Evidence from the National Botanic Garden of Wales

The National Botanic Garden of Wales is being developed as a new centre for research and education in biodiversity, systematics, conservation and sustainable exploitation of plants. It is thus a new scientific institution in Wales but, unlike botanic gardens in other parts of the UK, its current support is based on receipts from the operation of its living collections as a tourist attraction. As Director of the National Botanic Garden of Wales I have been charged by the Trustees to seek other sources of funding to facilitate science and education activities.

In response to a recent HOL select report on science and technology which highlighted the important role of systematics in the conservation of biological diversity, HMG recognised the value of the three major systematics institutions, Kew, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and the Natural History Museum, by making new resources available to them.

Apart from the National Museums and Galleries, there are no such institutions in Wales, and so the creation of the National Botanic Garden comes at a particularly opportune time. Attempts at securing its financial support have been frustrated by a difficulty in understanding the lines of demarcation between the NAW and the relevant Westminster department. As you will know responsibility for science rests with Westminster, and biodiversity and sustainability with DEFRA, but to date there has been difficulty in identifying the relevant divisions within the Ministry, even with the help of the Wales Office, and to determine its interactions with the WAG.

We appreciate that the creation of a new scientific institution in Wales is a rare, probably one-off, event. It does seem to provide an opportunity to increase the existing very small non-devolved science budget to Wales - but an investment which would have important spin-offs in the development of local entrepreneurial companies e.g. via Biotechnium and a highly trained local workforce.

In view of the very specific nature of this confusion between London and Cardiff, we would not wish to generalise on a solution and primary legislative powers for NAW are clearly not relevant except where the lack of powers leaves Wales at a disadvantage vis-a-vis Scotland, England and Northern Ireland.

We do, however, make the following points to you:

1. that a clarification of the division of present responsibilities between the Westminster Government and the NAW will be a useful first step in any revision of such responsibilities;

2. that such bodies who hold funds for science are Westminster based and responsibility for science is divided between them. There is no seeming link between science policy the NAW holds on sustainability, biodiversity and the policies that are pursued by these Westminster organisations which are applied to Wales;

3. from our perspective, there is no coordinating of science spending in Wales and no accountable budget holder.

Therefore, it would seem sensible that science policy and activity for Wales is devolved to the Welsh Assembly Government and that the portion of the funds allocated theoretically to Wales from budgets held in Westminster should be transferred to one coordinating holder who would be responsible for implementing such policy.

Alan Hayward

Dianne Edwards