PAST MONTHLY MEETINGS

November — Quentin Peel — associate fellow with the Europe Programme at Chatham House — 'May, Macron and Merkel — where are they leading us?'

We were packed to capacity for the AGM followed by a very topical presentation by Quentin Peel, former European correspondent with the Financial Times, who gave a fascinating insight into the world of Merkel, Macron, and May, and where they might be leading us. We are living in a time of extraordinary confusion and uncertainty and this applies as much in continental Europe as it does in the UK and it’s interesting to look at what’s happening from a European perspective. This means not just France and Germany but all the other 25 countries that make up the EU.

Merkel remains a stabilising force in the EU, even though currently she is struggling to put a coalition government together. She remains an extraordinary political operator: she is primarily a scientist and is pragmatic, cautious, and exactly what the Germans want. She has problems within her own party and is in many ways too left-wing for them, but she has saved the Euro and survived the difficulties in Greece, Italy and the refugee crisis; and she has held together the political situation in the Ukraine by pushing through sanctions against Russia. While the refugee crisis may still come back to trouble her, together with her refusal to accelerate nuclear power, she remains dominant in the centre ground of politics and is steadfast in her belief that membership of the EU is in Germany’s national interest.

The majority of Germans have really welcomed Macron as president of France. as he too has a passionate belief in the EU. He, too, is an outsider although his background is elitist. He has big ideas on reforming the EU, such as reinforcing border protection, particularly in places like Greece and Italy, he has talked about setting up a European intervention force, and reforming the common agricultural policy. He is positive about the benefits of the multilingual nature of the EU. Although his popularity, too, is currently slipping, he has reached into the centre right and centre left and has presented a very clear reform platform. The trade unions are divided in their opinions on his reforms but, to date, there has been no major opposition from them. French business confidence is increasing. He is working towards coalition politics, but it will take time.
Both Brexit and Trump have undermined stability throughout the EU. There have been concerns about the rise of the far right in both France and Holland and a rise in nationalism in Poland and Hungary. The situation in the Middle East and the continuing refugee crisis could all erode the stability of the EU.
Both Merkel and Macron are determined to hold the EU together and this is more important that Brexit issues. Although disappointed by the departure of the UK, they want to ensure that Brexit negotiations will not get in the way of all the other critical issues facing the other EU countries. Although May has stated that she wants the EU to succeed, the Europeans remain sceptical about this. The Europeans continue to be concerned about the Brexit timescale proposals, the exit process and a fundamental lack of agreement within the British government on what they want. There is a blame culture developing and still a lack of technical detail from the UK, for example no real solution as to how the Irish border controls will work. They are concerned that the British government views the EU in terms of trade deals rather than a major peace project. They would, however, still like to see May and her government change their minds!

As usual there were many questions raised by the audience and not enough time to debate the answers.



October — Niall Dickson — Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation — 'The NHS at 70' — over the hill or ready for the next challenge?'

Niall set the present challenges that the NHS faces in the context of its history. From 2000 to 2009, the NHS was given considerable additional funding to improve access to services, with targets to reduce waiting times for hospital treatment from more than 18 months to 18 weeks. An internal market was created in which health commissioners paid hospitals on the basis of their activity: this extra activity improved waiting times but at the cost of very little investment in community services.

Since the 2009 recession, there has been no additional funding for the NHS and there are now serious problems of insufficient social care services to support people outside hospital, and rising demand due to the increase in older people with multiple long-term health problems — most hospital beds are occupied by people aged 85+ and this age group will double in size in the next 15 years. A further problem for the NHS is recruiting and retaining enough staff. To address these problems, the NHS is now asking health services to work in a different way, through integrated coordinated services which focus on the health needs of the local population, with funding being dependent on improved health outcomes for that population.

There is no political consensus on the future of the NHS and Niall ended his talk by arguing that much more public debate was needed on what sort of NHS people wanted and what they were prepared to pay for.

September — Sir Paul Nurse — Director of the Francis Crick Institute, recipient of the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2001 — 'Science as Revolution'.

Paul Nurse took us on a 10,000 year journey through the revolutionary advances made in human civilisation due to the application of 'scientific' ways of thinking and working. He began with neolithic societies that first domesticated wild plants to produce harvestable crop plants, and developed metallurgical technologies, producing copper and bronze for tools and weapons.  The same attributes of curiosity, careful observation, experiment and reasoning characterised the expansion of early scientific knowledge and discovery in classical Greece, when the application of rational thinking and scienftific methods demonstrated that the world was comprehensible without recourse to superstitious beliefs.

In Britain, the Enlightenment era ushered in the age of modern science in the 17th century and led to the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries which transformed society: evolutionary theory, molecular science, modern chemistry, genetics, new energy sources such as electricity and new communications. A scientific culture and institutions were generated characterised by tolerance, internationalism, and equality through scrutiny by peers.

Revolutionary advances in our scientific knowledge continue today and change our culture, technology and understanding of the world and our place in it.  Although science can be used as a threat — it has been used to create weapons of mass destruction, and in some cultures science is seen as oppositional to orthodox religious beliefs — Paul Nurse was confident that science was a positive endeavour that would continue to bring 'revolutionary' improvements to the human condition.

For notes of meetings in earlier years you can see the records as below -
For 2016-17, click here.
For 2015-16, click here.
For 2014-15, click here.
For 2013-14, clcik here.