SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY SELECT COMMITTEE

Government funding of International development R&D

Oral and written evidence

Contents Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Institute of Development Studies, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge and Wellcome Trust – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) ...... 2 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) ...... 3 Government – Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Department for International Development (DfID) – Oral evidence (QQ 10-16) ...... 22 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) – Written evidence (DSA0001) ...... 23 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) and Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – Oral evidence (QQ 10-16) ...... 26 Institute of Development Studies, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) ...... 36 Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Institute of Development Studies and Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) ...... 37

Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Institute of Development Studies, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge and Wellcome Trust – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9)

Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Institute of Development Studies, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge and Wellcome Trust – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9)

Transcript to be found under Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge

2 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9)

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9)

Evidence Session No. 1 Heard in Public Questions 1 - 9

TUESDAY 12 JULY 2016

Members present

Earl of Selborne (Chairman) Lord Cameron of Dillington Lord Mair Baroness Morgan of Huyton Baroness Neville-Jones Viscount Ridley Lord Vallance of Tummel Baroness Young of Old Scone ______

Examination of Witnesses

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge, Dr Jeremy Farrar OBE, Director of Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser, and Professor Melissa Leach, Director, Institute of Development Studies

Q1 The Chairman: On behalf of the Committee, I give a very warm welcome to our four expert witnesses, and “expert” is indeed the right word. We are most grateful to you for coming at relatively short notice. As you know, we thought we should do a short inquiry on government funding of research and development to support international development. Please introduce yourselves for the record and, if you would like to make an opening statement, please feel free to do so. Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: My name is Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, vice- chancellor of the University of Cambridge and chair of the DFID’s independent expert Research Advisory Group (RAG). The Chairman: Would you like to say anything by introduction or wait until everyone has introduced themselves? Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: I can wait. The Chairman: Welcome back, Sir John. Professor Sir John Beddington: Thank you, Chairman. I am John Beddington. As the Chairman has indicated, this is not a new event for me, but it is very nice. As everyone

3 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) knows, I am retired as the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, and I spend the majority of my time at the Oxford Martin School as an adviser. I have no statement to make. Professor Melissa Leach: I am Melissa Leach, director of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, and I am also happy to wait. My opening statement will fit well with the first question. The Chairman: I have to declare that one of my sons once worked for the IDS. Professor Melissa Leach: Absolutely. I supervised his PhD, so I wanted to say hello. Dr Jeremy Farrar: Good morning. Thank you for the invitation. My name is Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust. I have a background in infectious diseases and have spent the last 18 years living in Vietnam. The Chairman: Sir Leszek, you said that you would like to make an opening statement. Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: It relates very much to the first question. The importance of development and research into development is at the forefront of what ODA funding is about. The key element we see in DFID, and in particular in R&D, is the way those monies are distributed. For me, one of the most important issues your Lordships will have to consider is how we monitor that effective use is being made of those resources for development purposes rather than plugging holes that might appear during periods of austerity. The primary purpose of the ODA funding, in particular for research associated with ODA funding, is at the heart of many of the questions and issues you raise and, therefore, the development of appropriate mechanisms for that scrutiny goes to the heart of many of the questions you pose. The Chairman: Would anyone else like to make an opening statement before we go to the questions? Professor Melissa Leach: I will. I want to start with two examples. Over the last four years a programme called The Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium, funded by DFID through the ESPA scheme, has brought together 20 partners from the UK—from Sussex, Cambridge and others—with government and African universities, to look at the drivers of zoonotic diseases (diseases that jump from animals to people), bringing together social science, epidemiology, medicine, veterinary medicine, environmental science, and coming up with solutions that enable people to live with animals and ecosystems in healthier and more sustainable ways. In 2014-15, as we all know, the Ebola crisis hit the world and DFID, along with the Wellcome Trust, helped to support an Ebola response anthropology platform in which innovation communications tools, building on long-term research, enabled social scientists to change the nature of government strategy and response to make it more sensitive and effective. This has been recognised in the ESRC Celebrating Impact Award. Sir Mark Walport, as the UK Government Chief Scientist, earlier this year cited this example when calling for mechanisms to integrate social science evidence in addressing all global challenges. To me, this is the kind of research that DFID has been so good at funding and that is so vital for international development. There are four key features that are vital to retain as we move forward. One is that it is cross-disciplinary. It brings together natural science, medicine, environmental science, but also social sciences. Rigorous and robust science is needed but it must be is multifaceted because the problems we are dealing with are

4 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) interconnected and difficult and require multiple angles. Social sciences do not have to be the handmaiden; they can often be the lead, because, critically for international development, questions about poverty, inequality and the links to policy have to be central. Secondly, it needs to be integrated with policy and practice, not just producing science but feeding it through to policymakers and often co-constructing that research with government agencies and civil society organisations so that the policy implications are integrated and can be used. Thirdly, it has to be impact-oriented; it has to use the best of our communications tools and mechanisms, including the digital, to mobilise that evidence for impact. Fourthly, critically, it has to be international and partnered, involving the people and organisations on the ground in low and middle income countries, not just as data collectors or receptors, but in conceptualising and designing work. DFID has been fantastic in supporting exactly that kind of work, those ingredients, over the years. We must ensure that amid current pressures, which I am sure will come up in this inquiry, that capacity is retained. The Chairman: Dr Farrar? Dr Jeremy Farrar: Very briefly, and through the lens both of my own personal background, of which 75-80% has been outside this country, and in my role now as director of the Wellcome Trust, notwithstanding the events of the last two or three weeks and to bring some context to that, we are going through a period of profound change as a nation and a world with a number of different issues colliding at once, and I think that is going to lead to very uncertain times. The UK has been a world leader in its outward-facing approach to that, its integration of different research elements and making sure that research feeds into policy, and it is done, as Melissa says, in areas of the world where the need is greatest. The UK should not underestimate the impact it has, not only on the countries with which it works, but in providing that world leadership and leveraging of others, whether it be the Wellcome Trust, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank or others. The UK’s leadership in this has had a tremendous impact on others and the model by which the UK has done this over many years, supported by all sorts of governments, has truly led the world. I agree with Borys that accountability is absolutely crucial and co-ordination across government departments and with external partners is absolutely crucial. I can come back to some ideas of how that might be better achieved in the future, but it is a real jewel in the crown of this country and it would be a tremendous shame if that was reduced.

Q2 Viscount Ridley: On that specific point, there was a report last year from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Health, organised by Lord Crisp and Lord Kakkar, pointing out that in all sorts of ways in terms of health organisation as well as health research, Britain has a very good opportunity to lead the world and “sell” its capability to the world. Has that report had any effect? Is anyone taking it up? Dr Jeremy Farrar: As you may remember, we were at the same launch event in this building some time ago. I can say without doubt that that has had an impact. If people have not had a chance to read it, it would be a very important document to read because it was well thought through, the data included in it were very detailed, and it put on the map and celebrated what the UK is achieving. Those activities you talk about have been picked up by others—USAID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust—in partnership with the UK Government and that has leveraged huge other activities.

5 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) The Chairman: Following Dr Farrar’s observation that the United Kingdom is a world leader and greatly respected in this area, can we specifically look at the role of DFID? Clearly, when you talk about the United Kingdom you are talking both about organisations such as your own, the Wellcome Trust, and other charities as well as DFID. How effective would you assess DFID to be in addressing these key challenges and monitoring the impact? Sir John, would you like to take that one? Professor Sir John Beddington: Thank you, Chairman. It was probably a good decision not to give an opening statement; otherwise I would have been slightly repetitive. Focusing on DFID, there has been an important change over the last decade. When I was first involved in government DFID did not have a chief scientific adviser. A chief scientific adviser was appointed in Sir Gordon Conway and a pretty fundamental error was made in giving him no resources other than the proverbial one boy and a dog. I am glad to say that after I became Chief Scientific Adviser in the Government and we opened this dialogue, that changed dramatically with the development of the Research and Evidence Division, which was headed initially by Chris Whitty and is currently headed by Professor Watts. That division, which has control of the budget, has the opportunity to bring in individuals from outside and I would highlight the really important Senior Research Fellow Initiative, which was started by Chris and is continuing under Charlotte. It brings in academics from the outside who spend a couple of days a week—sometimes a bit more or a bit less—and bring a very different view of what research is needed to address development goals. Critical to that is some degree of independent scrutiny of what research is funded and what research is done. A perfectly reasonable question to people who have contracted to provide research is, “What did you find out that is of use to us?” That is the sort of question I am very glad to see being posed by a whole series of bodies, such as the Research Advisory Group, which Borys chairs, and I am sure will talk to a little later, and which seems a really important innovation. In terms of what DFID is doing, going back to the points Melissa made, it is probably choosing the right questions. We could quibble about detail and the balance of funding, but there is real scope to see that the way forward is rather attractive. Of course, if things are working you really do not want to see them thrown away or modified significantly, so the role of the Chief Scientific Adviser and of the various independent advisers who are brought in under the system is essential. The world has changed, and is changing, but there are a number of trends which perhaps one could look at to evaluate where DFID might be putting in more funding. For example, I think its joint initiative with the Gates Foundation to set up a global panel looking at agriculture and nutrition has potentially important effects. I would say that, would I not, because I am co-chair of that panel, but, ignoring the Mandy Rice-Davies quote, this is emerging as a major issue. The figures are quite frightening. If you look at the order of stunting in sub-Saharan Africa—58 million-odd children are stunted, increasing by 500,000 a year—the losses to the African economy are dramatic, and, in terms of research investment in nutrition, the rates of return which have been calculated are about 16 to one, comparable to other research on agriculture. These are new things which need to be addressed. I promise not to talk for very much longer, but we need to think about the mega trends that are out there, and this Committee is well aware of them. The key trends that must be addressed are population growth, particularly in Africa, and urbanisation, and the consequence of those trends, coupled with some degree of increasing prosperity and the

6 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) pressure that puts on natural resources, whether it is soils or water and so on, and then complicated, of course, by the potential problems generated by climate change. These are my opening thoughts. Professor Melissa Leach: I agree with everything Sir John Beddington has said. I would like to emphasise that DFID, as it clearly states in its own research strategy, does at least three kinds of research which are all important and it is this combination that is critical. One is about developing new technologies, whether they are in health, climate change or agriculture. The second is about helping understand what development approaches work well. That is critical. It involves understanding states and citizens’ organisations and the processes of development rather than just their outcomes. A third is also really important. That is about the work they support to understand bigger picture questions, whether they are around the impacts of climate change or some of the bigger issues coming up on the horizon. I am sure we could all have our lists. Some of them have been alluded to here. I would add inequalities, which we are understanding are multi-dimensional, and the effects of inequalities are going to be big, as are questions about movement, mobility and migration. It is these three areas which are very important. Although the UK is very strong in its technology focus, I think it would be an enormous shame if the pressure to enhance those often easier to measure, more tangible impacts around developing the technology fixes downplay these other really important emphases on processes and approaches and the bigger long-term questions. Horizon-scanning too, work to identify what the next big picture questions are going to be as well addressing the ones we know about at the moment in a world that is, as colleagues have said, changing fast, complex, uncertain and very globally interconnected, I think will be critical.

