How does foresight look in hindsight?

Selection of uncorrected questions and answers at a meeting of the Public Administration Select Committee on 8th February 2012. Sir David King is the former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Lord Rees is the Astronomer Royal.

 

 <Paul Flynn:> When you last came before this committee, Sir David, you were lukewarm on marine power and other renewables.  In hindsight, how does that foresight look?

Sir David King: I was lukewarm on wave energy.  

<Paul Flynn:> Well, tidal power I think was the one that came up.

Sir David King: I am going to continue to say that I was lukewarm on wave energy, but I happen to be in favour of tidal power in the Severn.  That is in my view a very positive way of producing a large amount of energy in a renewable way.  I am very much in favour of renewables and microgeneration of electricity, but I am not in favour, specifically here, of picking winners.  I think we need to create a higher price for carbon so that we produce these alternatives.      

<Paul Flynn:> Tidal power is immense, eternal, British, clean and untapped.  Do you not regret that you have not been an advocate of increasing the work, and not just at tidal barriers, as there are other, probably more efficient ways of doing it?

Sir David King: I do not regret what I was doing, because I have a feeling that I was pushing this agenda harder than anybody else.

 <Paul Flynn:> If you take your horizon scanning, did Fukushima appear on this?  A year ago there were 54 reactors generating power in Japan.  There are now three.  Isn’t nuclear appearing to be the most fragile of energy-generating sources?

Sir David King: Here we are going to disagree.  I believe it would be fair to say, post-Fukushima, that nuclear energy per kilowatt hour is still the safest form of energy that we have yet devised, just in terms of the number of fatalities.  

<Paul Flynn:>  The situation is that, post-Fukushima, the argument in Germany, Holland, France and a whole range of other countries has concentrated not only on the public’s perception of fear, which has been well reported, but on cost.  In this country, we have had no examination of the additional costs, as a result of Fukushima, for protecting against terrorism or from the natural events that are likely to turn up.  Are you happy that the Government have persistently refused to look at additional costs?

Sir David King: At Oxford University I have established a school that does futures work.  We produced a report last year, which was published just two weeks after Fukushima, on nuclear waste and material in the UK, looking at the situation in Cumbria in particular.  We are currently preparing a report on the future role of nuclear energy in the UK, which will be published in March this year. 

I believe that the Government are keen to see that we continue to produce these reports at arm’s length from Government, where we are not influenced directly by Government.  I do not believe that the Weightman report was a poor outcome of Fukushima.  I think that the Government immediately set up Weightman to look into the outcomes of Fukushima, and his report is a very good analysis of the situation.  

<Paul Flynn:> In that report there is no mention of cost.  Weightman has said that he was not even qualified to consider costs.  That report was set up by Government to shore up collapsing public and investor opinion.  It was a part of spin.  Weightman would admit that. 

Sir David King: I would just say that Weightman is an independent nuclear adviser.                  

<Paul Flynn:> Lord Rees, you have said that “it is depressing that long-term global issues of energy, food, health and climate get trumped on the political agenda by the short term and parochial”.  I wonder what you had in mind.  But isn’t it true that Government decisions are taken on the basis of pressure or prejudice and not on the basis of evidence, let alone scientific evidence?

Lord Rees of Ludlow: I think that was in my Reith lectures or somewhere similar.  I am sure that it is true.  I do not need to tell parliamentarians that the urgent tends to trump the important.                       

Paul Flynn:> How do you get across to scientifically illiterate Prime Ministers and Ministers that their policies are wrong?

Lord Rees of Ludlow: Obviously, we have to have the best scientific advice.  We have to try to have some bipartisan consensus on these long-term questions like the environment or energy.  Regarding what you said about public ignorance, I tend to think that scientists grumble too much about public ignorance of their subjects.  I find it gratifying how interested people are in aspects of science, whether it is dinosaurs or space or anything like that.  It seems to me just as deplorable if the public cannot find Afghanistan or Korea on a map, and many people cannot.  In both cases, ignorance prevents people from participating in debates. 

