HC Deb 17 March 1964 vol 691 cc1251-72

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution.

6.5 p.m.

Mr. Charles Pannell (Leeds, West)

I rise to speak about the Vote which covers the work of the Department of Scientific annd Industrial Research, but I make clear at the outset that I shall address myself particularly to research in the building industry.

As a result of the curious way in which we conduct our business, we do not always know how the procedure will go. It might have been a more tidy way of doing it if we could have had a debate on the work of the Ministry of Public Building and Works, a rather longer debate in which one could have raised certain matters concerning the industry, and then, secondarily, have raised the matter of science and research in the industry in parenthesis, as it were. However, I understand that we have to debate the second part first, and that this is why the Lord President of the Council is to reply.

In the last debate we had about science, the right hon. and learned Gentleman had plenty to say, and the House had plenty to say, about the "brain drain". It was suggested that it would be a great disaster if scientists continually tended to leave this country. It could well be argued that science is international and knows no frontiers, but this certainly cannot be said about engineers or technologists. We badly need them in this country, and there is no doubt that, if they went abroad in great numbers, we should be in serious difficulty. I wish to direct attention to the development and application of science in the building industry.

We are here considering an industry employing over 1 million men, with a yearly output of over £3,000 million. It is an industry which employs very few graduates, and the professions associated with it do not embrace many graduates. As far as the managerial side of the industry is concerned, there are only the degree courses in building at Manchester University, the Dip. Tech. course in building at the Birmingham College of Advanced Technology and the post-graduate courses at Liverpool and Sheffield. I am surprised to learn that not many more than 20 graduates a year trained in building enter the industry from these sources. I regard this as a rather serious matter.

Lower down, there should undoubtedly be more courses for site agents. In the building industry, site agents are usually promoted foremen who emerge, if that be the word, somewhere in their forties or fifties. We must train more of these people. In addition, the industry ought to look at its apprenticeship system as a whole. It needs about 24,000 apprentices a year, and it is getting only about half that number.

All sorts of considerations are mixed up with the idea that people now, including the Minister, have set their minds on industrialised building. As my hon. Friends in the engineering industry will know very well, it is a mistake to assume, when some new technological advance is made, that skills will no longer be required. Technological advance does not do away with skills at all. It demands and creates new skills.

None of us is a "left winger" in his own industry or profession. This applies right the way through. People often sneer at the plumber and his mate, thinking that theirs is a rather useless exercise. But nobody, except the man who has to pay for it, ever thinks that about the work of the lawyer and his junior. We often prate about the demarcation lines in the filthy trades, but ignore them in the noble professions. But, as I say, they are not left-wingers either, and I speak with all the prejudice of a craft unionist. All sorts of difficulties will arise if we go over to industrialised building, and we must think more than somewhat about them.

Many years ago, when I was writing an essay, I read a text book from London University which suggested that when the Industrial Revolution came it did away with all the skills in the engineering industry. Of course it did not do that at all. It just supplanted the old home handicraft skills with the skills of the man minding the machine tool—the universal grinder, the planer, and so on.

This industry has been heavily criticised on the ground that it does not devote enough attention to research. I turn to the Report of the Working Party on Building Research and Information Services which has only just been published. On page 9, in a paragraph headed, General Need for Further Research and Information", it is stated: We have compared the scale of research and development effort in the construction industry with that found in other industries, and thus drawn general conclusions about its present adequacy. Excluding the production of materials and components, the annual expenditure on research, development and advisory services for the construction industry is estimated to be about £3 millions representing 0.2 per cent. of the net output of the industry of about £1,500 millions per annum". After that, there is a reference to the amount spent on research by the ancillary trades within the industry itself. On page 10 there is some pretty heavy criticism. Attention is called to the national average expenditure on research, and it is stated: While, therefore, we accept that any industry's research needs must be established empirically, these figures suggest that the level of expenditure on building research, however financed, is at present disproportionately low and that the deficiency may well be measured in millions of pounds per anum". It is also noted from the Treasury's Bulletin for Industry that …if the private sector is viewed in isolation the construction industry spends considerably less on research than any of the manufacturing industries listed, though some research in the manufacturing industries is, of course, relevant to construction. Later, it is said that …builders in general have been slow to make use of men trained to the full professional or academic level that would enable them to extract the maximum benefit from research… The Minister's prognosis of this industry is that over the next 10 years its output must rise dramatically with almost the present labour force. I am not as optimistic as the Minister, and we may come to that in a later debate. But, if that be so, it seems to me that we must bring more intelligence to bear on the industry. This industry has tended to lag behind. A great many promises have been made for it, but I do not think that there is any doubt that it will have to be completely reorganised if it is to discharge the tasks laid upon it.