Q3 Baroness Young of Old Scone: In spite of increased urbanisation, about 50% of the poorest people in the world depend on the natural environment and biodiversity for their livelihood. Do you think DFID sufficiently recognises that in its research and does sufficient research on the natural environment? Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: In answering that, may I inform your Lordships about the structures in place in DFID to monitor and advise DFID on where new areas of research are? The Chairman: Not just the structures, but your assessment as to how effective it is. Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: I joined DFID when I was finishing my time at the Medical Research Council and have now been chair of this advisory board for the best part of six years. It was set up with the pure intention of being able to ask the questions you are posing; in other words, what should the major thematic areas be, what should the relative investment be in both manpower, not just of funding, in those areas both within the department and external to that department? How do we bring interdisciplinarity to all of those elements and ensure that the impact is primarily around the poorest countries in the world rather than the possibility that much of the research which is sometimes undertaken under the rubric of development has more impact in the developed world.

7 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) The committee functions on a three formal-meetings-per-annum1 basis under my chairmanship, attended by the Chief Scientific Adviser. At each of the meetings we scrutinise two key areas whereby all the officers are made available to us, present a report to us and then undergo a two-hour scrutiny of what is going on and what progress has been made against the targets so that we can advise the chief scientific adviser as to whether that is on track or whether we would like to see variation from those major thematic areas. The second part of the meeting deals with issues that the chief scientific adviser wishes to raise with the advisory board where new issues are coming up, usually internal to DFID or other government departments, to seek our advice as to where as to where we believe emphasis should be placed from the point of view of research as it impacts on DFID. The third component is matters which are brought up independently by the experts we have at the research advisory board to put to the chief scientific adviser where they need perhaps to be looking in new directions in terms of focus. In addition, the meeting has always been utilised by DFID because the Director General of Policy and Global Programmes frequently also attends, and that gives you some idea of the emphasis given within the department of the importance of investment in R&D for development. That means we cover a very broad portfolio. We have also been asked, in the preparation of the strategy, both to scrutinise the ideas that come from within DFID and to bring in an external perspective on those ideas. The external perspectives, because some of the members are even outside the United Kingdom, are bringing in some very interesting views which have to be taken on board. We not only serve as a group which scrutinises and ensures that there is real-time assessment of where investment is going and whether it is appropriately being spent, but also as a forum where new ideas and evolving themes can be looked at to see if emphasis needs to be changed in real time, providing advice to the Chief Scientific Adviser and the Director General of Policy and Global Programmes and therefore going forward to Ministers in those ways.2 That is very unusual in many other government departments all the way through the structure of a department and that is why I believe it has been a very worthwhile entity which was created. The impact of individual areas is considered in the scrutiny of every single area. The broad areas are ones that you would identify and have been identified with the sustainable development goals of the United Nations, therefore very much in keeping with those thematic areas that under ODA have been decided as priority areas for future investment: health, sustainable agriculture, clean energy, and particularly the implementation of clean energy. The natural environment in particular is considered around inclusive growth so that the environmental impacts of these areas and biodiversity and those issues are considered. By the very fact that we consider that leadership in these areas very often does come from social sciences, it also comes from the private sector, and therefore we are not frightened of engagement with the private sector but also with other funders and providers in the area such that we began to look at where DFID could make the biggest impact in joint partnership

1 The DFID Research Advisory Group (RAG) holds 3 formal meetings per annum. If required by the Department (and with RAG Chair approval) the RAG can hold either another formal meeting per year or initiate a RAG lead working group. 2 Under the Terms of Reference of the DFID RAG, the Chair has impartial access to the DFID CSA, DFID Director General of Policy and Global Programmes and if required the DFID Permanent Secretary.

8 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) with the Wellcome Trust, Bill and Melinda Gates and elsewhere in order to get more bangs for buck for the UK taxpayer in the investment we are putting into the developing world. It is a structure that I think is robust, it is one which has stood six years of reasonable scrutiny, it looks at impact very positively and reports all the way through the department and is better than I have observed in other departments.

Q4 Lord Cameron of Dillington: First I had better declare various interests, for which I apologise. I am a farmer. I chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Agriculture and Food for Development. I am a trustee at Rothamsted. I am chair of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. I chair the Strategic Advisory Board of the Government’s global food security programme. Sir Leszek has answered my question, which is about how the strategy evolved, so to follow up on that, as someone who has been trying to get DFID to take agriculture seriously as being the best tool for development and suddenly being amazed that they produced this great agricultural conceptual framework last winter, which was brilliant as far as I was concerned, to what extent do you, as the advisory board, follow and mimic the policies DFID are putting forward? To what extent do you have an independent role? Did you influence that decision on agriculture or did you take that decision and react to it? How does that work? Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: Both. For example, the situation in setting the strategy first became a survey of activities that were viewed within DFID as being important. I can tell you from recollection that about 89 separate proposals were put forward. That is not a strategy. This was whittled down by the RAG board bringing in their own external view. On the research advisory board we have many international research experts, such as Jeff Waage and others, who are involved in agriculture, and they were very keen in particular that the agriculture component has to deal with direct impacts of agriculture in the poorest parts. This is not agriculture as we might look at it; certainly in Cambridgeshire and East Anglia, as you know, we are driving agriculture. Lord Cameron of Dillington: I should have said smallholder agriculture. Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: We are looking at the far larger concept of how to develop that small agricultural area. That is so important because it touches on how you sustain biodiversity in those areas as there is an increased pressure for agriculture from small communities. It has a big impact, based on the fact that we also perceive that urbanisation is going to have a detrimental impact as to the manpower available in small agriculture units. That means we have to increase efficiency, but at the same time get that efficiency translated into what is possible in those areas such that the ever increasing urbanisation in those poor countries does not result in a problem of shortages because the agriculture system is unsustainable. You can see how these now begin to interplay one after the other, because if you do not have the transportation systems to supply the urbanised setup you do not have the structures within the development of an urbanised settlement to enable markets and other situations to take place and farmers to access funding in order to develop systems because you have to pump-prime those systems, and the whole panoply Professor Leach was talking about, the interdisciplinarity and multitude of disciplines you have to bring together come to the forefront. Those are the challenges we then leave with the Chief Scientific Adviser to come back to us at the next meeting with how we are going to implement ideas going forward, which again is then subject to discussion, deciding how much is best done in-house, how much is best outsourced, bearing in mind the limited

9 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) capabilities there are in DFID, because it is still a relatively small group of researchers and they do not have, for instance, all of the numbers of groups and advisers you might expect in a research council or other body. By and large they do a good job; I am very satisfied with their job, and I think it stands scrutiny from other experiences I have had in government. Professor Sir John Beddington: I endorse that entirely. The only point that has not been made, which I think would be a serious omission, is on the issue of water. People talk blithely about agriculture and growing crops or, indeed, having urban development, and the issue of water has been massively under-researched. On the issue of the broad-brush calculations and being aware of spurious accuracy, I am talking about probably a 60% shortfall in water availability in the context of the development you are going to be seeing in terms of urbanisation and population growth. It tends to be coupled with agriculture and it probably should not be. It needs to be thought about rather more separately. It is not just the simple calculation that 80% of the water used in the developing world is coming out of agriculture; it is vastly more important than that. That, if anything, has been one of the things I feel has been slightly underplayed in the documentation I have seen. Dr Jeremy Farrar: May I underline a point I made earlier? One of the judges of how you are doing is whether others follow you—whether you are one of the first organisations which identifies an issue, follows it through and brings others with you. I speak now from the Wellcome Trust’s perspective and the work that has gone on, as you say, on agriculture has led us to re-think an area. Quite recently we launched something called Our Planet, Our Health, which is looking at these broad agendas. Agriculture is a central component of that, and nutrition in a changing world with ever-increasing urbanisation, but not forgetting the populations who are living still in rural communities and the challenges of that as articulated with water and everything else. In a sense, what DFID has done has influenced others’ thinking and has followed some of that, and we would be the first to admit that may not have happened without DFID’s lead in that space. I think that is a very positive thing to say about the leadership which has been provided. Professor Melissa Leach: I would absolutely like to endorse the role that DFID has played over many years in thought leadership in international development, not just as an implementation organisation but as an organisation that has led the way in some big, important concepts that have driven the field, whether it was the emphasis on poverty 15 years ago or now the way DFID is moving towards thinking about interconnected challenges. That really needs emphasising. DFID is looked at as a leader for the world for other bilateral agencies, as well as the Wellcome Trust and other foundations. We have talked about a lot of different issues, but what international development demands and what the 17 sustainable development goals which the UK, along with every other country in the world, has signed up to emphasises is not just that there are now 17 goals which cover the things we have talked about—agriculture, water and natural assets, biodiversity and health as well as equality and gender—but also that these are linked to each other. One of the big research and development challenges is to look at the synergies and trade-offs between some of these goals. Yes, we are thinking about agriculture in relation to water, or we are thinking about climate change in relation to equality or gender equality. This is a big area where the kind of advisory committee that Professor Borysiewicz has talked about and, indeed, the professional cadres working with each other within DFID can really help to emphasise. The world does not need siloed thinking that chops up a sector or an issue and looks at it separately from others, but needs to think about how these can be pursued in win-win

10 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) solutions together but, also, where you can sometimes get quite difficult trade-offs between them. Viscount Ridley: Can I follow up on the agricultural point? Before I do so, I will declare two interests. I am an investor in a Newcastle start-up trying to do genetic testing in the developing world with the Gates Foundation in a project called QuantuMDx, and last year I was given an award called the Bledisloe Award for Land Management by Sir John in his capacity as President of the Royal Agricultural Society of England. That is showing off rather than declaring an interest. The Chairman: I had it years before you.

