132. Why Britain Isn’t A “Science Superpower”

0:10Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Money with me Robert Peston. Steph will be joining us in a minute and I'm delighted that today's guest is Paul Nurse, who is arguably the most important scientist alive in Britain. Today he's won the Nobel Prize. He's got every honour you can think of, including the Order of Merit. And he runs the, again, I think arguably the most important research, Science Research Institute in the UK, the Francis Crick Institute. We're going to talk about the importance of science to all aspects of our lives, our economy, our well-being. And we're also going to talk about his extraordinary life story.

0:58So here is our interview with Sir Paul Nurse. Paul, thank you so much for joining us. It's an absolute treat to have you here. Like your career is just beyond fascinating. And I know we're going to get into some of that a bit later in the podcast. But I guess the first thing I'd really like to know is what our kind of standing is at the moment in terms of science on the global stage. Like how are we in the UK in terms of invention and creation and research and development? Like set the scene for us in terms of where we're at now. It's a very good question, Steph. Let me just start by saying science is important.

1:38It's important for driving sustainable economic growth, better public services, improving health, quality of life. So it matters. It matters to us all. To understand where we are, we have to have a good sense of what we mean by science. I mean, it sounds a stupid question, but what do we mean by it? Because it's useful to think of it in three categories. what I call discovery, discovery science, where you're actually trying to work out how the world works, curiosity-driven bottom-up. Then you have something called translation, which is more oriented discovery research, to find out something about things that are meant to be useful, you know, a new cure for a disease or a new machine or whatever.

2:21And then finally, the application of that knowledge to something that's absolutely useful. And these three activities are very related in terms of how they work, except for one big difference. At the discovery end, it's very much bottom up, driven by, I'm a discovery scientist, driven by individuals, driven by their curiosity. But as you move further through translation and through into application, it becomes increasingly top down because then you have to have objectives. And I emphasise this right at the very beginning because, in fact, we're good at some of the things in the UK, but we're not necessarily good at all of them.

3:02Historically, what everybody's always said about Britain is brilliant at pure science, the discovery, absolute crap at the application in a commercial sense. Is that reasonable? No, it's not reasonable, actually. It's more sophisticated, more complicated. We absolutely have been brilliant at discovery science in the past. And in fact, you could make a case that modern science was invented in the 17th century with the foundation of the Royal Society, which played a key role of it. And we have made absolutely amazing contributions over our history, exactly as you just said, Robert. But we get complacent when we say we're brilliant at all of that.

3:48So let's not pay attention to that. Let's pay attention to other things like translation and application. In fact, discovery is becoming increasingly fragile in the UK. And it's a problem because it hasn't been fully recognised, I would say, by government. Then we go through sort of translation, blah, blah, which I think is working sort of OK at the beginning. But the next problem we have is we're moving from translation into really serious application. Now, what's the problem we have there? It's interestingly, I'd say less to do with the science and more to do with the economy. We are risk averse at investing in big opportunities, absolutely risk averse.

4:32Our pension funds, etc., which has been identified, simply are risk averse. They won't actually go into this activity. It's absolutely crazy. and we are totally vulnerable to being bought out by companies in the US at just the point when they're going to really make money. So this is essentially the DeepMind sort of catastrophe, is it? It's, for example, DeepMind. I should say I'm an advisor to DeepMind or to their spin-offs. But just to remind people, sold 10 years ago to Google for 400 million, probably worth 150 billion today. All that financial benefit going to its owner Alphabet Google rather than to British investors?

5:11Absolutely, and driving British jobs as well. So it's not just a question of profit and where it goes, it's also driving... So too many jobs now in Silicon Valley rather than in the UK? Exactly it. And the reason for that is, I'd say, twofold. One is the lack of ambition amongst our big investors. And the second is the fact that our market is small. And I think we just have to realise that We've made it even worse with Brexit, of course. So you don't mean the financial market. What you actually mean is the economy, you know, the real sort of market. It's simple. We've got a population 65 million.

