SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY

HL Deb 11 June 1952 vol 177 cc35-114

VISCOUNT SAMUEL rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have any statement to make with respect to (a) the use made by industry and agriculture of the results of scientific research; and (b) the policy they propose to adopt to promote the higher education of technologists; and to move for Papers. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, it is the custom to say that we live in a scientific age. Certain it is that in the last 150 years science has transformed civilisation: some may think it is for the better, and some, perhaps, may think it is for the worse. I believe that I shall be with the majority in holding that, taking into account the standards of comfort, of health and of knowledge, the balance is overwhelmingly on the credit side. But however that may be, taking the world as it is, all will agree that no country can flourish economically, or even be in a position to defend itself militarily, unless it keeps fully abreast with the developments of science.

In your Lordships' House we have had several debates in recent months on the difficult problems that trouble us; and each one of them has ended by indicating the very problems that we shall be discussing to-day. Whether it has been a question of the cost of living and the vicious spiral of prices and wages, or of maintaining our currency at home and abroad, or of finding money and labour for the armament programme, or of increasing the growing of food at home, or of a shortage of manpower, all these subjects have been fully debated; and everyone, at the end, has emphasised as a solution or a partial solution an increase of productivity. All have agreed, also, that the increase of productivity must depend very largely on the adoption of the latest scientific methods.

Underlying these questions that we are discussing to-day is one factor which is of universal and eternal importance, and that is the qualities of the people—the intelligence, the industry and the honesty of the individual men and women who make up the nation. But apart from that foundation there are two definite, practical questions with which the Motion which I have the honour to move to-day specifically deals. The first is, how far are industry and agriculture failing to keep pace with the discoveries and inventions of science? If so, why is it and what are the remedies? Secondly, is there a shortage of technologists of the higher grades, and of technicians as well, and, if so, what are the remedies for that?

The immense national importance of questions such as these was realised in the years before the war, and a group of Members of the House of Commons conceived the idea of forming a new organisation which would link together members of the two Houses and the working scientists. So was formed the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, and that body now consists of 123 Members of the other House, thirty-six members of your Lordships' House and the representatives of no fewer than seventy-four of the principal associations dealing with the professions and vocations relating to applied science. That Committee serves a double link. On the one hand, it brings together the Parliamentarians and the scientists and, on the other hand, it links both in combination with the Ministers and the Government Departments. It has served a most useful purpose. The Committee at present is unique in the Parliaments of the world, but many countries are now inquiring into its working with a view possibly to following its example. It is because I have the honour of holding the office of President of that Committee that I ventured to put down this Motion for your Lordships' consideration to-day.

Two years ago there was a similar debate in the other House, but we have now the Minister chiefly responsible for these matters, the Lord President of the Council, in this House, and also another member of the Cabinet, the Paymaster General, who is Scientific Adviser to the Government. Both will be good enough, I understand, to contribute to this debate. There are to be many speakers—so many that we shall have to run into another day. Many of them will be putting specific questions on particular points to the Government. I have only one such question to ask and I will dispose of it before turning to matters of general policy. I have been asked by those concerned to inquire how the question of the establishment of a British Science Centre in London now stands. I know that the Royal Society which, with the other important scientific organisations co-operating with them, first mooted this project, attach much importance to it. In 1944, it was proposed to the Government that such a centre should be established to replace Burlington House, which was provided by the Government of the day for just such a purpose nearly a hundred years ago and which is now quite inadequate. The Government in 1950 gave an Answer in Parliament saying that they agreed to this project and would forward it and would use this Science Centre, when established, to house their own Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and also the Patent Office Library and other public organisations, thereby releasing elsewhere much valuable accommodation.

We all fully understand, of course, that, because of present restrictions, it must be some years before the project can be carried into effect, but I would ask the Government how it stands now. It has been stated publicly that the site has already been agreed, and although the location of it was regarded as a private matter, when the late President of the Royal Society, in a public speech, said that they hoped that the Centre would be housed in a building worthy to look Somerset House in the face, it required no Sherlock Holmes perspicuity to make a guess that in all probability this building was to be part of the cultural centre on the South Bank. If this is so, not only will it serve the purposes for which it is intended to function, but it will also contribute to what is likely to be the principal contribution of the twentieth century to the amenities and beauties of London. Remember Wordworth's Lines Composed on Westminster Bridge: Earth has not anything to show more fair. That, of course, was written before Charing Cross railway bridge was built; but when that monstrosity has been removed and the South Bank is completed, with buildings which, we hope, may be worthy of and in harmony with the rest of the river frontage, we shall have there an urban river view not surpassed, and probably not equalled, by any other city in the world, one really worthy of the Capital of the Commonwealth.