Q5 Viscount Ridley: More deservedly, I am sure. About a month ago the European Parliament produced a report which “urges the G8 member states not to support GMO crops in Africa”. Is that a helpful statement? Does DFID and do your organisations agree that that is a good or bad thing? Is the European attitude here holding us back and does Brexit represent an opportunity here? I mention that in the context that we know that—Sir John mentioned water—drought-resistant maize is in development in Kenya, wilt-resistant bananas in Uganda and insect-resistant cotton in Burkina Faso. Are we helping on any of these projects and what is our attitude in this country? Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: I can speak not just from DFID but particularly from the University of Cambridge, which is heavily involved in this. It is unhelpful and we are rather more interested in the position India is taking where the Modi Government are looking at the possibility of introducing edible crops in relation to GMO. The issue here is a difficult one. We all recall what happened to Anne Glover in Europe as a consequence of taking a strong stance in pointing out there are not deficits. We find the positions on GMO are largely relatively ill-informed and political with ideological biases, rather than focusing on the objective evidence of safety and security. Our belief— certainly from the group that operates in East Anglia, which couples not just Cambridge but all major East Anglian institutions in this area—is that that is an unhelpful stance. We believe we are going to need to feed 2 billion more people in a period of 20 to 30 years, which is about 30 to 35 growing seasons, depending on where you are. As a scientist, if I was looking to increase yield by nearly 20%, and had 30 experiments in which to do that, I think I would be looking to accelerate the way in which we can produce appropriate variation crops to be able to do it. On a personal level, I am firmly of the belief that GMO is not the only solution but is part of the solution and has to be used judiciously and be appropriately tested, but to have blanket statements that it is unacceptable is not helpful to some of the needs that we can foresee in agriculture. To the best of my knowledge on the advisory committee, DFID does not take a view on the position that GMOs should not be utilised; it is up to individual investigators to look at that issue. Sir John Beddington: Borys has covered a lot of the points I would make. The key here is evidence. As Borys alluded to, Anne Glover and many scientists have made the point that the evidence of any harm caused by GMOs in particular does not exist, particularly on human health. On a number of occasions people have made the point that the idea that you classify a technology as being unacceptable is completely fatuous. What one needs to be thinking about is a particular GMO. It is not impossible that a GMO may be developed which does have problematic effects either on ecosystems or human health. On the other hand, it has to

11 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) be looked at on a case-by-case basis. The worry I have is that a number of NGOs have taken a very radical position that all GMO activity is illegitimate and dangerous to the world at large. There is no evidence to that effect. In fact, the evidence is very clearly against it, and there are major opportunities to improve human nutrition in a way that can be done relatively cheaply by using already developed GM technology. Secondly, if one thinks about the environment, for example, Rothamsted has developed a technology to look at plants that can produce Omega 3, which means the saving of, essentially, in aquaculture, catching fish to feed to fish, which is a pretty dumb idea in basic principle. I should say that I am chairman of Rothamsted’s board, following on the line of Lord Cameron that I should declare an interest. These are really problematic. It stems from some of the early introductions and debates about this when one was very concerned about the monopoly power of GM and the use of patenting to develop this which could act in a detrimental way on small farmers. That was a long time ago; this is not happening now. A lot of DFID’s work is done with African institutions which are involved in developing this technology, and that is the way forward. I am glad to say that, in all my observation of DFID, it has taken a very reasonable and sensible attitude to it. To respond to the question of whether Brexit will help, the straight answer is that we do not know at the moment. Professor Melissa Leach: I agree with what has been said. The other danger that critics have picked up with GM is that there has become a kind of over-focus; there has been a lock-in to this as the major solution, to the extent that sometimes other alternatives have not received the R&D attention they deserve. This has been a conclusion of the Independent Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food). It has also been a conclusion of the Future Agricultures Consortium in Africa, which DFID has been supporting over a number of years. This is not an argument against GMOs per se but an argument for putting them in their place. They are part of the solution, they work in certain ecologies and for certain social and governance set-ups, but farmers in Africa and some parts of the world are going to need other solutions, which may be based on different sorts of technologies, other kinds of breeding, and agro-ecological approaches. We should be aware of diversity and make sure we foster the R&D that is enabling that diversity to flourish; these multiple pathways to sustainable food for all. Sir John Beddington: Professor Leach is really attacking a straw man. I do not think anybody I have ever heard talking about GM has indicated that this should be the central foundation of all research. Of course there should be diversity, and indeed there are new techniques that are go way beyond genetic manipulation. One can think of agriculture in a whole series of ways which are going to be beneficial beyond GM. I probably ought to put that in. I do not see there is a concern that GM is being funded to the exclusion of other activities; it is part of a properly balanced research portfolio. Baroness Young of Old Scone: I absolutely take the point that the case-by-case evidence base is fundamental. Do you think DFID is sufficiently influential in making sure that research done elsewhere is getting at that case-by-case evidence base? There has been a tendency in the past to cut corners. I should declare an interest in that I am on the global advisory group for BirdLife International, the international bird and habitat conservation organisation. Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: The important element is, because of the independent experts we have on the advisory board, we can begin to consider elements around conservation in relationship to these areas and the relative impacts that we have. Frankly,

12 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) the biggest impact on agriculture that we have been able to identify is education in relationship to farmers. Something that pervades a lot of the thinking in DFID is the big role that education has to play in health SDGs and how you begin to promote good practice in relation to themes such as this. For example, how do you instil that conserving local wildlife and plant species is a good thing to do so that you preserve land in those areas where development is taking place? It is fair to say that the research advisory board, from my perspective, brings that holistic element and can provide that advice and ensure it is a general perspective; you do not override one particular theme with another and you begin to look at the impact across the board. This goes back to Professor Leach’s original comments on interdisciplinarity, on bringing in different disciplines and people with expertise in different areas and the board is a fairly unique environment in which to do it. It is not just the board; that also pervades much of DFID’s activity, with the interactions occurring on a day-to-day basis between experts looking at education, specifically, looking at agriculture, looking at conflict zones and impacts on societies and security. There is a general sense that by the time we see this reported back at the advisory board a lot of thinking has gone on across these boundaries. That is really important in a structure such as DFID, where that interactive environment is created internally in the department so that we observe first-hand that that is already happening. You do not have to force that agenda on DFID at all. Dr Jeremy Farrar: We should also acknowledge the tremendous strength of this country in that area of research and development. If you look at the UK in the areas where it is truly world leading, this is certainly one of them, through Rothamsted, the BBSRC centres around the country and the Sainsbury centre just outside Cambridge. These are truly world leading and have world leading partnerships around the world, along with the Kew Gardens initiative on seeds of the world, and I hope Wellcome will contribute in future. On your earlier point, it does not see this as being a biomedical or other solution, it is putting GM crops and everything that goes with it in the context of the whole of the society in which it operates. That is an almost unique strength at a global level, so do not underestimate the quality of the research and the way that research is put in the context of the societies it is operating within in this country.

Q6 Lord Vallance of Tummel: I have only my ignorance to declare. This comes back to what you said, Sir Leszek, about the interconnectedness of these systems. Are you satisfied that the way of measuring the impact on these systems is robust, both in deciding where to invest—that is, the prospective impact—and then the return thereafter? There are a number of references to specific returns, which are matters of IRR. Is that what you are about or are you more at the sort of Benthamite felicific calculus end of things? Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: There are two things that are very important with research for development. The first is that research for development is no quick fix. What is needed here, more than in any other field I know—like Jeremy, I am very heavily involved in the health area—are things you can do quickly; there are certain interventions that are needed. For example, there are issues that DFID, because of humanitarian and other crises, is expected to respond to. It is very important in those areas that there is a rapid response situation. Ebola was a good example of how that needs to happen. For many of the areas we have been talking about, for example, the education of girls in the developing world—a hugely important area—that is an area which will have greater bearing on maternal health

