John Bowis enjoys a timely visit

My return visit to Mark's 'den' at Imperial College was fascinating.

By chance I was there on the day the shock-horror news was coming out on the MRSA deaths at Stoke Mandeville and the alarming rise in the national 2005 figures over 2004, showing more than 50,000 patients affected and a 17 per cent rise in one year.  And so it was doubly interesting to sit in on a joint research discussion and planning meeting with two of Mark's colleagues from Birmingham and later to visit the laboratory and, suitably attired, to see the various specimens collected from various parts of the world and hear about the processes in this particular branch of scientific research.

Its topicality could not have been more dramatic.  Nor could the layman's half-knowledge be more clearly exposed. Tabloid readers and schoolchildren and I know all about MRSA - the hospital superbug - or do we?  First I doubt if many have even heard of the larger scale bacteria - Clostridium difficile - which was actually responsible for the 50,000 figure, while MRSA led to 7,000 cases. Secondly I learned for the first time about the less dramatic superbug cousin that exists outside hospitals.

Given that patient safety is one of the current key priorities for policymakers in Europe and in Britain, this meeting of science and politics showed in a microcosm exactly why the Royal Society's scheme is so valuable. 
My visit also brought about another sort of reunion, when I discovered the professor heading up Mark's department, Brian Spratt, was at school with me. But those memories are for another day!

Committee responsibilities

As an MEP and former MP I know that I don’t know enough about science. I also know that in my day to day legislative and scrutiny duties I rely on the advice of scientists.  On the whole I do not know them or their working processes and nor, I suspect, do they know mine.

I am a member of the European Parliament's Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety.  The raison d’être of much of my Committee’s work is the protection of human, animal and plantlife health from pollution in its many forms – air, water, soil and the waste and emissions from people, households, industries, agriculture, transport, electronics and so on.

The three areas of scientific advice on which I rely most often are probably those of the four agencies of my Committee (the European Food Safety Committee, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, European Environment Agency and the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products). A fifth is about to be born:  the Chemicals Agency that will flow from REACH (the Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals), if and when it completes its legislative passage (probably by the end of 2006).

Judging and regulation

In making a judgement, as we have to do, on whether a process or a substance should be phased out or a pollution reduction target met and by when, we have to rely on scientific advice as to the risk, its management and the alternatives.  The committee establishes advisory committees of scientists to give this advice.

But how such advice is decided upon or how and by whom it has been agreed, is often unknown to us.  It only takes another scientist to question the accepted advice of such a committee for parliamentarians to second guess the advice we have received and to go for tougher standards or restrictions than may be necessary.

This is not very sensible governance but it stems from the blind adherence to the precautionary principle (if in doubt, play safe – or if there is a scintilla of doubt, condemn). The last Commission’s attempt to underline that the principle must be one of proportionality as well as precaution was somewhere lost in translation!

Excellent concept

Mark Enright was a welcome but all too brief member of my office. He was able to sit in on my Development Committee, but was not able to come to Brussels early enough in the week to hear the debate on my Mental Health Report in the Environment Committee.

This perhaps suggests that future visits should be more tailored to the needs and interests of the two participants, rather than the organisers.  That is not however to be critical of an excellent concept, well executed by the organisers, and a pilot that should be translated into a permanent scheme. I warmly welcomed the opportunity provided by the Royal Society to bring our two cultures together.

John Bowis is MEP for London. He is Conservative spokesman for Health and Consumer Affairs at the European Parliament