Abstract
Science and Parliament
Today science and engineering considerations are to some extent involved in almost every question that Parliament considers, sometimes perhaps only because the reasons for doing or not doing something may be largely statistical. There has been criticism in the press and elsewhere that because so few members of parliament (MPs) and Peers (only a dozen or so MPs and slightly more Peers) have had any kind of technical background that more resources should be available to them to help them make sensible decisions. As a consequence, I was asked to carry out an inquiry into the science resources that were available to Parliamentarians – a job that I have just finished.
When almost any matter is due to come before Parliament, members of both Houses tend to be besieged with requests for meetings so that interested parties can offer ‘briefings’ to make sure that their point of view is taken into account during the debates. This is all part of the democratic process, and it is valuable to hear different points of view. As you might expect, many of these briefings are slanted towards the interests of the organisation providing them, and if the material is technical, it may be baffling for the Parliamentarian to evaluate.
MPs may be assisted by ‘research assistants’ – young people who tend to be recent graduates who the MPs trust and who delve into complicated questions and provide the MPs with both answers and awkward questions. There are also astonishing good library services in both Houses of Parliament. The libraries are very much more than shelves of books. The staffs of both libraries include people with a wide range of expertise, and before any major piece of legislation comes up, they prepare balanced briefing notes for members. If any individual member feels that more information is needed, they can ask for a personal piece of research to be carried out for them.
There is also the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST). This is a small office with a dozen or so staff, all of whom combine writing skills with a scientific or engineering background. They take a longer view and try to anticipate parliamentary business and prepare detailed briefing papers (‘Postnotes’) – normally only four sides long – that offer thoughtful and balanced analyses of technical questions that may arise in forthcoming debates. These papers tend to take around 3 months to research and prepare, and recent issues have included the 4G spectrum Auction, Antibiotic resistance and Shale gas. There is now a library of several hundred Postnotes available openly online.
Finally, there are the 800 or so ‘All Party Groups’. These are unofficial groups set up by Parliamentarians to promote interest in particular topics, including engineering, science and medicine. The groups have to register with the Parliamentary authorities and are entitled to meet on Parliamentary premises. They hold regular meetings with external speakers and may occasionally run visits to off-site facilities. The oldest of the groups is the quaintly named ‘Parliamentary and Scientific Committee’ – the All Party Group covering the whole range of science and engineering. It was founded in the early days of the Second World War and may have been intended to form some kind of Parliamentary counterbalance to the fairly dogmatic views of Lord Cherwell whom Churchill brought into the War Cabinet as his special science adviser.
To cut what could be a very long story short, I concluded that although some improvements were possible, and Parliament’s handling of science and technology left something to be desired, there was really no shortage of scientific resources to support the work of Parliament. The only shortage was of Parliamentarians’ time to make p roper use of what is abundantly available.