Policy in practice: Pathways to maximizing microbiologists’ impact in UK policymaking

Abstract

Policymaking is increasingly driven by scientific data and evidence. Despite this, few policymakers in the UK have a high degree of scientific literacy. Expert microbiologists have a key role to play in advocating for better outcomes in One Health, biosecurity, and global sustainability by communicating their knowledge to relevant policymakers. Unfortunately, expert microbiologists are approximately as unfamiliar with the UK policymaking process as policymakers are with microbiology. This article outlines the ways in which microbiologists can most effectively influence policy in the UK; who their key interlocutors are; the level of scientific literacy of these interlocutors; and how to best communicate scientific expertise to different key policy stakeholders.

Sustainability Statement

This article highlights pathways for life scientists and microbiologists to influence UK policy generally. This means it has the potential to help deliver on all sustainability goals which can be achieved through the use of microbiology, such as SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production).

Introduction

Scientific expertise has never been more important to the policymaking process. This was made manifest during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the UK Government repeatedly deflected blame for unpopular public policy decisions by claiming to be ‘following the science’ (MacAulay et al. 2023). The UK’s institutions are ill-equipped to meaningfully engage with or follow scientific advice, with a paucity of scientific specialists in both the civil service and Parliament. This naturally means that policymaking in the UK must be informed by external experts, in part from think tanks and learned societies, but mostly from academia. Unfortunately, academic experts have very few touchpoints with the policymaking process, which they (and the wider public) almost uniformly describe as opaque and nebulous.

At the same time, universities and funding bodies have for the last 10 years increasingly required that academics specify the ‘real world impact’ of their research (Watermeyer 2014, Wilkinson 2019). There is therefore a conjunction of needs: policymakers who can impact society through their actions need expertise, and experts need to demonstrate their impact on society. All that remains is to create solid bridges between these two communities to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.

This piece aims to do so by outlining the main pathways available for scientific experts to influence UK policymaking. It focuses in particular on how expert microbiologists can best inform processes that will help drive change towards better One Health, biosecurity, and global sustainability.

Why should microbiologists engage in the policymaking process?

There are myriad issues that may benefit from being inspected through a microbiology-focused lens, and tackled by leveraging the power of microorganisms and our increasingly sophisticated understanding of these life forms. Microbiological expertise can help address sustainability and security issues in policy areas as wide-ranging as

• land use (e.g. engineering of plant microbiomes leading to higher crop yields) (Arif et al. 2020);

• defence (e.g. design of pathogen-agnostic metagenomic sequencing for novel pathogen detection) (Morton et al. 2024);

• agriculture (e.g. production of prebiotic and probiotic mixtures to reduce methane emissions in cattle rearing) (Tseten et al. 2022);

• housing (e.g. manufacturing of ‘self-healing’ construction materials) (Javeed et al. 2024);

• health (e.g. discovery of novel compounds to combat antimicrobial resistance) (Devine et al. 2021);

• foreign policy (e.g. design of tools for genetic engineering detection and attribution) (Lewis et al. 2020); or

• business and trade (e.g. stimulating economic growth in the UK through the creation of a thriving biomanufacturing economy) (Payne et al. 2025).

There is therefore huge value in expert microbiologists providing input across Government departments. On several occasions, experts have informed the author that although they are eager to contribute, they are uncertain as to the most effective procedures to follow and the specific contacts to approach. This piece therefore provides suggestions for maximising impact when engaging with policymakers.

Who informs and makes policy in the UK?

It has been useful, when discussing this topic in person at past conferences, to remind scientific experts of the separation of powers in the UK. While a full account of how legislation is designed, scrutinised, and passed into law is beyond the scope of this article, it would behove experts wishing to participate in the policymaking process to consult appropriate materials outlining this process. Many resources are available from either the Government (Cabinet Office 2023); Parliament (UK Parliament, https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/passage-bill/ , date last accessed 18 December 2024); or independent think tanks such as the Institute for Government (Sargeant and Pannell 2022 ).

