Science and Heritage: S&T Committee Report

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Andrews]

My Lords, I am delighted to contribute to this debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, for the leading role that she has played in the first report and in the committee’s work essentially to make science and heritage more visible. That was the task and I believe that it has been and is being achieved.

This debate bridges two of my personal interests: first, I declare an interest as chair of English Heritage, in the conservation of our extraordinarily diverse heritage in this country; and, secondly, I have an interest in seeing that science serves every conceivable cultural and economic purpose. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and I overlapped for a while as academics in the science policy research unit in Sussex, and she played a key role there in leading the design of research programmes.

However, English Heritage is not only an adviser to government: it is essentially a major contributor to the field of heritage science. We are therefore hugely indebted to the Select Committee for the consistent and relentless attention that it has focused on this relatively neglected critical area of work for the past six years. As we know, the work started in 2006 and the follow-up report today very usefully charts the progress made. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, set out comprehensively where progress has been made and referred to some of the issues that we still have to address.

I do not believe that it is possible to overemphasise the importance of science in the successful protection and public enjoyment of our heritage, covering everything from the conservation of the boots worn by sailors on the “Mary Rose”, which are on display in the Mary Rose museum, to the conservation of wartime airfields.

The first report of the Select Committee explained that science is an essential instrument and support for those who work with the portable remains of the past—in museums, libraries and galleries and their collections—and for those, such as English Heritage, who work with fixed remains such as historic buildings, archaeology on land and sea and historic townscapes and landscapes. In each respect, science helps us to detect and locate the evidence, and to analyse, conserve, interpret and understand it better. I am reminded that Pasteur once said:

“Science … is the torch which illuminates the world”.

Obviously, it illuminates the world that we have lost as well as the one we inhabit.

I shall give a couple of examples which reflect the way in which science and technology are opening up our knowledge and understanding of, for example, our pre-history. Last year, English Heritage funded a high-tech survey of the standing stones at Stonehenge. It is a monument that has been in the care of the nation since 1918 and one might therefore have thought that there were very few secrets left to reveal. However, the application of a new three-dimensional laser scanning technique revealed a plethora of previously unrecognised carvings on the stones, including 71 images of Bronze Age axe heads. Most importantly, it revealed significant differences in the way that particular stones were shaped and worked, leading archaeologists to suggest a far greater emphasis than had hitherto been placed on views through the monument during the winter solstice as well as the more familiar summer solstice.

Today we had an equally brilliant demonstration of the exceptional power of heritage science to write, or possibly rewrite, history. We have this morning learnt that, beyond all reasonable doubt, the skeletal remains uncovered last year in a modest Leicester car park are indeed those of Richard III, buried in the former Franciscan friary church. The evidential trail announced at a press conference this morning is compelling. Geophysical surveys helped fix the location of the excavation which uncovered the grave; radiocarbon assay provided a date of 1455-1540 for the bones; osteoarchaeological analysis suggested a male in his twenties or thirties, confirmed scoliosis—curvature of the spine—and revealed blade injuries at the base of the skull which were almost certainly fatal; and, finally, DNA analysis confirmed that the skeleton was related genetically to the last two direct descendants of the lost king. That is pretty effective and pretty convincing.

However, if anyone really wants to see science at the frontiers of knowledge, I can recommend no better place to visit than our own scientific laboratories at Fort Cumberland, run by English Heritage. There, you will see science at the geographical and intellectual frontiers, with analysis of DNA from Roman infanticides, the dates of the introduction of historical cereal and game species to England, and the development of X-radiographic dating of historic windows. It is an extraordinary place and I should be very happy to arrange a visit if anyone wanted to go.

Therefore, science and heritage are giving us ever greater insights into our ancestors. They are helping us to conserve monuments with far greater sensitivity than in the days when concrete was slapped on everything, and we are still digging out that concrete. They are also helping us to create greater wealth. All that is taken for granted in the importance that the Select Committee has attached to scientific knowledge and technology in terms of heritage. Its reports in 2006 and 2007 set out that economic and cultural importance.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said, the committee set out a raft of crucial recommendations for better leadership and better co-ordination of resources, and the need for a national strategy for science and heritage, as well as a forum. As she said, the current report acknowledges that there is a great deal of good news to be celebrated. However, as has also been made clear, there is some way to go. It is true that the AHRC has done some excellent and ground-breaking work with its successful science and heritage programme. It is, for example, looking at major research projects on conservation matters as diverse as flood resilience and renaissance sculpture. Very importantly, it has addressed the challenging issue of future capacity by encouraging post-doctoral studentships and collaborative awards. As the noble Baroness said, it is beginning to put us back on the map as a global leader. The national heritage science strategy is indeed a reality—the final report in 2010 set that out—as is the national heritage science forum, which is intended to implement the strategy by bringing these diverse organisations together.

