§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. James Hamilton.]
§ 12.29 p.m.
§ Mr. Adam Hunter (Dunfermline)The House will agree that we have waited a very long time for this Adjournment debate. It has been a long, long night. However, I am glad indeed to be able to raise this subject even at this hour. This matter is of great relevance to the public. However, I am always surprised to find that so few people in Government and outside it are interested in the subject of computer macrosystems.
The Minister must think it strange that an hon. Member with my industrial background should want to debate computer macrosystems. I do not blame him for that. His Department will know, however, that I have dared to venture into this area of information retrieval services over a period of years. I have asked Questions and have corresponded with the Secretary of State for Education and Science and officials of the British Library. But it has not been possible to elicit what success research and development in computerised information services for science and technology have achieved or what the costs would be if the British Library automated information service materialised.
I have no particular interest in this subject. The debate stems from a constituency interest. The Scientific Documentation Centre is in my constituency. The research director of that centre has been battling for years to prove that manually operated retrieval services are more efficient and less costly than computerised systems.
The centre has been established for 15 years. In its first 10 years it set up five major information retrieval projects. First, it set up the largest British information base of its kind, containing 1,500,000 coded references. These cover most of the subjects of spectrometry, analytical chemistry, computers and related subjects, information retrieval librarianship and about 40 narrower subjects. Secondly, this information base can be used for retrospective searches, which have the same cost effectiveness 714 advantage as the SDC's current awareness services.
Thirdly, this information base can supply complete bibliographies covering whole subject sections with the same cost effectiveness advantage as the SDC's current awareness services. Fourthly, the SDC has collected the largest generally available collection of spectra and spectral data. A complete range of spectra services operate from this spectra data base. Fifthly, the SDC's current awareness and SDI services give higher recall than their computerised equivalents at lower unit costs. They supply more users than any of the Government-subsidised SDI services.
The long-term aim of the SDC is to become established as a major supplier of scientific information. To do that, it is necessary for it to transform part of its information base to the indexing of publications. That requires money and is one reason for the debate.
Being funded by taxpayers' money through the allocation of grants from the British Library research and development department would not be desired by the SDC if it were not for the fact that the British Library research and development department's grants go to organisations to assist them with research and development of computer information retrieval services. If other systems are to receive financial support, why should not the SDC receive support? Why is there this unfair competition? Why should not the SDC get support for research in order to compare costs of the different methods of handling information?
The office of scientific and technical information, a Government Department, spent large sums of public money on certain computerised information projects, especially those produced by the United Kingdom Chemical Information Service. Dr. Davison, the research director of the SDC, has constantly criticised this information service. From evidence, it seems that the SDC was able to compete successfully with the United Kingdom Chemical Information Service as long ago as 1974. The OSTI has now disappeared. I understand that its staff was transferred to the research and development department of the British Library.
Policies do not appear to have changed. Several reports have been published. One, 715 the Oxford evaluation, did not comment favourably on the work that UKCIS contributed over a period of time. It showed up the ineffectiveness of the work relative to other services. The SDC's experience with the British Library research and development department has been no different from what it was with OSTI. The nature of complaints voiced by the SDC remain the same.
Over many years, several Secretaries of State for the Department of Education and Science have been involved. The present Leader of the Opposition was Secretary of State when I asked a Question in the House about this matter. A considerable number of issues give me reason for concern about how the present position has arisen.
For example, the Oxford evaluation showed the advantages of systems based on people as against computers. It cost the Department over £40,000, and probably more. It has never been published because the Department would not insist on misleading statements supporting the removal of the computer systems. The Oxford and Birmingham reports, which were paid for from departmental funds, hide the advantages of manual systems and show the Department's pro-computer policy to be ill based.
A recent report blithely claims economic viability within three to five years for a computer on-line network which the British Library has supported. The same type of claim was, no doubt, made frequently of the Swansea centre when it was opened. A recent report, supporting computerised veterinary information services, concludes that all information is recorded already and will be available through the network. The report also admits on the same page that no system is able to provide all the material that the scientists want and which is known to exist.