<Paul Flynn:> How does a scientific adviser to the Government turning up with his slideshow about what is going to happen in 100 years’ time compete with people who do not want to see wind turbines out of their windows?

Lord Rees of Ludlow: With great difficulty, obviously.  It is fairly clear that any investment in energy, whether made by the public or private sector, is going to be looking 40 years ahead.                            There are instances where it is clear that decisions were made on the basis of inadequate thought.  I would classify offshore wind as being an example of that.  Also one needs to have consistency.  In many of these areas, like environment and energy, there is a long-term plan, but the trouble is it is being scuppered or rendered suboptimal by small changes. 

 <Paul Flynn:>  Other countries, such as Finland and Israel, have committees for the future, which take decisions based on their reactions in 15, 25 or 100 years’ time.  In this Parliament we have POST, the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, which does a splendid job of explaining complex scientific issues in terms that are digestible for the majority of MPs.  We also have Foresight.  But what else should we be doing, especially here in Parliament, if we are going to improve the role of scientific advice in decision making?

Lord Rees of Ludlow: It would be good if a higher proportion of those getting elected to Parliament had a scientific background.  At the moment it is a rather low proportion.  We should be grateful to organisations like POST for doing what they can and to science journalists for what they do to digest difficult science.  Within the civil service, one needs perhaps not just a Government Chief Scientist or a chief scientist in each Department, but perhaps a rather stronger support group for each of these people.  Some Departments have a good cadre of scientists, others do not.  Scientific participation at all levels of Government is probably rather too low.

Sir David King: The question is a very good one.  There are several countries that do take the issue of futures seriously.  I see myself now as an expert in futures.  Although the Foresight programme in Government continues, it is still marginalised in terms of general decision making within Government.  The strategy group within Number 10 that was set up during my time in Government was looking at much shorter term issues than what I would describe as futures scenario gaming.  Futures work is looking 10 to 100 years into the future, as I said before. 

I believe this has to be done by bringing together scientists, economists, social scientist, technologists—in other words, you need the expert community to sit with the political community and advise on future trends, opportunities and risks.  The contribution that this could make to the direction on strategy for the Government would be enormous.  I realise there are political differences of opinion, and some of this has surfaced here.  I happen to think that climate change is a critically important issue.  I also think that our oil supply is a critically important issue.  I am prepared to go to nuclear energy as part of the parcel of solutions.

 Lord Rees of Ludlow: I think we need a strong cadre of experts who are independent of Government.  If you contrast our situation with the US, we find a big difference, especially in the area of defence.  In the US, because of the revolving-door system of Government, there is always a group of well-informed experts who are out of Government and can criticise Government policy and have a high-level debate.  That is harder in this country because Government service is more of a long-term career and secrecy is more pervasive.  So it is harder in this country, especially in defence-related areas, to have an informed debate where you have expert outsiders speaking on an equal level with those in the Government.  That routinely happens in the US.                                  

<Paul Flynn:> One final word: I think we want to thank our two witnesses for their contribution to British life and sympathise with them, as the whole wealth of 2,000 years of scientific achievement can be trumped by a headline in the Daily Mail.  That is the sad reality.  You mentioned defence and defence thinking.  To put it as simply as possible, we went to war in Iraq on the basis of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.  We stayed in Afghanistan on the basis of a non-existent terrorist threat from the Taliban.  We might now be stumbling into a war on the basis of a non-existent missile and nuclear threat from Iran.  What hope is there?

Sir David King: I wonder if I may come back to that, even though I am treading on political ground.  Iraq is a country with a very large remaining oil reserve.

 

Comments

[career descriptions]

Very educative post updated.

[Paul Flynn]

The numbers of post Fukushima deaths are still uncertain. The likely figure will be in the thousands. The best estimate at the moment is around 50.

[DG]

Very thought-provoking comment on the revolving door making for good debate, though I feel it could also be argued that the debaye being dominated by groups of people with very similar experiences (Government then relevant private sector) risks the quick formation of unchallenged shared assumptions.