us to the peculiar character of many of the statements in this speech. They are not a statements - could not ever be - statements of what the government is actually going to do. Unlike, say, Andrew Lansley with the NHS, Cable is not master of this domain. Each different proposal Cable makes here will have to be weighed on its own terms, with everything to do with the Browne review, such as a Graduate Tax, treated specially cautiously.

Much of what we have to say you might not like. But I hope you will accept that we are on your side and are looking for ways of turning this funding crisis into an opportunity for universities.

Where they stand on Vince Cable's Graduate Tax - For & Against

For

Vince Cable

LibDems (presumably)

National Union of Students (with caveats)

4 of the 5 candidates for the Labour leadership (not David Milliband)

University Alliance (who have lots of students but not so much research, and who were the first to set out a substantive case for a "Graduate Contribution Scheme")

Against

Lots of Conservatives (judging by Conservative Home blogger and Daily Telegraph blog, leaks to BBC etc)

Russell Group universities (the big, glamorous research-intensive universities)

David Milliband (who probably will be the next Labour leader)

Tony Blair & Howard Newby (presumably, since they are the ones who Labour candidates are saying blocked the idea in 2003)

The Times (in an editorial today)

Conclusion

The more right-wing you are, the less you like the idea. [Update: This is confirmed by a poll of grassroots activists.]

More later - please comment anyone else you know about