The UK has a specific constitutional design, which, while not unique, may be unfamiliar to non-British scientists working in the UK. There are, as in most countries, three branches of Government: the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive. The judiciary does not take part in the policymaking process, and thus will not be discussed further in this article beyond pointing out that there may be opportunities for specific engagement as an expert witness in legal cases (Vaidya 2022). This is likely to be of most relevance to medical microbiologists.

There are a number of different types of policymakers in the UK, and it is not always clear to scientific experts, who may not regularly engage with the policymaking process, who they are or what they do. Key terms are therefore summarised in Table 1, with acronyms summarised in Table 2. The two branches which engage in policymaking are the executive and the legislature. Unlike in other countries, the former is composed entirely of members of the latter. More concretely, this means that for anyone to be ‘part of the Government’ such as a minister, they must be a member of the legislature as either an elected member of the House of Commons (an MP) or an appointed member of the House of Lords (a Peer). This is not the case in, for instance, France or the USA, and means that directing efforts at Parliamentarians is likely to be a fruitful avenue of engagement for UK-based academics. Ideas socialised among MPs or Peers can spread rapidly to ministers, as they are all members of the legislature.

Table 1.

Glossary of key policy-related terms.

Term	Definition
Government	Body which represents the executive branch, i.e. which is tasked with developing and implementing policies and laws
Minister	Member of the executive branch
Parliament	Body which represents the legislative branch, i.e. which is tasked with creating laws, scrutinising the Government, and debating current issues
House of Commons	Lower chamber of Parliament, in which MPs sit. Has primacy due to its elected status
House of Lords	Upper chamber of Parliament, in which Peers sit. Mainly engages in detailed scrutiny and debate, and has limited ability to reject Bills brought forward by Parliament
Member of Parliament (MP)	Elected member of the House of Commons
Peer	Appointed member of the House of Lords
Parliamentarian	MP or Peer
Bill	A proposal for a law which has been introduced into Parliament but has not received Royal Assent (i.e. is not in force)
Act	A law which has passed through Parliament, usually receiving amendments during the process as a result of debate, and which has received Royal Assent (i.e. is in force)
Committee	Body composed of a subset of Parliamentarians chosen by their peers to scrutinise a particular aspect of Government activity, or societal developments related to a particular topic
Civil service	Body charged which represents continuity and support within the public administration, i.e. which is tasked with supporting the implementation of policies chosen by the Government

Table 2.

Glossary of abbreviations.

Abbreviation	Meaning
APHA	Animal and Plant Health Agency
BBC	British Broadcasting Corporation
COVID-19	Coronavirus disease 2019
DEFRA	Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs
DHSC	Department for Health & Social Care
EDM	Early Day Motion
FSA	Food Standards Agency
HOLAC	House of Lords Appointments Commission
KEU	Knowledge Exchange Unit
MP	Member of Parliament
OQ	Oral Question
POST	Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
QSD	Question for Short Debate
QWA	Question for Written Answer
STEMM	Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine
UK	United Kingdom
UKHSA	United Kingdom Health Security Agency
UKRI	United Kingdom Research and Innovation
VMD	Veterinary Medicines Directorate

Ministers are the highest level decision-makers within the executive. The number of ministers varies depending on the Government’s priorities and decisions around internal structures. At the time of publication, there are 135 ministers in post (Institute for Government 2025), across 20 departments. The list of responsibilities for each of these ministers is publicly available on the UK Government’s website, and periodically updated (Cabinet Office 2024). This should be the first port of call for microbiology experts seeking to identify the relevant departments for them to interact with. The list reveals, for instance, that at the time of writing, the minister in charge of biosecurity is Baroness Hayman of Ullock—the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) minister in the House of Lords—whereas domestic biodiversity is under the remit of Mary Creagh, MP, another DEFRA minister.

