Image: Jan Persiel [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Flickr
Mark Walport leaves UKRI with much about its purpose and methods unclear, says Athene Donald
As UK Research and Innovation approached the ripe old age of 18 months, its founding chief executive Mark Walport announced his retirement. His departure will follow those of director of strategy Rebecca Endean and chief financial officer Ian Kenyon, announced in December 2018 and April respectively.
It must have been a difficult period for such an organisation to be born. The shadow of Brexit, and its attendant uncertainty, will have impacted massively on the nascent body, tying its hands as everything from finances to interactions with the European Union remain clouded in obscurity.
Through this time, Walport has overseen a momentous transition, with the umbrella organisation taking its place above seven research councils, Research England and Innovate UK. He always puts a brave face on things, but life must have been difficult for him, the Board, the research council executive chairs and the whole team trying to create new structures in Swindon.
For the research community, however, things are just as hard: uncertainty in UKRI’s world affects all those who rely on its funding. Individual research councils may have carried on as usual—in so far as flat cash has become usual—but UKRI has new pots of money, as part of the National Productivity Investment Fund, and the community wants to know how decisions about this money are being made.
The largest portion of new money is the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, which forms a key part of the government’s drive towards achieving 2.4 per cent GDP spending on R&D. The Strategic Priorities Fund and the Strength in Places Fund also offer intriguing possibilities, but are shrouded in mystery. The delivery of both came in for some criticism in the recent Commons Science and Technology Committee report on the balance and effectiveness of research and innovation funding.
It’s yet to become clear, for example, how the Strategic Priorities Fund will be split between joint work with government departments and interdisciplinary research. Meanwhile, the Strength in Places Fund has more than a whiff of political interference—which places should get funding?
In the brave new world of Northern Powerhouses and city deals, this leads—as Walport once described it to me—to different kinds of excellence. I am no fan of all research being focussed in the Golden Triangle of Cambridge, London and Oxford, but the suspicion that external forces are impacting on decisions regarding Strength in Places funding is reinforced by the delay between the panel meeting and decisions being announced.
The Commons Committee remarked several times on the need for “political choice[s] to be transparently set out”. I am sure Walport would be frustrated by any interventions by politicians out for a quick win, but he is also likely to be the prime recipient of researchers’ frustrations as questions are asked about the Haldane Principle in action.
The 2017 Higher Education and Research Act enshrined in law the Haldane Principle that researchers should decide which research to fund. But how rigorously this is being implemented is being questioned.
The Nurse review, which gave UKRI its genesis, recommended the creation of a ministerial committee to bring policymakers and funders together. The government may indeed be placing science high on the agenda, but the lack of a committee raises concerns that scientists have less control than the Haldane Principle might indicate.
As UKRI develops, a crucial overarching question is: what is its added value? If each research council goes on much as before, what does this new layer of structure and governance bring?
Here I think Walport and the UKRI Board have failed to provide a clear raison d’être. Their efforts may, wisely, have gone into creating structures fit for purpose and streamlining the research councils, but the upshot is that the researcher-in-the-street is not clear what is going on.
All UKRI’s work is, inevitably, driven by the possibly fickle requirements of its political masters. These seem to include placing the agency under unrealistic timescales.
These, and other factors currently invisible to the community, should be better communicated if there is to be a culture of trust.
Walport has done a good job of getting UKRI up and running. Now he and his successor need to work harder at their communication strategy.
Openness and transparency would do much to keep the community on side. Everyone wants UKRI to succeed, but that will only be guaranteed if we all know what hymn sheet we are singing from.
Athene Donald is professor of experimental physics at the University of Cambridge and master of Churchill College.
This article also appeared in Research Fortnight