European and External Relations Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Official Report 513KB pdf

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Horizon 2020

Today we have a different format for our meeting: we call it a round-table discussion, even though the table is oval. We are delighted to have you all here. This part of the meeting is scheduled to run until about 2.30—I am sorry; I meant 3.30. I gave you all a fright there. I know that Professor Downes has to leave at 3.30 sharp, so we will ensure that that happens.

I thank all the witnesses who sent in submissions; it is helpful that we have also had submissions from people who could not make it here today. I believe that the submissions have been circulated to everyone.

The format of the discussion will be similar to that of a normal committee meeting. As the convener, I will lead on the initial topics. We will try to generate discussion around the table, but if all contributions are channelled through me, that will give us a better indication of who is saying what and how it relates to the topic in hand. I will announce people’s names before I invite them to speak—if I remember them all; I have a handy guide with me—just so that we know who is who.

I encourage everyone to comment on each other’s contributions. That way, we will get the best out of the information that we have to share and will be able to develop some of the topics that we need to develop. Members can ask questions of one witness at a time or of all the witnesses at once.

I invite everyone to introduce themselves. I am Christina McKelvie MSP, and I am convener of the European and External Relations Committee.

I am the principal and vice-chancellor of the University of Dundee, and I am also the convener of Universities Scotland’s research and knowledge exchange committee. It is in the latter capacity that I am here today.

I am a member of the Scottish Parliament and the deputy convener of the committee.

I am senior policy officer in research and innovation at the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council.

I am director of research and innovation at the Scottish funding council.

I am an MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife.

I am an MSP for the Highlands and Islands region, which has eight constituencies. I am my party’s environment and climate change spokesman, and I sit on the committee.

I am senior executive in research and innovation at Scotland Europa, which is part of Scottish Enterprise. I am based in Brussels.

I am an MSP for the South Scotland region.

I am the member of the Scottish Parliament for the Cowdenbeath constituency.

I am director of innovation and enterprise services at Scottish Enterprise.

I am head of research at Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

I am the MSP for Glasgow Anniesland and a member of the committee.

Thank you. I open the discussion by throwing out a question to everyone round the table. The overall question that we are looking at is how framework programme 7 has worked and how you see FP8 working, or horizon 2020 as it has been renamed. What is your organisation’s involvement and how do you see FP8 being taken forward within your organisation and within Scotland?

I am happy to go first. From the funding council’s perspective, it is important that we encourage our higher education sector and our college sector to engage with Europe whenever possible. With the pressure on research council and other funds from the rest of the United Kingdom, Europe offers us a significant opportunity to bring in significant resource. Our experience is that the Scottish universities and colleges are competitive. We have significant excellence in our research base and we have been successful so far in securing funding, but most people in the sector believe that we could be even more successful.

There is a particular opportunity to join up the sector and the industrial base, linking small and medium-sized enterprises with the academic research base. That is an area where I do not think that we have been as good as we might be. The funding council’s recent announcement of Scottish Government funding to encourage the engagement of our research pools, which enshrine research excellence in Scotland, and allow them to work with SMEs to secure FP7 funding is a fantastic opportunity for us.

On FP8, it is a question of upping our game and finding ways in which to support the engagement, exploiting the Scottish research base wherever possible. We need to be more active in engaging with Europe. Scotland Europa has been a tremendous vehicle for us in engaging with Europe and linking things, but we have also had support from the Scottish Government, with the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning giving us access to the Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science in Brussels. I visited Brussels with him in February. We would not find it easy to do the work on our own, so Government support is enormously useful.

We also feed into discussions with the Scottish Government and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, given the UK’s member state status, to try to influence the submissions that go from the UK to Brussels, but we work separately on the Scottish identity within Europe, which is particularly powerful in securing funding.

Following up on what Paul Hagan said, I remind the committee that, as well as being part of Scottish Enterprise, Scotland Europa is a membership organisation. Among our members are the majority of Scottish universities, some of the colleges and the major research institutions. We provided intense support to ensure that there was active engagement in FP7 and, according to the statistics that you can read in the various reports, Scotland is doing well. We managed to get £256 million back to Scotland in the first three years or so. The data does not include the second part of 2010 or the first part of 2011, because the statistics for those periods are still under discussion.

As part of horizon 2020, we started an informal steering group two years ago, including the Government, the Scottish funding council, Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and, through Scotland Europa, the majority of its members, to influence the process. As part of that, we put together a common Scottish response to last May’s consultation in a single document for Scotland.

I will give you a few more statistics that show Scottish institutions’ increasing engagement with European funding.

During the period of FP7, funding to Scottish institutions has increased year on year and, during the past two years, there has been an increase of more than 40 per cent in the funding from FP7. In 2009-10, which is the last year for which I have figures, we won approximately £50 million of funding. Those figures can be an underestimate of the extent to which we both leverage influence over Europe and have access to communities that are garnering much greater funding than that total. That total is the money that comes into Scottish institutions. However, typically, through other programmes, we will be engaged with funding elsewhere in Europe that increases that figure at least tenfold. The degree to which we are engaged is underestimated by that amount, but it is still impressive.

Universities Scotland has assembled a number of case studies of Europe-funded programmes. I will not go through those now, as that would be using the committee’s time inappropriately, but they are available for the committee to scrutinise at its leisure. Those numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.

I reiterate Paul Hagan’s comments on FP8, which is a huge opportunity for Scotland. An area where we are not performing well in FP7 is engagement with Scottish commercial organisations, especially SMEs. We have a high level of funding of institutions relative to the rest of the UK, but we have a low level of funding of Scottish SMEs, and FP8 is our great opportunity to begin to reverse that. It is often believed that we cannot do anything if industry does not want to engage, but I think that that is entirely the wrong attitude. The issue is translation of the fundamental research, which everybody accepts is truly world class in many Scottish institutions, into commercial, social and cultural outputs. To do that, we need partners, and those partners are often in the commercial sector. The area for real growth is SMEs.