Let me turn now to these two heads of my Motion. First, there is the question whether there is a time lag (as it is generally called). That does exist. This country has been a pioneer in revolutionary discoveries and inventions in the scientific sphere during this century. The Cavendish laboratory, under the directorship of J. J. Thomson and Rutherford, solved one of the great, mysterious problems of nature, namely, the structure of matter itself, and opened the door to the great new science of electronics and nuclear energy which, in future generations and centuries, is likely to solve for the whole of mankind the problem of the adequate provision of fuel and power for mechanical purposes. Perhaps the Government may be able to say to-day how the great enterprise of Harwell is proceeding. If there is any information which can be given, with due regard to military secrecy, I am sure your Lordships and indeed the whole country will be glad to receive it. Then, in physics we have been the pioneers in radio and radar; in engineering we were first with the turbine engine, with jet propulsion and in taking a part in air transport questions generally; in chemistry we led in the development of plastics; and in medicine in finding the cause and the means of prevention of and cure for malaria, and lately in the discovery of penicillin. In all these things Britain stands in the front rank, and will so stand in the history of science.

But when we come to consider the practical working of industry and of agriculture the picture is somewhat different. In this respect we are by no means at the head. America and Switzerland have in some degree and in some respects surpassed us. A great deal of information has been collected on this head, and it appears that so far as the newer industries are concerned, such as electricity, chemicals or petroleum, we have been quick off the mark whenever anything new comes forward, and in many old industries the larger firms have also proved themselves very adaptable. But the older industries, and mostly those that are in smaller units, such as agriculture and building, have by no means so good a record. There is a time lag which is having a most harmful effect. Some of the other industries which are exposed to the hard conditions of world competition are also in a precarious state because in some degree they have been surpassed by industries in other countries. I will not trouble your Lordships with statistics. One can give a single illustration of the immense benefits that may be derived from scientific application in concerns which have been going on for generations. The British Electricity Authority inform me, in a paper which they have sent, that in the short period of the three years preceding and including 1951 improvement in the methods of utilising coal have resulted in a saving of 2,000,000 tons a year, with not only an enormous strengthening of our economic position but also a great saving of money to the Electricity Authority—and that in spite of a lowering of the quality of the coal. This was achieved without having to call upon one additional miner for overtime, merely by more effective utilisation of the product itself.

With regard to agriculture, we have all been delighted from time to time to hear the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, tell us how much more the soil of this country could produce if it were scientifically cultivated, with the same manpower as now and with the same area as now—or even less, because there is a constant shrinkage of farmland through the expansion of the towns. With fuller use of machinery, chemistry, biology and veterinary science, agriculture might produce a much larger proportion of food for our consumption than is now the case, and would thereby lessen the dangerous dependence of this country upon imports. Well, there is that time lag, not only in those but in a great many industries.

What are the causes of it? One is certainly lack of publicity and propaganda. It is very difficult to reach the average farmer or the average builder, to acquaint him with the new and the best methods, though great efforts are now being made in that direction. Perhaps more important, there are the restrictions due to our economic condition upon labour and materials. Buildings or equipment for scientific development in industry cannot be erected because licences are refused. Further, there is the enormous burden of taxation which weighs upon the nation, reducing the amount of capital that can be devoted to development and depriving enterprise of much of its incentive. When we compare the position in this country with that in the United States, we see, partly as a consequence of these conditions, and partly owing to the difference in the technological climate between the two countries, that the proportion of plant used per man in America is twice what it is in this country; and of electric power the proportion used in America is two and a half times what we have here.

At the moment, of course, these conditions have been greatly worsened by the need for carrying out the defence programme. On the necessity for that programme we all agree. Sir Boyle Roche, famous for his Irish "bulls," once said that "the best way to avoid danger was to meet it plump." That is just what we and our Allies are doing in this instance; we are avoiding danger by "meeting it plump." No one, I think, would suggest that we should reduce the dimensions of that programme. When we were debating that subject in your Lordships' House a few weeks ago, I ventured to submit that the time might have come when we might reduce a little the pace at which that programme was being carried into effect. That has already been done in the United States, and to a slight extent here; but it might be extended further. If that were done, if international conditions do not necessitate that headlong speed which seemed to be essential a year or two ago, it would give us more elbow room to carry out many of the suggestions which no doubt will be made to-day. Their cost would be relatively very small compared with the national income. We should remember that this is not deadweight, unremunerative expenditure. Far from it; it is highly remunerative—in fact, no expenditure more so. So much for the question of time lag.