13 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) and child health. Frankly, if you do not make any further investment in health, investment in secondary education of girls will have a huge impact. Those are UNESCO reports that speak to that. To do that is a 14-15 year programme, therefore simplistic IRR measures are not going to work. We rely very much on peer review. How do our peers and other funders look at what DFID is actually doing? Are they co-investing in these areas? Do they see the directions we are taking as helpful in those domains, and looking for feedback on the ground of what is and is not working? In some areas one has to also be careful this is not a simple clinical trial where you give drug X or drug Y and count the body bags at the end of the day, you have to look at it and say it is more like an audit process; you are looking to see whether progress is being made against parameters, being able to re-review as to what you might do to improve that process. The role of the advisory board is to advise the Chief Scientific Adviser that this needs to be thought through or amended or adjusted because it is a continuous process of that investment. It is a far more sophisticated system which requires subjective peer review as well as, where it is available, objective measures of success and, through success, being able to judge what impact it is able to have on countries. Lord Vallance of Tummel: Is this primarily qualitative rather than quantitative cost-benefit analysis? Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: In the main, many of the questions have to be qualitative. There are things we can begin to look at; for example, impact of education on childhood mortality. Frankly, it is not the sole intervention. We have to remember that in development there are 101 interventions going on in every single country, and we have already heard about those interdependencies. To dissect out which was the critical area is extremely difficult. You have to use good qualitative subjective measures alongside peer review, as well as objective measures wherever possible. In an education intervention, yes, we can look at educational attainments as an objective measure, but if, for example, we want to look at, as in one project I was involved on, the impact of childhood education on the reduction of schistosomiasis in those populations, it is not as straightforward as being able to claim it is all down to education because the drugs are more readily available as a country begins to develop. It is against a moving baseline and that is why all these elements of assessment are essential. Sir John Beddington: A very short defence of using IRR—the internal rate of return. Borys has characterised fairly halcyon days of how one looks at the future, which is fine, and that is clearly the way we should be thinking. However, there are often short-term problems and short-term choices that need to be taken. I can give you an example from my recent experience. Dealing with nutrition in Africa, an initiative has come out funded by Gates, DFID and the global panel I chair looking at whether there should be investment in a variety of areas in Africa to mitigate what will be very quick returns on GDP. The internal rate of return is a perfectly reasonable calculation to make, and it shows that investment in improving nutrition and better diets would have a very quick effect through the workforce in improving it. The IRR will be calculated on a three, four or five year timescale, and can be quite important in that context. Manifestly, all the good things Borys is characterising one needs to be thinking about long-term. One thinks about how you address these problems and their integration in the long term, but there will still be short-term problems, particularly for policymakers in the developing world. They are going to want to know, if I decide to put my

14 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) restricted investment into a particular area, “What is the area that will most quickly benefit my country?” That is a perfectly reasonable request, and these rather simple economic models enable one to quantify that. Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: I stress that I in no way demur from that. We have been discussing large goals such as SDGs, and then IRR is very hard to measure, but short-term IRR returns as well as, for example, straight clinical trial-type models which the International Monetary Fund is using for interventions even in areas such as education where what might be the best way to deliver, do provide some objective guidance. Of course, we use objectivity wherever possible, but the big questions are sometimes the ones we are charged with. What impact are you having on national security, for example? It is difficult to answer that in terms of IRR. Professor Melissa Leach: Picking up these points, I agree with what has been said. I emphasise that DFID over the last few years has developed a strong monitoring and evaluation culture. This is partly driven by the value-for-money agenda and the desire to make sure that taxpayers’ money and the 0.7% the UK gives to international aid is spent really well and with impact. That is a very laudable aim. We should also be aware that what has been discussed is not only the impact of research but also the impact of programmes themselves, and there is often a blurred boundary when you have something like an intervention programme or a clinical trial. I endorse the point made about the need for multiple evaluation techniques. There are some things you can measure and there are some things which are really important that you cannot; there are some outcomes and impacts that are short term and there are others which take a long time to unfold and you might not see the impact for a number of years. The UK is also part of an area of leadership globally in impact evaluation techniques, and DFID, I believe, is at the moment commissioning a centre of excellence for impact evaluation which will do research and development on those techniques and look at some really innovative ways to combine the quantitative and the qualitative, the short term and the long term, to deal with these questions of uncertainty. We should recognise that as a big step in learning from what it commissions externally into the evaluation of its own programmes in a fast moving field.

Q7 Lord Mair: I should declare an interest. I am a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the Royal Society and professor of civil engineering at Cambridge University. My question is about some of the new funding that has been announced at the Global Challenges Research Fund and the Ross Fund. How have these new funding initiatives changed the picture for international development research? Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: I will start on this issue because it is one that is concerning us as an advisory board within DFID. The funding is really welcome; let us start from that perspective. I think it is brilliant that the UK decides that 0.7% of our taxpayers’ resource is placed at the benefit of countries that are a lot worse off than us, and I believe we get an enormous amount of national benefit from being seen to be a country that really engages with these issues. I find it difficult at times when people find that 7p in £10 is too much to be investing in this area, so I will make my views on this absolutely clear from the outset. There is, however, a problem that could arise. During the current period there are shortfalls in funding in research in many domains. The Ross Fund goes to the Department of Health,

15 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) the research councils will receive a component of ODA budgets and they will be going to the research councils directly. Other government departments will doubtless also benefit, and it is good that they benefit because, from my point of view, it forces them to begin to think about the development agenda. In all of this discourse is the entity that will scrutinise that this investment, which is earmarked and targeted for development, is utilised for development purposes. My own view, and that of many members of the advisory board when we discussed this issue, is that this fantastic opportunity will need a level of scrutiny that is different from the level of scrutiny that is currently required. That level of scrutiny must be significant enough, because once the funds are transferred they are transferred into the budget lines of the Department of Health or BIS—whichever department it might go to— or Transport or Climate Change. It then behoves someone to say, “Are these fundamentally being used for the purpose for which they were intended?” A lot of us know how difficult it is to prise resource out of a Permanent Secretary when it has already been committed in that area, and those budgets are very often defended quite vociferously that the use they are being put to is an important one. I believe a variety of models need to be looked at to create an essential, overarching body that can look at what use is made of this resource, building on the principles they have to fulfil Britain’s commitment to the sustainable development goals and to the principles that development is at the core of this funding; a group that also recognises the huge impact that bodies such as the Wellcome Trust and others make, the importance of social sciences and the diversity of those areas and, frankly, to hold those departments to account that the money is being spent on the purpose for which it was intended. It may be helpful if your Lordships take a view that some such organisation is going to be required for effective scrutiny of the use of these resources, which are brilliant—it is fantastic that we have them—and which could place the UK at the forefront of work in this area. To continue what Dr Farrar was saying—we have international respect in this field— and we need to scrutinise how we put that investment in and maintain Britain’s enviable position as being seen as a very important player in this area, even though we may not be able to match the American dollar often thrown at these entities, and that we spend it judiciously and well and know what we are spending so that the impacts, the IRRs and other measures can be applied in totality. The Chairman: May I ask Dr Farrar to respond to that? Dr Jeremy Farrar: I also believe that these various funds that have been available for Global Challenges, Ross and sub-groups within that have the ability over the coming years to push the UK’s leadership in this space to a new level and actually transform the landscape. Given that the monies will be divided up into departmental budgets, I want to reiterate the absolutely critical need to have an overarching body that brings together those departments so that there is a co-ordinated mechanism and that these are not seen as siloed elements. We have heard the importance of cross-sectoral work and interdisciplinarity. The danger of giving little bits of larger funds to individual silos, potentially, is that you will not get that joined-up approach. The best model I am personally aware of, and I declare a conflict because I sit on the OSCHR board—the Office for Strategic Co-ordination of Health Research in the UK—which has played a very important role in bringing together the various components for health research in England and in the devolved nations to make sure that across the health research piece there is a forum through which these debates can be had

16 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) and that the different elements are then represented and know what is happening to each other. I would very strongly endorse the idea of a similar body being established. There are discussions about this, and encouragement to allow that to be put in place would be hugely positive for everybody. Lord Mair: I have a follow up about new funds going to different government departments. Is there a danger of stretching the meaning of research for international development? There will be lots of organisations, universities and others, wanting to do research and putting in proposals which are rather loosely connected with international development but might not be compliant with overseas development aid. Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: That is exactly the point. From my point of view, having been scrutinised by OSCHR in a previous carnation, it is a system that does work, and a body of that sort does matter. However, there was one important element that OSCHR had, and that was the capacity to go to the source of where that resource was being allocated so that in the ultimate position where there were completely recalcitrant bodies it was made very clear to all the participants that making sure things were working together is a form of scrutiny that ensures that the budgets will be used for the purpose intended, and they can be scrutinised by House of Lords committees to make sure that the budget is genuinely spent the way it is. Models are there, but if you could stress the importance of such scrutiny it would be very helpful for future proper utilisation of these funds. Professor Melissa Leach: I endorse the point about an overall body to ensure accountability. The Global Challenges Research Fund has already moved some way to ensuring this; this is the £1.5 billion being held by the research councils, where in the initial funds allocated to research councils there is very strong awareness by those councils of the need to be compliant with ODA and, in a soft sense, not just to tick the box of its low and middle- income countries but to be aware of the need for the kinds of things we have been talking about: interdisciplinary and interconnected approaches and partnerships with organisations in low and middle-income countries. The bigger problem is embedding those ways of working in practice in research councils and communities that have not necessarily been involved in working that way. There are some, such as the ESRC and MRC, that have been and there are others that are less experienced. It is about making sure that people with international development experience and experience within DFID are sitting on panels to ensure that the research that is funded is compliant in this softer sense. There is also an advisory group for the Global Challenges Research Fund common pot, as it is being called. This is the larger amount of money that has not been allocated yet to individual councils. It is very important that that group is internationally representative and it is also a very positive move that Professor Watts, the DFID chief scientific adviser, is part of that SAG, as it is called. These are exactly the mechanisms we need to ensure that ODA is being used effectively. It should also be recognised that the Global Challenges Research Fund, as well as being ODA money, is also funding that is being used to maintain the level of the UK’s science base in the research councils. There is tension between spending in and for low and middle income countries and the kind of spending that enables the UK science space, in general, to hold its own internationally. We need to be aware of that tension moving forward. Sir John Beddington: I think Borys and Jeremy have made points I would endorse. I would expand it a little because it is a necessary but not sufficient condition that this work is