There must also be a great deal of retraining in this industry. Foreign countries, particularly the United States and Sweden, are already organised on an enormous scale to discharge these sorts of task. All sorts of things are mixed up with this, such as the question of winter building and the question of new techniques for the industry. Generally speaking, its research must be brought completely up to date. I want to refer to this on a later Vote. I content myself with those few remarks, because I appreciate that the debate is pretty wide. I ask the Minister to address himself particularly to the building and construction industry when he replies.

6.15 p.m.

Sir Harry Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)

I am, naturally, glad that the Opposition have chosen to raise the question of the D.S.I.R. on the Supplementary Estimates, but the matter which the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) has been dealing with is concerned to only a minute degree in the D.S.I.R.'s Annual Report for 1962. That was published in May last year, and a good deal of water has gone under the bridge since then.

Our difficulty in discussing Supplementary Estimates in any one year is always that we have before us only reports from these various bodies which are considerably out of date. I know that my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord President of the Council realises this difficulty and that the principal problem is how to digest all that has been done and to bring it all in from the out-station and to make a report relevant to the final Estimate for the out-turn of the year.

I appreciate that in dealing with these Supplementary Estimates we can talk only about those matters mentioned in them. Having listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Leeds, West, I am not sure under which heading the matter which he raised comes, but I appreciate that it is of considerable importance. I do not dispute that for a moment.

Mr. C. Pannell

The Building Research Station is part of this Vote.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke

I appreciate that, but I am not sure whether more has been spent on the station under the Vote or not. All that one sees is the various departmental establishments. I do not think that the Building Research Station is mentioned in the Supplementary Estimate. I do not think there is any indication in the figures which appear in the Estimate to show whether more or less has been spent than was originally estimated. It is possible that, however important the matter which the hon. Member has raised, there is not very much to show that it is directly related to this Vote.

I should like to touch on one or two matters which do, I think, arise out of the Vote. I have always felt that the D.S.I.R. has immense advantages, not least because its relationship with the former Lord President of the Council, who is now also Minister for Science, has ensured that we have in operation the great buffer principle by which there is not undue political interference with the work of these establishments. It would be out of order for me to discuss the various recommendations made by the Trend Committee, in particular, during the debate on this Vote, but I think that it is important that we should examine some of these Supplementary Estimates to see whether there are any signs that the D.S.I.R. is not working as well as we should wish.

If we look at the record of the increase in grants over the years we note that a marked improvement is shown and we know that this arises from considerable increases in the grants to universities. It is reflected particularly in Subhead F, where there has been a considerable increase in the grants for studentships through the D.S.I.R. This is one of the immediate outcomes of the Robbins Report. My right hon. and learned Friend made an announcement about this and I am certain that it is a very desirable thing. There is an increase of £460,000 in the total Vote, which was originally £2,050,000, and this brings the figure up to over £2½ million. I am sure that no hon. Member would begrudge a penny of this money.

It is important to consider what these students will do. I appreciate that we must not talk about that which does not come into force until 1st April, which makes discussion difficult. But I feel that one of the most important aspects to consider is to what extent we shall meet the demand which is now arising by means of these studentships. The hon. Member for Leeds, West was right in saying that we must try to increase the number of engineers. In a debate last week, in another place, this point was made particularly by Lord Todd, who is Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Scientific Policy. It was also made by a number of other speakers. There is a danger that we shall not get enough engineers and I therefore support the recommendations made by Lord Todd in that debate.

