I was struck by the following declaration in the foreword to the Government’s new Life Sciences Plan. The Secretaries of State for Science and Health say:

‘This is a new model of partnership between science and society, between government and industry, and between economic and health policy.’

The idea that the Life Sciences plan will re-draw the relationship between science and society is one I did not anticipate. It is a tantalising prospect and echoes the messages from across the life sciences industry about the desire to be more connected with communities and to be seen to be socially responsible…..

Or it was tantalising until I read the plan and realised it promises nothing of the sort. The document neither includes a substantive definition of what it means by ‘a new model of partnership’ between science and society. Nor does it provide a narrative for how the Government wishes to evolve the relationship including its own conduct when it comes to working with the public. So, instead of taking its word for it I decided to take a closer look at the plan in this blog to understand why it might make such a promise and where it fails to measure up.

The most obvious surrogate narrative for a change in the nature of the relationship between science and society is what the plan promises to do to drive health innovation and NHS Reform leading to patients having quicker and easier access to medicines, treatments and therapies.

Most evidence (see for instance Health Foundation polling in 2024) supports the notion that people will value research and innovation if it improves the quality of their life and that of their communities. But this support is not unqualified. The Life Sciences Plan does not address people’s priorities about the way innovation should be done, namely that it should: be co-developed with them; implemented in an equitable way and maintain a human connection that avoids marginalisation as can so easily happen with for instance digital solutions. 

The Life Sciences Plan does not match, echo or even hint at any of the commitments to co-production or co-development (flawed though they may be) that are part of the NHS Ten Year Plan and which the sector plan is aiming to underpin. The one small shred of comfort is the extent to which medical research charities have been involved in the consultation. Nonetheless a whole theme on public involvement and engagement which I saw in the early consultations for the Life Sciences Plan did not make it to the final cut for reasons we shall probably never know. That is a shame. The result is one of the most top-down and least democratic documents in tone that I have seen from within our sector for some time.It shows no understanding and certainly makes no effort to think through the community building that will need to happen (with researchers, health professionals, patients and the public) to make implementation happen.

The foundation of any positive relationship between science and society is good governance, particularly mechanisms that support transparency and accountability. The Life Sciences Plan is at pains to herald how it is bringing in a new era of accountability including an independent Chair and NEDS for NIHR, the creation and maintenance of a single comprehensive UK database for clinical trials, and an admittedly very helpful table at the end of the document listing the actions, how progress will be measured and by when plus who is responsible, and a ‘refreshed and bolstered’ Life Sciences Council (to be chaired by the CEO of the BioIndustry Association, Steve Bates, we learnt yesterday – not sure why this is not independent or was advertised through the public appointments process).

It is a start in addressing some of the criticisms that have been levelled at bodies including the Life Sciences Council (LSC), Office for Life Sciences (OLS), the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCH); that they are opaque by nature, detached if not invisible to most people across the research community, fail to co-ordinate what they are doing, and are insufficiently resourced to grow sustainable partnerships to drive change. It can only help in the Life Sciences Mission if these entities were to also commit to greater openness and transparency in their ways (you probably need to file an FOI request if you want to know who is on OLS) of working including a more inclusive membership and a greater focus on proactively engaging and mobilising the wider community behind the plan’s ambitions.

Data and AI take centre-stage in the plan as it does in the NHS reform strategy with the key commitment being the much-trailed creation of the Health Data Research Service (HDRS).  The most significant element of the plan that might have a bearing on the relationship between science and society appears in action 8:

Government will use a combination of policy and legislative change to speed up access to health data for research and other secondary purposes, streamlining governance processes to maintain core safeguards while operating in a more efficient way. This will be supported by an extensive programme of public engagement to ensure we continue to build public support and trust for major data transformation programmes, alongside continued consultation with health and care professionals. Cyber security principles will be embedded within the process to reinforce core safeguards.

Funnily enough this is the only firm commitment to public engagement in the whole plan. No funding has been committed as far as I can see nor commitment to work with strategic partners such as Sense About Science, Understanding Patient Data or Sciencewise who would bring immense value to this discussion. And, again, there is no commitment to work with or co-develop the approach with people. Call me cynical if you like but this sort of declarative statement is usually rolled out when science wants something from the population, namely to broaden its license to operate, rather than to work with it. As was underlined in the Sudlow report we really do need to work differently with people if we are to strengthen public trust in data. You may also be interested in this comment from Dr Luc Rocher, Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, on the Science Media Centre website:

“To speed up access to health data, the plan calls for new revamped laws to allow the NHS to more easily share sensitive but “de-identified” patient data.  De-identification is a controversial approach with serious privacy limitations.  Attempts to broadly share and sell de-identified NHS data with private companies have caused numerous backslashes over the years and undermine trust in our research and development ecosystem.  Instead, the UK needs strategic investment for the NHS to develop privacy preserving platforms at scale with robust security measures.”

Throughout the document each time you look for evidence to substantiate the claim of a new model of partnership you come up short. There is certainly no sense of a new social contract being drawn up between science and society. There are also the oddities – the MyHealthApp platform which feels like a very top-down solution to a problem that does not exist. The underwhelming – £30M for prevention research does not feel like a shift in funding nor transformative. And the plain old missed opportunities to innovative and go further. For example, we know from the excellent work done by CaSE and its partners as part of its Discovery Decade programme that people will make judgments about the benefits of science based on what impact it has in their locality whether it be increased employment, improvements in health outcomes, a more healthy environment. Charging the innovation  clusters around the UK with a duty to involve and engage their local public, empowering them to find socially responsible ways to innovate with their community, might have been an enlightened way to engender innovation in this area and cement public trust at local level.

If this reads like a diatribe against the Life Sciences Plan or industry then I apologise because that is not my intent. The plan is an important document. Industry must be a critical partner in the nation’s recovery. But society must also be a partner in this endeavour and we risk a great deal by being complacent about the constant need to nurture and strengthen this relationship. Yes, it is a plan that is part of the industrial strategy but if it is claiming a new model of partnership between science and society then it is perfectly reasonable to put this to the test. I think this is the third or fourth life sciences strategy statement to come out of Government in the last few years with words like ‘bold,’ ‘transformative,’ ‘ambitious’ and the like. Sadly, from a society perspective, I am not sure the apple has fallen far enough from the tree to make the greatest possible difference.