17 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) actually being done, in a sense, to address the ODA’s goals, and we need to be thinking about the coherence of it. One needs to be thinking about not a whole series of research funding projects that address and tick the box that this is of course focused on middle income and lower income developing countries and meets the agenda, but you could have a whole series of relatively unconnected pieces of work. The OSCHR model is an interesting one. It will be an issue to think about how that develops and it will need quite a substantial bureaucracy to support it. The agenda is not just “Do you pass this test?” but that you ask in a wider sense whether the research coming up under this set of new funding will be coherent in a way that addresses theme messages. That would be a minor caveat, but I certainly think, and would agree with Borys, that an endorsement of this as a principle by this Committee would be extremely helpful. Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: One thing which, to me, is very clear—and I am in complete agreement with many of the things that have been said—is that such a body must be independent of any group, even the global fund, which is looking at it. It is within a single department. The key issue for me is that the Ross Fund, coming into health, has a large part to play. If we are to get added value out of the investments in individual departments, as Sir John has said, it is essential that this group thinks more broadly. I would also hope that organisations such as the Wellcome Trust, which invests so much of the money it has available in this area of development, would wish then to play a part, much as happens on OSCHR, because they have a great deal to contribute because of the cohesion that can then be developed between the resources that are available for the purpose of development. That in itself puts added value back in the system. Independence is key if we are to go forward. The Chairman: Sir Leszek, I will ask you specifically where in government would you place this independent forum. Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: That is a very good question. I am a great believer that in committees one looks at “follow the money”. At the end of the day, the resource is allocated to ODA from a group from the Treasury and in some way it has to have traction within the point where money is allocated to the individual departments. If it is beholden in BIS, DFID, health, or any other department, it will potentially be skewed to one or other of those dimensions. Like OSCHR, it has to remain independent. It does not have to have formal draconian powers. OSCHR was able to achieve a lot of cohesion between charities and the medical research councils, NIHR, through the knowledge that through soft influence it was able to ensure cohesion occurred. The trick is to have a body that is overarching, has the respect of the research communities, has understood its primary purpose is to answer the question of cohesion and development, and its membership truly reflects the variety of component parts essential for research into development. None of the players receiving these funds, I genuinely believe, would be malevolent in any way; they all want to contribute to this agenda or they would not be seeking this support from the ODA budget. It is a matter of ensuring we get the added value that the ODA funding can deliver. Sir John Beddington: I would add, if I may, that I think “follow the money” is the right answer. You need a body, but some reporting into Treasury seems to me to be essential. It is not so much where it sits, because that is for development, but a reporting line into Treasury is going to be essential if it is going to have the sort of leverage that Borys has been describing so well.

18 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) The Chairman: We are near the end but I am going to ask Baroness Young if she would like to ask a question. We will not take the last question. Dr Farrar first, quickly. Dr Jeremy Farrar: It is no secret in these discussions that independence and reporting to Treasury is crucial, and an independent chair would help bring that. We have offered, if it is of any interest to the bodies, that we would be happy to host that sort of body to make it at arm’s length and give it a degree of independence, if that was of interest to a future such structure. The Chairman: That would not be reporting to the Treasury? Dr Jeremy Farrar: No, it would be reporting to the Treasury but independent of us. Someone has to host it. We would be happy, if it was of interest, at the Wellcome, but independent of us.

Q8 Baroness Young of Old Scone: My question has almost been answered, which is how effectively does DFID work with other organisations? Perhaps I could turn it round the other way. We have heard lots of statements from you that DFID is good at working with other organisations. Are there any ways in which you would want it to improve its working relationships with other organisations? Professor Melissa Leach: This is moving to a slightly different level. We have been talking a lot about the governance, funding and determining of research priorities but DFID constantly works with other organisations in delivering that R&D in the organisations it supports and funds and in its delivery partners. I would like to emphasise that, on the one hand, DFID has worked very effectively with UK and international universities, with think tanks and civil society organisations, often bringing those together in consortia, and that diversity is critical. What I see as a slightly worrying trend is a movement away from that emphasis on public- facing organisations, research centres and their commitment to public access and knowledge for public good and policies such as open data sharing in contrast to the growing move towards privatisation of this kind of work. Sometimes it is commissioning out to private sector consultancy companies who, not to denigrate them, often do a very good job but have different interests. They are seeking profit and have less incentive to make their information widely available. They are not necessarily embedded in the country context and the longer-term research issues to the extent that some of these other partners are. Attention needs to be paid to that balance between the public-facing, public good organisations and the private sector ones. Dr Jeremy Farrar: It has come across in many comments from around the table how universally positive individuals’ partnerships with DFID and other elements of government in association with this have been. That has certainly been the experience of the Wellcome Trust in interactions, whether bilateral between us and DFID or part of multilateral activities. However, do not underestimate the human capacity required within organisations to partner. It is often easier to not partner than go through the sometimes complicated discussions and debates one needs to have to establish the chemistry between organisations and individuals and the ability to deliver on that. Partnering with others does not come at a reduction in need of the so-called back office functions of any organisation. If you reduce those beyond a certain level it is almost impossible to partner well.

19 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) Q9 Lord Cameron of Dillington: The main body is CGIAR, where DFID gives around £37 million per annum, which is nearly half the research budget.3 In the past, in my experience, CGIAR has not been particularly efficiently run, shall we say. I am wondering what influence you have had over the reforms and improvements. Monitoring and evaluation is a phrase that has come up with all four of you. How do you monitor and evaluate the success of the work done by the various CGIAR centres, particularly the really important ones? Are you really getting bangs for your buck on that? Would it not be better to reduce the £37 million and put it into your own directed and monitored research? Sir John Beddington: A couple of years ago, I chaired the mid-term review of the CGIAR system, and I think it is fair to say our report was devastatingly critical of the structures it had in place. Since that report there have been a couple of years of what I suppose you might call intensive discussion, and as of 1 July a new organisation has been put in place which is broadly in line with the recommendations of the review that I chaired, which was saying, as opposed to two committees, which did not obviously operate—I will not bore you with the detail—there is now a structure which is potentially efficient. It has a systems council which will have the donors and it properly restricts council membership to donors who have a reasonable amount of input. Prior to that, if you put a couple of hundred thousand dollars in you became a member of the council. There is now a restriction on that council of at least $10 million. All of these things are helpful. The CGIAR individual Centres now have an organisation based in Montpelier that will be responsible for co-ordinating across the whole CGIAR system. It is not exactly a blueprint of what we recommended in our mid-term review, but it is pretty much in the spirit of it. It started on 1 July this year, so the jury is out on how successful it has been, but the direction of trend has been an enormous improvement from what was a completely dysfunctional operation, and I am delighted to see that happening. DFID played a major role in that. It will chair the systems council. It was very influential in the discussions on the lack of function of the previous setup and it has been a force, in my view and in terms of the view of the review I led, for good. Lord Cameron, I would probably say keep the money going in for a little while and see how this new system works, because I have every hope that it will work extremely well compared with its predecessor. Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz: There are two things that are going to be very important about getting partnerships right for the future. The first is an ability to sustain the in-house activity of scrutinising where other partners are. This is important to ensure you are not duplicating activity that, if somebody is better suited, it is better to partner. It is a principle, certainly as an advisory board, we have always tried to look at, but it does mean it requires manpower internally, otherwise, as Professor Leach has stated, you then become reliant on external consultants, and there are all sorts of pressures on those consultants to come up with particularly skewed views. The second activity that I think is very important goes back to the issue that DFID has, at its heart, to partner, because these are global issues; they are not going to be solved. Even with a total ODA budget you are not going to solve food security agenda issues; you need engagement on an international scale. You also need the private sector, but the private sector has to be able to work effectively with the public sector in an open innovation system which can be genuinely utilised for the benefit of the people concerned. I am aware of

3 Agricultural research budget

20 Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Institute of Development Studies – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9) programmes that GlaxoSmithKline, for example, as a pharmaceutical company, is engaged in. I chair a drug discovery programme, a charity that runs out of Tres Cantos in Madrid, in an effort to accelerate drugs for neglected tropical diseases. These things work but they have to be very carefully scrutinised to make sure there are not vested interests in there which are taking a free ride on the public money investment that occurs. This needs in-house presence through the Chief Scientific Adviser to ensure that attention and scrutiny is paid and we do not deflect public resources into private benefit. The Chairman: I am sorry. I am going to have to bring this fascinating session to a conclusion. We have detained you longer than we said we would. We are most grateful to you for a very informative session, which will give us some thought as to how we can contribute to this important discussion. Very many thanks to Sir Leszek, to Dr Farrar, to Sir John Beddington and Professor Leach for helping us this morning.

21 Government – Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Department for International Development (DfID) – Oral evidence (QQ 10-16)

Government – Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Department for International Development (DfID) – Oral evidence (QQ 10-16)

Transcript to be found under Government – Department for International Development (DfID)

22 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) – Written evidence (DSA0001)

Government – Department for International Development (DfID) – Written evidence (DSA0001)

Background

The UK’s scientific, research and technical expertise is one its greatest assets. UK universities and industry are global leaders in many fields, and the commitment by government to use science to inform its policies is globally respected. As countries develop they will increasingly turn to the UK not for financial resources, but for ideas and technical expertise.

Poor countries face multiple problems including demographic and climate change, rapid urbanisation and migration, and poverty and poor health is increasingly concentrated in fragile and conflict affected states. There is an opportunity to help address these challenges using science and technology as a driver of positive development impact: saving lives, strengthening resilience to crises, creating jobs particularly for young people, and supporting economic transformation and growth and stability. This work is critical for development, and also contributes to the stability, security and prosperity of the UK.

Development research can have substantial impacts, delivering a high return on investment – the evidence suggests an expected annual internal rate of return of at least 10% across DFID’s current research portfolio, with impacts spanning the breadth of DFID’s research investments from health and agriculture to governance, clean energy and economic development.

Experience from areas such as tackling childhood disease and malaria, where there is a strong history of research evidence, show how a strong evidence base can translate into significant impacts on the ground. But there are other important areas, including humanitarian response and education, where the global evidence base is much weaker.