I turn now to the question of the shortage of highly trained technologists. The Parliamentary and Scientific Committee sent out a questionnaire on this subject to a large number of its member associations and to many of the heads of the research establishments, and their answers throw a clear light upon this matter. Those answers have been sent to many members of your Lordships' House and it is not necessary to go back to what can only be a partial inquiry, for the whole matter has been investigated very thoroughly by an official committee. Although, in the usual form, I shall be moving for Papers at the end of this speech, one Paper which we should have desired has already been issued, it was published in advance, about a week ago, just in time for this debate. I refer to the Report of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy appointed by the Lord President of the Council, which consists of the Report of a Sub-Committee on Scientific Manpower. After one and a half years of labour that Sub-Committee have presented a most valuable Report, Command Paper 8561, which many of your Lordships will have seen, and that answers very clearly the question that has been in our minds. I will not endeavour to give the gist of it, but will quote a single sentence. It is this: The general conclusion is that there is likely to be a long-term shortage of practically all kinds of scientists, and that every effort should be made to increase the supply, with particular emphasis on chemists, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers and physicists. We may perhaps agree in taking that conclusion as our starting point.

In considering this matter we ought, surely, to take into account not only our own needs in these islands but also the needs of the Commonwealth, and particularly of the Colonies. Men of foresight can easily see that in the next decade or so Africa and Asia will play increasingly important parts in the economics of the world, supplying to us here many of the things which we need and taking from us many of the things we can offer on a far larger scale than has hitherto been thought possible. They will all need technicians and while, no doubt, every effort will be made to secure these from among their own people, they will, certainly in the first stage, have to depend very largely upon those from Europe. The British people therefore have a duty, as trustees of the interests of those Colonies, to supply that demand so far as they can. Moreover, indirectly, that will also assist our own interests. It used to be said that: "Trade follows the flag." Perhaps that is less so now than it used to be, and we are coming more and more to find that trade follows the technician.

How are we to achieve this increase of supply? There has been another Advisory Council on this matter, the Advisory Council on Education for Industry and Commerce, appointed by the Minister of Education. They published a Report in 1950 on the Future Development of Higher Technological Education. Here we are in the field of very active controversy. This Committee recommended as their chief proposal the creation of a new Royal College of Technologists, which would have a status equalling that of any of our universities and would be staffed by men of the highest qualifications. Others who have studied this question, and lived with it, do not agree with this recommendation; they would rather select some of our principal technical colleges and raise their status, increase the financial support given to them, and double the number of their students. Others, again, would enlarge the present scientific faculties of the universities—especially of the newer ones. Yet others advocate a combination of these various methods.

The late Government had this problem before them but were not in a position to resolve it. In February, 1950, in your Lordships' House, Lord Burden, replying for the Government, said that it was still under consideration. In May of that year, Mr. Morrison, who was then Lord President, gave a similar reply. That is two years ago. The word "consideration" in the mouth of a Government spokesman is almost a sinister word, and it is not made much better when he calls it "active consideration "or" immediate consideration," or even if such a term is used as that employed by the Prime Minister two days ago in the House of Commons when he said that a particular matter was being "attentively considered." That gives us rather a dreadful glimpse of what is going on in Government offices in the way of "inattentive consideration." The new Government have come into office with fresh minds. We have waited to bring forward a Motion of this kind until they have had time to look around at their problems, and I hope that in this debate the matter may be put to an issue and that one or other of the Government spokesmen, or both, will be good enough to say in what direction they think current activities in this matter should proceed, for though this, as a long-term problem, must involve necessary delay on account of shortage of manpower and materials, we ought to know what is the future prospect and plan for the development of this matter.

My final point is this. We may be on the eve of very important decisions which will determine, perhaps for a generation, the trend of the development of our national system of education. We all feel that the civilisation in which we live is too materialistic, too technical, and there is a widespread feeling of anxiety on this head. It would be a very serious thing if a large proportion of the young men and women—among them people possessing some of the most alert and active minds in the country—during their formative years, from the ages of sixteen or seventeen to twenty-two or twenty-three, were subjected to an education which was wholly technical. If a man leaves a technical school, or even a university, at the end of his career there, a specialist, and nothing but a specialist, whether it is as an engineer or a chemist or an agriculturist, whatever degrees he may be able to append to his name he is not an educated man. The same is equally true, indeed, with regard to one who has been subjected solely to a classical education and is wholly ignorant of the world of science. He, too, has not been taught to "see life steadily and see it whole."