The best examples are often where the SME arises as a spin-off company of the university that is engaged in that process. Although I am not here wearing my University of Dundee hat, I can give you very successful examples from Dundee. The most important thing about that success is that it is infectious. When you have got one, you will start to get more as you learn the process and the company that is engaging suddenly realises that it has found an opportunity to fund its business that it did not know existed beforehand. It also creates a network in Europe that could be a fantastic outlet for its products. Once that catches on, especially in areas where we have good clusters of activity, in the Scottish regions, it will spread like wildfire. Both universities and commercial partners must fully engage in the process, and there are ways in which that can be incentivised through Scottish Government funding. Several mechanisms are already in place, but we ought to explore how that might be assisted.

14:15

You have picked up on a issue that I hoped to go into. You talked about how engagement with SMEs can be improved. Have any other weaknesses been identified in FP7 that we should focus on as we have done with SMEs? Are there other weaknesses that we have not picked up on that we can take forward and learn some lessons from for FP8?

One way in which we are failing is in reaching out to minority community businesses. Traditionally, they are not aware of the facilities that are available to them, so reaching out to them is important. I am not sure what mechanisms are available at the moment, but I am not aware of companies from the minority communities engaging. It would be helpful to know whether there is a specific way in which we are dealing with the issue and, if not, whether there is a plan to create a mechanism to draw them into the system, so that we benefit from all the companies that are available. We must keep it in mind that those companies are growing. SMEs in that sector are growing and are reaching a stage where they are not focused on where they want to go next. Assisting them would probably be very beneficial for us.

I want to make just a couple of points about the question. First, there are still some weaknesses on the university side. You will not find a university leader arguing anything other than that European funding represents our best chance for growth in research activity in the coming period and doing anything other than actively encouraging their institutions to follow that through. Ultimately, it is the academic staff who apply for funding and there are still weaknesses in the engagement of academic staff. The process is longer than it sounds—it is not just a matter of picking up a form and filling it in. It requires prior engagement with Europe, so that is the first thing that must be encouraged throughout institutions.

Secondly, European grant applications consider different criteria from those that we are used to in the UK through the research councils, major charities and other sources of funding, such as the programme assistance for co-ordinating European research—PACER—which helped in that process and was fantastically important. I am sure that the increases that we have seen through FP7 were enhanced by PACER funding. We are all very keen to see such funding continue. It could, perhaps, be reshaped according to experience, but we do not want to see it diminished.

The Scottish proposal assistance fund—SPAF—is an area of funding that was cut out in the most recent spending review. SPAF addressed the issue that I highlighted as problematic, which is getting SMEs engaged. That fund was specifically designed to help SME engagement and I think that it is rather incongruous to our intent and that of the Government that it was cut. From Universities Scotland’s point of view, I would certainly argue that the decision should be reconsidered, or at least that an alternative way to support that work ought to be pursued.

I want to build on the points that have just been made, particularly those to do with the longer-term competitive and strategic nature of the funds we are talking about, particularly horizon 2020. It is important that we continue to build on the lessons from and our experience of FP7 and that we ensure from a team Scotland perspective that we build our engagement with the various technology platforms, which have a huge amount of say and influence over what opportunities will become available over the horizon 2020 period.

We must build on our experience of having a high level of Scottish influence and engagement in, for example, the European technology platform on smart systems integration and the strategic direction of sensors in the information and communications technology sector, because that will help us to ensure that we can shape the research priorities and align them with the Government’s economic strategy. That is particularly important. We gained a lot of good experience over the FP7 period in doing that, and we should continue to focus on that.

I spoke to Luca Polizzi earlier about the fact that we are updating a map of team Scotland’s participation in all the technology platforms. I will be happy to share that updated map once it has been completed. We should use it as the basis for identifying gaps and increasing our participation and influence, so that we have a greater say on the direction of the programmes and can further align ourselves from a team Scotland perspective and secure more of the funding.

I think that the committee would welcome that and find it helpful.

Professor Downes put his finger on the problem. It is incredibly important to have excellent research and development, but if industry does not benefit from it or engage with it enough, we must find out why. I think that it was Winston Churchill who said that it is better to have science on tap than on top. That may not be regarded as relevant, but it is relevant to me and probably quite a lot of businesspeople. The written evidence from HIE notes the difficulty that businesses are having. It states:

“Businesses, particularly SMEs, have struggled with accessing FP funding. They find the application process complex, time consuming and overly bureaucratic.”

The documents involved have such an unbelievable amount of jargon and are so full of acronyms that you have to be more or less an expert in European Union jargon to tackle them. However, businesspeople do not have the time to do that.

I believe that that is the crux of the matter. It is vital that our universities are funded well so that we can produce excellent research and development and be experts in various fields, especially in the new fields of renewables and so on. However, if industry does not engage with that, we must do something about it. How do we cut out the bureaucratic process and make things more understandable for the average layperson or businessperson?

Could I just add one more thing on acronyms? Why does FP8 have to be called horizon 2020? Why is it called two different things? It was only when I got towards the end of the papers that I realised that they were the same thing. I have to be honest about this. If you are an expert, you will know, but otherwise it is quite hard.

It is a rebranding exercise.

The current research commissioner is not keen on referring to the framework programme because she does not believe that the European public understand what it means, but I am not sure that they understand what horizon 2020 means.

As Professor Downes said, the principals are committed to trying to secure more European funding for the research base in Scotland and to build links with industry. The challenge is to persuade academics to do that on the ground. Of the various funding arrangements, PACER and SPAF have helped. The pools’ engagement with the European research funding that is available to link with SMEs will help SMEs to come on board with the universities. The latter have expertise in engaging with Europe, which should facilitate matters.

One of the areas that we have to fix is the extent to which Scottish researchers engage with people in Brussels. I can speak from experience in that I spent three years managing a programme in Brussels for the European Commission and would see Italians, Germans and French people every day, but only a limited number of people coming from Scotland. However, if someone engages in that way, they will find that the people in Brussels can be enormously helpful to them in preparing applications and offering them support when there are challenges and problems. Although the bureaucracy is a problem, the situation in that regard has improved dramatically and there are ways in which we can facilitate the process.

