Industry Year 1986 (Hansard, 26 November 1986)

§ Mr. Alistair Burt (Bury, North)

I shall begin by conveying my thanks for the opportunity of raising this important topic. No one need over-stress the importance of industry to an area such as the one that I represent. Industry Year has been a special event, and I felt that it was time I had an opportunity to bring to the House some of the important achievements that have taken place, especially in my constituency and the north-west. I shall be concentrating my remarks on the north-west.

I should pay an appropriate tribute to the Department of Trade and Industry, represented by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. The Department has offered support in cash and kind to our regional co-ordinating committee in the north-west for Industry Year. It has offered support not only by placing a senior civil servant on the co-ordinating committee and, in the best possible way, by not imposing any particular ideas on the committee, but allowing it to push through its own ideas and spread the message of Industry Year throughout our area. The support of the Department of Trade and Industry has been most welcome.

I should like to couple my thanks to and appreciation of the help of the Department with that of the work of the co-ordinating committee in the north-west. I would like to thank Mr. Jim Kennedy, the full-time regional co-ordinator and the chairman, Con Allday, and his committee who have been responsible for some major achievements throughout the year. It would be appropriate to recap the aims and objectives of Industry Year which have reference not only to the north-west but to the whole country. The aims were to encourage a better understanding of industry, its essential role and its service to the community, to win acceptance for it and ultimately to lay the foundations for a more prosperous economy. Industry Year in the north-west sought, therefore, through action in three specific areas, to underwrite those fundamental aims.

The first thing it sought to do was to link education and industry. Industry Year aimed to accelerate the growth of links between industry and education from primary schools to universities and polytechnics in order to increase the understanding and resources of both. Specific targets existed, such as the linking of all secondary and as many primary schools as possible with local companies and broadening teacher training so that teachers became more aware of the importance of industry and its contribution to the community.

The second type of action envisaged was action by industry itself. Industry Year was designed to encourage industry, and the people involved in it, to communicate more effectively the part industry plays in society and to earn the reputation its importance merits. Companies were encouraged to hold open days, to link with schools, colleges and universities and to strengthen contacts with the media, Members of Parliament and local community groups and to demonstrate an increasing concern for the environment.

The third action task that Industry Year set itself was to increase the general public's awareness of the importance of industry. This was to be by using activities, 406 events and all channels of communication to focus the attention of the general public on industry and to make people more aware of what industry does and why it is important to them.

The co-ordinating committee that is responsible for Industry Year in the north-west claims a great deal of success in each of these three areas for action. First, as regards activity in education, the north-west can claim that 270 secondary schools—50 per cent. of the total in the north-west—are now linked in some way with local companies. That is double the figure in 1985, and it is one of the most important achievements of Industry Year in the north-west. In some areas, all secondary schools have been linked with industry.

Secondly, a growing but smaller number of primary schools are now linked with local companies. It is about 20 per cent. so there is still some way to go.

Thirdly, throughout the area there have been at least 20 industry weeks in schools, involving teachers, parents, pupils and industrialists. Innumerable conferences, workshops and seminars have been devoted to industry and education. There have been many other activities, including work shadowing, schemes involving teachers coming into industry and managers going into schools.

In the case of the second target area—ensuring that industry does a little more to communicate its importance to people—the north-west has also had a tremendous response. Well over 1,000 companies have done something related to Industry Year in the north-west. Over 500 of these companies have linked up with local groups. Companies linked to local groups, or independently, have generated over 1,000 major events to publicise Industry Year's aims and to gain greater understanding of what they do. There have been open days, exhibitions, competitions, conferences, sponsored concerts, workshops, seminars and trade shows. All these events have been publicised, and they have increased the awareness of the general public of what industry does.

As for what has been done to increase the general public's awareness of what industry does, there have been some spectacular events. Even more important has been the sheer number of grass roots events throughout the community in the north-west. All these activities have contributed to the success of Industry Year in the northwest. I pay special tribute to the activities in my constituency. Bury has taken the lead in a number of ways and been responsible for leading the north-west in a number of most important areas.

There are 17 secondary schools in the area covered by my local education authority. In 1986, only one of those schools was linked to an industrial company, but 13 schools are now linked in some way to industry. There is great hope that by the end of this calendar year all 17 schools will be linked. That is a tremendous achievement, and it is largely due to a most active local committee. There is a very good blend of industry, education and local authority personnel. I pay tribute to them for all the work that they have done in their spare time to make Industry Year a success in the town.

One company, Milikens, and one individual, Mr. Clive Jeanes, who led the local group in Bury, went beyond the call of duty in presenting that industry to the town arid in rallying support for the cause of Industry Year. I understand that Mr. Jeanes has generated so much interest in the school to which the company is attached that teachers from all the disciplines come regularly to the 407 factory to learn about new ways in which they can make its activities exciting to their pupils. Regular contact between teachers and industrial managers has proved to be most valuable in itself, quite apart from the benefit to the children.