DFID’s research portfolio

Over the last few years, DFID has invested around 3% of its budget in research with a focus on three strategic priorities:

 supporting the development of new technologies and innovations which should have impact on poverty or the effects of poverty;  finding better and more cost-effective ways of delivering development to those who need it; and  improving understanding of key development questions to support best policy choices.

The seven broad priority thematic areas for DFID research have been: economic growth (including infrastructure); sustainable agriculture (including nutrition); climate, energy and environment; governance, conflict and social development; health; education; and humanitarian.

23 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) – Written evidence (DSA0001)

Building on its extensive country presence, DFID prioritises high-quality, operationally relevant research and, seeks to invest in transformational technologies, tackling important but neglected problems, and delivering impacts in challenging locations. This work fosters innovation and sustainability, and involves working with the private sector, developing country partners, academic partners and civil society.

In 2014/15 Financial Year, DFID’s central research spend was £301m.

DFID’s Research Review and priorities for 2015-2020

DFID is undertaking a review of its research portfolio, which looks at emerging global research priorities and challenges, and how DFID’s investment in development research can contribute to a concerted cross-government effort, including the Department for Business Innovation and Skills’ new Global Challenges Research Fund and the Department of Health’s component of the Ross Fund, to accelerate progress on development through science and technology. The review will set the future budget and priorities for DFID’s research.

Recent examples of DFID research impact

 DFID funding to the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) has supported the development of a new malaria treatment for sick children. The medication fills a vital, life-saving treatment gap as over three quarters of malaria deaths are children under 5 years of age.

 DFID funding has helped to support the development and launch of the first new improved treatment for sleeping sickness in 25 years. This new treatment is safer, easier to administer and requires shorter treatment times than the previous treatment, which killed 5% of those treated. It is now available in the 13 African countries, that account for 100% of reported cases of sleeping sickness and represents over 90% of all treatments distributed.

 DFID’s response to Ebola was shaped by the rapid commissioning of scientific evidence: new diagnostics and vaccines to strengthen intervention options, mathematical modelling to map disease trajectories, and social science research on culturally appropriate safe burial practises.

 DFID supports the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) which has achieved a rate of return of 28% through the development of new more productive and resilient rice varieties, for example “scuba rice” which can survive up to three weeks of total submersion, while normal high yielding rice can survive for less than a week.  DFID is one of the main funders of global research to improve wheat yields in developing countries, producing wheat varieties that produce greater yields and are more resistant to climate stress and pests and diseases. In 2014, almost half of all wheat planted in developing countries had benefited from this research, generating additional economic benefits of $2.2 to $3.1 billion per year.

24 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) – Written evidence (DSA0001)

 Newcastle Disease is one of the biggest problems for poor people keeping poultry in rural and peri-urban areas in Africa. Serious outbreaks can kill 80-90% of backyard chickens. DFID funding has helped to develop a form of the Newcastle Disease vaccine that is suitable for small-scale poultry producers, who are often women. In 2015, 10m doses were sold to small-holders, enough to protect 200,000 households.

 In response to the Prime Minister’s focus on tackling undernutrition, DFID has supported the development of eight vitamin-enriched varieties of staple crops. Vitamin A enriched orange sweet potatoes are effective at reducing Vitamin A deficiency and diarrhoea in children, scalable (reaching 3 million farming households in 2015), and good value for money (USD 15-20 per Disability Adjusted Life Year).

 In 2015, following warning signs that the El Nino weather event was likely to be very strong, RED commissioned a rapid piece of research that summarised which sectors have been affected by past El Nino events in countries where DFID operates. Country offices were informed of the potential risks and a £90m fund established to respond to El Nino impacts as they occurred.

 DFID funded tax research with the Ugandan Revenue Authority highlighted tax avoidance by “High Net Worth” individuals such as high profile doctors and lawyers. A new unit was established to address this. It collected an additional £2.5m in its first few months – a significant step towards Uganda’s ability to self-fund its exit from poverty.  DFID funded research has helped the Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor programme to develop commercially-viable models to bring improved water and sanitation to nearly two million people in urban slums in six countries.

 DFID funded research is transforming rural infrastructure development in Africa, through more cost effective rural road design. It has already informed £4bn of planned road investments in Ethiopia, where roads act as lifelines for communities and trade, and it is expected to impact on 130,000km of rural roads across Africa by 2020.

 DFID funded research on violence in schools in Uganda, has developed a Good Schools Toolkit with several behaviour-change techniques for staff and students. 18 months after the introduction of the toolkit there was a 40% reduction in the amount of physical violence from teachers, reported by students.

12 July 2016

25 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) and Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – Oral evidence (QQ 10-16)

Government – Department for International Development (DfID) and Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – Oral evidence (QQ 10- 16)

Evidence Session No. 2 Heard in Public Questions 10 - 16

TUESDAY 12 JULY 2016

Members present

Earl of Selborne (Chairman) Lord Cameron of Dillington Lord Mair Baroness Morgan of Huyton Baroness Neville-Jones Viscount Ridley Lord Vallance of Tummel Baroness Young of Old Scone ______

Examination of Witness

Professor Charlotte Watts, Chief Scientific Adviser, Department for International Development (DFID); Rurik Marsden, Deputy Director, Research and Evidence Division, DFID; and Jenny Dibden, Director Research Base, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Head of the Government Social Research Service

Q10 The Chairman: Welcome to the second session. I apologise that we are a little later than you might have expected. You were present and will know that we had a very full session just now. We are being broadcast. For the record, would you introduce yourselves? Rurik Marsden: I am Rurik Marsden. I am a deputy director working in the Research and Evidence Division in DFID. Professor Charlotte Watts: I am Charlotte Watts. I am the Chief Scientific Adviser to DFID and I am the Director of the Research and Evidence Division at DFID. Jenny Dibden: I am Jenny Dibden, Director of Science and Research at BIS. One of my responsibilities is the GCRF. The Chairman: Thank you very much. Would any of you like to make an opening statement before we begin our questions? Professor Charlotte Watts: I just wanted to say how pleased I am to have this opportunity to discuss this issue. Also to thank my colleagues and yourselves for the really interesting discussion previously. I am very much heartened by the positive comments that the panel

26 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) and Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – Oral evidence (QQ 10-16) had about DFID’s research and a number of very important challenges for us moving forward that were flagged up, particularly thinking about the increase in ODA research funds and how we can work effectively across government departments to achieve substantial impacts with these research funds. Jenny Dibden: Just a very short opening sentence reflecting on what I have heard today. Since we got the GCRF in November we have been absolutely focused on three things: one, the opportunity; two, the need for coherence; and, three, the need for control, both now with the GCRF and going forward, because it is a substantial fund that runs over many years. I look forward to the opportunity to tell you about the work we have been doing to look at opportunity, coherence and control. The Chairman: Make sure that you do indeed tell us that. We look forward to that with interest. Let me ask my first question specifically addressed to Professor Watts. Welcome to your new job as Chief Scientific Adviser at DFID. What are your impressions of your first nine months in this role? How easy is it to influence policy-making? What is the main challenge of your role at present? Professor Charlotte Watts: It is a great privilege and pleasure to be Chief Scientific Adviser. I have been incredibly impressed by the strengths of the department, in particular its focus on evidence. Getting Ministers and policymakers to pay attention to evidence has been much easier than I might have expected before I joined. What is impressive is that DFID prides itself on its use of evidence. Part of its standing in the world is that it has brought leadership, its ability to draw on evidence and to provide smart guidance. I think that is why DFID is very influential in the development space. Evidence is embedded in DFID’s systems through every business case, so there has to be discussion of evidence around every proposal to use taxpayers’ resources. There has to be discussion of evidence—what does the evidence say about the issue and what does it mean about proposals that are then given to Ministers to consider? Similarly, in the audits and quality-control mechanisms within DFID there is attention to evidence—is evidence being used well and influencing the actions that DFID is taking? There is a strong culture of evidence that makes my job easier. The challenges that we face were reflected somewhat in the previous discussions. We are in an ever-changing world. Some of the areas that DFID needs to respond to are very new and there might be a limited evidence base. We might be in a situation where we are very rapidly trying to synthesise what we know on a particular topic, be it ISIL, migration—these are some of the immense challenges that we face—so we are not in the position of saying, “Let’s commission a three-year research project on this topic”, but saying, “What do we know from existing evidence?” and putting that into the domain. Because of that, within RED—the Research and Evidence Division—we have a number of evidence mechanisms. We have the large research programmes that we commission, but also my predecessor developed a number of other mechanisms—rapid evidence syntheses, policy evidence mapping systems—so we can systematically say, “What do we know on this topic? What is the level of uncertainty?” and based on that, what might be the issues that Ministers need to consider when making their final decisions. Viscount Ridley: I welcome your emphasis on evidence, it is absolutely crucial. I want to strengthen your arm by suggesting that you watch out not so much for evidence-based

27 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) and Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – Oral evidence (QQ 10-16) policy-making but policy-based evidence-making, which is a habit of some of the NGOs these days. Professor Charlotte Watts: That is very important about my role. I am seconded as an academic. I have spent my life generating evidence. I see my role as supporting DFID to say, “Let us look at the evidence, both the evidence that we have generated and in the broader academic literature” and making sure that is feeding into the decisions that are being made in a neutral way. It is very much evidence-based policy rather than the other way round. The Chairman: In the earlier session you heard Sir John explain some of the difficulties the first CSA had. Have these issues been resolved? Professor Charlotte Watts: Having a role where I am the scientific adviser, but also managing a substantial research budget makes my role tenable. Without that, the risk would be that I would be side-lined and would not have that seniority. Because I have resources that I can direct to fundamentally creating new evidence on issues that are important to DFID or the broader development community, that makes my role effective and means I can really generate evidence that responds to the needs of DFID as an organisation and the broader development community. My role has been improved by that. Baroness Morgan of Huyton: This is not trying to catch you out, I do not know the answer. Do you sit on the board of DFID? Professor Charlotte Watts: I am a member of the Senior Leadership Group at DFID, so I am not on the EMC4 level but I am a rank down, a director.