The initial engagement with Brussels is critical. Scotland Europa can be central in helping the Scottish research base to engage: it has contacts; it is out there looking for business regularly; and it has been able to facilitate fantastic, productive meetings. We need to use it.

That the level of administration and bureaucracy for SMEs is an issue has been widely acknowledged across Europe. Through the work of Scotland Europa in the past year or so, we have held workshops and open consultation sessions in order to put together a Scottish response and set of proposals on how administration could be simplified to increase the level of SME engagement in the framework programmes. We have submitted information to the European Commission; in its response, it invited us to comment on its current proposals to improve and simplify the process.

I would like to explain the logic behind the change of terminology. Luca Polizzi may endorse this, but Brussels does not want to call the next framework programme FP8, because three programmes—the build-up of FP7, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, and the competitiveness innovation programme—are being brought together into something that is bigger than FP7.

On the issue of encouraging institutions to apply for European funding, the purpose of PACER was to assist institutions with developing internal capacity and becoming familiar with all the bureaucracy and red tape, so that in future they would have all the relevant expertise. Now that the pools can apply for funding, we hope that they will be able to build up their capacity as well. However, as you know, the PACER funding is for only five years, and it comes to an end in 2012.

As David Smith said, we have put together three different position papers on simplification, with 45 recommendations to the Commission on how to improve access to horizon 2020. Some of those have been accepted by the Commission and will go through to the new rules of participation, which is a concrete result. Horizon 2020 will be much simpler than FP7, so I am sure that SMEs will be better able to engage.

We know that we need to stimulate the participation of SMEs, but we have to be careful about the quality of the engagement—because FP and what will be horizon 2020 are complex instruments and are not for all SMEs. We will have to manage the expectations of SMEs, and to understand which of them can be considered to be research and technological development—RTD—intensive industries and which can be considered to be fast-growth SMEs that could benefit from the programme.

A total of 13.5 per cent of the participants in FP7 are SMEs. We can do better, and we are working on that, but we are not far from the European target of 15 per cent. At the moment, the European average is 14.5 per cent. We focus on the quality of engagement—on SMEs that are key for economic growth in Scotland.

14:30

A weakness in the academic sector is the reduced number of leading universities in applications. Scotland’s universities are doing well, but they tend to be partners rather than lead, and that is having a negative impact on the overall economy. We can do work on that. We are supporting a much more leading approach. Simplification would surely help to encourage universities to lead.

On minority engagement, FP7 contains a capacities programme, and there is a sub-programme to support the engagement of local actors in different areas. In horizon 2020, the capacities element will probably be transferred to the cohesion funds, and it will probably be under the structural funds, but that has yet to be agreed at the European Parliament.

We are going to have a round-table discussion on structural funds.

I want to bring some members back in, as they are queueing up. We will start with Helen Eadie.

I have listened to Professor Downes and other contributors and I am interested in the European Commission’s green paper on FP8 and the briefing papers. Obviously, a key area in the green paper is

“Strengthening Europe’s science base and the European Research Area”.

The green paper makes a criticism, which has already been kind of commented on. Members of the panel might like to expand a little bit on what has been said. The green paper says:

“Europe’s science base is among the most productive in the world, yet it does not contain sufficient pockets of world class excellence where ground-breaking research results are generated which are able to drive structural change”.

Is that due to the point about translation that Professor Downes made? Is it because we are not getting things understood? What is the reason for that comment or criticism in the green paper?

The reason for it is that it is largely true, but I think that you are asking why it is true. It is quite hard to get to grips with the matter, but it is ultimately about the nature of the research culture in the academic sector. That culture differs from country to country in Europe, but it often tends to be rather egalitarian or towards the egalitarian rather than involving the sharp focusing of resources on where excellence exists and ensuring a virtuous cycle in which that excellence is promoted.

The counter-argument is often put forward that, if that focused approach is taken in extremity by a funding council, for example, opportunities that could not have been predicted in universities or for individuals who are not in the elite area will never occur, but that is a fallacious argument. In the UK, we must increasingly selectively fund the very highest-quality research and constantly promote the idea of great ambition on world-class terms in what we do. We need that culture, and I believe that the funding council is moving significantly in that direction against the obvious opposition to that. Paul Hagan might want to comment on that.

My argument does not preclude the idea that pockets of excellence arise where they are not expected. In fact, life sciences in my university are a classic example of how that has occurred, but that is an institutional issue. Universities are autonomous institutions, although that has been questioned recently. That allows us to move our money around, and our overall budget allows us to identify in our own institutions where we think excellence has arisen that has not yet been recognised through the funding mechanism. We have ways to do that.

The key is for the instruments of funding through Governments and funding councils as well as specific research funding through research councils, charities and so on to constantly emphasise excellence and ambition in world-class activity. That is the solution.

I think that Pete Downes knows that I agree whole-heartedly. We are a small country with limited resources and if we do not back the very best—that is where the research excellence is—we will not compete in the UK or on the international stage. If we are serious about world-leading research in Scotland, we have to back it to the best of our ability.

I will go back to what we talked about first—the engagement of business. Professor Downes mentioned that, not in the capacity in which he is giving evidence but in his capacity as somebody who knows what is going on in the Dundee scene, he felt that the University of Dundee had been more successful in engaging business. What is Dundee doing that other places could learn from?

It seems from the comments that have been made that part of the problem is that there may be awareness that there are funds out there, but there is no bridging of the gap between a general loose awareness and concrete thinking about the relevance of that to somebody’s business. Since Scotland is an exporting nation, what role do trade bodies have, for example, in thinking about Brussels and the fact that funds are out there and potentially available? It seems that the culture of not applying or not considering applying may be the biggest problem. I presume that there are ways in which we could help businesses if they were engaged. As Professor Hagan said, it is a question of engagement. What are your thoughts, collectively, on those points?