I should like to mention a young lady, Lindsay Pickston. Towards the tail end of 1985 she saw a scheme advertised on television called work shadowing. The purpose of the scheme was to give young girls, in particular, more of an insight into business and industry because of this country's poor record in attracting young ladies into those activities. Lindsay Pickston was not content with just seeing that television programme. She contacted me and asked for my help in setting up a work shadowing scheme in the town. I put this to my local chamber of commerce, and by dint of its efforts a local company called Bibby and Baron agreed to take on Lindsay Pickston. Through her own efforts Lindsay found herself placed with this company and had a most worthwhile week on the work shadowing scheme.

It is people like Lindsay and companies like Bibby and Baron and Milikens and the enthusiasm generated in a town like Bury that has made Industry Year a great success.

I want to speak about more than just bare achievements, for they alone will not tackle our fundamental problem—industrial attitudes. Britain is a curious paradox of an industrialised country with an anti-industrial culture. We know that there is reluctance to engage in trade and we are all aware of the apocryphal stories about youngsters who are persuaded not to go into trade but are told that they should enter the safe professions like the Civil Service—anything other than soil their hands. We know the apocryphal stories about people who are looked down upon because they are in trade until they suddenly make a great deal of money, at which point they suddenly become socially acceptable.

Those attitudes of reluctance have been such that Britain has been deprived of people whose talents, had they been applied in industry, would have made Britain even more prosperous than it is. A whole series of achievements and open days and shows will not change attitudes in Britain. We need a continuing effort by people involved in industry and in the wider community and, above all, by people engaged in education. That will start to change fundamental attitudes towards industry, and that is the point that I want to emphasise.

The activity in the north-west has been designed to change attitudes and that will be one of its lasting effects. There has been a considerable amount of activity in the schools, and the process is beginning to come to fruition because it has changed the attitudes of teachers and educationists towards industry. A growing number of youngsters are beginning to see that industry can offer them a career, no matter what their skills and abilities may be, because business offers opportunity to all. A greater awareness and appreciation of economics is growing in the schools and more schools are taking part in schemes such as Young Enterprise or are setting up companies within the schools enabling pupils to learn what the business world is all about.

We have seen changes in the curricula in schools. That is not necessarily associated with Industry Year, but, added to the effort of Industry Year, schemes such as 408 TVEI are having an even greater impact. A growing enterprise culture has gradually spread throughout our area with the development and further progress of institutions such as Enterprise Agency. All in all, attitudes needed to change. They have been attacked and they are changing because of the variety of activities which the Industry Year co-ordinating committee has organised in the north-west.

Officially, Industry Year will end at the end of this year, but the growing awareness in the north-west that industry matters will not come to an end. I should like to see the continued existence of the regional co-ordinating group. I hope that local commitments to education, openness in industry and the greater public awareness of what goes on will continue. Above all, I hope that the attempts being made to change the attitude of society towards industry will continue.

The north-west had an industrial base for the greater part of the last century. It brought great wealth to our area, but at the turn of the 20th century it also brought great hardship and despair as our former important industries declined for one reason or another. However, our fundamental core of industrial awareness and knowledge has not been lost. The traditional skills need to be applied to new industries, but for some time there has been reluctance to accept this. Industry Year has sought to tackle this basic problem. People have begun to realise that their prosperity lies not in the past but in the future, and that traditional skills can be used to forge new successes and new industries.

The north-west has a proud record in new industries and new technologies, but too often it is linked with the smokestack industries of the past. The classic picture that is sometimes seen from the south of England of the Coronation street terraces and the factory chimneys is no longer truly representative of the north of England. It will certainly not be representative of the north of England's future.

Industry Year has made great strides. The efforts of people throughout the region and in my constituency have all been designed to change fundamental attitudes towards industry and to point the way to the future. I am pleased and delighted that the Department of Trade and Industry has taken such an active interest in the activities of Industry Year 1986 in the north-west. I am convinced that should the north-west decide to continue Industry Year—I am sure that in some way it will continue the activities of 1986—the Department of Trade and Industry will want to play a part.

Industry Year has been a great success. The future of the north of England—if it is moved by some of the attitudes that have changed in the past year—will be all the more secure, thanks to the efforts of so many people.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. John Butcher)

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North (Mr. Burt) for the choice of a timely subject to raise on the Adjournment of the House. I confirm that I shall convey to my officials in the regional office and the north-west his appreciation of the work that they have done. I shall ensure that they get a copy of Hansard. I join my hon. Friend in congratulating the north-west regional committee and those who worked so hard in his constituency on making great progress, particularly in the area of school-industry links.

409 I also suspect that Miss Lindsay Pickston may well have made history, as I am sure that she is the first girl sixth former to be mentioned in the Official Report of the proceedings of the House.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving the House the opportunity to look at what has happened in Industry Year and the role that Government have been able to play.

I should perhaps first remind the House that Industry Year is not a Government campaign. It has been organised by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, more commonly known as the RSA. The aims of Industry Year were set out at the beginning. Industry Year is trying to increase understanding of the role of industry and its services to the community. The year has just been the start of this campaign. and RSA will be announcing next week how it intends to continue after 31 December.