Q11 Baroness Morgan of Huyton: To put it on the record, what is DFID’s annual spend on R&D? Can you give us some examples of the impact of this funding and the importance of it being within DFID rather than elsewhere, and a little more detail about monitoring the impact of R&D? My slight pushback after the last session and your introductions is where could it be better? There is always a danger of complacency. In the time you have been there where are you beginning to think, “There needs to be more on this or that”? Is there anything you want to flag up at this stage? Professor Charlotte Watts: My annual budget for 2015-16 is £308 million. For the last few years about 3% of DFID’s resources have been invested in research. It is a substantial investment. We have had lots of impacts. We have quantified some of those. We try to look at the rates of return on many of our investments, because particularly in discussions with Ministers and within an organisation when we are saying, “Do we fund research? Do we keep girls in school in Pakistan?”, we need to be able to talk about the impacts that we expect to see from our research investments. The sort of things that we have achieved with previous investments include, in health, new malarial drugs, so there are infant drug regimes for malaria, for example. Three hundred million treatments have been delivered in over 50 countries, directly saving lives by having these new medications. There are “mama” kits for pregnant women that have facilitated women coming to health facilities to deliver, again reducing complications at birth and infant mortality. In agriculture we are seeing a lot of impacts in some of our investments, some

4 DFID’s Executive Management Committee. This committee provides strategic direction to the management of DFID operations, staff and financial resources. It is chaired by the Permanent Secretary. Its membership includes the 4 directors-general and the non-executive directors

28 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) and Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – Oral evidence (QQ 10-16) through CGIAR and some in other areas. It includes things such as vitamin-enhanced sweet potatoes which have helped about 10 million people avoid starvation and illness. In the energy space, which is an area that is growing for us in research, looking at building on mobile money to enable poor communities in Africa to access solar technologies, and testing a business model has enabled us to deliver clean energy to 340 households in Kenya, for example. There are combinations of technology and business models to reach scale. We have impacts in areas that may be more on the qualitative side. A nice example recently from research that we did with partners in Uganda was looking at tax avoidance. There was a really interesting study that looked at who the high net worth individuals are in that country and worked with the local tax authority to track those people down. Through that research high net worth individuals were taxed and it generated about £2.5 million in six months from a small research programme. I hope that gives you a flavour of some of the different impacts. Clearly there are things like Ebola where we brought together social science, epidemiological modelling and new diagnostic development in combination to contribute to the UK’s response. Baroness Morgan of Huyton: What could be better? Professor Charlotte Watts: I see there is a real opportunity in my role in the division that I head. I head not only the research division but also the professional cadres, and the heads of profession and cadres are critical to ensuring that DFID has expertise in the right place. I also head the evaluation unit. The issue that I am looking at internally is how I make sure that those different parts of the organisation are joined up effectively, are on top of the evidence, using it and feeding into the system, but also the challenges are coming back and influencing the sorts of research that we commission in the future.

Q12 Lord Mair: My question is to Jenny Dibden. You heard my question in the earlier session about the GCRF—Global Challenges Research Fund—and how that would work. It is a substantial amount of money. Jenny Dibden: It is. Lord Mair: Can you tell us a bit more about that? Jenny Dibden: As you know, it is a £1.5 billion fund over this spending review period and into 2021. We are taking our responsibilities very seriously. We were delighted to get it and see it as a real opportunity, but also as a challenge to ensure coherence in how we spend it and coherence with the spend of other bodies, including DFID. We have been doing a huge amount of work with DFID on coherence and control and with our delivery partners. You will also have seen in the allocations booklet that we have allocated certain amounts of money to individual delivery partners, but there is a very substantial unallocated line which grows over time, which reflects the fact that we believe we need to build capability and capacity to be able to use this fund. That is one of the reasons why we have that sort of shape to our allocations. On work we are doing now, our settlement letter from the spending review says this is a different sort of money and it is incredibly clear that we will account for it properly. The

29 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) and Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – Oral evidence (QQ 10-16) paragraph in our settlement letter runs through all the work we are doing with our delivery partners. I am sure you will be aware of a number of things that are going on with the research councils—some were mentioned earlier and you may have seen some elsewhere—but also our other delivery partners, so the academies too. At the moment, the research councils have a number of calls out around GCRF, which are letting grants now, particularly around capability. You will see that some of those calls are truly multidisciplinary. We have talked a lot about the social sciences. I am a social scientist by background. If you look at those calls, you will see calls combining not only ESRC and AHRC, but there is one bringing in NERC as well. The research councils are also working very much on how they build this fund over the future. Currently, they are consulting and doing a series of town hall meetings around the country. They put a call for evidence out on Friday to say, “These are the themes that we want to work on with this fund, do you think they are right?” That also builds on the work they are doing with the strategic advisory group, which was referenced in the earlier session. Not only does Charlotte sit on that, but I also sit on it as an observer. The academies’ delivery plans are not published yet. You may have seen them as a fellow. The academies are very interested in using their fellows as part of the process of shaping the GCRF spend and ensuring that it is truly ODA and there is the proper control. They are very keen on working with a whole range of delivery partners, including the research councils, and there is joint guidance on ODA spend from all the delivery partners. The academies are interested in joining up the GCRF with Newton, because they are also our delivery partners. Within BIS, I should mention that we are going through a process of bringing together the governance around our ODA spend. We have a very small amount of ODA spend, we also have the GCRF and Newton. We have decided that the Newton board should be combined with the governance for GCRF into an overarching BIS ODA board which the Minister of State for Universities and Science will chair—Jo Johnson. It will not only have BIS officials, both policy officials and finance, it will also have Charlotte, Treasury and as observers our delivery partners. I hope that gives you a flavour of how we are operating. As well as Charlotte, we are working with a number of other departments. In the health space there is an oversights board around global health that we are attending. We have also been talking with Duncan Wingham on the UKCDS proposition and is there a role for that body to have some sort of coherence oversight. Lord Mair: Professor Watts, you told us that you have roughly £300 million a year for research in international development? Professor Charlotte Watts: Yes. Lord Mair: What we are talking about with GCRF is, roughly divided over five years, another £300 million every year, so potentially am I right that there is double the amount of funds for research in the whole sphere of international development? At one level that sounds very good. Professor Charlotte Watts: There is a substantial increase that provides a huge opportunity to bring the breadth of UK scientific expertise to development challenges in a very

30 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) and Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – Oral evidence (QQ 10-16) unprecedented way. There is one caveat: we know our budget for this year but are still waiting for confirmation of later years. That £300 million is what the landscape currently looks like. Lord Mair: Is there a danger that the Treasury might say that now you have got this other £300 million a year through the GCRF they will reduce your funding? Professor Charlotte Watts: There has not been any sense of that. The discussion has been very much aspirational, in terms of how we draw on other departments to have additional ODA to use on research.

Q13 Viscount Ridley: Given this new munificence, this Committee made a suggestion a few months ago that a proactive investigation into the use of GM insects to control tropical diseases would be well worth spending money on. A few weeks later the Zika outbreak happened, rather proving our point, and yet our suggestion has fallen on rather stony ground. Can you enlighten us as to whether it is civil servants or politicians who have kicked this one into the long grass, to mix my metaphors? Professor Charlotte Watts: I cannot speak on what has happened. I have been quite involved in the discussions on Zika5 and what are the research and evidence gaps. Part of that is thinking about what might be the role of GM mosquitoes and we are interested in Wolbachia, which is a similar approach whereby a bacteria that lives in insect cells has the potential to lead to non-viable offspring and intergenerational effects on Aedes survival. In our thinking about investments on Zika we have been looking at who is funding what and where are the gaps that we should prioritise. My understanding on the GM mosquito is that there is already some funding from the Brazilian Government to test the mosquito in Brazil. We are very keen to see what the results of that research are. My feeling scientifically is that it is probably similar to the discussion we have been having about GM crops: there is a role for those approaches, but we must think about how that fits within a broader landscape of interventions around Aedes vector control. I am particularly interested in its role if you have small populations and whether it could crash populations, for example. Viscount Ridley: Very specifically, we said Britain could play a role here, partly because we invented the technology, partly because there are pests in this country, but also because of the overseas territories. We could help this technology get off the ground in a very specific way. I will not press you any further. Lord Cameron of Dillington: I am sorry—this will sound a rather aggressive question, but I mean it in the nicest possible way. Do you feel in control of your budget? Half of your budget6 goes to CGIAR and another half is coming in that is run by BIS7. In relation to the overseas development R&D budget, do you feel you are controlling it? Professor Charlotte Watts: I feel in control of the budget I have within DFID. When I came in the discussion on CGIAR was one of the areas that I looked at closely because it is a large investment that we are making. What I see with CGIAR is some impressive investment and

5 DFID CSA is a core member of HMG’s Scientific Advisory Group in Emergencies (SAGE) on Zika chaired by the Government CSA. 6 Around 40% of DFID’s agricultural research budget goes to CGIAR. 7 The Global Challenges Research Fund held by BIS is £1.5 billion over 5 years. This is a similar size to DFID’s current £300 million annual research budget. BIS does not manage DFID’s ODA funding.

