COMMENT SCIENCE & GOVERNMENT
A prescient call
WHY EMBEDDING SCIENCE AT THE HEART OF GOVERNMENT IS SO
IMPORTANT, EVEN BEFORE THE EVENTS OF THE PAST FEW WEEKS
The UK’s strategy for coping with the unfolding coronavirus health crisis had been
described as being to “contain, delay, research and mitigate” the spread of the
disease, and in doing so atten ‘the curve’ of the epidemic and mitigate its impact on
the NHS.
While the initial policy of the government has been amended it has been done in
response to scienti c evidence, as the disease has spread through the population.
At the end of January the Government’s Chief Scienti c Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, gave
the annual CaSE Lecture to an audience at the Francis Crick Institute, and his comments
on the importance of science and why it needs to be embedded across government were
certainly prescient.
While science certainly has a presence in parts of government, it is not universally
present, and it certainly needs to become more like economics, a social science, which now
underpins all areas of government policy.
The challenge, for Sir Patrick, was how this could be achieved.
It’s certainly true that scienti c issues have implications for practically every area
of policy, whether that’s transport, renewable energy, an ageing population, security or
emergency issues.
Science has played a role in government since the Second World War but it’s really
only been in recent years that signi cant steps have been taken in raising its pro le with
the formation of UKRI, the embedding of Chief Scienti c Advisers in every government
department and the size of the Science and Engineering Civil Service Fast Stream set to
double.
The Budget, which now seems like an irrelevance, raised funding in government backed
R&D signi cantly, more than many commentators expected.
Sir Patrick looked at the report, ‘Realising our ambition through science’, and discussed
three key themes, critical to the UK making the most of science and through science,
innovation.
The rst is building science capacity across the civil service and having more people with
science and engineering backgrounds in the civil service, the second focussed on ARIs or
Areas of Research Interest, in which key themes and questions are explored and nally the
importance of using all resources and accessing expertise, wherever it is, to provide the best
scienti c advice.
We need to create better links with industry in helping to achieve the best possible
access to expertise and the government needs to make better use of PSREs or Public Sector
Research Establishments, according to Sir Patrick.
He also made the point that UK science is dependent on our place internationally and
said that future immigration and collaboration need to be maintained and be as easy as
possible to support UK research.
As we, and the rest of the world, battle the terrifying and profoundly disturbing impact of
the coronavirus his talk has raised serious and important questions about the role of science
in a modern society.
Politicians need to understand and embrace science and should never again be allowed
to dismiss the advice of ‘experts’ or the value of scienti c knowledge and expertise.
Neil Tyler, Editor (neil.tyler@markallengroup.com)
“While
science has
a presence
in parts of
government,
it is not
universally
present, and
it certainly
needs to
become
more like
economics,
which now
underpins
all areas of
policy. ”
www.newelectronics.co.uk 24 March 2020 5
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