Using a central team under the directorship of Sir Geoffrey Chandler, a network of regional working groups has been built up across the country to take the campaign down to a local level. Much of this effort has been voluntary. I should like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to all those people and to thank them for the hard work that they have put in.

Many companies have provided magnificent support for the campaign, and their contribution has been more than matched by teachers and others in education. In fact, perhaps one of the most notable achievements of Industry Year is that it has enabled people to build on previous industry-education activities, many of them started by my own Department's industry education unit. That is why we have taken the lead in providing Government support for the campaign.

One element of our support is that we have contributed £850,000 towards central running costs. This is over half these costs, and we have also seconded a press officer to the central team. We have done this so that contributions from industry can be concentrated in the local areas where they will have the most impact.

That is by no means the end of our support. Over the lifetime of the campaign we have spent over £1 million on regional Industry Year. This money has been used on a wide variety of projects chosen by the people in the local areas. We have put money towards industry days or weeks, where schools or colleges and local companies get together to see how they can help each other. We have helped fund local newsletters used to alert more people to the need to become involved. We have provided support for conferences, exhibitions, display material, and so on. What is important is that we have listened to what local people have said they wanted. We have joined in the collaboration between industry and education and provided financial help where it was most needed.

I know that the IY team in my hon. Friend's constituency has been extremely active over the past year under the leadership of Mr. Clive Jeanes of Miliken Industries Ltd. They are obviously very good fund raisers in Bury, North, because they have not approached us for money to support any of their activities so far. We would be happy to consider any proposals for part funding activities if they need support from us.

We have also done things for Industry Year nationally. One of the best known is the workshadowing scheme, to which my hon. Friend referred. Like him, I participated in that scheme and can confirm from personal experience that the conclusions gained by the sixth formers in 410 virtually every case have been very vivid and have been reported back to their constituents, namely, their fellow sixth formers, in tangible form. We have recorded 1,500 shadows under our national scheme. The idea has proved so popular that a number of areas have taken it up and run their own schemes, so the total number of shadowings is much higher than this.

A project that was one of our key targets for Industry Year has also been widely welcomed. This is the mini-enterpise in schools project. Here we have got together with the National Westminster Bank in England and Wales and other banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland to offer every middle and secondary school in the country the chance to run at least one mini-enterprise. The schoolchildren themselves set up and run their own operations. They learn about budgeting, marketing, accounting and product design, by becoming involved in these activities. They all learn what is invloved in running a business. We may have planted the seeds of some mighty enterprise here in Industry Year. I understand that over three quarters of our secondary schools will have had experience of mini-enterprise before the school year ends. That is a fine achievement.

To help schools have access to industrially relevant teaching materials, we have provided each middle and secondary school with a modem. Through these modems schools will have access to material on remote databases. We are helping to set up such a database called NERIS—the national education resource information system. From January, schools will have access to considerable resources of up-to-date and relevant teaching materials, particularly in mathematics, physics and technology.

That is all part of another of our IY targets—the introduction by all LEAs of technology as an examinable subject. Through the work of British School Technology, many LEAs now have fully equipped technology buses travelling among schools making maximum use of scarce resources. We have collaborated with industry to buy and equip buses in some areas. We now lead the world in that element of technology teaching.

Another target was to ensure that every LEA has an individual or body with clear responsibility for promoting school—industry links. We have achieved this through the network of school industry liaison officers, the school curriculum industry partnership and the science and technology regional organisations. Of course, the IY network has been working hard to achieve the associated objective of linking schools with local companies and has achieved great success. So far over £5.85 million has been committed to Industry Year by Government agencies of one sort or another either through direct funding or through funding projects and activities in support of the campaign. On top of this we have taken the opportunity to enhance existing or new projects worth over £20 million. This is what we have identified so far. If I were to look at other areas of Government support for industry, all of which contribute to the central aims of IY, the total would be very much higher.

Of course, neither we nor the Industry Year team are going to rest on our laurels. I have already said that next week the team will be announcing how it intends to continue the campaign next year. A small central team will be maintained at the RSA to provide a focal point for future work. I know from my travels around the country that there is an absolute determination among local groups not to lose the momentum generated this year. The 411 Government, too, will be supporting the continuing campaign, as we have done this year, in whatever ways we can. I can respond positively to my hon. Friend's suggestions and that is why, at the beginning of my speech, I said that his Adjournment debate was timely. I can now state that the RSA, local groups, the Government and institutions will work together under one banner to change attitudes to industry. And what will that banner be? What else but "Industry, Matters." That will continue into 1987.

412 I again thank my hon. Friend for all the work that he has done and the encouragement that he has given to the magnificent work that has been done on the ground in Bury, North and the north-west. I am sure that we are all delighted that that work will be built on and not simply left as a one-year effort that could not have borne fruit if we had not persisted with it. That is what we shall do.