5:50The US, 380, 400 million. Europe, 350 million. China, 1.3 billion or whatever. Our market is limited. So the investors see that. So we are a bit pathetic with investment. And part of it is because our market is small. Back to the front end, Discovery. We are still an amazing country and we are simply driving a Citroen, if you like, rather than a Mercedes. I mean, we are a pathetic funding from government. I do drive a Citroen, Paul. Do you? Well, that's because you have character, Steph. That's because you have character. Now, look, I'm going to say something that probably will surprise you. because one thing you need to know when you're thinking about these things is actually how much money we're spending on different parts.

6:38And the ONS has just messed it up for years. It's the beginning to get it right now. In fact, they were 1 % GDP out. So what do you mean they were 1 % out? What are we talking about now? Right, what we're talking about is the percentage of GDP that is spent on research, how much is spent by industry, how much is spent by government. So part of the myth that you were talking about that were crap at translation is because the statistics that were being collected by ONS totally underestimated how much was being spent in business, small businesses, by a large amount. What we were thinking was that the total spend in the UK was 1.6%.

7:18It was actually 2.5%. Unbelievable. So where did they recognise that mistake? Well, first of all, why was it? They were using a metric based on, well, most of the research is done in aerospace, automobiles, big pharma. So let's only count that and not look at anything else. And they did that for about 20, 30 years. OK, so everybody was saying industry isn't spending enough money. Actually, it was government that wasn't spending enough money. How was it revealed? Well, it was civil servants who were working with me when we wrote a report that came out two years ago or 18 months ago. that just had a go at it.

7:57So it was civil servants who, it wasn't their job, but they poked around in it, in bays, and they got it out. And did the ONS apologise? I haven't noticed it. I haven't noticed it, but, you know, I don't follow the stuff. But again, we actually, funny enough, talked about this only the other day with Robert Choate, who's in charge of essentially keeping all our statistics in this country honest, and we were talking about how the employment statistics are terribly misleading at the moment. We've got a problem with data. Well, we have a problem with data. This is a little sideline just for a moment.

8:27But how can we plan what we do with science and our economy if we don't have reliable data? If we have data which says our spend is a big hole in commercial and it isn't, what do you do? Well, there was for years this obsession in the Treasury that you had to give very significant credits to businesses that were investing in R &D. It was the R &D tax credit. And what you're saying is, and they did give a lot of subsidy, but you're saying it was way more effective than the government realised. Well, the fact is, if you looked at the tax returns, it was obvious what the ONS was saying couldn't be right.

9:04Because everybody was claiming this tax credit. Yes. I mean, this is sort of GCSE, isn't it? is what I would say. But what I want to get to is, if you now look at the figures, the amount of money government performs on research is 0.15 % of GDP. 0.15%. This is tiny. It is. And how does that compare to other places then? Yes, I have the figures here. I thought you'd ask me this. The OECD average is 0.2%. Now, the OECD is 37 nations or whatever it is, only 33 reports. So it's a third higher on average everywhere else. That's the average. And, you know, the OECD isn't G7 and G10, as you know much, much better than me.

9:51And we are actually, that's performed by government, but there is a second figure, which is what's funded by government. And that is, of course, higher. It's 0.56%. But the OECD average is 0.62%. And we are 18th in the 33 nations. For a country that wants to be a science superpower, that's pretty low down. But tell us who's above us in that 18. I'd say if we look at US, Germany, Korea, I mean, these obviously are superpowers. Yeah, and major competitors. And major competitors. It ranges between 0.65 % to 1.12%, double. It is significantly higher. Now, I hate whining about money. I hope we can talk about how we can spend the money better.

10:37You can do that on this show, definitely, by the way. Well, I'm going to whine about money. Now, there's nothing that we can do in the very short term, but one, government has got to recognise there is no way we are a superpower with that sort of spend. And what Boris was saying was bollocks. I'm afraid it just was. Am I allowed to say words like that on this programme? You're definitely allowed to say that on this podcast. You can probably say slightly worse before we get taken off our various platforms. But just remind us what he said. Well, we are going to be a science superpower, I think was the term.