31 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) and Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – Oral evidence (QQ 10-16) very high returns on some of the technologies that have come from those investments, but also issues around governance that DFID has been very active in challenging and addressing. Moving forward, I do see that CGIAR is becoming more efficient. With our own investments, we are carefully focusing on areas where we know what is going to happen with those funds, and it is directed at areas of investment where we will have most impact and meet a real development challenge. On the broader cross-government ODA budget, I do not see that as my budget. Other departments have direct responsibility for their own ODA research spend. I see my role as saying how we share our experience—the expertise that we have—that we are in the right places and we are at the table for the decision-making processes, including being part of these governance boards. Lord Cameron of Dillington: Do you have enough influence over the co-ordination of R&D research generally? You are working well with Jenny. Professor Charlotte Watts: We have been joking that we see each other all the time. We are still developing the high-level coherence mechanism, but in practice there is a lot of discussion happening at the senior level and lower levels on how we really make this work, how we identify and ensure there are synergies, making sure that we share experience and lessons learned. It has been incredibly productive so far and we have had very open conversations. From the outset I think the critical issue has been that commitment to impact and quality of research in other government department initiatives.

Q14 Baroness Young of Old Scone: In the spirit of what might also be seen as a slightly hostile question, we have heard lots of praise for the way DFID carries out its research role— its inclusiveness and cross-disciplinary, cross-organisation partnerships. Why was BIS given the money to do this rather than DFID? Jenny Dibden: Maybe we should start with the Zika example. The first call we did under GCRF was as part of the Zika response. We were able to do that because we have a fundamental bedrock of high-quality science that is funded out of BIS at the science base. What we are bringing to the party is the UK research and science base. That means we are part of an incredibly powerful story. I am very glad that it was given to BIS. It is an opportunity for us, but also for DFID as well to capitalise on the fundamentally strong research base of this country. Baroness Morgan of Huyton: What I thought was interesting in the first session was the positive view of the advisory committee in DFID. I take your point about the strong connection to the research councils, but when you described what sounded to me like the decision-making body, chaired by the Science Minister, it did not sound as if there was lots of expertise around the table. Does there need to be some outside expertise on that decision-making body? Jenny Dibden: I would think about it in two ways. There are people I did not mention to the committee. We have got Sir Mark Walport, the Government’s current Chief Scientific Adviser, who we work with very closely. He was previously on the Newton board. We are very pleased that he has agreed to come across to the BIS ODA board. Mark runs the CSA network, so has an incredibly clear line of sight across all departments, including ones that receive ODA money. We find that very useful. Each of those CSAs within those individual departments is responsible for their subject area, so he has access to that. As part of the

32 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) and Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – Oral evidence (QQ 10-16)

Government Office for Science he has a programme of work looking very much into the future, just as the research councils do on emerging opportunities and threats. We have also been keen to bring over other input from the Newton board in the form of Judith Macgregor, who is the High Commissioner in South Africa, who has been incredibly useful describing what it is like to be in-country, the work you have to do to develop partnerships, which has been useful for us in relation to Newton. I have talked about the strategic advisory group of the research councils. All the research councils were able to nominate somebody. The research councils go through a process of people applying and a selection process. It may be that we need to consider whether we need further advisory support, but we were very keen, in the interests of coherence and control, not to create a plethora of advisory boards. We could have had multiple advisory boards. The research councils that work very closely with academies are very practised and used to creating the right sorts of advisory groups for work that they do, so we thought it was right that we should use that group as a direct line into the BIS ODA board. Jane Elliott, who is the RCUK International Champion, will sit on the BIS ODA board. Lord Mair: Nevertheless, do you worry that there might be a stretching of the meaning of international development? With all these opportunities—the research councils, the two academies—there is a substantial amount of money that is available for research proposals. Jenny Dibden: The word “malevolent” was used earlier. I definitely do not see malevolence at work. I have talked about capability and capacity and there is definitely some work to do there. I do not share the concern that you are suggesting is out there. When you read the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering statements and delivery plans on ODA, absolutely at the top is not only a description of the rules, it is the whole spirit of what they are trying to do, and that runs throughout the research council plans as well. People’s hearts are absolutely in the right place on this, backed up by the science that we know all our delivery partners can do.

Q15 Baroness Neville-Jones: My question has largely been asked by Lord Cameron. I ought to declare my membership of EPSRC and the Foundation for Science and Technology and the Quantum Technologies Strategic Advisory Board. Listening to you, I do have a rather uneasy feeling that a fragmented picture could emerge about how the money is spent, the control over it and the co-ordination of the overall policy. In your evidence you say that you are reviewing your research portfolio and will set the future budget and priorities for DFID’s research. Do I understand that in your review you will only cover those money that DFID is spending? Normally, if a department sets a strategy it sets the national strategy for that sector of governmental activity. It does not seem that is entirely the case if you are not going to cover in your strategy what the global fund is also doing. Is it the case that the document you produce will cover only DFID-controlled matters and we have to look to another document to see how the totality adds up? What comment do you have as the Chief Scientific Adviser in that area? Professor Charlotte Watts: The UK Aid strategy that was published in November set out the UK’s overall strategy on development, and that included R&D. There are four ODA objectives, which are strengthening global peace, security and governance; strengthening resilience and response to crises; promoting global prosperity and tackling extreme poverty,

33 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) and Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – Oral evidence (QQ 10-16) and helping the world’s most vulnerable. In that big strategy it is very much the ODA strategy and sustainable development goals, which is the bigger global strategy to which, within development, we are seeking to contribute. What have finished since I joined are the Research reviews, very extensive analyses of forthcoming challenges, the majority opportunities, the gaps, the sorts of research investments that can deliver large impacts on the short to medium term. These analyses were peer reviewed. Our Research Advisory Group looked at it extensively. It had internal and external peer review. From that, we have identified a range of areas where we think development research should be focusing. Subsequent to the cross-government ODA investments, we have looked at that portfolio again and thought what are the comparative advantages that DFID should make sure we are funding. That often links to our presence in-country, the work we are doing in very complex and challenging settings, our direct pathways to be able to deliver impact on the ground. What are areas we might want to collaborate with the Global Challenges Research Fund on, and what areas the Global Challenges Research Fund should be leading and we can support, but potentially may not contribute funds. We have had those discussions with BIS and other research partners. The issues that we have identified are fed into the framing and priorities that GCRF have focused on, but they are also doing their own process of consultation to check they have got it right and their community feels comfortable with the priorities. Baroness Neville-Jones: Would you say, therefore, that the Global Challenges Research Fund fits within the intellectual and policy framework of the priorities that you identify, even if you are not implementing all of them? Professor Charlotte Watts: Yes. Baroness Neville-Jones: It is not a question so much of who you are all aiming at but who does what? Professor Charlotte Watts: Yes. Baroness Neville-Jones: Are you satisfied as the lead department in the area—I think you are, rather than BIS—that there will be adequate co-ordination when it comes to implementation such that the objectives and strategy of your department are supported and followed through by people doing things outside your control? Professor Charlotte Watts: We have been discussing the co-ordination mechanisms. I agree completely that we need very strong co-ordination mechanisms. Those are not formalised yet and the steers provided by the speakers in the previous session point to what might be the ways forward in terms of that coherence. Baroness Neville-Jones: Do you have anything to add to that? Professor Charlotte Watts: No. We have an overall ODA coherence board that reports to the Treasury and DFID. The opportunities to have a similar coherence mechanism, potentially drawing on the OSCHR mechanism with an independent chair, might be something that would work well thinking about the co-ordination of ODA research. We have been in discussions with UKCDS, Wellcome and BIS to think does the OSCHR work and is there some adaptation of that. That is the direction of travel, but it is not yet formalised.

34 Government – Department for International Development (DfID) and Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – Oral evidence (QQ 10-16)

Q16 Lord Cameron of Dillington: You have already answered the CGIAR question and endorsed what Sir John said in the earlier session. The main purpose of development aid is to help people stand on their own two feet. There are two parts to partnership: one is working with private sector and NGO—which is part private sector—partners; and the other is working with research institutions in the developing countries, which is what I want to enquire about. If they could develop their own research capability that would be hugely beneficial to the overall agenda. How does that work? Professor Charlotte Watts: I am totally in agreement. If we are thinking of long-term objectives we need to be thinking about how we support national governments and local institutes to develop and use their own evidence. That is one of the other opportunities that is potentially a very important link to the increase in ODA research funding, which is how can we make sure that investments complement each other and support the development of knowledge systems and evidence systems in different lower and middle income countries and that transition to countries generating evidence to solve their own problems. Rurik, do you want to add anything? Rurik Marsden: Maybe just one example. We work jointly with the African Academy of Sciences and NEPAD on an initiative which is jointly funded with the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust on excellence in African science. That is using mechanisms in Africa to support African researchers, because it has 15 % of the world’s population, 25% of the world’s diseases and 2% of the world’s research products. It is how we put in place sustainable support that is going to build up institutions and systems of knowledge. Professor Charlotte Watts: Embedded in a lot of our research programmes are partnerships with academics and universities in south. Part of the way that you do good development research is with very meaningful partnerships from the outset. That is part of the lesson learning that we have been sharing with colleagues in BIS and across government to say, “These are the sorts of models that not only generate good research but lead to impact and development of capacity in the longer term”. Jenny Dibden: I mentioned the Newton partnership working. That is in-country, very much about the needs of that country backed up by a country strategy and very much helping to build the capability in those countries. Certainly on GCRF, we are looking in particular at the academy proposals but also the research council proposals, which are about developing people in science and research—leaders now and for the future in the countries we are working with. Lord Cameron of Dillington: I helped to launch your brucellosis prize in this very building. The Chairman: That concludes this session. We are most grateful to you for coming to help us. Thank you, Professor Watts, Rurik Marsden and Jenny Dibden. A transcript will be circulated in the normal way; do please make any minor corrections that are necessary. Thank you very much for helping us.

35 Institute of Development Studies, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9)

Institute of Development Studies, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9)

Transcript to be found under Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge

36 Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Institute of Development Studies and Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9)

Wellcome Trust, Professor Sir John Beddington, former Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Institute of Development Studies and Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge – Oral evidence (QQ 1-9)

Transcript to be found under Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, University of Cambridge

37