The lab runs key government functions that cannot be outsourced, such as decontamination in the event of a nuclear incident. “We wouldn’t really want to rely on the market in the event of that,” she said.
However, Hill explained that “we are very tight for capital investment in Defra, and the science labs are very hungry. They have a lot of opportunities to do commercial work, so they work with big food companies to test their products but they’re very limited by our capital in how much they can grow their income – and most of Defra’s capital goes into flood defences, which is a ministerial priority.”
“What we’re looking at [in York], and we have only just started, is some sort of joint venture”, Hill explained, adding that the lab’s partner “might be voluntary sector, it might be higher education, it might be private sector.”
She added that it would still “preserve bits of the science lab service to government where we wouldn’t want to rely on the market.
“It’s very early days, we’re still doing something called soft-market testing, but I think [new] business models can help us preserve very good science but help important institutions to build and grow,” she said.
Hill called for civil servants to look at new business models “with an open mind.”