The Report to which I have referred, which was published a few days ago, refers to this aspect of the matter in these terms: There has been remarkable unanimity among our informants that, although present day science graduates are adequate as scientists they tend to lack a sufficiently broad education. and, the Report adds, not only in a general sense, but also in the field of science. Scientists themselves fully recognise the danger with which they are faced. This danger is also becoming recognised in America. A couple of months ago when I was in the United States I took occasion to visit Boston and there to see the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology—universally known as M.I.T. It is an exceedingly impressive establishment covering 100 acres, with a long frontage on the broad River Charles. It comprises over twenty great educational buildings and many others of an ancillary character. The Institute gives a four-years' course, as a minimum, to some thousands of students, many of whom continue post-graduate studies, and has an annual spending budget of from 11,000,000 to 12,000,000 dollars, with nearly as much again to pay for work that is being done there for the Defence Departments of the United States Government.

This establishment was not created all of a sudden, and those who would make it a precedent for building all at once another "M.I.T." in this country forget that it is the result of a growth of more than eighty years. It was founded in 1865 and is still expanding, in recent years with great rapidity. I had the privilege of an interview with four heads of the Institution, who were good enough to answer a number of my questions, most of which were concentrated on this one point—the danger of the education of technologists being too narrow. I found that they were much alive to this and were making every effort to combat it; that they were, indeed, broadening still further the range of their curriculum. They told me that all students had to give from 16 to 20 per cent. of their time to the arts and humanities. A wide choice is offered in arts in the curriculum, including history, political and social science, philosophy, literature, languages and music. They told me that their relation to Harvard University close by was this: that the M.I.T. regarded it as their business to humanise the scientists and Harvard regarded it as their business to "scientise the humanists". So all agree that what is necessary is a broadening of general education. They recognise, and I think in this country we should recognise, that technology, like the machine, is the servant of civilisation—the indispensable servant, but the servant only—and must not be allowed either to dominate or to monopolise.

Some of your Lordships may remember the first Lord Craigmyle, Thomas Shaw, in one of his charming books, describing this incident. A wealthy man rented a great deer forest in Inverness-shire. Walking one day with an old gillie along the glenside, he looked over the barren and stony country, dotted here and there with small patches of cultivation and the cottages of the crofters, and said to his gillie, "In God's name, what can you grow here?" The old man took off his cap and said, "In God's name, we grow educated men." And what a breed of educated men and women have come from that soil! So we should also realise that, in setting a fresh course, technology is not enough; that life is more than livelihood, and that a nation of technicians which may become rich and numerous and powerful will not attain greatness unless it has something more than riches and numbers and power, unless it also cares for the things of the mind and of the spirit. I beg to move for Papers.

3.14 p.m.

THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (LORD WOOLTON)

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Samuel for placing this Motion on the Order Paper and for the most successful effort he has made to mobilise the large muster of speakers, who I am sure will produce a good debate. Perhaps the noble Viscount will allow me to say that he has made himself master in the realms of both science and philosophy. The noble Viscount was good enough to suggest to me, after a speech I made some weeks ago to the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, that it would be well if I were to be given an opportunity of telling your Lordships and those who read our debates, either in Hansard or in the daily newspapers, something of the extent of the Government's interest in these matters. Perhaps it would be convenient if, at the outset, I answered this specific question which the noble Viscount put to me.

I want to assure him that the present Government are in agreement with the statement on the site for the Science Centre that was made to your Lordships by the late Lord Addison on November 21, 1950. No final decision has been made, but your Lordships may be aware that a site on the South Bank immediately below Waterloo Bridge and facing Somerset House has been reserved for a Science Centre by the London County Council, which is the planning authority, and was so reserved in the County of London Plan. Obviously, at this stage I can give no assurances as to when that Science Centre will come into existence, and the noble Viscount did not ask me to do so. But if I may be permitted to express a personal view, your Lordships may rely upon me to use whatever in fluence I have to secure that that Science Centre at some time takes shape on that noble site, which I think would be gratifying to the whole country.

It is particularly important at this time, when our economic position is subject to considerable strain, that the country should realise the importance of the industrial application of scientific knowledge and method and its relation to our present financial position. As a nation, we are suffering great hardship in order that we may balance our imports and our exports. During recent years they have been gravely out of balance, with the consequent devaluation of our currency and a rapid rise in the costs of our imports. Particularly has this been reflected in the restriction of the supply and the increase of the cost of our food. During these last few months we have been compelled drastically to reduce our imports, and con- sequently to reduce our standard of living, in order to preserve our remaining financial reserves.