We should establish, as a normal practice in the universities, that those who study pure science should be enabled to move into applied science more often than they do. Unless this happens we shall be excruciatingly short of engineers. I do not know to what extent strings may be attached to the grants made by D.S.I.R. I am sure that it would be wrong to attach political strings to them. We should not allow political considerations to enter into this matter. We know how zealous are the universities about their academic freedom. But these grants represent considerable sums of money spent on what is essentially a Government research council structure through D.S.I.R.

Some other research councils may make grants as well. This is public money. To what extent can pressure be put on the universities to ensure that some of this money is spent in such a way that the recipient; will direct their interests to producing for the country men with the kind of qualifications which are needed. I do not under-estimate the difficulties and the natural reluctance of universities to surrender one tittle of their academic freedom if that can be avoided. The more we look at the demand which would arise in the for-seeable future the more it becomes apparent that we shall need more engineers. I hope that something will be done, through the studentships and research fellowships and other grants, to help to provide them.

There is a disturbing note in the statement on page 182 of the Estimates where, in relation to development contracts, there is a shortfall of £290,000 out of an estimated original figure of £450,000. The reason is the proposals in industry have not materialised as quickly as expected for development contracts. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will be able to say something about this. The more one studies what leading scientists in this country have to say the more one realises that they are waiting to welcome co-operation from industry with open arms.

I do not suggest that the matters with which we are dealing here may be rapidly decided. But it is right to ask how it comes about that we have a decrease of over half in the original estimated figure for grants for development contracts. I know that the policy of D.S.I.R. has been governed to a great extent—at any rate in recent years—by some recommendations of the GibbZuckerman Report, which was published in 1961. Some of the observations of that Committee are relevant to what I have been discussing.

Paragraph 81 states: In our view, pure basic research is best carried out in the environment of a university rather than that of a Government research establishment." The Committee states, further: Government scientific organisations should nevertheless encourage and support such research in fields which appear to need assistance". That is in pure basic research. The report continues by saying that it. is very much the direct concern of Government research organisations. to deal with objective basic research by which is meant basic research stimulated primarily by some practical need in the field of potential application.

We come to the sphere of applied science very rapidly. Presumably it is here that we must have a division of application of the scientific discoveries to developing something in industry or whatever it may be. Here I feel that there is a need for a concerted effort by all sections, the Government, universities, research establishments and industry.

I hope that the improvement which my right hon. and learned Friend has managed to achieve since he became Minister for Science will enable him to say that he considers that he has experienced the same sort of drive in industry. I know that industry is doing a certain amount to sponsor university research, and that sort of thing, but these figures are disturbing. The amount involved is not great when compared with the many millions spent in other Estimates, but it is a significant short-fall when one would expect the pressure to be entirely the other way.

On the nuclear physics side, I see that we have an increase of £68,000, to a total figure of £3,733,000. Can my right hon. and learned Friend tell me what that was designed to achieve or the cause? When I see a reference to "Upper Atmosphere and Satellite Instrumentation research" and note the figure has increased, I am a little hesitant, because I know that there are so many things on the ground which require to be done.

We must face the fact that this country is essentially dependent upon communications and that we must, therefore, ensure that we are in the forefront of developments even if we do not actually make the most expensive type of equipment. We must certainly keep in touch at least with the "know-how" of telecommunications satellites. Perhaps the big policy decisions on that are not for my right hon. and learned Friend, but for the Postmaster-General and, possibly, the Minister of Aviation, but my right hon. and learned Friend is certainly closely involved on the research side. I hope that he can say something about what we are doing about research in the upper atmosphere to the tune of £233,000 a year instead of the £189,000 of the original Estimate.