While members of the executive and the legislature design and scrutinise legislation, much of the serious policy thinking in the UK is done by civil servants. These are public employees who work to achieve the Government’s policy aims. They are mostly generalists, moving between departments on average every 2 years (Dunt 2023). This has the disadvantage of eroding institutional memory through rapid and regular turnover known as ‘churn’; churn has been identified as an impediment to the UK’s ability to respond to biological threats and other ‘wicked’ problems (Fady et al. 2025). While a deeper foray into the exact nature of the civil service is beyond the scope of this article, excellent resources are available to help scientific experts better understand this linchpin of British policymaking (Civil Service , https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/civil-service/about , date last accessed 13 January 2025; Stanley, https://www.civilservant.org.uk/information-definitions.html, date last accessed 13 January 2025). Ultimately, civil servants are charged with apolitically assisting ministers to achieve their policy aims.

What do policymakers know about microbiology?

Some civil servants, in particular those within ‘executive agencies’, are deep subject matter specialists who are well placed to interface with academic experts in microbiology. For instance, the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) is an executive agency within DEFRA, and is composed of highly technically able veterinarians and scientists with an average time in post of ~14 years. Civil servants within the VMD are responsible for setting and delivering on policy objectives that relate to animal health, usually within frameworks determined by politically motivated ministers in the executive and approved by a majority in Parliament. Other executive agencies with extremely capable scientific experts include the United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) within the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC); the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) within DEFRA; or the Food Standards Agency (FSA).

Communicating information at the appropriate level is key to meaningful engagement: unlike the civil servants in the aforementioned executive agencies, elected Parliamentarians (on average) know nothing about any scientific topic. Only 78 members of the House of Commons, fewer than 1 in 8, have a background or interest in STEMM (Campaign for Science and Engineering , https://www.sciencecampaign.org.uk/what-we-do/political-engagement/mps-to-watch/, date last accessed 20 November 2024). This definition of STEMM includes economics, education, geopolitics, and the social sciences. Only 20 MPs (3%) have ever worked in STEMM academia. There is therefore a very low rate of scientific literacy among the elected members of Parliament. In contrast, there is deep technical expertise in the House of Lords and in Parliamentary staff—though unfortunately there are no cognate data on the educational and professional backgrounds of Peers. There are, however, case studies showing that scientists in the House of Lords have positively contributed to legislative scrutiny of Bills with a scientific focus (Campaign for Science and Engineering 2012).

Peers undertake the legislative scrutiny function to a much greater degree than do MPs. In addition, as they are (almost all) appointed for life, they are not subject to the whims of electoral cycles or constituency opinions. They are therefore an attractive group of policymakers for academic experts to engage with. ‘Crossbench Peers’, i.e. members of the House of Lords who are non-party-political, tend to have extensive knowledge of specific subject matter areas. This is particularly true of those appointed to the Lords by the House of Lords Appointments Commission (HOLAC), which ‘recommends individuals for appointment as non-party-political life peers’ (House of Lords Appointments Commission, https://lordsappointments.independent.gov.uk/the-commission-2 , date last accessed 8 January 2025). This allows for the appointment of scientific experts with deep technical expertise, who are much better placed to engage meaningfully with academic scientists hoping to influence the policymaking process. Any member of the public may apply to be appointed, and readers with a strong track record in their fields should feel empowered to do so by filling out the form on the HOLAC website and submitting their CV.

One recent HOLAC appointee relevant to life scientists is Baroness Freeman of Steventon, who holds a DPhil in zoology, worked for years in science communication for the BBC, and has published extensively on pandemic misinformation in her role as executive director of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication in the Faculty of Mathematics. Another is Baroness Willis of Summertown, who holds a PhD in plant science, worked for years as the Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and is currently a Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Oxford. Life scientists interested in influencing policies with impacts on sustainability, One Health, or biosecurity may find engaging with these policymakers particularly valuable. A number of other Peers with equally impressive scientific backgrounds sit in the House of Lords, including Lord Winston, who pioneered fertility treatments (and was ennobled at the request of a Prime Minister rather than by HOLAC); Baroness Greenfield, who has published hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers on neuroscience and served as Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain for over a decade; and many others. Expert microbiologists wishing to contact specific Parliamentarians can find their contact details listed publicly on the relevant Parliamentary website (UK Parliament , https://members.parliament.uk/, date last accessed 13 January 2025a). The official record of contributions in Parliament is known as ‘Hansard’, and is publicly searchable on the relevant Parliamentary website (UK Parliament, https://hansard.parliament.uk/, date last accessed 13 January 2025b).

