FST JOURNAL

Lord Willetts: We really appreciate your coming along and joining us this evening. You've been Government Chief Scientific Advisor for over a year. What’s your assessment of the role of government Chief Scientists, and how does it compare with what you were expecting?

Dame Angela:  Well, it is definitely the best job in the world without any question. It is a wonderful mixture of quick-fire, ‘you are going to do three short meetings this morning’ with an afternoon spent on something a bit longer. If I want to know more about something - particularly with good reason, I say to my lovely team in ‘GO-Science’, “I wonder if we should have a round table about that?” We do, and then a set of people from academia and industry and the relevant parts who really know about it, come in and answer our questions. It is like having a reverse tutorial with a bunch of profound experts. It is exactly what I think we really need to get some very expert advice down on paper and across to colleagues in government need to know about. There are some exhausting round tables in the summer, when I sometimes literally find myself going and lying underneath a tree in St James's Park after they were over, just to let it sink in. So, it is a terrific job. It is more varied than I had understood.

Lord Willetts: Of course, you came to it from having been the chief science advisor in the MoD and you could argue that one of the big changes in Research and Development policy in the UK in the last 10 or 15 years has been the rise of the security angle permeating so many decisions on science and technology, and a gradual recognition that just about everything is potentially dual use. Can you give me some comparisons to your defence background before and what extent to which you find yourself drawing on that with your new enhanced role?

Dame Angela: It is very useful to have had that time in defence. I thought I understood the civil service. I have done lots of advisory work as an external on science advisory councils and things like that. I'd spent days shadowing people in the civil service, but I had not ever worked in the civil service. I'll be honest with you, the culture shock was tremendous moving to a full time four day a week job in the Ministry of Defence, after being a full time academic. It was like moving to a foreign country and having to speak another language. 

Lord Willetts: When you say a different language, what do you think is the difference between the civil service public policy language and the scientific, rigorous language of empiricism and mathematical models?

Dame Angela: I think the difference is highlighted by a meeting I had with other senior civil servants recently. Somebody started talking about a book she had found called, it was called “Radical Candor”. (I actually misheard her and thought it was called “Radical Panda”!) Anyhow, it is quite a thing for civil servants to be candid. I think civil servants are very honest and truthful, but let us face it, the entirety of the joke ‘Yes, Minister’ is about the gap between candour and honesty. Academics are very candid. Sometimes to the point that it can be a bit painful, but I think we academics are used to that. So that's the huge difference. I can see myself slowly being hauled into the gravitational field of ‘Thou shalt not say what one really thinks’, but I am hoping that I will not collapse into it before I finish.

Lord Willetts: So, the variety of subtle ways of saying what you really think?

Dame Angela: I have a book. I wish I brought it with me. My first notebook when working at the MoD. I actually used to keep a list of them. The first one of course was ‘Consider it done’. Do you know what Consider it done means? Consider it done is ‘Yes, you have told us, but we are never going to do that, and we are hoping you are going to figure out another way’. There is also, ‘Thank you for that very full description’. That means, ‘Oh my god, I thought you would never shut up’.  I must say that I actually refuse to speak that language and the one I really hate is, ‘I agree with everything that has been said’, because to me, the implications of that are, ‘I have not really listened to what you said, because I do not care and now I am going to tell you what I think anyway’. I think behind the politeness, there is a reticence for real debate that is unhelpful, but there is also this incredible importance of building consensus in order to deliver. That is really what the civil service is there for. If you spend all your life arguing about the details, you will not deliver anything. 

Lord Willetts: That is the civil service but of course, you are also dealing with politicians from a wide range of backgrounds too, and you now have a science minister who was previously the Chief Scientist. How do you find engaging with ministers who have such a wide range of frameworks? 

Dame Angela: Well, I like that challenge. I mean, I think in my heart I am really a university teacher. Nevertheless, I really relish the sort of challenge of trying to make it feel that anybody can ask any question. I think one of the things that is becoming a better habit of ours is to make time to talk to people one on one, so that they do not have to feel worried about what their colleagues think. I think it's a very strong story that Patrick (Sir Vallance- former GCSA) used to talk about going to see the (then) Prime Minister with a couple of scientists to talk about climate change, with nobody else in the room. A total safe space. I think we should do more with that. 

Lord Willetts: We really got to know ministers and the political process through that intense crisis of Covid. In my experience, it is often when an unexpected event with significant scientific assessment needed, such as Fukushima or the Iceland volcano, when the chief scientist is summoned and suddenly it's their moment in cabinet. What are the challenges that you have faced at the more urgent end of the scale, when you've suddenly found yourself briefing ministers on an emergency?

Dame Angela: So, there are all the things that have not blown up where we have done some of the steps to being ready such as mpox. In this case, Chris Whitty and I were there and lots of people from the UK Health and Safety Authority. The process is, you go downstairs in a building, and you hand over all your technology and go through a special door and you are never allowed to mention the fact that this meeting existed. You then have a very sensible discussion about what you are going to do. Our job, in the case of mpox, is making clear to everybody that we already have mpox in this country called a Clade. Clade 2b is what is already here. Clade 1b is what we're worried about. We also explore why this new thing is a problem and then the operational stuff like how much vaccine should we buy? What's the right vaccine. And then, of course, the other thing I talk about that comes up with resilience is the UK Covid-19 inquiry. 