High expenditure on computer systems from the Department of Education and Science by OSTI and by the British Library research and development department over a decade has been accompanied by a refusal of funds for competing systems based on people. This is despite substantial independent evidence that systems operated by people are much more efficient in retrieving the information required.
716 Are the Department and the British Library research and development department in a position to deny that 61 per cent. of the money awarded by the funding Department was, in one five-year period alone, awarded to organisations associated with participants on the committee at the head of that funding Department? If not, it means that 61 per cent. of funds was awarded to people with an organisational, financial interest. I am sure the Minister will agree that in most situations this would nut be allowed.
The Department awarded 61 per cent. of its funds to organisations associated with a tiny select body of information scientists on its principal committee, but there was no representation from the one organisation in the United Kingdom which has specialised in this work for 15 years —far longer than any of these computer systems have existed. Indeed, ideas initiated in grant applications from this body, seem, after rejection by the Department, to have been supported later in organisations associated with members of the controlling committee of the funding Department. If such a state of affairs exists, can we be surprised that my constituent condemns the grant allocation system?
I have written many letters to officials engaged in the funding Department asking questions in an effort to establish whether the refereeing committees awarding these grants were truly independent, but I have received no satisfactory answer. This can be compared with a situation in a local authority where a secret committee of unnamed people was allowed to allocate the authority's tenders. That comparable state of affairs would not be tenable in any local authority. Why should it be acceptable in a funding Department using taxpayers' money?
Is the Minister of State able to comment on a report coming from a recent official meeting of British users of online systems at which one of the main speakers supporting the British Government-funded on-line system made an extraordinary statement about objectionable pressures being put on staff to use on-line computer systems when otherwise they would not have used them? At the same meeting, one of the operators of a Government-supported American-based on-line computer system was astonishingly 717 critical of the quality of the data bases available by computer.
It has been drawn to my notice that evidence is available regarding a degree of censorship by the British Library or its officials of a report highly critical of a senior official who made allegedly untrue, misleading and damaging statements in this controversy. The suggestion of such a thing happening should be enough for my hon. Friend the Minister of State to emphasise the seriousness of censorship to his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, especially when it is levelled at an organisation such as the British Library which controls the nation's storehouse of scientific and technical knowledge.
The time is too short and the complexity of the subject so great that I am unable to treat it in as detailed a fashion as I should like. I trust that, from what I have said, the Minister of State can recommend to the Secretary of State that a public inquiry is essential to throw proper light on these matters, to ensure that any faults in the past are removed and to ensure that future policy on support for computer systems and research and development for them is properly in the public interest.
It is accepted today that employment and social values are of high importance. To continue a policy which uses substantial amounts of taxpayers' money to build computer systems to put people out of work and which do the job more expensively and less effectively than the people they replace is completely against common sense.
No doubt, many who read my part in this debate will call it Ludditism. It certainly is not. The debate is necessary simply to show that not all computerised systems are effective or cheap to run. Computer systems will tend to be successful and economic in situations where the data or information which they hold is used frequently. They will tend to be unsuccessful and too expensive for situations where data or information is used infrequently. They will tend to be successful in dealing with material in respect of which the unit manipulated is short, and unsuccessful and very expensive when dealing with material in respect of which the unit manipulated is long.
718 I have asked questions also about telecommunication on-line costs in order to gather information about on-line systems, particularly abroad, and the answer which I received from the Minister of State, Civil Service Department, was not very good. Not only has my constituent been complaining about the cost of telecommunication on-line systems, but other people are now writing or telephoning to me from the London area to say how wrong my right hon. Friend the Minister of State was to reply as he did. It seems, therefore, that even in America computer systems are very costly, and I understand that the cost of searching for data or information from any of the great American computer centres is extremely high.
I conclude with something which someone has already said to me—"Employ jobless graduates, not mindless computers."
§ 12.45 p.m.
§ Mr. Nicholas Fairbairn (Kinross and West Perthshire)I support the hon. Member for Dunfermline (Mr. Hunter) in this important matter. It involves three strands which, I am sure, will appeal to the Minister: the employment of human beings, the saving of public expenditure and the efficiency of public Departments.