There has been further action. We have heard about the DCMS and the very welcome appointment of the head of analysis. Incidentally, we hope that the holder of that post is going to act as an advocate and a champion for heritage science. The DCMS is committed to unlocking philanthropic funding. It is also committed to the fact that heritage is embedded in the objectives for Horizon 2020, the European framework funding programme. We also talked about the new programmes from the AHRC, such as Living with Environmental Change and Connected Communities. RCUK has provided welcome support for funded programmes and for the encouragement of bids from the independent research organisations. I am pleased to say that in our sector the heritage science communities are showing welcome signs of increasing partnership and collaboration. We have seen seed-core funding from the AHRC to support the national heritage science forum, and we welcome early sign-up by bodies , including the National Archives, the National Trust, ICON, University College London and English Heritage. All that is good news. In part, it is a response to the reduction in the resources available in many areas. There is a tangible increase in the appetite for working together.

However, the critical questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, deserve answers. I endorse the questions that she raised, as well as those asked by the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, in relation to the EPSRC and the role of the science research councils. There is clearly important work to be done in collaboration on the science base. There remain questions about the degree to which the momentum created by the science and heritage programme will be supported further. I think that there are also questions to be answered by the DCMS in its leadership capacity. As yet there is no central means of consistently measuring the health of the heritage science community itself. Again, I think that that comes back to the DCMS and its leadership role.

Crucially, the forum which should now be emerging from its formative stage will need to demonstrate leadership and secure long-term sustainable funding and membership support to ensure that it can deliver on its potential. There is work to be done here by the DCMS, the research councils and the heritage bodies. I believe that there is certainly the will to do that because of the knowledge that there is a great deal at stake here. We at English Heritage are fully committed to the recommendations of the report, and I can explain briefly how we are meeting the challenges that we face in terms of our own contribution.

We have taken significant steps to implement the strategy. It is a fundamental tenet of the national heritage protection plan, which guides the prioritisation of all our resources, and which we are optimistic will increasingly act as a framework for all organisations that protect our heritage. We take the need for collaboration extremely seriously. This lies at the heart of our post-CSR organisational restructuring, despite, as we have heard from my noble friend Lady Hilton, a severe cut in our funding. Crucially, we have retained our science expertise almost untouched because we recognise its strategic value for capacity-building in the sector, as well as the leading research expertise, which represents unique expertise.

The strategy informed our decision to move away from the chief scientist model in favour of a fully integrated and regularly convened science network within English Heritage which is better able to co-ordinate information on foresight, knowledge and gaps in practice, in support of the national heritage protection plan—a much more diffuse model. Collaboration is also written into our own English Heritage strategy, which we have produced this year, and which is in part in response to the committee’s recommendations. It is driving our increasingly close work with the research councils: we have a concordat with the AHRC, joint workshops and a collaborative doctoral partnership. All that will help to build capacity.

We are now in a different and more challenging climate. Almost all the publicly funded bodies responsible for heritage science are working with reduced resources. That will impact on the speed and scope of what we can achieve. However, the committee is right to urge the forum to provide clear leadership to encourage wider membership and the right to exhort greater public engagement. However, I hope that that call will be heard beyond the forum to the funders and supporters who could enable the forum to achieve greater things. Increasing membership of the forum itself will respond to that because there is a will to do that.

I recognise that this is a personal aside but it is central to our understanding of the heritage of science in this country: I personally believe that it is essential that the Royal Institution continues its outstanding work in terms of scientific knowledge and understanding, which has been its unique role for two centuries. In my early days as an academic with Professor Roy MacLeod, I spent a lot of time in the archives of the Royal Institution working on the papers of John Tyndall, a physicist, and Thomas Archer Hirst, the mathematician. I have a deep affection for the place, its collections and its history. The scientific community, as it should, is rallying around with great distinction to help the RI find a solution to its current problems, not least in terms of the work that it does to spread the understanding of science among young and old alike. It is impossible to imagine our scientific heritage without the Royal Institution in place, and I sincerely hope that it will get the support and resources that it needs—not least, naturally, the support of the Government.

I thank the Select Committee again for the work that it is done in these reports. I commit again the goodwill and expertise of English Heritage not only to making our science heritage more visible but to maintaining our place as a global leader in this area.