Lord Willetts: The network of Chief Science Advisors is a great kind of cross governmental structure and when you are trying to get a message across government, getting all the chief scientists to understand, share and transmit it, it is very powerful.

Dame Angela:  So, we meet every week. We actually genuinely like each other- it is one of the best groups of people I have ever worked with. I must say, I really appreciate the time I spend with the CSAs.         

Lord Willetts: There are varying relationships with ministers. You can sense that with some CSA’s, there are absolutely key policy advisors in the minister's office, all the time. For others, you are not quite so sure how strong the access is. How do you help out in those circumstances? Always

Dame Angela: Whenever new posts come up, I remind departments that their CSA ought to be advising their minister and not someone else. A powerful CSA is not always a blessing to a department, I think. And why is that? They ask awkward questions. They're not part of a network of career advancement. We are there to be awkward. One of the things we are there for is to defend the future. It is so hard to spend money on things that you know you are going to need in the future, and that is one of the reasons most CSAs have no operational responsibility. So, if you do not have to buy the mpox vaccine, it is easier to say, ‘No, I am going to invest in the new class of vaccines that is going to absolutely revolutionise the way we do vaccination in five to ten years’ time. That is one of the reasons why it is important that the CSA should be external.

Lord Willetts: Does defending the future (which is a great way of putting it) include pressing for science in delicate public expansion negotiations?

Dame Angela: Very much. My job is to press for the science across negotiations and because I don't really have a budget, I am a trusted voice to say, “Here are some bits that fit together”. I mean, mostly my voice at the moment is “don't cut the R and D budget”. That would be a foolish move.

Lord Willetts: Within the network of Chief Scientists, there is not a particularly large cadre of social scientists. How do you decide on the balance of disciplines? How do you ensure that the social science needed to answer some of these questions is available alongside all the other forms of scientific expertise?

Dame Angela: So, I think I could probably name four of my CSAs who are social and behavioural scientists. (Which out of 20, is not bad). They organise themselves into a sort of special interest group and bring along other people from within the civil service- particularly those thinking about resilience. This is part of our continuous work to be ready in case SAGE gets called tomorrow. So that's always there. Quite a lot of our roundtables are social science because so many of the questions that government asks are social and behavioural science questions. For example, a lot of the work that we were doing over the course of the summer was around the situation with prisons, which eventually became very public. There was a lot of preparatory work based on the fact that the prisons were getting very, very full. Fundamentally, that work was behavioural science. I must say, I had not understood that there is not very much behavioural science in government.

Lord Willetts: What do you think levels of expertise in the civil service? Sir Patrick Vallance had (in the past), ambitions for patterns of recruitment, particularly trying to attract people from a scientific background into the general civil service. Is there more still to be done?

Dame Angela: There's lots more to be done. There is our sort of flagship recruitment process which is called ‘The fast stream’. This does recruit some scientists. There is also a special thing called ‘The Science and Engineering fast stream’ that has a lot to do with GO-Science and that is a great way of bringing in people, sometimes straight after a first degree and many of them will have done a PhD or even a postdoc. However, this is ongoing work, and I often think about, how do we help the civil service itself become more scientific? We're working to make a programme to get people much later in their career to come and be civil servants. So, it is people who will come having done maybe 10-15 years as a university academic, or at one of our own Public Sector Research Establishments or, in our dreams in industry. This would mean that they bring that real depth of knowledge with them and then become a policy generalist. The power in the civil service, lies in policy. 

Lord Willetts: Do you think that there is willing to accept the limitations of information and analysis if you are functioning in Whitehall with the limitations of time? I sometimes say that often in government, you're more like a GP than a hospital consultant, taking decisions with limited information and limited time. I think sometimes the cultural pressures are the scientists accepting that decisions have to be taken under those constraints. Can they? Can that cultural gap be bridged?

Dame Angela: Yes, by some people. Some people hate it, and some people revel in it, and there are quite a lot of secondment schemes. We would encourage most people to try it.

Lord Willetts: So, you are actively designing these type of career options and routes which will be public information and easily accessible and understood? Fantastic.

We ought to focus briefly on some of the government specific priorities. And one of the messages that comes across very clearly is using science and tech to improve public services. There is a particular focus on AI and data. How do you think we are doing at harnessing science and tech to deliver better public services, even when they're operating under very serious resource constraints? 

Dame Angela: I think learning from each other is a thing that we need to do more of. Coming from an academic background, it is one of the things I find a little bit strange about the civil service. I don't see as much learning from each other as you do in academia. I mean, let us face it, in academia, we have a whole system for nicking each other's ideas, but you have to do it with accreditation. Because they do not have accreditation in the civil service, there is not much motivation to have people take your ideas, which I think is a bit of a problem, actually. There is not a seminar series in the civil service for all the people who work on quantum, for example. Those people who do work on quantum and do know each other quite well, don't get together and say, ‘look, here is this amazing paper, what can we do with this?’ That is a surprise to me, so I think we should do more of that. 

Please note: For the purpose of the journal, this is a shortened summary of a much longer discussion which can be viewed on the Foundation’s ‘Events’ page. https://www.foundation.org.uk/Events/2024/In-Conversation-with-Professor-Dame-Angela-McLean