Sir, Professor Grant (letters, May 6) is being uncharacteristically unfair and has clearly not understood or even followed the select committee process with regard the science budget inquiry.

The committee process consists of inviting everyone who has an interest to give evidence and then testing that evidence in oral hearings. In the case of the recent report on the Science and Technology Facilities Council (SFTC), Professor Mason gave evidence on two occasions, at the inquiry and as the final witness. All the issues in the report were raised with him during these sessions and he had ample opportunity to present his case.

Much of what Professor Grant quite rightly describes as hearsay should not and was not accepted as formal evidence. The select committee process is not as Professor Grant intimates, a formal judicial one, but a parliamentary process with the intention of scrutinising government policy and its use of resources. Nor is our report the end of that process: it is the Government and STFC who have the final word.

The Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee (IUSSC) would have rightly been held to account if it had not examined the difficulties at the STFC. That is its task, set out by Parliament. Professor Keith Mason is a public figure, paid by the taxpayer and appointed by the Secretary of State. He is therefore wholly accountable to the public and to Parliament for his actions. The committee has a duty to draw its own conclusions based firmly on evidence, and to make practical recommendations to improve a far from happy situation. I believe we have discharged that duty fairly.

Phil Willis, MP
Chairman, Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Select Committee

Sir, Professor Grant fails to emphasise the root cause of this sorry affair, namely the Government. As the IUSSC correctly identifies, “the former PPARC community has been saddled with a £75 million funding deficit”, “despite assurances that STFC would be formed without any legacy issues”.

This undoubtedly forced STFC and its chief executive to make very difficult short-term decisions under pressure, and goes some way towards explaining the actions so roundly criticised by the IUSSC.

If the IUSSC report causes the Government, perhaps after the Wakeham review of physics funding, to redress the harm caused then the report will have achieved a great deal for UK science.

Dr Ian Corbett
Abingdon, Oxon

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