I am happy to take the general question. We have undertaken a great many awareness-raising events over the past three years, which have engaged more than 700 SMEs across the country. As you rightly pointed out, we have increased the overall level of support and advice that is available to companies through an expanded presence on the ground from Scotland Europa, the Enterprise Europe Scotland network and colleagues in Highlands and Islands Enterprise. That has helped to increase companies’ interest, engagement and willingness to engage to the point where we now have a pool of between 400 and 500 companies that have the capacity and have expressed the ambition to be regularly involved and to apply for calls under the present programme, framework 7. That is important progress and we have learned a great deal from our engagement and our work with those companies.

Paul Hagan had an earlier question about what we can do to help with knowledge transfer mentoring, particularly from our educational bodies or institutions, which have a great deal of experience of successfully applying for and securing funding from programmes and are familiar with the application process. As he pointed out to me before the session and on a number of occasions previously, once you have a bit of experience of what is required, it is about staying the pace, investing time and understanding the importance of following the instructions, which can be quite lengthy and initially daunting. Working to transfer more of that knowledge to our SME base helps to build SMEs’ ambition and capacity to take more advantage of the framework programmes.

Another approach involves clustering in some sectors in the Highlands and Islands. For instance, our marine renewables sector and our telehealthcare sector are taking a slightly different cut of the cake. We are looking at the businesses in those sectors and trying to determine what research infrastructure we require to support them.

As well as trying to encourage small businesses in the Highlands and Islands, help them and hold their hands as much as we can, when we get their interest—which takes a bit of time in the first place—we consider how we can help small groupings of two or three small businesses to engage with the appropriate university or the programme itself. However, that all takes time and effort and it is a big ask for the typical small business in our area.

I would like to return to the question about the University of Dundee. I appreciate that Pete Downes is not wearing that hat, but I ask him to comment from his knowledge of Dundee. If good things are happening there on the commercial and academic sides, other parts of Scotland would be interested to know what they could do to promote such activity.

Tell us your secret, Professor Downes.

If I must speak about Dundee, so be it. The other day, I had just come back from India and was asked about how we go about creating a research culture. I talked a lot about a research culture that is properly connected in the way that we are talking about.

Many people ask me what the University of Dundee’s secret is. The first thing that I say is that we do not have a strategy. We make use of opportunities and build strategy around opportunity. That is critical, but it is not the same as the culture that creates the connectivity out into the real world. The real world is not just industry and the commercial sector; it is what matters to the social environment in Dundee and what happens to the development of cultural activities. For example, the Victoria and Albert museum project is as much as anything an output of recognising the links between our academic activity and the society in which we are engaged.

Right from the start—from the inception of the university in the late 19th century—we have had a specific role of driving and developing many elements of the city that founded us. That has run throughout our history and, I am pleased to say, successive principals have adopted it. I stand on their shoulders and I do not think that I am necessarily doing anything particularly different. However, we are driving that culture in new and interesting ways.

That is most manifest in the biosciences. We have talked about global research strength. We have that in the biosciences in Dundee and, through the linkages that are created by the pooling of life sciences through the Scottish universities life sciences alliance, we have world-class biosciences in Scotland. There is no doubt about that. The criticism that we do not have enough world-class research does not apply to life sciences in Scotland, particularly Dundee.

We could say that such areas of research are all right because they are strong academically, we can get funding from all the usual sources and we can bring in millions of pounds a year to create great research buildings and bring the best scientists to the university, but that is not enough for the University of Dundee—it is not enough for me—because we must see that it has an impact.

Our core business is to do fundamental, basic research. There is a lot of argument that we should do more applied research, but that is the wrong solution. The right solution is to connect the fundamental research to those who can apply it, which includes applied research institutes—the James Hutton Institute is one such institute with which we work a lot, because it can apply our fundamental research. It also involves creating partnerships with the commercial sector and the cultural sector, for example, because they want to apply new research and they need efficient access to the new knowledge that our fundamental research generates.

Creating partnerships to do that is the only way that I know of locking the investment that we make in our universities into outputs in the nation that made that investment in the first place. Normal academic outputs—publication—do not do that. Especially now, in the global communication age, the world gets that information at the same time. If we look at the scale of activities here and compare it with that in India, from where I have just returned, or in China, where I was a few months ago, we can see that publication will not help us. It gives us reputation, which is good, but it does not lock the investment that we make into economic development in Scotland.

The partnerships that I have talked about will lock in that investment. That is why we have to focus our attention on them and why the emphasis in EU funding is always to link a programme to SMEs and other forms of business. The universities have to play their part, and we have to do our work in bringing businesses into our own proposals and not rely on the business community coming from the European components—the non-Scottish components of the European consortia that we are engaged with.

14:45

The universities have to be proactive, which takes us back to Jamie McGrigor’s point. The language in the system is difficult, but we just have to learn and translate it so that our industrial and commercial partners are not fazed by the difficulty. We can interpret the language and help them through it. The successes that we have had are primarily with our own start-ups, because we already have such a connection in place. The step change is that we have to go out and seek partners from among the community so that we can help them to get access to funding.

So the city of discovery is well named.

We are now, “One city, many discoveries.” Just to make sure that the brand is clear. [Laughter.] Anyway, I will not say anything more about Dundee—back to my other hat.

I will come back in on Jamie McGrigor’s point. I agree that the language is difficult. I used to run a European-funded project, when the system was not online and the monitoring papers for each quarter were much thicker than the papers for today’s meeting. We just had to work out the formula, and once we did that we could get through the next few years. Then the formula was changed, and we had to learn it again. Everything is a learning curve.

Bill Kidd will pick up on some of the same aspects and then move the discussion on.

We received a written submission from WoSCoP—the West of Scotland Colleges Partnership. It has a number of interesting things to say, one of which is that only one of its member colleges has managed to access funding through FP7. One reason for that is that

“the structure of the existing Framework Programme is unduly complex.”

I know that Luca Polizzi has said that there were ideas to address 45 different aspects of the programme—that shows how complex it is—and that some of them have been taken on so that horizon 2020 should provide greater ease of access.

