Scientific advice in policy making

Scientific advice is increasingly used to inform UK and international policy and regulatory decisions, particularly on sensitive issues involving people's health and safety, animal and plant protection and the environment.

The Guidelines set out some key principles applying to the use and presentation of scientific advice in policy making. It is for individual departments and agencies to determine how these should apply in detail. However, they will be particularly relevant to cases where:

• there is significant scientific uncertainty;
• there is a range of scientific opinion;
• there are potentially significant implications for sensitive areas of public policy such as those listed above.

The Guidelines apply to advice and research in science, engineering and technology, although aspects may usefully be applied to a broader range of issues involving other disciplines. They cover:

• the need for early identification of issues requiring scientific advice;
• the need to obtain the best possible advice from a wide variety of sources;
• a presumption towards openness.

They are intended to complement more extensive guidance already available on risk assessment and policy evaluation.

The Guidelines were first published in March 1997 and Departments are required to report annually to the Chief Scientific Adviser on the procedures they have put in place to ensure the guidelines are being followed. The first implementation report was published in July 1998 and is available on the OST website (www.dti.gov.uk/ost). The second report will be published shortly. Implementation of these guidelines is overseen by the Ministerial Science Group, an informal Ministerial committee which promotes a co-ordinated and coherent view of S and T policy making across Government. 

Science and policy: key principles

 Identifying issues

 1) Individual departments and agencies should ensure that their procedures can anticipate as early as possible those issues for which scientific advice or research will be needed, particularly those which are potentially sensitive. Early identification of issues should always be the aim.

2) No single approach is likely to be adequate. Instead, information should be drawn from a variety of sources and monitored by those responsible for the department or agency function as an intelligent customer for science, engineering and technology.

3) Sources may include:

• a. departments' own programmes of research. It is important that departments maintain adequate support for broadly-based longer term research to help them identify and/or respond to new and unexpected findings;
• b. research from non-departmental sources, including international bodies (eg the European Commission);
• c. departments' existing expert advisory systems, where members of committees may be specifically asked to draw attention to new areas in the scientific literature. Membership should be kept under review to ensure an appropriate range of scientific opinion is represented;
• d. discussions with those in the Research Councils, industry, academia and elsewhere, including through the network of Foresight panels. These are likely to be most fruitful when held against the basis of long-standing relationships developed with departments;
• e. issues brought to the attention of Government by the interests directly concerned (eg individuals, companies, scientists or lobby groups) or by reports in the media.

4) Nonetheless, some issues will inevitably arise with little or no prior warning. Departments should ensure that they have the capacity to recognise the implications and to react quickly and efficiently to such crises.

5) It is important that there should be mechanisms for early identification of issues which affect more than one department/agency, or may have an international dimension, and for early provision and exchange of information. The Office of Science and Technology has responsibility for ensuring that SET issues which cross departmental boundaries are effectively handled. It will keep emerging transdepartmental issues under regular review, in liaison with departmental Chief Scientists.

Building Science into Policy 

6) Once a potentially sensitive issue has been identified, departments should consider how to access the best available scientific advice. They should ensure that they draw on a sufficiently wide range of the best expert sources, both within and outside Government. They should seek wherever possible:

• a. to take independent advice of the highest calibre (whether provided by eminent individuals, learned societies, advisory committees, or consultants). Efforts should be made to avoid or document potential conflicts of interest, so that the impartiality of advice is not called into question;
• b. to ensure that Research Councils are invited, where appropriate, to provide scientific input and contribute to interdepartmental discussions;
• c. to involve experts from outside the UK, for example those from European or international advisory mechanisms, particularly in cases where other countries have experience of, or are likely to be affected by, the issue under consideration;
• d. to involve at least some experts from other, not necessarily scientific, disciplines, to ensure that the evidence is subjected to a sufficiently questioning review from a wide ranging set of viewpoints;
• e. to ensure that data relating to the issue are made available as early as possible to the scientific community to enable a wide range of research groups to tackle the issue. Scientific advance thrives on openness and competition of ideas.

7) Where the policy issue falls within European Community competence, or is likely to affect intra-Community trade, particular attention should be paid to encouraging a sound scientific basis for Community decision-making. This may involve contributing to Community-level scientific committees, briefing the Commission on developing scientific opinion, and exchange visits by scientific experts from other Member States.

8) Drawing particularly on the principles set out in paragraph 6, departments should involve the scientists whose advice is being sought in helping them frame and assess policy options. This will help maintain the integrity of the scientific advice throughout the policy formation process.

9) In practice, deliberations frequently involve a risk assessment of one type or another. Separate guidance on risk assessment is listed in the Annex. Recent public debate, to which the Minister for Science and Technology and the Chief Medical Officer for England have contributed, has focused in particular on the presentation and communication of risk. The Interdepartmental Liaison Group on Risk Assessment (ILGRA), chaired by HSE, provides a forum for taking forward cross-Government dialogue on these issues.

10) Departments should systematically review priorities to see whether funding needs to be directed to programmes of further research to illuminate outstanding areas of uncertainty identified. Departments' R and D programmes should conform to competitive tendering rules and be subject to robust quality assurance systems involving peer review.

11) Scientific advice will often involve an aggregation of a range of scientific opinion and judgement as distinct from statements of assured certainty. Departments should ensure that the process leading to a balanced view is transparent and consistent across different policy areas, in the light of the guidance above.

We also need to look at the relationship between the executive and the legislature.

In a paper to be published in the next couple of weeks by Nature, Ana Padilla and Ian Gibson, MP say“Our analysis shows that S and T-related issues have become increasingly important in the work of the UK Parliament over the past 10 years. But does this reflect an increasing importance of S and T within the British Parliament, or merely an increasing sophistication/efficiency of lobby groups at getting S and T on the agenda.”

They also argue that “S and T issues are set to account for an increasing proportion of parliamentary business in legislatures around the world.” and ask what the likely implications are to be.

They conclude this challenging paper by saying, “A new compact, then, is needed between parliamentarians, scientists and citizens and new institutional arrangements must be set up to enable this. We don't yet know what these will look like- but let the experiments begin.”

All of this is a recognition that the process that I described earlier is not only very new but very demanding.

In a debate in Parliament earlier this week relating to provisions for e-commerce I said, “The problem that we face is legislating on something that is moving so rapidly. No hon. Member can do more than guess at the scale of the growth of e-commerce over the next 10 years. The phenomenon equally applies in other areas of scientific and technical evolution. In my short time here since 1992, those developments have included digital broadcasting -- I served on the Bill that provided the framework for that -- and human genetics, on which the Select Committee on Science and Technology, of which I used to be a member, worked. Like the information technology revolution, such developments are moving so fast as to render legislation potentially out of date before the ink is dry…”

I will not seek to comment upon processes in other countries, only to observe that as in the UK most countries have an acute shortage of scientists and engineers in their legislatures and in government. But I am sure all of us need to find better ways of addressing the key issues of public policy surrounding science. We need to ensure that our citizens are well informed and are simply reliant upon the views of an editor with an axe to grind or of a pressure group.

The processes that I have described at the earlier part of this paper should help to achieve those goals. But I think the words of Dr Padilla and Ian Gibson need to be borne in mind when they say. “There is a need to find an interactive mechanism by which all stakeholders would be enabled to have a say on science and technology-related issues.”

Government and Parliament have some difficult challenges in this area. This conference although targeted at a specific area of policy will I am sure help develop best practice by helping all the nations represented learn from each other.