11:08And, you know, that was great. We liked him saying it. But, you know, what was happening? We were trundling along at the bottom. There's been a gradual withdrawal of money from government departments for their own research, you know, to know what to do. Because every time there's been a cut in funding, where do they go? They cut research because it doesn't affect the immediate front line. So can I just ask you a question? Because this is I mean, there will be some some people here who don't know essentially the sort of structure of how discovery is done. Does any serious discovery happen in the private sector?

11:50Well, Google DeepMind for sure. I mean, so yes, it can. And does it happen in has historically it happened very much in the UK in the private sector? It can happen in the private sector. Has it historically happened much in the UK? The origins of most discovery research are in the UK primarily in universities and to a lesser degree because they're much smaller in research institutes. And research, there's a lack of diversity in the UK. We have nearly everything funded in the universities and not enough in some parts at least of institutions. Because as I understand it, funding for the Met Office, for example, counts as government investment in science.

12:32And it is. And it is doing discovery research as well as useful things like telling us if we're going to get wet today. So if we just go back, because again, history is useful, the incredible breakthroughs that somebody like Alan Turing would have made, they would have been funded directly by government, I'm assuming. Well, Turing, of course, was starting his discoveries in the Second World War, working for government, trying to break codes. Exactly. Of course. And at the same time, making really important discoveries, which were then essentially university-based. So it's the universities and research institutes, to a lesser degree, primarily government-funded, which have driven most discovery research, with some that happens in certain laboratory situations.

13:17In the United States, there was a lab port now closed called Bell Labs. It was funded. Yeah, it was absolutely celebrated huge private sector doing extraordinary discovery. Exactly. So it can happen. But mostly, and particularly now, companies look at the bottom line all the time. So they will strip out things probably which are not either direct application or to some extent, perhaps translation. And just before we move off this, you'll have seen the work over many years of Marianne Matsukato, who comes on this show from time to time. Her big thesis is all important breakthroughs are made by the public sector and all commercialisation is broadly done by these enormous companies.

14:00And one of the problems in the world, I'm simplifying, is that these big companies rip off essentially the public sector and never give proper credit to the public sector. And there's both an issue about understanding how you make these breakthroughs, which have economic significance. And there's also a sort of deification of the private sector, which is very harmful just in terms of how we think about how to allocate resource. Yes, I might use different language, but I think that is essentially correct. The majority of knowledge generation is government funded, to some extent a little bit charitably funded.

14:32There are some charities, particularly in the health sector. So cancer research, for example. But the majority of the application, translation on application or the back end of translation is commercial. So it is built on discovery. Now, that was a deliberate decision made, for example, in the US in the 1940s, so after the Second World War, where they would invest in universities to produce those discoveries. And so the Department of Defence, for example, the budget of the Department of Defence in terms of fundamental research is just off the charts huge. Yes. Can I ask, Paul, is there then a correlation between increased funding for science, so whether it's for disease or cancer, whatever, and then commercialisation of it, a growth in commercialisation or a reduction in the disease seen there or, you know, fewer fatalities or whatever?

15:24Like, do you see that when there is more funding in certain areas, it does genuinely have an impact, albeit long term? This is quite a complicated question because sometimes people say, let's just throw money at a disease like AIDS or something when we don't have a scooby what to actually do in that area. So there is a question of whether you are applying money in the translation application ground usefully if you don't actually know what problem to solve. If we took cancer when I was a kid, we really didn't understand it at all. Today, we understand it much better. It's completely different. So throwing discovery money at a problem simply because it's a big societal problem, you've got to be a bit careful of that because you may waste money.

16:06But if I can generalise your question, Steph, if we look at the US, the US is driven partly because it's a big market, partly because it has adventurous big investors, but also because it has high levels of public spending in the universities and to some extent also research institutes which are often controlled by government. And that has worked. There are other countries, unusual ones. Israel, for example, if I remember the figures correctly, doesn't have such a big public funding and they are quite effective and they do it more in the commercial sector. Looking at countries like Korea, for example, and Germany traditionally, and of course its economy is looking a little more weak at this present time, but it is public expenditure in discovery research has to be at a level to drive commercialisation, and it isn't properly recognised.

