SUMMARY OF COUNCIL MEETING ON 10 MARCH 2005
Attendees
1. The meeting was chaired in part by Sir Keith Peters and in part by Sir David King. The other members present were:
Professor Sir John Beringer; Professor Geoffrey Boulton; Professor Janet Finch; Andrew Gould; Professor Wendy Hall; Dr Hermann Hauser; Dr Dieter Helm; Professor Alan Hughes; Dr Sue Ion; Sir Paul Nurse; Professor Michael Sterling; Professor Kathy Sykes; Dr Mark Walport.
2. Also in attendance for parts of the meeting were: Rupert Lewis, Head of the
Horizon Scanning Unit, OST/DTI;
Judy Britton, Director, Science in Government, OST/DTI; Jeremy Clayton, Director, Transdepartmental Science and Technology, OST/DTI.
Conclusions
The Council agreed:
- CST members will work with the OST Horizon Scanning Unit as they develop their working processes and test the outputs of their work.
- CST gave a cautious welcome to the government's plans to define ‘grand challenges’ facing public policy where research can play a major role in establishing the way forward. CST broadly agreed that the concept of a ‘grand challenge’ could be helpful as a rallying call to action and that climate change, demographic changes in the UK (including ageing) and data management were all suitable candidates. The first step would be for government to define some focussed questions and CST would be happy to work with government in taking the 'grand challenges' forward.
- Draft reports from CST's four subgroups were discussed:
- The report Policy through dialogue (prepared for CST by the science and society subgroup convened by Professor Geoffrey Boulton) was agreed, subject to some minor amendments.
- A draft letter to government on the possible qualitative and quantitative uses of real options analysis tools to aid investment decisions (prepared for CST by the Innovation and Commercialisation subgroup convened by Professor Alan Hughes) was agreed, subject to some redrafting.
- The report from the Energy subgroup (convened by Professor Michael Sterling), looking at the levels of investment in energy RD&D budgets, large scale forms of electricity generation, and institutional strategy for energy, was discussed. Amendments were suggested. It was agreed that the report should be submitted to government before the next CST meeting.
- An early draft of a report from the Datasets subgroup (convened by Professor Mark Walport), exploring the benefits and practical issues arising from the use of personal information in electronic databases, was discussed. A further draft will be discussed at CST's next meeting.
- CST discussed its future work programme:
- CST agreed that it would invite universities, learned societies and other institutions for their views on whether a universal ethical code for scientists had the potential to be useful and whether they could see a role for it within their own institutions.
- CST identified three priority areas for their future work programme, which the secretariat were asked to work up for CST's next meeting. They were: the research environment; scientific input to public health; and raising private sector investment in R&D.