From what Professor Downes said, I was wondering about co-operation not only with SMEs but with further education bodies. With a partnership throughout education that is linked into business, commerce and industry, would it be possible to formulate some form of structural approach that would ease the access route so that some of the less experienced or smaller institutions could piggyback on the back of some of the more successful and larger institutions? It was mentioned earlier that we should promote the excellence of the research and development in Scottish universities, but the excellence could be enhanced if we took on board all the different aspects and contributions that could be made. Could some of the organisations that have not been successful under FP7, for whatever reason, be encouraged through support from those that have been successful under FP7 as we move into horizon 2020? I hope that that is not too long a question.

It is a challenge to do that. Our universities and colleges are different entities, and the challenge for accessing research funding is that our colleges do not have a strong research base. They often have close linkages with local businesses, with business engagement in the training and skills agenda in particular, but it is difficult to fit that into the context of what is meant to be an excellent research framework programme activity.

There is a challenge there, and that challenge will remain with horizon 2020. We are encouraging our universities and further education colleges to link up wherever possible. We have just funded a training and skills activity that will cross the colleges and universities and there may well be other opportunities to do that. However, I am not sure that the colleges themselves bring to the table the strong research base that could easily fit within those programmes.

I know that colleges do that sort of thing. Anniesland College, in my constituency, has been successful in working on the development of skills, with the aim of putting into practice a lot of the research that comes from universities. Is that a possible route through which funding could get to a lower level of the programme?

Luca Polizzi would have to advise me on the appropriate programme in Europe. I do not think that you would be trying to source that funding from the framework programme for research, but there might be other programmes from which it would be possible to harness expertise and secure resource.

The University of the Highlands and Islands is a regional university. It is very new—it achieved university status only in February. It does not have a good track record to date in terms of accessing European funding; it has not yet reached maturity in that regard. The type of challenges that were raised in connection to the colleges apply to UHI, too. Professor Downes talked about the challenges that are involved in linking world-class—or, at least, good—research with businesses in the locality and the wider region, and we face similar challenges with our university, which is also a partnership of colleges. We are keen to develop the capacity for that, perhaps through structural funding, but we need to find ways of helping to bring the new kids, as it were, up to scratch in terms of accessing the FP7 funding. Paul Hagan and I often discuss how we can help to make that happen.

It is true that FP7 is not designed to be a programme for further education colleges. The distinction between further and higher education applies in the UK in particular, not to any other countries across Europe; that creates some confusion around the question of which instruments are available for whom. However, the colleges that have a strong research capacity can apply, and there are some success stories. For example, some of the colleges that are parts of UHI have been successful with regard to a number of projects, especially in the area of marine science and biofuels. Now that they are part of a university, the project capacity will improve thanks to the support to the research dimension in certain key areas.

There are instruments that can support access. The capacity programme in FP7, which I mentioned before, provides the capacity to engage, and there are other programmes that can be applied for at the European level by further and higher education institutions, such as the lifelong learning programme, and at the external European level by further education institutions. In horizon 2020, there will probably be less space for that capacity support because the Commission is looking to support that capacity more at the regional level, through the structural funds. Taking the time to reflect on how to use the structural funds could help to narrow the gap and support engagement for further education in horizon 2020.

We will be holding a round-table session on structural funds, to which we hope to invite representatives of the colleges, so we can talk to them about that then.

I want to come in on that point, in the context of the paper that we received from the Finnish embassy. I do not know whether other members or visitors have read it, but I was interested to read that:

“One of the reasons for Finland’s success is that the help desks and counselling services regarding EU’s funding programmes are well organized and easily achievable in Finland.”

Can any of our visitors comment on how Scotland’s approach compares with the type of approach that Finland mentions?

The paper goes on to state that the service

“provides convenient means for people, who are either involved or otherwise interested in EU’s funding programmes, to gather information and learn more about the programmes.”

Is there something like that in Scotland?

I think that there used to be.

Finland is a specific case because it supports a strong thematic approach. It provides support according to the different themes in a more coherent way, whereas we try to combine a thematic approach with more general cross-dimensional support. We can probably intensify the sectoral dimension and learn from good practice elsewhere. We are starting to do that in Scotland Europa and Scottish Enterprise by considering different thematic approaches to boost support.

The European Commission has placed a strong emphasis on horizon 2020 and the importance of smart specialisation, with reference to the term “smart specialisation platforms”. In essence, that describes a focus on excellence and on developing research that will help to address some of those important societal challenges—which can be compared with the Finnish challenges—that the European Union faces.

In many ways, the link to the Finnish approach is that Finland has chosen to organise its support along thematic or sectoral lines. We have an opportunity to build on our approach and our excellence in research pooling—with regard to the work of the different industry groups and advisory boards, for example—to help to develop our specialisation and our smarter approach, so that we can compete even more effectively on the horizon 2020 platform.

I want to follow up on Luca Polizzi’s comments. Scotland Europa is the nearest thing that we have to what Helen Eadie asked about. Universities Scotland certainly believes that Scotland Europa is very effective, and we strongly support the initiatives in which it is engaged. It works on two fronts: selling the Scottish brand in the European context, and providing the type of advice that encourages people to engage and makes them aware of the programmes that are available and of what is appropriate for which organisations.

The next level, beyond knowing about what is available and what one might apply for, involves the process of application and getting networked appropriately. I have already mentioned PACER, which is one of the things that has contributed in that regard. Sandhya Kapitan said that that was a five-year programme, and the idea is that once we have created the skill base through that process, we should be able to do all that. There is some truth in that, but there is an on-going element too. Regardless of how much the process of application has improved and the bureaucracy has been reduced, the process will still carry an additional burden for universities.

To apply our own experience in Dundee generically, we saw a sixfold increase in our funding from framework programme 6 to FP7, which coincided with our putting in place an outsource agreement with Neil Stewart Associates to support us through the application process in particular. The difference is like chalk and cheese. That support makes a huge difference, and it is not just that the company helps us with our success rate. Academics in Dundee are more disposed to apply for European funding because they have that vehicle that gives them the support that they need; they do not feel as if they are dealing with jargon that they cannot understand.

