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Mill Hill - We are walking into a tragedy here, says Paul Nurse
The bitterness that has dogged discussions on the future of the NIMR could be dispelled if there was another meeting if the Task Force and if the Mill Hill site was a fallback.
So said Sir Paul Nurse, giving evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology.
He was joined by Professor Richard Flavell. Both were questioned by the Committee on why they had asked for the phrase without coercion be removed from a letter circulated by MRC to be signed by all 10 task force members.
It seemed unhelpful and provocative, said Flavell. Had there been coercion? There was persuasion, there was lobbying, said Sir Paul. There is a fine line between strong persuasion and coercion. I thought it was strong persuasion. He added that the view of staff might be different. It was within the limits, but close to the limits, he said, acceptable, but only just.
Both witnesses said that they had no evidence of any hidden agenda, and paid tribute to the fairness of the discussions among the task force. The problem, said Sir Paul, was that Mill Hill seemed to fade as an option as the discussions wore on. This left people at the site with the belief that if the central London option did not work, Mill Hill would close.
Where the task force went wrong, he said, was that we did not consider what would happen if London failed either because there was no site or because there was no money. We should have covered that: if the London site failed, Mill Hill should be kept alive until there was room in London.
It was this uncertainty that had poisoned the whole process, he thought. The tragedy was that at the end of the fifth and final meeting, there was consensus. It was only in an exchange of telephone conversations after that meeting that things began to unravel.
We should have said that we couldnt make the deadline [for the report] and had another meeting, said Sir Paul. He believed that trust could be rebuilt between the two sides, if Mill Hill was re-intorduced as an option. Other wise things looked bleak: We are walking into a tragedy here, he said about the bitterness between the two sides in the dispute.
Meanwhile the council is proceeding with the central London option. At a meeting last week (15 December) the MRC Council considered the proposals from Kings College London (KCL) and University College London (UCL) for the co-location of the MRCs National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) with each. It decided that various aspects of both cases needed further assessment before a decision and a team of Council members will be making further site visits.
See previous stories:
10 April 2003 Mill Hill threatened with closure
28 May 2004 The future of NIMR
9 July 2004 NIMR London or bust?
22 October 2004 MPs to investigate NIMR move
2 December 2004 Colin Blakemore threatened me claim at Mill Hill hearing
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