16:59Now, could I ask you, therefore, on one sort of modern development in all of this, a slightly controversial former public official, former advisor to Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, created this new institution called ARIA. Now, your old friend, Patrick Vallance, was a chief scientific officer. Now he's a minister in the Department of Innovation and Technology or whatever it's called. De-sit. Whatever it's called, yeah. Unfortunate term, which can be easily changed to something else. Please continue. Yep, I think we've all noticed that. Anyway, I just want to know, is ARIA doing the right kind of research?

17:36Right. ARIA is new, it's fresh, so it's too early to call. The way it is doing it is like a sort of big glorified start-ups. So they've got five sort of areas that they think are going to be commercially valuable. They are following a sort of start-up approach combined with identifying top-down certain areas that they should pursue. So it's not fundamental research. They've seen research in universities and they're trying to grow it. It might be just on the back end of fundamental research, but it is basically trying to commercialise. But good venture? We should try it. We should try it and see how it is.

18:14It's costing 800 million, I think. Which is no small amount of money. And so let's see if it works. So good luck to it, I would say. But there's something very interesting here. ARIA has been created to be protected, if I can call it, from the bureaucracy of government. But that's a great thing. Do you know that, for example, all salaries in government-funded institutions will look at the Prime Minister's salary and... So you can't get paid more than the... You can't get paid. And, of course, the fact the Prime Minister can, as soon as they step down, can get paid 100 ,000 every time they give a talk, it doesn't ever sort of factor into this nonsense.

18:51So in ARIA, they can pay 300 ,000, 300 ,000, say, certainly for the leadership, Top expertise. If you go to the Medical Research Council, UKRI, and go to one of its great laboratories, Laboratory Molecular Biology, they're probably around 100 ,000 at most. Because they're basically civil servants, they're not allowed to be paid more than the Prime Minister. You've got it. Now look at the total inconsistency. You invoke ARIA, you take off all the bureaucracy so it can thrive, and yet for the rest of the thing, which is 10 billion, 12 billion or 15 billion, whatever it is, you have all these restraints, It's probably treasury oriented and they don't even look at them.

19:29I run the Francis Crick Institute and I didn't realise the importance. When it was set up, I'm only half, less than half funded by government. So the bulk of it is what, a charitable foundation? It's 40 % government and then it's Cancer Research UK and the Wellcome Trust. OK, I'm very grateful for the three sources of the funding they give me. But it means I escape, I escape the restrictions that, for example, for laboratory molecular biology has. And it is a nonsense. And the government itself creates ARIA to say, oh, it's free of all these restrictions, and yet maintains the restrictions, probably Treasury imposed, in most of what they restore.

20:09Is this madness or is it madness? Again, just to flesh this out, the problem is they therefore lose really good people. They lose really good people. They can't attract people. And by the way, attracting people, you know we have the highest visa costs of any country in the world. You mean it's more expensive for you? If you see some amazing, talented person from India, for example, and you're desperate to get them to work at the Crick Institute doing your amazing, you know, work into genetics of various sorts, it's way harder to get that person, you know, the permission to work in the UK. It is.

20:43And not only that, it's very expensive. We plan to spend three quarters of a million pounds a year just dealing with the bureaucracy of visas. Three quarters of a million? Three quarters of a million for our institute. And that could go into really important research. Of course it could. And what are they doing? It is ten times, if not more, than most other countries. More than America, for example. Yes, absolutely more than America. Wow. Another piece of madness, which is, you know, it was driven by, you know, trying to hit immigration and all these sorts of things, but the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

21:17You know, we're a superpower on one hand, and we're stopping getting superpower scientists into the country. So in terms of what you want to see then, Paul, in order for this to change, this is about making it less bureaucratic, giving science institutions more independence to do what they need to do. And I guess it's collaboration as well. There was also a need for money, I think you said. It is money, but it is also how that money is delivered. Because we have not looked at this in the 50 years I've been doing this stuff. The fact is we focus too much on what are called direct costs of a laboratory.