I accept that PACER might have been an injection of funds to get us up to speed, but there is a need to keep that going. I could easily accept that PACER would not be the way to do it, and I have suggested in other forums that we might do it through research excellence grant funding—the core funding from the funding council that supports our research infrastructure in universities. A simple way to do that would be to tweak the formula for funding so that it gave more funding for European-funded projects than for UK-funded projects.

15:00

Is your question on the same point, Hanzala?

It is partly on the same question. Paul Hagan commented on engagement. Is the British Council engaging by promoting the Scottish badge and encouraging inward investment in Scotland from Europe?

It is becoming clear to me that there is quite a lot of fragmentation, with people pushing in different directions. We all have the same ultimate goal, but we are not quite joined up. I wonder whether there is room to create a body that would bring us all together and ensure that we are effective. If a university bids for an application, it is not in its interest to share that information with other universities because it is bidding for a particular pot of resource. We have the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council, Scottish Enterprise and other agencies investing in colleges and universities—because colleges are competing with universities as well—and we need all of that to be joined up. The Scottish Parliament is keen to encourage that development effectively; we will have an effective regime only if we are joined up ourselves. Can you guide and advise us on the way forward in bringing that together?

I will comment first on the British Council. The focus of the British Council is principally beyond European boundaries, so we would not look to the British Council to drive our engagement with Europe.

In terms of alignment within Scotland, we have made significant progress in joining up our institutions through the research pools and allowing them to prepare joint applications and to present a Scottish front whenever that is appropriate. That is working effectively and, over the past few years since pooling was instigated, there has been a change in culture and the level of collaboration. There has also been a significant change in the alignment of the Scottish funding council, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government. We have come together to ensure that we join things up for Scotland whenever that is appropriate.

We have different funding mechanisms and different governance, but we all have the same clear message on European and international engagement, and we take a team Scotland approach to delivering success for Scotland, promoting our research base, maintaining our excellence and being world leaders in what we do. Alignment already exists and that message is now embedded.

I have regular meetings with Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government at which we sit down together and talk about what we are doing. We also have regular meetings with the institutions to try to align and support our activities. I am not sure that I support the idea of there being a separate single body that would do that: the alignment that already exists is how we should harness the expertise and the funding that are available in order to get the best benefit for Scotland. Our engagement with Scotland Europa—we are all engaged with Scotland Europa—is a real catalyst in helping us to pull that through.

Okay. If you are that confident, can you back it up with figures to show how successful Scotland has been compared to other parts of the UK in attracting funding to assist us in that process?

I suspect that I will be able to find those figures; the Scottish Government probably holds them. I will take your question away and try to find some supporting evidence.

In securing funding from research councils and others, Scotland normally punches above its weight, which reflects the quality of Scotland’s research base. Although our figures for Europe are not dramatically better than others’, I think that we are in a strong position. There has been a significant change of culture in Scotland, and a willingness to join up and to gain added value from our combined efforts.

What about input from elected members? Some politicians in the Scottish Parliament are engaged with European countries. Could that be captured and used? Some politicians may have links with Scandinavian countries while others may have links with central European countries. Those special interests and connections might enhance the work that people around the table are doing.

I suspect that that resource is underexploited. We generally depend on academics in the research base making contacts and links across Europe, and on Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. That message is an important one for us all to take away—unless someone can tell me of a different experience.

Opportunities arise continually for us to do more of that kind of work. As was said earlier, we have to keep raising our capabilities and ambitions in relation to the global market.

You mean by taking a team Scotland approach.

Yes. We cannot remind ourselves often enough that horizon 2020 is a competition; it is about how well Scotland, as a whole, can compete for funding. We must use every avenue that is open to us to connect up all Scotland’s capabilities and relationships. We know from the European innovation survey that a relative weakness of ours is in our ability to collaborate effectively at the highest levels. We must, for example, use the work of enterprise Europe Scotland, and the different connections of the research pools. Social media will be increasingly important; we can make connections across Europe and around the world with the aim of having a globally better-connected Scotland.

I have a one-sentence contribution: I can be competitive for Dundee or I can be competitive for Scotland, but when it comes to pooling our expertise in order to be more successful in accessing European funding, we all have to be competitive for Scotland in the game, and I think that most university principals would acknowledge that.

The committee will welcome that view. I want to pick up on Helen Eadie’s point. The committee has two resident experts: Annabelle Ewing, whose question we will hear next, has a background in legal services in Europe that the committee appreciates. Aileen McLeod—

Aileen is a real expert.

Yes—we always defer to Aileen’s greater knowledge in such matters. She will raise points in the final part of today’s round-table discussion, and will perhaps take us into avenues that we have yet to explore. Annabelle will come in first.

The issue that I want to raise follows on from the previous conversation and introduces a slightly different element. It has been great hearing all the good ideas from round the table, and it is clear that you all work together extremely closely, which is heartening. Given my lineage, it has been great to hear about the team Scotland approach—especially on the international stage.

What is the UK Government’s position on the UK research pot? The UK is the member state in EU-level negotiations: UK representatives have the ultimate say and, apparently, are the only people who are allowed to speak at Council meetings.

What we are talking about is great and I would like to see a lot more of it, but how does the UK dimension impact on your approach and your work? We talked a minute ago about Finland, but of course it is a member state and has all the attributes and powers of a member state, whereas we are where we are, at the moment. That is an important issue to consider. How does it impact on the debate on horizon 2020?

There is a challenge for us but, through the Scottish Government’s support through Scotland Europa, we have been able to access Brussels, the European Commission and European influence directly from Scotland. It is really important that we continue to do that.

We have also had the opportunity to feed into the UK perspective through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills—BIS. There is currently a consultation on the European research area, and I have sat in teleconferences and in London with people from BIS and the Scottish Government trying to influence decisions about the submissions from the UK to Brussels in order to ensure that a Scottish perspective is represented, that Scottish interests are protected and that the best practice in many areas in Scotland is conveyed to Brussels in the hope that it will influence what Brussels proposes to the rest of Europe.