The Minister is interested in open government. All of us are interested in open government. I believe that an inquiry is essential, and in saying that I acknowledge at once that the hon. Member for Dunfermline is in no sense a Luddite.
All wisdom is not new wisdom, and all new systems are not necessarily more efficient than those which they replace. It is not necessary to computerise everything just because someone has invented the computer. I commend the hon. Gentleman for raising this matter, and I thank the Minister for allowing me briefly to intervene.
§ 12.46 p.m.
§ The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mr. Gordon Oakes)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline (Mr. Hunter) both on his physical endurance—surviving the night in order to raise this important matter—and on his persistence. In his opening words my hon. Friend suggested that the House might be 719 surprised that he dared to venture into the field of computers. I am delighted that a man with industrial experience ventures into this field. Indeed, it is a field in which the ordinary member of the public with industrial experience has something entirely relevant to offer if we are to control and tame creations which should serve the public interest instead of the public interest serving them.
In so far as my hon. Friend argues for careful consideration of the pros and cons before one embarks on any computer-based project, I agree with him in both principle and practice, but it he argues, as he seemed to imply later, that we should not examine the possible roles of computers or use them for legitimate purposes when these are established, I must disagree with him firmly. One cannot put the clock back. One must make the best possible use of technological progress while taking full account of its implications.
Computers, complex though they are, are a tool—perhaps the most sophisticated tool yet available to us, but still no more than a means to an end. They can be misused by being harnessed to purposes which are either suspect in themselves or are inherently unsuitable to be pursued by computers. But when they are used properly they offer vast benefits, especially in information, communications, management, research and many other fields. Their effect is not only to reduce costs and increase the range and quality of service but also by so doing to enable skilled labour to be used more extensively and productively.
Coming to terms with the computer will require constant vigilance, not least about the effect on our individual liberties. As my hon. Friend and the hon. and learned Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Mr. Fairbairn) will be aware, the Younger Committee on privacy reported in 1972, and in a White Paper published in 1975 on computers and privacy the Government stated that computer systems in the public sector were operated in accordance with administrative rules which provided substantial safeguards against any improper use but concluded that there was a need to establish permanent machinery not only to keep the situation under review but also to seek to ensure that all present and future 720 computer systems holding personal information, in both public and private sectors, were operated with adequate safeguards for the privacy of the individual.
Nor are the Government unmindful of the underlying economic and social implications of the technological changes which are now occurring in the computer field, particularly, as my hon. Friend said, in microelectronics. He will be aware that the Prime Minister has recently made clear the Government's concern, and much action is being taken on this front.
The Government have a wide interest and involvement in the use of computers. They must have, because if we do not take full advantage of their potentialities, we can be sure that our competitors abroad will. It would not be right for me today to discuss all the beneficial uses of computers, but I believe that the House is aware of the many fields in which computers now provide an invaluable service. It would not be too much to say that if the Government and their agencies did not employ computers, and large computers at that, to assist with scientific research, we should miss many discoveries of great interest and great potential importance to the economic and social welfare of our people.
The important point about the related technologies of computers and telecommunications is that they are moving very rapidly. Each change makes more things possible or reduces the cost of doing them. A dozen years ago, there was widespread scepticism about the use of computers in any information process. Since then they have become widely established for the typesetting of publications and the production of printed indexes. Their use in the generation and handling of library records, especially catalogues, has grown so rapidly that the question is no longer whether they should be used but what combination of local, co-operative and national services can bring the greatest benefit from their use.
In what is known as "information retrieval "—an area in which I believe my hon. Friend is deeply interested—the scene has changed significantly over the last few years with the evolution of what are called "on-line" systems, by which a user can question remote files of information direct and conduct a dialogue with them until he has the information he 721 needs. No doubt many hon. Members are aware that the British Post Office is already providing a commercially successful service which links United Kingdom users to 70 or more files of scientific, technical, economic and commercial information held in California, and at a cost which a large number of users, especially in industry, are prepared to pay. A Post Office spokesman recently said publicly that users are now connected to the system for about 600 hours a week all told. That probably means at least 2,000 searches for information a week. Access is also available, at comparable cost, to nearly 20 files held in Rome by the space documentation service of the European Space Agency, the membership of which includes the United Kingdom.