Parliamentary (or ‘House’) staff are a much more opaque group of stakeholders involved in the policymaking process. They are Parliament’s equivalent to civil servants, and ensure the smooth running of committees. They include Clerks and subject matter experts who brief and advise the committees and their chairs. It can be more difficult for academic expert scientists to engage with Parliamentary staff, as they are less publicly visible than many other actors in the policymaking process. However, they are influential through their extensive facetime with chairs of important committees, and are often able to engage very meaningfully in the details of academic work. They are uniquely able to steer the powerful resources associated with Parliamentary committees, and certainly worth engaging with for microbiologists aiming to influence policymaking. The most relevant standing committees for microbiologists with a focus on sustainability, One Health, or biosecurity are (inter alia) the

• Environmental Audit Committee (Commons);

• Environment and Climate Change Committee (Lords);

• Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (Commons);

• Health and Social Care Committee (Commons);

• Science, Innovation and Technology Committee (Commons);

• Science and Technology Committee (Lords).

A full list indexing all of these committees and linking to their web pages is also publicly available (UK Parliament , https://committees.parliament.uk/, date last accessed 13 January 2025c).

How should experts approach engaging with policymakers?

A stakeholder mapping exercise, identifying the key voices in Parliament and gatekeepers in the executive branch and civil service, is a very useful early step in determining how to best direct resources and efforts for scientific experts. An example of how to engage a policymaker on an issue of relevance to microbiology and sustainability is presented in Box 1.

Box 1:

Example workflow for engaging with a policymaker on microbiology and sustainability

1. Identify an area of expertise with a pressing need for policy engagement

For instance, assume you are an expert in metagenomics and biosurveillance and want to convince the UK Government to increase expenditure on pathogen-agnostic metagenomic sequencing at ports of entry into the UK. You have published on cost-effective methods for metagenomics and believe that you have identified a series of methods and partners who could provide real-time intelligence to the UK, boosting early warning detection capabilities.

2. Articulate a clear policy goal to address an issue and the desired outcome

Your policy goal might be to see funding be allocated to a pilot biosurveillance project at ports of entry in the first instance, or as a stretch goal, to see the nationwide implementation and rollout of this system. The required level of resource commitment for each of these goals to be achieved is substantially different and should be considered in your analysis of potential impact vs. likelihood of success.

3. Identify the appropriate policymakers and determine the level of familiarity that each may have with the issue

As with many issues, this cuts across multiple portfolios. Biosurveillance fits into the remit of civil servants and ministers within the Ministry of Defence, DHSC (and within that the UKHSA), the Cabinet Office, and DEFRA. This can be determined by consulting the list of ministerial responsibilities in the first instance. Most of these Departments have dedicated Parliamentary committees, each with its own web page containing a publicly available list of members. Where you choose to apply effort to gain political capital will depend on your existing network, specific area of expertise, and desired outcome. Given the professional background of most microbiologists, we will assume that DHSC is the chosen touchpoint for this example.

4. Devise a communication strategy that frames the issue in terms that are familiar and relatable to the policymaker

Decide on whether you will engage with civil servants in UKHSA or Parliamentarians on the Health and Social Care Select Committee. As mentioned, these two groups will have very different levels of expertise. If engaging with civil servants, you may plan to share peer-reviewed publications, which detail a techno-economic analysis of pathogen-agnostic biosurveillance systems’ contributions to pandemic preparedness. If engaging with Parliamentarians, plan to include fewer technical considerations and more discussion of lived experiences and ‘anecdata’, as well as links to previous work they or their committee may have undertaken.