There are a couple of good examples of that. One key example is the interface programme that we, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise fund. It allows small and medium-sized enterprises to access the academic research base in the whole of Scotland. We have taken that model to Brussels to say that it is potentially valuable for the whole of Europe.

We work hard to ensure that our voice is heard through London and directly in Brussels. We must continue to do that. I do not want to put too much pressure on Luca Polizzi, but he has a critical role to play in that.

Obviously, we have to work within the current constitutional setting. When it comes to FP7 or horizon 2020, everything is based on research excellence and money is attributed on the basis of competition, regardless of whether stakeholders are based at the regional, local or national level. That is the case for all Europeans.

We noticed over the years that it was important to improve our relationship with our colleagues in Brussels and in the United Kingdom permanent representation to the European Union, and to increase our presence at the regular meetings in London for framework programme co-ordination. That relationship has proved to be beneficial because we now can access many statistical data that were much more difficult to access before. We are working with colleagues in Brussels on a number of different dossiers, which was not so easy before; there has been much improvement.

I will pick up on one little point from Annabelle Ewing’s question. The European Parliament now has co-equal power with the member state Governments and the Council on the framework research programmes. We need to engage with not only our Scottish MEPs but the MEPs who are on the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy because it will play a key role in the horizon 2020 negotiations. I flag up to the other participants in our round-table discussion that they should not forget about the European Parliament because it will have an important role to play.

15:15

I want to move the discussion on and ask about the horizon 2020 proposals. We have seen, from various drafts, that they are likely to focus on three areas: first, raising excellence in the science base through, for example, the European Research Council and the Marie Curie actions from framework programme 7, which have been a success, and European research infrastructures; secondly, tackling the major societal challenges, such as climate change, energy supply, food security, health and demographic change; and, thirdly, the creation of industrial leadership and competitive frameworks.

Are those the right areas to focus on? Will focusing on those areas enable Scotland and the EU to achieve the 3 per cent target for investment in research and development funding?

Wearing my Universities Scotland hat, I can tell you that universities in Scotland have been consulted widely on the matter, and we have submitted our own papers.

On your specific points, we strongly support the Marie Curie actions, which are important for mobility of expertise. We find that many recipients of European Research Council support in Scottish institutions turn out to be overseas nationals, many of whom have come here as a result of Marie Curie actions. There is great synergy between those two aspects.

We are very supportive of the ERC. The question comes back to the point about how we drive global excellence rather than just a good general standard. The ERC is the first European-level funding agency that works on the same grounds as our research councils to support excellence and drive up standards. The synergy between its work and the Marie Curie actions is important for Scotland.

We are also generally supportive of the grand challenges agenda. Many Scottish universities and UK universities generally—ours included—are beginning to frame their own agendas in terms of grand challenges, relevance to society and other similar issues.

We caution that a balance must be struck between preselecting challenges and allowing for new challenges and new research space to arise and to be supported as and when it arises. One of the biggest challenges in supporting research effectively and being a global leader is to recognise something that you have got that others have not. That is not something that is usually second-guessed by a strongly thematic agenda. There must be balance between those two elements.

Joint programming will play a part in horizon 2020. That has some advantages, as it effectively creates a critical mass of funding by linking European funding to national funding streams, but I caution that there are dangers because the national schemes may well be the ones in which some of the new things emerge. If they are shaped too much by a thematic European agenda, there may be problems. We are positive about most of the proposals but sound a note of caution about taking some of them to extremes.

I was going to ask you about joint programming, because the Universities Scotland submission alludes to it. How could the joint programming initiative help us to increase our uptake of the framework research funding?

The UK is generally well funded, notwithstanding the difficulties in the past year or two. In the preceding 10 years, there were substantial increases in university funding across the UK as well as in Scotland, with a particular emphasis on funding research. That means that we have a better base from which to support projects if joint programming becomes important. That is our rationale for being generally supportive of the initiative, notwithstanding the note of caution that I raised.

The information that the Scottish Parliament information centre has provided identifies that we have huge strengths in a number of the areas, so the proposals do not pose a threat to our research base. In fact, there are considerable opportunities for us to contribute, to exploit and to demonstrate our excellence.

The issue on joint programmes is how they are delivered. We need to ensure that the UK perspective is sufficiently open to allow Scottish engagement, but I do not see a problem there either.

The themes make a great deal of sense. Strengthening competitiveness is one that is particularly close to our hearts. The implementation will be vital, and we want the programmes that are implemented under horizon 2020 to put even more emphasis on—and more support into—getting an impact from our excellence in research and innovation. The theme is absolutely along the right lines.

Tackling societal challenges also makes a great deal of sense, but much of the success will be predicated on how practical programmes are developed and implemented and how we can, for example, use public procurement across the European Union more effectively as a driver of innovation and competitiveness.

The key areas that are highlighted by horizon 2020 have been well trailed, and we see them reflected in Technology Strategy Board funding as well. We can see where they have come from and they generally feel right. Some of them are not as directly applicable to our region up north, but the focus on health demographics, wellbeing and food security strikes a chord with our region, our economy and what we are trying to do to diversify it.

How will horizon 2020 be rolled out in practice? Will a member state or a country get on better if they focus on certain areas, or is it better to take a more general, neutral approach? Will the approach that countries take make a difference to how they access funding? A country may get a reputation in certain areas, and success often breeds success. Is that important, or will it make no difference to how the authorities in Brussels implement the programmes?

The key is to be engaged, to get in on the ground floor, to develop the proposals and to deliver on the engagement with the programmes. If someone establishes a reputation, people who are looking for partners for another round of funding will go and talk to them and engage with them. If they maintain research excellence in delivering on the objectives of the programme, they can stay within the European funding framework for a significant period.

As Peter Downes said, the challenge is to encourage that culture of engagement. Some researchers in our institutions are good at engaging. Others respond that the rhetoric is difficult and bureaucratic, but if we get them over that hurdle, they see huge benefits from engagement.

Someone made the point earlier that Scotland is leading on research. Some of our institutions backed away from the perceived risk of running large programmes, but there are examples of programmes being led from within Scotland and being hugely successful. We need to encourage the leadership of those programmes, as that changes the dynamic of the interaction with the people who make decisions in Brussels. It is important for us to do that.