The country is well aware of these facts, but I very much doubt whether people have realised that the solution to this problem will depend, in the long run, on whether we are prepared to work our way out of our present troubles. Restriction was an immediate and urgent necessity, but we shall get out of our present financial difficulties only by a policy of expansion. New ways of doing this will have to be found, so that we can produce more of what the world is prepared to buy from us, and produce it at lower prices. New articles will have to be produced, both for home consumption and for sale abroad, which depend to a lesser extent on purchases of raw materials from countries that are not prepared to take sterling except at a discount. Men and women will have to be found to use and develop new methods of producing these new articles, people with the vision and the courage to foster fresh adventures in the field of industrial enterprise.

In the past, in the days when perhaps we were the wealthiest nation in the world, we could afford to rest a little on our accomplishments and to let other nations, perhaps more needy, perhaps less self-satisfied, exploit the discoveries that our scientists and our researchers had made, apply them to industry and so build up their national wealth. Scientific knowledge was freely exchanged. A few days ago I found myself standing in the laboratory where the great chemist, Perkin, discovered the means of preparing aniline dyes, in what is now called the Imperial College of Science. However, it was not the British, but the German industrialists who gave these aniline dyes to the world. More recently, as the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, told your Lordships, our scientists discovered penicillin, but it was the American industrialists who gave it to the world. In future, we must see to it that we benefit our own economy by the exploitation of discoveries and researches made in this country.

I mention these points at this stage because of the plea that I desire to make, through your Lordships, to a wider audience. I have spent the greater part of my life engaged in the industrial and commercial life of this country. If I have any influence at all in the fields from which I came, I want to tell the industrialists of this country that we depend largely upon their enterprise to restore the solvency of this country. Here is a call for a national effort. We must develop our own resources; we must increase our export trade by many hundreds of millions a year; and, in order to do this, the whole force of scientific research and development will have to be used. Through your Lordships, therefore, I appeal to those outside this House for a closer alliance between science and industry.

Fortunately we have knowledge in abundance in this country. What the nation needs is the will and the opportunity to use that knowledge. Her Majesty's Government, and previous Governments—for this is a problem which, happily, is outside the field of political controversy—have spent many millions of pounds in endeavouring to encourage the application of scientific processes to industry. In particular, as your Lordships know, the Lord President of the Council is responsible for the oversight of the Medical Research Council, the Agricultural Research Council and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research—if I may say so, I find that responsibility very much to my liking—and my noble friend Lord Cherwell, who will wind up the debate, has the responsibility of advising the Government on the other aspects of scientific research, and more particularly those concerned with defence. Of course, I make no claim to any ability to guide the distinguished scientists who are in charge of these many operations. But I shall be glad if I can convince this country, which these scientists seek to serve—they want to be used—of the outstanding benefits that would come to the nation if their efforts were more widely understood and used.

Apart from the £18,000,000 a year the Treasury provide for the universities, a considerable part of which is used in training scientists, we are spending directly £16,000,000 a year on civil scientific research, the bulk of it through these organisations directly controlled by my office. I admit that even this sum is not as much as some scientists, and, indeed, many members of the Government, would like to spend on scientific research, and perhaps in ampler times the amount may be increased. This great Government scientific organisation is designed to pursue the various fields of scientific research, much of it "applied" research, in the direction where those most qualified to judge think that the most fruitful and practical results are to be obtained.

The set-up of the organisation is one that makes expansion easy. This is demonstrated by the fertility of some of the Government scientific establishments in giving birth to most powerful and flourishing offspring. For instance, one of the oldest of them, the National Physical Laboratory, has in its short life of some half a century already produced powerful offspring in the Mechanical Engineering Research Laboratory and the Radio Research Organisation, whilst the Building, Road and Hydraulics Research Stations also owe something to work originally undertaken at the National Physical Laboratory. The broad plan of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research—the total Government grant for which is roughly £5,500,000 a year—is to have a number of directly financed research stations, such as those I have mentioned, doing work in spheres which are more appropriately carried on by Government than by industry. Problems of direct concern to particular industries are dealt with by some forty separate industrial research associations, ventures in which both Government and manufacturers assist financially, but for which the particular industry concerned is primarily responsible. There are many firms too small to carry out research on their own account: who would reap considerable advantage from the knowledge and experience that they could gain from membership of these associations. I commend these associations to members of those trades.