21:55OK, that is, you know, paying the people who are doing the work in my lab. I still have a lab. We do not invest in administrative support. We do not invest in high quality technical calls in the universities. We do not invest in laboratories so they're up to date and so on. And the consequence of this is our poor academics, particularly in the universities, are doing all their own typing and whatever, and they're supposed to be there to think, think about really difficult problems, and they're doing trivial administration, because somehow government universities or whoever it is thinks they can save money by cutting administration, because everybody can do their own stuff.

22:36Now, at the Crick, I took money out of the labs and put it into what I call end-to-end funding, all the things I just said. We have a decent administration. We have the highest quality technical cause. We weren't using more money. In fact, we had less, but we invested it in a more sensible way. And so we're not delivering it properly. I blame the research performing organisations in part, universities and so on, because they don't think about this properly. I blame the government for simply not going back to basics and look at that. Sorry, I had to rent on that too. So my kind of beef with this in terms of science and how we look at it and how we create these new discoveries and everything else, as someone who is, you know, from a science background, is that we silo science quite a lot.

23:23And I think you kind of touched on this right at the beginning when you were explaining how the statistics were wrong because we only looked at science in the very classic science terms. But, you know, we're talking about universities, but there are other places where science can happen. aren't there like the fe colleges or you know it's not that kind of just pure academic route into science and i think that there are so many people who are probably doing science stuff and not realizing it who who might discover things like we all know the famous story of penicillin and how that was discovered accidentally from a moldy petri dish and there could be other places and i hate the fact that we silo sciences you know you're either creative or you're scientific No, you're not.

24:05You're creative if you're doing science too. And so we shouldn't just look at the universities for where we find our scientists. Actually, the first thing, penicillin was not discovered by Alexander Fleming. I just have to point it out. It was discovered. Is that a big myth? It was. There were at least three papers in the 25 years before which were to do with penicillin. It was a particular publicity stunt in the Second World War. And Alexander Fleming didn't know of this other work, but there is a myth there. I just thought I ought to say it. So just to be clear, having dispelled the myth, who should we credit with the discovery?

24:42There were three papers, I think. The first of 1895. Fleming's work was good, but it just wasn't the only thing that was there. The reason I'm saying it is because what Steph says, science is often not just the single big hero. It often comes from different places. There was a long paper, I think, published from the Institute Pasteur, from somebody working in South America, 20 pages on stuff you get out of fungi. Another thing is the first use of penicillin was not with the policemen in Oxford. It was done, I think, in Leeds, treating infected eyes about 10 years before. The northerners, yay! And the interesting thing is I gave a programme, I forget who it was, Channel 4 or somewhere, and they asked about all of this.

25:26They edited it all out and they just left with the standard story. Absolutely true. That's very disappointing. Very disappointing. Now, that was a distraction. Two things I wanted to say to what Steph. Yes, indeed, science is across the board. I have people in my lab, junior technicians, who came from a completely different route. They contribute to what we're doing. In fact, they help us greatly. It's part of this end-to-end funding. You can strip people like that out and you're less efficient. You know, I mean, and so it absolutely stuff comes from various places. Also, it doesn't all come from Russell Group universities.

26:04There are real centers of excellence around the country. And we shouldn't just focus in those places which happen to have the biggest concentration. Those real brilliance can actually sometimes breathe more outside these big centers of excellence. I ran a university in the US, for example, which was very high quality, a real, I mean, and that was just full of the big honchos. You go to the Midwest, which isn't got a reputation for this, you'll find suddenly people who are breathing and doing something different. I wanted to get in a minute or two onto your extraordinary life story, but I just wanted to ask something relevant to an announcement that's happened in the few hours before we've been recording this.

26:50which is, you know, we've seen this sort of barrage of initiatives by the new presidents of America. One of the things that they've announced is that a number of huge companies, OpenAI, great leader in artificial intelligence, SoftBank, enormous Japanese investment fund, Oracle, slightly older but still huge IT firm. they've announced a$500 billion program to create supercomputers, data centers for the next generation of AI. And when you see numbers like$500 billion, you just think the UK will inevitably, particularly in this economy, society changing technology, we're just going to be a vassal state.