I hope that the House will, as soon as possible, undertake closer examination of the future of the D.S.I.R. Very important policy recommendations are being made. We cannot discuss them in detail now, because we should be out of order. But, whatever may be the future, we should all take the opportunity to pay tribute to those who have worked in the D.S.I.R. so many years and have established the unique system of so gearing the scientists, industry and the Government that none gets in the way of the other, but, on the contrary, all co-operate to the general good.

Whatever happens, that is a principle that we must preserve. Whether we shall call it the Haldane system or the Hogg system in future I do not know, but it is a system worth preserving and developing further rather than abandoning just because a committee has recommended great changes.

6.32 p.m.

Mr. Cyril Bence (Dunbartonshire, East)

I am glad that the hon. Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) mentioned subhead E, dealing with development contracts, where the figure has been reduced from £450,000 to £160,000 —a decrease of £290,000. We are all of us concerned with the modernisation of Britain and yet here we have a reduction of the money available for one Department which must be increasingly concerned with the programme of modernisation. Indeed, the amounts involved in the proposals to create a modernised Britain seem rather insignificant. A great deal more, for instance, should have been expended on university research and postgraduate training awards.

One of the greatest problems is that of the shortage of technicians and engineers. It is well known in the quarters in which I have discussed this subject that for pure research it is doubtful whether any institutions in the world are superior to British institutions. We have institutions where pure research in sciences of all kinds is excellently organised, well disciplined and effectively carried out with a great deal of co-ordination. We make a great contribution to the research of practically every nation and nearly all branches of science.

Yet I am convinced that we shall increasingly experience a shortage of technicians. I believe that already there is a shortage of laboratory technicians. We know that there are vacancies in the colleges of advanced technology. I believe that the latest figure is about 5,000, with apparently no students coming forward to undertake them. On the contrary, however, the university queues are longer than ever for the pure sciences.

I do not know whether snobbery is involved here or what the reason for the imbalance is, but we have certainly for many years had a seemingly tremendous capacity to fill our research fellowships and to attract plenty of students for postgraduate work in pure science. Apparently we cannot get the same amount of support for applied science and engineering. I believe that this is why proposals for industry have not materialised as quickly as expected. Industry has changed in its organisation. It is becoming increasingly a series of "batch" production units. Under this system, individual units are dispersed throughout the country, producing components which are then sent to a central assembly plant. Then there is "flow" production in one integrated plant.

There is a tendency to set up research associations. I do not quarrel with that, for it is the right thing to do. Nevertheless, there is a certain by-passing of these associations even by their own members in so far as research and development work is done within a firm's own research establishment. For instance, the Motor Research Association does very valuable and practical research, but there is little development from that work. That process is done by individual companies, most of them very large, such as Leylands, the B.M.C. or Fords. The number of units that can undertake large-scale development work is very small, partly because of the changing pattern of industry.

There are different views on the advantages of integrated production plants as compared with "batch" plants. In Western Germany, for instance, the integrated production plant predomi- nates, but tie reason there lies in the system of taxation—the "cascade" system—whereby the product is taxed as it passes from one plant to another. German industry overcame that by having the integrated production plant. We have Purchase Tax so we are not so concerned to have such plants.

I believe that our system is better, with one qualification. This is the difficulty of getting research and development at a particular plant. At the Rootes Group factory at Linwood, for instance, the process is that of straightforward flow production of the Hillman Imp. It is a modern plant, but it is not adapted or suitable for carrying out some of the great development programmes. It is a mass-production unit. Its functions and scale of opt rations do not permit big research and development functions. These are carried out at another plant, in the Midlands. I do not complain about it, for it is probably the right process, but this type of development means that both our economy and our industrial production are expanding while the capacity of industrialists within separate plants to undertake research and development is becoming increasingly limited.