5. Establish contact with policymakers as appropriate

Email addresses for most Parliamentarians are available publicly. There is no barrier to contacting them, though there is no guarantee they will respond. Peers are more likely to respond, as their inboxes are not filled with constituency casework (though they are often very busy nonetheless). For civil servants, email addresses are sometimes public. If not, searching their name and acronym of their agency/Department (or the standard email domain format for the same) is usually a good starting point. Many slide decks are available online in which civil servants post their email addresses on the final slide.

6. Provide expert input convincingly

Once contact has been established, try to schedule a meeting. Personal links from one’s network hugely increase the likelihood of securing a meeting, as ‘cold emails’ receive a low priority. In the event of a meeting, ensure that you are prepared and that your interlocutor can come away from the meeting with a clear understanding of your motivations, evidence, and asks. Delivering an ‘elevator pitch’, which outlines this top-level information convincingly and succinctly is particularly key with busy MPs (and even more so with ministers).

7. Follow-up and continue engagement until the desired outcome is achieved

Following the meeting, share any resources (academic articles, reports, etc.) that you may have mentioned. This provides an opportunity to re-engage with your interlocutor and cement your credibility as an expert. Parliamentarians may ask that you share materials with their staffers, who will digest and summarise the material for them—this is normal, and engaging with staffers can often be much quicker than waiting for a response from a Parliamentarian themself. Policy influencing is a slow process, and you cannot expect seismic shifts in a short amount of time. Continued engagement with the right people, who will point you to other key stakeholders, is required for change to take place.

Articulating a clear goal and hence identifying target policymakers is key. This then allows scientific experts aiming to influence the policymaking process to determine the level of expertise and familiarity with the topic that their audience is likely to have. Given the wide range of scientific expertise across Parliament, the executive, and the civil service, it is imperative that microbiology experts consider the likely familiarity of their target stakeholder with their topic. They must then adapt their communication style to match: If meeting a busy minister with no background and little time in post, everything should be distilled down to an elevator pitch. If liaising with a veteran scientist in a niche topic at UKHSA, or a soil expert advising a relevant select committee, lengthier and more technical exchanges are possible.

The ‘currency’ of policymaking circles is the policy brief, in the same way that the ‘currency’ of academia is the peer-reviewed journal article. Long-form reports that collate and analyse academic articles are commonplace, but tend to be read primarily by more junior employees (Parliamentary staffers or civil servants up to grade 7). Senior policymakers, such as Parliamentarians themselves, senior civil servants, or even ministers, are unlikely to delve into lengthy, detailed documents given their wide-ranging remits. As a result, it will be useful for any microbiology experts wishing to engage with the policymaking process to hone their ability to produce succinct policy briefs. These are usually no longer than two pages, formatted quite plainly, and in bullet point form rather than in flowing prose. The language is as free of jargon as is feasible (given the technical nature of the topics covered), and, where possible, the messaging is crafted to align with external objectives and goals. In light of the Starmer administration’s focus (at the time of writing) on its five missions, these can act as useful framing devices for academics producing policy briefs.

What opportunities are open to microbiology experts to feed into the policymaking process?

There are specific time-bound opportunities to feed into the policymaking process. Most notably, this includes committee hearings in Parliament, which happen sporadically and as dictated by the committees themselves. The topics that these hearings cover are often informed by House staff. A full list of current and future events and inquiries is available at the relevant Parliamentary website, enabling microbiologists to identify these specific opportunities; (UK Parliament, https://committees.parliament.uk/, date last accessed 13 January 2025c) this requires regular and ongoing monitoring.

