House of Lords reform must not impact on the science voice

Friday, May 14, 2010

It resembled the culmination of Brian Cox’s performance at the same venue just a fortnight earlier. A legion of excited young men and women clutching copies of Robert Winston’s latest book Bad Ideas? for autograph snaked up and down the theatre aisles as his talk drew to its climactic finale.

The size and enthusiasm of the audience was almost as if public science lectures, soliciting the sort of whizz-bang attraction that Sir Humphry Davy conjured up en mass at the Royal Institution two centuries ago were suddenly back en vogue.

Well not quite. But scientists such as Winston are delivering something much more than mind-boggling equations or sleep-inducing protocols when they give talks. And this is why a 300-strong crowd squeezed into University Place, Manchester, on a sunny Wednesday evening to hear what he had to say on big issues such as engagement, risk and uncertainty, ethics and government approaches to science.

But ironically it is politicians, many of whom were instead getting to know their new colleagues over their first meal in office, who would have benefited more from attending Winston’s address.

Britain had awoken to a worrying report in the Financial Times warning that science departments are likely to be hardest hit as universities respond to an immense squeeze in public funding.

And coupled with recent controversies such as the sacking of the government’s chief drugs advisor David Nutt, heated local and national debates about nuclear power, concern over the misuse of antibiotics, the BP oil disaster and friction over the Climategate scandal, Winston described what he saw as a "growing crisis in technology".

Many leading experts and academics believe that the new Con-Lib coalition government must undoubtedly listen to and act upon the kind of warnings being dealt about both the funding and control of science.

And in generating this strategy, a growing number are concerned that influential peers, such as Winston who was recently chair of the House of Lords Select Committee, might lose their position and influence in the Lords should proposed reforms get the go-ahead.

Winston told me after his speech that he would not be willing to stand for election. This is a sentiment likely to be shared by many of his science-focussed peers, who regard an election campaign as time consuming, or a risk to their scientific careers.

Elected MPs are often criticised as being ignorant of the benefits and repercussions of science and the Times newspaper carried out an analysis which showed that 71 MPs with a scientific background had been returned to the Commons compared with the 86 who had previously resided in the chamber.

The unique environment of the House of Lords, where representatives frequently vote against their own parties and where peers are appointed on the merits of specific knowledge instead, Winston argues, has a valuable impact in addressing this ignorance.

So while the need for reform may be clear, there is a significant challenge for those who go about changing the system in keeping the like of Winston, Baroness Greenfield, Lord Broers, Lord Rees and many others (and step forward Brian Cox if you will) in a position where they can continue to promote the scientific cause in government.

Get such decisions wrong, experts warn, and public trust in scientific decision making could be further undermined. Indeed some such as Michael Brooks who stood in the general election for the Science Party fear a government overrun by career politicians that simply don’t ‘get’ science. This would be to the detriment of science, politics and ultimately the publics that they serve.

But at the same time, there are others such as Hilary Levers, acting director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CASE) who believe that the ministerial appointments made by Con-Lib coalition could present opportunity for decisions to be made on science that genuinely reflect public concern.

The inclusion of new science minister David Willetts in the Cabinet team is a promising sign in this regard. As is a joint manifesto commitment to ensure a properly funded higher education sector.

But ultimately it is the continued impact that people like Winston have in influencing and guiding government policy – through an ability to engage people on all parts of the spectrum – that could ensure that the whizz-bang of the science voice rises above those who seek to subjugate it to the sideline.

Adam Gristwood, editor