The relationship between industrial development and the Medical Research Council is one of the most interesting aspects of Government research. I am sure your Lordships will allow me here to pay tribute to the great contribution which my predecessor, the late Lord Addison, made to the whole field of Government support for research, and, in particular, to the field in which he personally had much expert knowledge—namely, medical research. It was he who was largely instrumental, many years ago, in association with that really great pioneer, Sir Waller Morley Fletcher, in creating the Department. If I may venture on a personal note, I like to recall that among the earliest lay members of the Industrial Health Research Board of the Medical Research Council the late Mr. Ernest Bevin and I jointly served. The Medical Research Council's budget is now over £1,500,000 a year. Their work covers a vast area of research, running from, if I may use the phrase, the common cold to the more deadly diseases that afflict the human race. A striking development in medical research at the present time is the application of new knowledge in the field of atomic physics to the treatment of cancer. New radioactive substances have become available for trial in the treatment of this terrible disease, and also new machines producing radiations of great strength. These instruments are very costly. The line of research, therefore, involves expenditure on a scale never previously found necessary in the field of medical investigation. I merely report the fact of this research taking place; what success will attend it time will show.

That science is international is nowhere more true than in the medical field. There is free exchange of information, and even a considerable amount of movement of research workers from one country to another, benefiting all. I think your Lordships will be glad to know that in this country we house at our National Institute of Medical Research, the central establishment of the Medical Research Council, a World Influenza Centre, the function of which is to study the spread of epidemics of the disease and the strains of the infecting virus responsible for particular outbreaks. I was there the other day, and it was most depressing to think of the many different forms of influenza which one can contract in this country.

During the war, the Medical Research Council, in collaboration with each of the three Defence Services, were greatly concerned in the development of what came to be known as personnel research. That is a study of human efficiency in relation to the performance of particular tasks, such as the rapid manipulation of complicated instruments and weapons, and also in relation to conditions of work involving great stress and strain. Methods evolved then are now available for further studies of human problems in industry. This Medical Research Council is a most learned and distinguished body, and I am glad to have been able to persuade a member of your Lordships' House, the noble Earl, Lord Limerick, to succeed Lord Addison as Chairman of that body. Already I am told he has won the confidence both of his Council and of the staff of the organisation. If your Lordships will permit me, I would say that I am deeply grateful to the noble Earl for adding in this manner to the services that he has already rendered to the State.

Agricultural research costs this country about £3,000,000 a year. The Agricultural Research Council is responsible for all programmes of Government-sponsored research work, either directly, where the cost falls on its own funds, or through its advice to the agricultural departments in respect of research institutes which have grants in aid. Your Lordships will naturally ask what we get for the money which the Government expend on research and, as the noble Viscount said, whether the fullest use is being made of the results of the work which is undertaken. I do not need to tell your Lordships that research projects cannot always produce positive, and certainly cannot always produce immediately measurable, results. But if your Lordships will bear with me—I am sorry to occupy your time for so long—I should like to detail some of the items of research work which are going on. A large number of people are working on this subject, and it is some encouragement to them to know that so distinguished a body as your Lordships' House is taking note of the work they are doing. Therefore, perhaps your Lordships will be good enough to bear with me if I occupy your time a little whilst I recount some of their activities.

Revolutionary changes in existing industries and the creation of new industries are, of course, infrequent, but when you look back on the history of existing industries you often find that you can trace their beginnings to some piece of fundamental research which was carried out, not with a view to its application, but often as a piece of fundamental research carried out by some scientist in his own insatiable curiosity for the pursuit of knowledge. Great Britain has led—and let us be proud of it—and still leads the world in fundamental research, and many are the benefits to industry which have come from it. A recent example, for which we have had world-wide acknowledgment, is the development of radar. This can be traced directly to fundamental research work which was carried out by Sir Edward Appleton, with the support of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. At the present time, this Department is assisting fundamental research into nuclear physics and radio astronomy. But scientific advance in industry is usually much less spectacular and often much slower than this. It usually follows research work and investigations which are not likely to capture the imagination of the public.

Your Lordships will be aware, if you know anything about this subject, of the day-to-day assistance which is being given to industry by the National Physical Laboratory on the means of maintaining engineering standards. Your Lordships may know something of the Geological Survey which has helped the civil engineer, the water engineer and the mining engineer in their pursuits. But may I give your Lordships just three specific examples of the way in which the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research has saved the country money? If we can demonstrate that we are saving the country money, that is the surest way of being able to obtain more money for the development of research. Your Lordships will therefore forgive this somewhat sordid commercial approach that I am making in the next few words.