Research and development are expensive and are becoming more expensive and difficult as technology reaches higher levels. It was not difficult to increase the brake horsepower of the internal combustion engine at so many revs. per minute from 8 to 10 horsepower; but increasing it from 50 to 60 horsepower becomes more difficult. The same is true of aircraft. Raising aircraft speed from 60 to 100, or 150, or 200 m.p.h. is not difficult; but raising it from 1,700 to 2,200 m.p.h. is increasingly difficult. On this increasing scale, breakthroughs become increasingly expensive and difficult That is why I am bitterly disappointed with the amount of money proposed in the Supplementary Estimate for developing proposals from industry.

If the D.S.I.R. and the N.R.D.C. were more active and more pushing, they could get industrial organisations to make more proposals for research, but not within their own plants. The extent to which a development contract can be given to an industrial concern is limited. The time has come for the D.S.I.R. and the N.R.D.C. to set up their own development pilot plants within industrial institutions created by themselves, State industrial organisations, in which processes and programmes could he developed. Such plants might even be leased to private developers That is already done by the N.R.D.C., but not on a big enough scale.

For an industrial country like ours, dependent on keeping abreast of world techniques, scientific developments and technology within industry are but a minute contribution to the economy. We hear much about the "brain drain". Hon. Members visiting universities and institutions are constantly told that scientists leave the country not because of lack of pay but because of lack of resources and facilities. It is not so much the immediate reward which concerns them but the conditions in which they work and the lack of equipment and of technologists. The bottleneck in promotion is simply that we do not have sufficient institutions and that those which we have are not large enough and are not sufficiently equipped. If physical resources are limited, the area of promotion within those resources itself must be limited.

This expenditure is insignificant in view of the problem with which Britain is faced in the second half of the twentieth century. We are a small island with a small population and we must spend much more on training men, not merely in the skills in the old craft sense, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) and I were trained: but in the newer industries in the new techniques. There are now new systems of disciplines. As youngsters, my hon. Friend and I were trained in the discipline of our hands, in the control of tools. The new disciplines are in mathematics and techniques, not with the hands but with scientific instruments.

There are still too many apprenticeship schemes which look upon training and engineering as an apprenticeship for becoming a journeyman or a craftsman, it is time that that attitude was changed. To enter an apprenticeship today is to become potentially a technician at the highest level and, at the lowest level, a first-class tradesman or craftsman. More and more we need first-class technicians.

The expenditure by D.S.I.R. and N.R.D.C. shows the Government's lack of appreciation of the job to be done. World technology and scientific development will not wait for us to catch up. Unless we get cracking and make a far better effort than is symbolised by these figures, we shall be in great danger of falling behind.

6.46 p.m.

The Lord President of the Council and Minister for Science (Mr. Quintin Hogg)

This has been a rather curious debate, because the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell), opening in a friendly and excellent speech, confined himself to one aspect of technology, apart from one or two preliminary remarks. He treated it, as it were, as a sort of hors d'oeuvre to the main course coming on later in another debate, when my right hon. Friend the Minister of Public Building and Works will be replying.

On the other hand, my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Sir H. Legge-Bourke) and the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) rightly saw that the Vote was rather different in character and permitted somewhat wider discussion. I am most disappointed that the official Opposition—to put it in that way—confined themselves so narrowly.

When the Amendment was put down, I made discreet inquiries as to what would be and would not be in order, and I spent my weekend blamelessly thumbing through the £27 million of next year's Estimates and the £23 million of this for the D.S.I.R. trying to prepare a speech which would offer a complete account of the outcome of the D.S.I.R. over the whole field. I must say that I could very much wish that that speech was now to be delivered. The one thing of which I cannot persuade the Opposition is, first, that they have not really grasped what D.S.I.R. is for, and, secondly, that it is a much better instrument for the purpose than the four inconsistent models which have been put forward as official Opposition policy by the hon. Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman), who has not found it possible to attend the debate.

I shall try my best to answer the three excellent and very different speeches and I shall probably best be able to do so by treating the building research problem posed by the hon. Member for Leeds, West, as a kind of case study illustrating the wider problems with which we are faced.