One interesting (and thus far underutilised) mechanism for the advancement of sustainability- and microbiology-related policy issues is the annual creation of Special Inquiry Committees by the House of Lords Liaison Committee. Every Peer is entitled to submit a proposal for a new committee with a single inquiry as its remit. This differs from the ‘standing committees’ associated with Departments or (for instance) national security. Four committees are stood up each year, including one dedicated to post-legislative scrutiny, to carry out these special inquiries over the course of 10 months. These committees have the full powers of the House, and have previously investigated and published reports on scientific topics such as ‘Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment’ (in 2020) (Select Committee on Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment 2020), ‘Artificial Intelligence in Weapon Systems’ (in 2023) (AI in Weapon Systems Committee 2023), and the ‘Horticultural Sector’ (in 2023) (Horticultural Sector Committee 2023). There is an opportunity for enterprising microbiology experts to engage with sympathetic Peers and convince them to submit a proposal on an aspect of sustainable microbiology; examples of what this might look like can be found in the ‘fungal security’ proposals submitted by Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle in 2023 and 2024 (House of Lords 2023, 2024).

Committees in the House of Commons also sometimes launch ad hoc inquiries, which benefit from expert microbiological input. This was the case with the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee inquiry into ‘The antimicrobial potential of bacteriophages’, which arose from a public consultation named ‘My Science Inquiry’ (Science, Innovation and Technology Committee 2022). This offered scientists multiple opportunities to participate in policymaking, not only by pitching a proposal for a topic to be examined by the committee but also by subsequently contributing to the inquiry into that topic.

There are other less direct ways for academic scientists to influence policy in Parliament. This includes engaging with the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), which ‘works to ensure that the best available research evidence and information is brought to bear on the legislative process and scrutiny of Government’ (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology , https://post.parliament.uk/about-us/, date last accessed 15 January 2025a). There are two principal ways to engage with POST: firstly, by suggesting topics on which POST might produce research briefings (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 2020); and secondly, by contributing expert knowledge to a relevant life science research project (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, https://post.parliament.uk/future-research/, date last accessed 15 January 2025c). At the time of writing, POST lists approved workstreams on ‘Cultivated meat’ and ‘Regulation and remediation of “forever” chemicals’, either of which might be relevant to microbiology experts. Another way to translate scientific research into impact within Parliament is to engage with the Knowledge Exchange Unit (KEU), which facilitates ‘the exchange of information and expertise between researchers and the UK Parliament’ (UK Parliament, https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/research-impact-at-the-uk-parliament/knowledge-exchange-at-uk-parliament/, date last accessed 15 January 2025d). The KEU also helps organise fellowships and placements for academics wishing to provide their expertise in Parliament on a fixed-term basis.

A number of internships and fellowships exist to connect academic scientists at various stages in their career to policymakers. Some of these are funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) or its component research councils, as was the case for the Natural Environment Research Council Knowledge Exchange fellowships (UK Research and Innovation 2020). At the time of writing, these fellowships have been ‘paused until further notice’. Other opportunities exist through learned societies, such as the Royal Society Pairing Scheme (Royal Society, https://royalsociety.org/grants/training-mentoring-partnership-schemes/pairing-scheme/, date last accessed 24 February 2025), or the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy’s Parliamentary Internship Programme (Brown 2024). POST also provides the opportunity for UKRI-funded doctoral students to work with their team in Parliament (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 2024 ). This list is not exhaustive by any means, and interested experts should consult with their own learned societies and membership organisations to determine what opportunities are available to them.

In addition to these, there is always the ongoing possibility for microbiologists to engage with policymakers directly. Defined opportunities are useful, as they provide a specific reason for engagement and internal need for expertise, but they are infrequent and unreliable. Regular engagement with Parliamentarians, resulting in pressure being placed on the Government to address specific microbiological and sustainability issues through questions and debates across both Houses, is a key part of a holistic policy engagement strategy.

What can expert engagement result in ultimately?

The results of engagement will depend on the policymaker with whom experts have chosen to engage. Civil servants are somewhat constrained by ministerial decisions, though they are able to make very concrete decisions on points of detail which can make enormous differences. For instance, a team of civil servants will have been in charge of coordinating the production of the ‘Third UK One Health Report: Joint report on antibiotic use, antibiotic sales, and antibiotic resistance’ (Veterinary Medicines Directorate and United Kingdom Health Security Agency 2023). If a sustainability-focused microbiologist in the UK were to feel that, for instance, this report should make a mention of the carbon footprint associated with antimicrobial consumption, the only stakeholders who would be able to influence this would be those civil servants. No policy regarding the content of this report is made in Parliament, and the relevant minister is unlikely to be strongly concerned with such detailed considerations, so this concrete outcome could only be obtained through engagement with relevant civil servants, who very often have free reign over this level of detail.