First, let me talk about roads. The maintenance of our 100,000 miles of surface-dressed roads in this country is an expensive business. It costs some £10,000,000 a year, on the basis that the life of a surface of a road is as long as three years. As a result of improvements, largely due to the work undertaken by the Road Research Laboratory, the average life of a road surface may now be five years and may be up to ten years. This, alone, means a saving in the cost of road maintenance of several million pounds a year. Secondly, let me take the treatment of sewage. Great advances have been made in this field as a result of work done by the Water Pollution Research Laboratory; and by the adoption of the new method of alternating double filtration the cost of the filters for a large sewage treatment plant recently rebuilt was reduced from £480,000 to £87,000.

We all know that our trade balance position would be greatly improved if we could increase our coal exports, for which there is a very strong market abroad—though even that may not last for ever. At home, our industry and our householders have suffered far too long from inadequate stocks in a cold winter. All the experts tell us that the remedy for this situation is close to our own hands—namely, fuel economy. To this end the Fuel Research Station has made important advances in the design of heating appliances and insulation for domestic and other buildings. I would mention in passing that the Fuel Research Station has now developed a simple and cheap device which, when fitted to the doors of hand-fired Lancashire boilers, prevents the emission of smoke. This device is being produced by a large number of firms, and when it is in general use the saving of coal will be considerable.

I should like to give to your Lordships one or two examples from the very many which have been sent into me of the results of the work undertaken by the research associations—the co-operative ventures between industry and scientists to which I referred a short time ago. Largely as a result of intimate co-operation between the Iron and Steel Research Association and industry, Great Britain now leads the world in the design and in the instrumentation of open hearth steel furnaces. No other country has so many open hearth furnaces where the fuel input is controlled by the roof temperature. And as a result of the Association's work, the weekly output of many of the melting shops has been increased by as much as 20 per cent., and it is calculated that the saving in fuel consumption amounts to over £1,000,000 a year.

The Production Engineering Research Association shows more examples of considerable economic gains from investigations carried out at very small cost. I think this might interest your Lordships. In one case an investigation costing £25 resulted in more accurate tool-grinding which led to a seven-fold increase in the rate of production and a reduction in the operating costs from £120 to £20 per thousand articles. In a second case, work costing £25 led to the installation of two new machines costing £1,500, to replace slow machining and hand-finishing of special non-ferrous components by a single finish machining operation. This resulted in an increased rate of production and a reduction of the cost per thousand components from £1,400 to £100. In the textile trade the Wool Research Association's processes for making wool un-shrinkable and free from felting have been widely used on an increasing scale, both in the United Kingdom and abroad. The weight of wool so processed in the United Kingdom has risen from about 2,300,000 lb. per annum two years ago to over 4,000,000 lb. last year. I hope industrialists, if they chance to read these stories, will find themselves a little encouraged to pursue this use of science.

I could give your Lordships many more interesting examples if I had the time and you the patience. But I should like now to say something about the efforts we are making to assist the process whereby new scientific knowledge is placed before industry—recognising, of course, that industry itself is immensely active in this respect. These begin with the full publication of the results. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research do this through scientific and technical reports issued through the Stationery Office and papers read to professional and learned societies, and through bulletins for practical industrialists and for trade journals. But more than that, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research establishments follow this work up in a number of ways. For example, one of the most effective ways of getting results of research used is to embody them in a British Standards specification, where they become the basis of contracts. Again, information at the research stations is held freely available to anyone who inquires. The research associations circulate information to their members, and, which is very important, they are following it up by personal contact. The Cotton Research Association, for example, employs some twenty liaison officers who spend practically all their time in going to member firms telling them of results which have been achieved.

All these steps are meeting with some success; but I should be much less than frank with your Lordships if I were to say that I am anywhere near satisfied that British industry is making sufficient use of science or that it is fully equipped to do so. There is a need for some general review of the effectiveness of current arrangements for ensuring that the results of research make their contribution to the development of the British economy at the present time; and I am asking my Advisory Council on Scientific Policy—of which, I am happy to say, I have been able to persuade Professor Todd, the organic chemist of Cambridge, to take the chair—to look into this question.