The D.S.I.R. is about the application of science to industry. It is the principal Government instrument for applying science to industry. It is very much the best kind of instrument that can be devised, although questions can arise, as to scale and rate of development, which I developed at greater length in an earlier speech.

It is about the application of science to industry. It is, of course, true that I have used it, and I think that to a lesser extent my predecessors have used it, as an instrument for encouraging pure research in the universities, and it has been inevitable that this has been so, particularly in the fields to which my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely referred, of nuclear physics and space research where expensive facilities are required and where, for instance, this year more than £1 million has had to be allotted to Glasgow for Professor Dee's electron accelerator, and two or three years ago we allotted a similar sum to Professor Wilkinson's proton accelerator at the University of Oxford. But I have never allowed it to forget, even if it had been disposed to do so, which I do not think it has, that its principal objective is the application of science to industry.

Even where we are giving research grants to universities, by far the largest number have been applied science, engineering and technological in character. Whereas during my period of office. I have multiplied research grants to universities over the whole field by a factor of four, technological grants have been multiplied by a factor of five, thereby showing that they are a privileged class within a privileged class of expenditure.

To take, again, building research as a case study, I should be surprised to know that there were less than 30 research and civil engineering grants dealing with the building trade alone in universities and in colleges of advanced technology amounting to not less than £400,000 allotted in the last two years. I choose that example because it happens to be the one on which the hon. Gentleman concentrated.

My hon. Friend referred to research studentships. Taking, again, the case study of building research, probably not less than 100 of the 4,000 now current are applicable to the building and civil engineering industries alone, so that within the D.S.I.R. one can see the close concentration upon the application of science to industry.

I shall not go into the question of education Li all branches of training, to which the Lon. Member for Leeds, West referred, because that is outside my terms of reference, but if I might crave your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, perhaps I might say to the hon. Member that he will not have failed to notice the Government's plan, in co-operation with the L.C.C., to turn the Regent Street Polytechnic into a federal college, with one part of the federation devoted solely to the construction industry.

Mr. C. Pannell

The right hon. and learned Gentleman suggested that he would be going outside his terms of reference, or the terms of the Vote, if he referred to training within industry. I made rather a careful point about that, because I never like to be ruled out of order. The 1962 D.S.I.R. Report, which is the last one that we have, refers on page 14 to the fact that the Building Research Station is giving assistance to dealing with many problems connected with training in industry. Therefore, as this is part of the Vote which we are discussing, I think that it would be in order for the Minister to deal with it.

Mr. Hogg

The hon. Gentleman is a great purist in these matters, but we do not, in fact, carry out any general industrial training within the D.S.I.R. That is the responsibility of the Minister of Labour.

I say to the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East that the training of technicians, to which he made special reference, and whose importance I endorse, was made by me the precise assignment of the manpower sub-committee of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy. It was for that reason among others that I approved the appointment of Sir Willis Jackson as Chairman of the Manpower Sub-Committee.

To return to the D.S.I.R. and the application of science to industry—and this is perhaps the nature of the argument that I should like to present to the House—it is a much more complex and many-sided problem than is generally appreciated. Having made reference to the help given by way of training students and research grants to universities, I must say that the core of the D.S.I.R. organisation are the 15 research stations of which the Building Research Station is one of the larger, although by no means the largest. During my period of office expenditure has risen from just over £½ million some years ago, when I first became responsible for it, to a few thousand pounds less than £1 million a year in the Estimates for 1964–65. In the current Estimates, the Supplementary Estimate has brought the figure up to £929,000.

The essence of this business is that this is a research activity on behalf of the country. It is not designed to take the place of research in other Departments. It is not designed to take the place of research by industry itself. It is not designed to take the place of research either by individual firms or by research associations, to which I shall refer in a moment. It is, as it were, the central focus which carries on research itself in a variety of different ways, but also desires to stimulate research and development in others and to convey the results of research and development to others.