As regards Parliamentarians, those outside Government (i.e. backbenchers and members of the opposition) have limited ability to effect immediate change. They can, however, apply pressure on the Government through a range of mechanisms available exclusively to them. This includes, in rough order of impact (from lowest to highest):

• Written questions (WQs/QWAs);

• Oral questions (OQs);

• Adjournment debates/Question for short debates (QSDs);

• Backbench business committee debates (Commons only);

• Early day motions (EDMs, Commons only);

• Private Members’ Bills and Ten Minute Rule Bills (the latter in the Commons only).

These are all scrutiny and accountability mechanisms, which allow Parliamentarians to compel the Government to provide specific information in a time-bound manner (questions); raise the profile of an issue through debate; or introduce new legislation. The more potentially impactful a measure, the less likely it is to result in actual change, i.e. asking a written question is easy and guaranteed to result in some form of answer from the Government; introducing new legislation through a Private Member’s Bill is hard, subject to literal chance (candidate Bills are selected through a ballot) and extremely unlikely to end up actually becoming an enforceable law.

An example of a sustainability-focused, microbiology-related Private Member’s Bill is the Consumer Products (Control of Biocides) Bill [HL], introduced by Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (2024). This aims to reduce environmental pharmapollution by banning antimicrobial substances from consumer products intended for human use, such as chlorhexidine in mouthwashes or nanoparticulate silver in period products. The time between first proposing this Bill to Baroness Bennett, drafting it, consulting the relevant microbiology experts and civil servants, altering it, and having it selected at ballot was ~5 years. The Bill is now going through the House of Lords.

Conclusion

Policymaking increasingly relies on a scientific evidence base produced by experts. There are an uncountable number of ways in which these same experts can help policymakers understand either the basics or the nuances of the ever-growing corpus of scientific evidence. UK experts interested in contributing to the policymaking process should leverage the resources outlined in this article, including policy teams at relevant learned societies; time-bound evidence-gathering opportunities from relevant Select Committees; engagement with the KEU and POST; and direct engagement with policymakers in parliament or the civil service. Senior and well-established life scientists may even consider applying for a life Peerage through HOLAC, to contribute their wealth of knowledge as a Member of the House of Lords.

Increasing the impact of microbiological research to achieve real-world improvements in One Health, biosecurity, and global sustainability can take many shapes, from citizen science to empower the public, to media engagement for wider dissemination to non-traditional audiences. Engagement with the policymaking process is one tool in the impact-magnifying toolbox for academic microbiologists, and one which can prove to have an outsized impact on society if successful.

Review process

The contents of this article were delivered as part of a talk and received in-person peer review. This took place during the invitation-only Theo Murphy meeting entitled ‘Microbiome manipulation for health: building a shared narrative’ in October 2024. Experts present discussed and approved the contents following the talk. The article followed the journal’s standard peer review process.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the people and institutions (in particular Dr Anastasia Theodosiou and the Royal Society) responsible for convening the Theo Murphy meeting entitled ‘Microbiome manipulation for health: building a shared narrative’. The author also thanks Professor Jack Gilbert for his encouragement to disseminate this knowledge more widely among microbiologists. Finally, the author thanks Dr Meredith Barr for guidance on the direction the article should take and proofreading, as well as Théophraste Fady and Lucy Di-Nozzi for feedback on drafts and proofreading.

Author contributions

Paul-Enguerrand Fady (Conceptualization [lead], Project administration [lead], Writing – original draft [lead], Writing – review & editing [lead])

Conflict of interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Funding

No funding to declare.

Data availability

No new data were generated or analysed in support of this policy-in-practice paper.