Science and Discovery Centres (Funding)

It is a great centre. The youngsters come in teams and, after a lot of training, manage to fly a Challenger simulator. They each take a different role and get hands-on experience that shows them why science matters if they want to do exciting things such as being an astronaut, a pilot or a shuttle captain. I am very comfortable with the idea that the centres contribute a lot not only to the education of STEM undergraduates and those taking STEM subjects at school, but eventually to the UK economy. They promise to inspire, to educate and to inform young people, which are vital objectives at a time when the Government are saying that the UK economy is crying out for STEM skills. There was concern about the funding and effectiveness of the centres, because they are often not purely commercial, but semi-commercial. The centres are not ministerial creations; they have welled up from the insights and enthusiasm of social entrepreneurs, business men, academics, teachers and people who are perhaps retiring from their primary career. They provide educational benefits, but are not state-run operations or top-down Government creations. Yet, in many ways, Government policy on science and discovery centres affects the ability of the centres to survive and be commercially viable. Ministers have always recognised that science centres have an important role to play and that funding is part of the support given to them. The former Departments of Trade and Industry and for Education and Skills provided £750,000 for Ecsite-uk—a network of science and discovery centres—to research the impact that centres were having. Most people welcomed that research. However, Ecsite-uk has not looked at what the Committee was crying out for; it has not considered the empirical evidence on the impact of the centres. For example, out of 10 youngsters who visit a centre, how many change their choice of subjects in school? Evidence on that is not available. Clearly, some of the recommendations from Ecsite-uk will, I hope, over time lead to some of that data becoming available. However, as of today, the Government cannot say they will not fund science and discovery centres because the evidence does not show whether they make a contribution to the their overall objectives. We do not have the relevant evidence, so it is incredibly disappointing, frustrating and worrying that the science and discovery centres have been closing—one more has done so in the past few months. We simply do not know whether they perform a function in relation to our overall goals in society. Let me make it clear that science centres have benefited from public money. As other hon. Members have said, 18 centres received £450 million from the Millennium Commission. The principle of funding the centres from Government has been established, so the Minister should not simply dismiss that notion and say that funding is anathema to the Government when it comes to independently operating organisations. In effect, there is already a public subsidy. It is also important to point out that there is a danger of drawing artificial distinctions between museums and science and discovery centres. We should not move commas and semi-colons to define out or exclude science and discovery centres from the definition of bodies that provide public services. For example, we say that supporting collections is in the national interest, but that supporting the public engagement aspects of science and discovery centres is not, which is not a particularly helpful way to move forward. I hope that the Minister will explain the reasoning behind the almost specific exclusion of science and discovery centres from the funding that goes through the museums channel. Will the Minister clarify the Government's relationship to science and innovation centres? How do they fit into the overall STEM narrative? I commend the Minister for speaking about the shortage of science skills in society and among the work force. Could he spend a few moments explaining how science and discovery centres will fit into the overall picture of encouraging engagement in science subjects at school? As I have said, we currently have no idea whether science and discovery centres are viable. The Government have already said that they will not support unviable science centres, but what is an unviable science centre? Is it a centre that does not have enough visitors giving it money and is therefore unable to provide an overall operation, or is it a centre that provides a service to the Government but is unable to recoup enough money to provide that service? Will the Minister tell us what his definition is of an unviable science and discovery centre? As the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) has pointed out, a restriction on the flow of funds for the public good and for public engagement with museums and other educational establishments to the exclusion of science and discovery centres might make them unviable. Indeed, the Government may make these organisations unviable because of the way in which they fund existing institutions. My main concern—especially as I come from a science background—is the lack of rigorous and reliable evidence to justify the lack of public support or continued public support. We currently do not know whether support should be forthcoming. One concern expressed in the Ecsite-uk report is about the lack of information on visitor numbers. The collection and analysis of data would help centres to focus on their core business and prepare effective applications for funding. However, such data collection is expensive and money for data collection would detract from the capacity of centres to educate and inform in the way they do now. In reality, a solid evidence base remains merely an ambition. Perhaps the Minister will explain how that ambition will be fulfilled in the coming months. The Ecsite-uk report recommends improved data collection, so will the Minister say what progress has been made on that? Beyond public support, many science and discovery centres are independent and already stand on their own two feet. There is a danger that if the Government were consistently to provide core funding to all science and discovery centres—a couple of Labour Back Benchers have called for that—they might lose their independence and unique qualities. They might also lose the control that they have over the outcomes that they deliver to society. I caution rushing headlong into complete Government core funding for every organisation. The energy and enthusiasm of the people who start these centres, which was most ably described by the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson), make the centres successful and vibrant in the long run. How does the Minister plan to help science and discovery centre budgets in the short and long terms? The short-term issue is that one or two more centres may be going out of operation in the next few months. What does the Minister plan to do in the short term to address those challenges, while we await the evidence that we hope will be forthcoming, if he has commissioned the research? When UK schools are slipping in world science ranking tables, and a Government poll found that 59 per cent. of people feel uninformed about science, it is vital that the Government tackle the challenges to and remove the obstacles to the take-up of STEM subjects. Science and discovery centres certainly contribute to the task of capturing young people's enthusiasm and helping science teachers to motivate their students. Given the lack of empirical evidence, it is difficult to know what the Government plan to do next and it is difficult for us to call on the Government to do something specific. That is why I think the recommendations of the report are superb—they are clearly stated and clearly conditional. I was incredibly surprised at the almost off-hand dismissal of those clear recommendations in the Government's response. In his eloquent, entertaining and amusing speech, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough made it clear that many of the rejections were completely unreasoned. Other hon. Members have pointed out that the rejections were illogical. I think they were pretty slapdash. Having heard the debate today, will the Minister go back and ask his Department to take some time to review those rejections and come back with a more comprehensive explanation of why the recommendations were rejected? Simply saying, ““We are not doing that””, and setting up a straw man argument not only discredits the work of the Committee, but the work of the Parliament. I therefore urge the Minister to go back to the Department and answer the recommendations once again. Currently, we are subsidising access to museums for overseas visitors. We do not differentiate between the people who come into museums, yet we could enhance social mobility and the opportunities of some of the least well-off and most disadvantaged in our society by increasing access to science and discovery centres. Will the Minister explain that anomaly? Why do we subsidise overseas visitors to museums in the United Kingdom, yet charge our own citizens, often from the least well-off backgrounds, to gain access to science and discovery centres? I am instinctively very enthusiastic about science and discovery centres, but if, when the research comes through, it shows that they contribute nothing to the overall agenda of encouraging people to go into science and if the evidence says that they work against that objective, I would withdraw my support for some of the recommendations. However, I suspect that if the Minister just gets a move on and commissions the research, we will find that the centres contribute an enormous amount to our society and economy. I urge him to get on with it and commission the research.