To give one or two rather simple examples, if one goes round the country, one sees that even in ordinary domestic housing the tower crane is a familiar sight on the landscape. I do not think that this would have been introduced either so widely, or so soon, if it had not been for the information services of the Building Research Station. It was originally a Continental application, but the Building Research Station sent a working party abroad, and, having selected its objective, it first applied the general invention to the particular problems of domestic housing, and then sought to popularise it through the industry.

Dr. Jeremy Bray (Middlesbrough, West)

Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the tower crane was recommended by Professor Bernal during the war for use in building? The speed of its adoption seems to have been a little slower than the Minister said.

Mr. Hogg

I am aware that it quite an old invention, and that various people have recommended it from time to time. All I am saying is that its actual application was carried out fairly recently, largely through the efforts of this station.

Dr. Bray

Could not it have been applied earlier?

Mr. Hogg

That is not within the Estimate which I am discussing, nor, I think, does it refer to my period of office. I think that it refers more to the period of office of the Labour Government. I think that application for its use was made in about 1951, but I do not want to claim any party virtue for this.

To give another example, the station has also developed a new brick, and a factory for building such bricks, which will greatly reduce the time required for bricklaying will be opened later this year. It has developed a method of packaging bricks. It has developed various methods of machine handling. It studies soil mechanics, carries out the testing of structures, and this year it has tackled some of the problems of management, for instance, the method known as the critical path method of analysing management problems in building work.

The result is that the Building Research Station is a focus, but I agree with the hon. Member's main contention that not nearly enough research is going on within the industry. I am concerned here only to illustrate the way in which D.S.I.R. can encourage research to take place. I would not accept that the rate of research within the Building Research Station has been at all unsatisfactory, or that the proper way of increasing research within the industry would necessarily be to increase the work of this station, either in its central location or its out-station.

Let us take the question of the relationship between the Building Research Station and other Government Departments—a matter to which I shall refer shortly, because it is at the heart of further progress. In the Ministry of Education, a few years ago, a complete revolution took place in the design of schools. This is associated with a civil servant—now dead—of great genius, David Nenk, who was working in the Ministry of Education when I was Minister. This work was done in conjunction with the Building Research Station.

Again, the design of hospitals requires a great deal of careful work by way of research and development, and this is done in conjunction with the Ministry. There is also the design of atomic power stations, and so on. The Building Research Station operates as a service to other Departments which carry out research and development of their own. This needs to be emphasised both in defining policy for the future and the object for which D.S.I.R. is framed.

This applies also to industry. No less than 14 of the co-operative research associations grant-aided by D.S.I.R. and associated with the Building Research Station. If we want to arrive at a just proportion for building research in relation to industry we must take into account the work of the various research associations.

During the past few years we have specially developd these research associations—the Government contribution towards which, incidentally, has multiplied during my period of office by a factor of about three, which represents a much bigger proportion really, because only one-third of the expenditure of each research association, on the average, comes from the Government, the other two-thirds come in from industry. We have developed in two or three separate ways.

The first was a change in method of grant-giving, to a flat percentage grant. That will be a great help. The second was the introduction of a new type of grant—the ear-marked grant—associated with a particular project, and the third was the use of the headquarters' activities of D.S.I.R. to carry out surveys of certain industries, which nearly always throw up the necessity for the creation of fresh research associations.

The three examples we have had during the past three years, during which I have been in office, are the Machine Tools Research Association—a totally new one, and a much-needed one—which arose out of a survey by D.S.I.R.'s economic section; the British Ship Research Association, newly farmed, which is the biggest item of this Supplementary Estimate in its application to research associations, and the Civil Engineering Research Association, again newly formed, which I was able to bring into existence partly because I combined he office of Minister for Science with the charter-giving function of Lord President of the Council. That is directly relevant to the case put forward by the hon. Member for Leeds, West. I am sure it will be seen that the Building, Research Station, through D.S.I.R., stimulates new activities throughout the industry.