The Government have played their part in the creation of a European network for scientific and technical information, using up-to-date technology. The new network, EURONET, is expected to come into being next year and will provide easy and wide access to computer-held files in other EEC capitals. Let me give a few rough figures. At present, the "communications" element of cost in reaching California from London is about £13 an hour. New linking equipment, which will soon be in service, will reduce this cost to £8 an hour. The cost of reaching any EEC capital through EURONET has been fixed at less than £3 an hour. The potential attractions of EURONET are such that several non-EEC countries have already asked whether they can be linked to it. In due course, EURONET will be absorbed in to a public-service network handling all kinds of traffic, not just scientific and technical information.
From what I have said my hon. Friend will realise that it would be possible for this country to become wholly reliant on foreign sources of supply—in the United States and in Western Europe, where several countries, notably France and the Federal Republic of Germany, are spending a considerable amount of money on the creation of new files of information and on providing access to these and other files through computer-based service agencies. But we ought not to become dangerously dependent in such a sensitive area.
Accordingly, the British Library and the Department of Industry have cooperated in the creation of two informa- 722 tion service agencies, which are known as BLAISE and Info-line. BLAISE—that is, the British Library Automated Information Service—has been created largely to provide a national cataloguing facility. In creating it, the British Library has responded to sustained pressure from librarians. But it is also providing an information retrieval service in medicine. Info-line, which comes into operation later this year, will offer information retrieval services mainly of interest to industry and will build up a range of services distinctly different from those of any other service supplier. It is an interesting experiment in partnership.
I can assure my hon. Friend that all the Government action that I have mentioned results from careful weighing up of evidence for and against it. As my Department has made clear to him on several occasions, its own direct expenditure on information retrieval has been concentrated to a large extent on research, now financed by the R and D department of the British Library. The scepticism with which use of computers was originally viewed was backed by a widespread desire to discover, through research, what computer techniques could and could not do, and how far their use was economically justifiable, or might become justifiable, as technology advanced and comparative costs changed. We were accordingly prepared to support a variety of research on computer applications in order to establish useful data for decision making.
The research of this period has largely run its course and has made a substantial impact on thinking among information suppliers and users in this country. Partly because of it, United Kingdom users, I believe, are particularly well informed about computer-based services, what services exist, how to use them effectively and economically, what day-to-day problems they create and how these can be overcome.
My hon. Friend mentioned specifically and in some detail the Scientific Documentation Centre, which is contained in his constituency. It would seem to me better if those in charge of that centre, perhaps along with my hon. Friend, were to discuss these matters with the British Library rather than be subject to a debate in this House. I understand that the British Library board has suggested 723 several times that my hon. Friend and Dr. Davison should discuss their complaints with the British Library, but that offer has not yet been taken up.
I also understand that a Scottish member of the British Library board offered to take up Dr. Davison's case for support of research and put it before the board. I am quite certain that it is the British Library board which should ultimately make a decision on the particular value of the manual operations of a service such as the Scientific Documentation Centre.
My hon. Friend also mentioned the Oxford evaluation study. Again I take the view, as does the British Library, that, if Dr. Davison feels that his interpretation of the findings is correct, the best course would be to allow the results to be published and independently assessed. This is a sensitive area which is far better dealt with in that way rather than to be subject to a parliamentary debate.
724 On a number of occasions my hon. Friend has argued that the Government have neglected manual operations and have placed their trust blindly in highly sophisticated computers. I hope that from what I have said he will accept that our trust is not blind but is based on practical reasoning, research and experiment. Frankly, I do not think that any public inquiry into this matter is necessary. I believe that we must continue in the way in which we are progressing at present. If there is scope for manual operations in all this, the case will have to be made on its merits, just as the case for computers has been made. If sensible proposals on this are to be made to any Government Department or agency, I am quite sure that they will be given proper consideration, as, indeed has happened hereto.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at two minutes to One o'clock p.m.