杏吧原创

LAST WEEK, the British government announced that another six public
research institutes are to be sent down the privatisation track.

Destined, as the government puts it, for 鈥渇ull independence from the public
sector, with the greater freedom this will provide鈥�, are the John Innes Centre,
Silsoe Research Institute, Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research,
and the Institute of Arable Crops Research, all belonging to the Biotechnology
and Biological Sciences Research Council, plus two attached to the Scottish
Office. The next step is for the Prime Minister鈥檚 adviser on efficiency, Peter
Levene, to examine how this should be done.

The timing is very strange. The BSE crisis should, if anything, have taught
the government that the agricultural sector needs more long-term research and a
bigger, not smaller, pool of expertise able to provide independent, top-quality
advice. But the institutes have fallen foul of the privatisation juggernaut.

The government completed its much-criticised 鈥渆fficiency scrutiny鈥� of all
public research institutes in 1994, but couldn鈥檛 actually find anything that it
could justify selling off. Many of the country鈥檚 most prominent scientists
condemn the continuing pressure to privatise.

But nothing stops the government from trying again. Yet another
review鈥攖he Prior Options review鈥攚as launched last October. The four
new candidates for privatisation come from the first set of institutes to pass
through the process. The rest will be dealt with in July and December.

Time is not on the government鈥檚 side. The efficiency hounds now face the
difficult question of how to pay the pensions of BBSRC employees. And within a
year, there will be an election. The Labour Party has said of the national labs
that 鈥済overnment should be giving them support rather than flogging them off鈥�.
With that sentiment, we can certainly agree.