I will bring in Jamie McGrigor, because he is anxious to speak, and then Luca Polizzi.

Thank you, convener.

Aileen McLeod talked about areas that we should concentrate on. One of the key points in the Scotland Europa submission is:

“The Scottish Government wants Scotland to lead the world in the development of a low carbon economy.”

Morven Cameron made the point that UHI—which is a new university and is based on a different concept of a university as it seems to have campuses all over the place and no major campus anywhere—is surely in a remarkable location to take the issues forward. I went to the renewables garden in Lews Castle College, which is part of UHI, several years ago, and I was impressed by what it was doing then. I would be interested to know how much of the FP7 money it managed to draw down, given that a low-carbon economy is one of our real targets.

I do not know how to put this in a nutshell, but in the 1960s we were leading the world in renewable energy. Our hydro schemes, over which Tom Johnston had presided, were the envy of the whole world. I do not know where the money came from. It did not come from Europe in those days; it probably came from the UK. We then discovered oil, so all that went out the window, and we allowed other countries, who did not have oil, to develop. Denmark and Germany, for example, ended up being the leaders in low-carbon technologies.

There is a bit of a paradox at the moment. Here we are saying that we want to lead the world in a low-carbon economy, and yet virtually every single turbine and wind tower is built abroad—although some of the wind towers are certainly assembled here. We are not leading in a way that allows our population to benefit.

Given that we are playing catch-up with renewables, should we be buying the technology from other countries and foreign companies or should we be trying to get our universities, through research and development, to make us leaders again?

Luca, do you want to address the Scotland Europa side of that? Morven Cameron can maybe then address the rest of Jamie McGrigor’s question.

As Aileen McLeod said, the European Parliament now has a different role, with more power. The second phase of the steering group’s strategy will be about tackling the Parliament in a more direct way. That will be part of the future development plan for the influencing approach that we are taking forward.

If we look at the contributions that we got from universities, the majority of our members and a number of stakeholders across Scotland, we see that the structure is going in that direction. There is a strong focus on the European Research Council, frontier research, mobility and the international co-operation dimension. We see that there are some interesting coherent approaches.

David Smith mentioned the procurement approach. There is also the proof of concept approach, which is a typical Scottish approach in supporting actions and which Mr Russell presented to Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn during his last visit to Brussels. There are new elements in the proposals that are based on good practices in Scotland.

On sectors, it is always very difficult to detect how much we can influence things in Brussels when we are competing with 27 member states and 350 regions, but if we are not there to engage we will have no impact at all.

FP7 had a very limited emphasis on marine research and technologies. In FP8 an entire chapter is dedicated to geothermal, hydro and marine energy sources. That is surely an area where we actively contribute to shifting the emphasis. That probably also answers your previous question.

I will touch on the relevance to the Highlands and Islands. Perhaps Paul Hagan or David Smith can touch on the Scotland-wide opportunity within marine renewables.

We have had to invest about £4.95 million in Highlands and Islands research capacity in marine renewables to try to bring some of it up to a better level. The challenge that I see for the whole of Scotland is to connect what is going on in marine renewables in the Highlands and Islands with what is going on in the rest of Scotland, which is quite superb. In many ways we are seen as leading in marine renewables.

15:30

I remember a workshop that Mike Russell held, which was attended by Aquamarine Power Ltd. It was basically knocking down the door in Brussels. In fact, it did not have to do that; the door was wide open for it to come in. People in Brussels said, “Tell us about this. This is new to us. You tell us how we want to structure programmes.” It is a matter of influencing right at the heart of Brussels and of people looking to Scotland to have an influence.

Our region wants to benefit, but the legacy will not necessarily be the manufacture of turbines in the Highlands and Islands. I think that there will be a strong legacy from the excellent research, particularly—from our perspective—in the environmental impacts of marine renewables. That is where our science is up north, although it links with what is going on in the University of Strathclyde, the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University in the central belt.

Scotland is also seen as taking a real lead in the UK-wide development of technology innovation centres. There is a lot to be really excited about, but it is a matter of getting a Scotland-wide approach.

Paul Hagan or David Smith might want to add to that.

You have made a point that I did not come on to. We are probably leading in wave and tidal energy, but there is a lot to be overcome to develop that commercially. It must be the case that the University of the Highlands and Islands and Scottish universities in general are best placed in that respect, as we are surrounded by sources of such energy. We are right in the centre of them, in particular in the Highlands and Islands. We should draw down money for research and development in that field as quickly as possible, as there will be a mad race to win that prize. Are we doing that?

That is a good question. UHI’s capacity to do that is still a little limited, but it is looking at the regions of potential fund, which would help to grow its capacity. I have on-going dialogue with it, and I know that that is the kind of programme that it is looking towards.

For UHI to carry out that work, it would need to partner Heriot-Watt University, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Strathclyde. It is about ensuring that we have a cross-Scotland approach and not the competitive element that we know can sometimes get in the way of the right decisions being made for Scotland. It is about trying to create partnerships and make things better.

I am conscious of the time. We said that we would finish the discussion at 3.30. Now is your chance to raise any pressing points or anything that we have missed—any glaring omissions or hot topics that we have not touched on.

The Aquamarine Power example is very good, as the message from people in that company is that going to Brussels and engaging directly pays huge dividends. We need to ensure that our research base has direct engagement with officials in Brussels. Again, Scotland Europa is the key to that door.

On behalf of the committee, I thank all the witnesses very much for coming along. We have found the discussion to be very informative. It has given us more questions and avenues that we can explore as a committee, and the witnesses have opened up and explained other avenues that we were perhaps a bit in the dark about. I thank them for that. We will no doubt cross paths again, as the committee wants to progress the issues and share the best possible practice to ensure that Scotland punches above its weight. Please keep in touch with the committee; we will keep in touch with you.

We will have a five-minute comfort break to allow everybody to get organised and back into their seats in the usual committee set-up.

15:33 Meeting suspended.

15:41 On resuming—