That brings me back to the building question, on which I concentrate largely because of the hon. Member's speech. In the 1960 Report of D.S.I.R., and also in subsequent Reports, it is made clear that the key to the matter lies outside the Building Research Station. This is absolutely at the heart of the question of applying science to industry. The Government came to the conclusion, largely on the advice of D.S.I.R., through the office of the Minister for Science, that important advances in research in the building trade would be likely to occur only if we made full use of the power of the Government as a customer of the building trade and simply not as a Government.

As the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East has said, the growth of the development contract, which was an introduction into D.S.I.R. by myself, has been disappointingly slow, and particularly slow in the last year because we have unfortunately had to cancel one of the largest contracts, for a gear-cutting machine which proved to be of unsatisfactory design. But the future of development contracts largely lies outside D.S.I.R. I am not now talking about the N.R.D.C., formed for a specialised purpose some years ago, which has continued to carry out that purpose. If we want a development contract for a supersonic aircraft we put it through the Minister of Aviation, through the user department. The Minister of Defence has such power over science in h is own field because his is a user department.

But the future of development contracts in the building industry must lie largely with my right hon. Friend rather than with D.S.I.R. That is because it lies largely within the power of the Government to order, develop and design standardised components for building which will both make industrialisation of the building process profitable and also force industrialisation and system building upon the industry. It is one thing to order 5,000 baths: if one can order 250,000 baths, or 250,000 kitchen units, in support of one's housing programme, one is getting somewhere with the development of an appropriate design.

We came to the conclusion that it would be possible to achieve this result only if two things happened. The first was the remodelling of the Minister of Works to become the Minister of Public Building and Works, which has happened. The second was the encouragement of local authorities to organise their starts in consortia—something, incidentally, that we had developed in the Ministry of Education in 1957 by the introduction of the Clasp system of building.

Mr. James Boyden (Bishop Auckland)

The right hon. Gentleman is always leaving out the contribution of the Nottinghamshire L.E.A. He should give credit to Nottinghamshire for initiating this.

Mr. Hogg

I did not propose to leave out the contribution of the Nottinghamshire L.E.A. I was merely illustrating the Clasp system of school building as a way in which house building could be developed, and why it is important, if we are to apply science to industry, to make use both of the central chain of laboratories under D.S.I.R. and of the appropriate executive Ministry. I was discussing organisation and methods. I was not seeking to apportion praise or blame, although I agree that a certain official of the Nottinghamshire L.E.A. played a big part in the introduction of the Clasp system of school building.

The point I was leading up to was that we must have a national building code which will make standardised requirements across the country as well as a phasing of starts. If all the local authority regulations demand cisterns and pipes of different dimensions and sizes we shall not get the full benefit of mass production. Precisely because this kind of consideration was brought home to the Government through the D.S.I.R. and the office of the Minister, these new developments are about to take place.

This leads me to two other general observations about the future which, I think, are material. The picture I have tried to draw is of a very complex but absolutely necessary inter-related series of grants, contracts and research work done in Government laboratories, held together by the D.S.I.R. Research Council. The picture I am trying to draw using building research as a case study is of the D.S.I.R. Research Council as the most efficient instrument there is for stimulating research in industry and development in science and in other Government Departments. This it will do partly through information services, which have not been raised in this debate, so I shall not deal with them in detail. The Building Research Station is the station of the D.S.I.R. which receives more individual inquiries from the public and the professions than any other. It also produces a journal with a circulation of 40,000 to the profession and the trade which carries out this work.

There is another feature in this context which I have not mentioned. It is the N.E.D.C. The N.E.D.C. has an important part to play in the future. Until it was formed we had to work entirely through the economic section of the D.S.I.R. to make a survey of an industry before we could apply a generalised policy. Now the N.E.D.C. has formed a series of smaller N.E.D.C.s to deal with individual industries and very close and fruitful co-operation is springing up between the D.S.I.R. and similar N.E.D.C.s and industries.

I have taken a long time to answer three very good speeches by hon. Members, but this is a matter which requires close attention by the House. I hope I have not wearied hon. Members by dealing with the building industry as a case study in the application of science to industry.

Question put and agreed to.