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Speech by Alan Whitehead
at the Launch of the ESRC
2. In particular, I would like to congratulate the ESRC, the programme director and those of you who are recipients of awards, on the exciting programme of research ahead. Relationship between the DTLR and the ESRC 3. It is an occasion which underlines the close working relationship that has been forged between my Department and the ESRC, formalised within the Concordat between our two institutions. 4. Our officials support the ESRC in commissioning research, and we have been pleased to have representatives on the commissioning panel for the research programme we are launching today, as well as the Science and Society, and Cities, research initiatives. 5. Furthermore, officials of both the ESRC and my department are currently developing a major joint initiative on commissioning research of relevance to the work of this department, and meeting our mutual objectives in building up research skills and capacity. I hope we will formally announce this important joint DTLR/ESRC Fellowship and Studentship scheme in the days to come. 6. You will know that on occasions, Government is accused of appropriating elements of research for its pre-decided purposes. When it prefaces an argument in favour of its policies with the phrase 'research indicates that' it actually means 'a particular research paper fortunately happens to support our point of view' Of course we should reject this view. Government should be informed by bodies of research, which tell it things it both does and doesn't want to hear. The Department's interest in the D&CC research programme 7. And this is why I believe the Devolution and constitutional change research programme is so important to Government right now. As you will all know, my Department, in conjunction with the Cabinet Office, is developing the regional government white paper setting down our ideas for taking forward the commitment to introduce elected regional assemblies within England. 8. It is clear that the white paper will be part of the process of change, not the final word. We shall continue to need to draw upon others' experience and understanding of the options for, and impacts of, elected regional assemblies. 9. In this respect, I look forward to seeing your emerging findings and I know that there will be lessons we can learn from this research for the development of our regional policy in England. 10. I think it was R.G. Collingwood who claimed that if you could examine the head of a Jacobin, at the time of the French revolution, you would find no trace of what we have come to describe as the French Revolution. We are I n the middle of a far reaching constitutional revolution in the UK, and it maybe that the same observation applies. But the job of the researcher is to clear away the smoke and confusion of battle and see what is actually happening. 11. For this reason, we are interested not only in those projects whose focus is England, but those that seek to analyse the Devolved Administrations in various ways. In other words, how transferable to England is the experience of how devolution has worked in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? 12. It is also, continuing my somewhat strained metaphor, the job of a researcher to write up his or her findings about the fields of battle and then rush it up to the front, conscious that, whilst he or she is in transit, things may have changed radically for the better or worse. So I hope that my officials and the ESRC will establish mechanisms that allow the department to benefit from interim findings. Indeed, perhaps we might explore the potential utility of an annual joint seminar, hosted by the department, bringing together researchers and the Department's regional policy officials? Building up the evidence base 13. I am now going to make an astounding claim. This is that this Government has committed itself to using evidence to inform the policy-making process, and our work in respect of regional governance arrangements is no exception. 14. My department has its own research programmes that help to provide evidence across its range of policy responsibilities, and I am pleased that some of you here will have worked with us in delivering those programmes. 15. However, we recognise that the department's research can only be one part of building up the wider evidence base: it requires collective effort across all of us: researchers, research funders and research users. The complexity of the issues we seek to research requires us to work closely together. You may be looking at blue skies: we are attempting to find out where the horizon is: together, we may well be able to complete the view of the landscape. 16. Indeed, the work of the ESRC to develop programmes of work, rather than projects, recognises that research is rarely a one-off venture, and that coherent research programmes can bring new insights and understanding that individual projects may not. Conclusion
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