I referred earlier to the development in other countries of such fundamentally British discoveries as aniline dyes and penicillin. A more recent example, about which some of your Lordships may have heard at the soirée at the Royal Society the other night, is terylene. Here is a new process, a synthetic fibre at least as valuable as nylon, a purely British discovery. It was, in fact, discovered in Manchester in 1946. Since the original discovery research and development have been pressed with great energy and speed by Imperial Chemical Industries Limited—probably just as rapidly as they have been in America, where a parallel development has been going on under licence. Nevertheless, terylene is going into production faster in the United States, and products from it are already being made to compete with our own textiles in the export markets of the world. Here it would seem that our main handicap is that the actual construction of a chemical manufacturing plant in this country takes about twice as long as it did before the war. This may well be due to delays through material shortages, and it is an open question whether it could have been avoided. The problem is obviously a most complex one, and simple and speedy solutions of such problems are harassed by our internal and external financial problems. My general conclusion on the use which industry is making of the results of scientific research is that, contrary to the impression that one sometimes gains in some quarters, a great deal of practical applied research is being carried on in this country. Having said that, I am quite satisfied that there is an almost inexhaustible field waiting for us to cultivate.

I should now like to turn for a few minutes to the field of agricultural research, with which many of your Lordships are familiar. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Rothschild, the chairman of the Agricultural Research Council, is unable to be with us to-day, because this is a matter on which we should have welcomed his expert knowledge and experience. I take the opportunity of expressing in public my indebtedness to him for the considerable help he has given in this aspect of scientific development. The field covered by agricultural research is so large that it is difficult to select examples of the very many lines of research in progress either at the agricultural institutes or in the universities of this country. Work at least as valuable in the economic sense as industrial research has been done and continues to be done to improve production of our pastures and arable crops by breeding varieties with high yields and other desirable qualities and by better methods of fertilisation and management. Much progress has also been made in the feeding of cattle, and already the breeding of cattle, particularly by the smaller farmer, has been remarkably advanced by the introduction of artificial insemination. Continuous work on animal diseases is bearing fruit; and outstanding successes in this field have been the control of contagious abortion in cattle—once a serious scourge of the dairy industry and a cause of very heavy losses of milk. The other thing in which we have made considerable progress has been the control of swine fever. There is no doubt about the increasing interest which the farming industry is showing in technical development, and I could occupy your Lordships' time with many examples of the progress that has been made.

I should now like to turn to the second part of the Motion which is before your Lordships, dealing with the higher education of technologists. It is quite obvious that if industrialists are to make the maximum use of the results of scientific and technological research they must employ on their own staffs highly-qualified technologists. With some outstanding and very successful exceptions, an understanding of the scientific basis of technical progress is still not regarded as an asset from the factory floor to the board room. I hope that British industrialists will give fresh consideration to this matter and consider the experience of other countries who have mobilised the best scientific knowledge available in the management of their businesses. If we are to compete on equal terms with competitors in the United States and in certain of the European countries, we must follow their example in this and employ first-class technologists—and not only employ them but offer them both salaries and prospects and a wider scope of responsibility sufficient to attract them.

There are, of course, many examples in British industry where we not only hold our own with the rest of the world, but lead it. Examples that come to my mind are in the aircraft world—the design and production of the Comet, admittedly the most advanced civil aircraft in the world, and the design and production of jet engines. The excellence of these products is no accident. It occurs because the direction in management in such firms has its due proportion of engineers and technologists, men who understand the business and who are always following the researches of sciences in order to seize on any advance and turn it to the advantage of the industry with which they are connected. The recently published Report of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy incorporates an interesting Report on Scientific Manpower, to which the noble Viscount referred. This draws attention to the likelihood of a long-term shortage of practically all kinds of scientists and technologists, arid concludes that a substantial increase in scientific manpower is essential in the interests of technical and industrial efficiency.

I cannot hold out to your Lordships any hopes of an immediate and dramatic increase in the facilities for the training of higher technologists to ensure that top-level men will be trained in the numbers likely to be required. Here, supply must wait on demand. But, as noble Lords will be aware, my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has allowed for an increase in the grant to the universities for the quinquennium 1952–57 to permit of some expansion during that period. In distributing the grant the University Grants Committee will no doubt have regard to the need for scientific and technological progress.

For a long time discussions have been going on in academic circles as to what steps should be taken, and where, in order to encourage young men to train themselves for this sort of work. I am certain that in these days, when we have been forced to recognise that we must develop our world trade if we are to live—it is as vital as that—we must take active steps to train an officer class for industry. Whilst I hope that British industry will increasingly give every opportunity for the man or woman from any rank in the business who has the necessary ability to progress in the firm to higher position, and to be elected to join the board without regard to his financial interest in the concern, I am convinced that more than that is necessary now. Industry depends on the ability of the man with commercial knowledge, upon the skilled craftsman and upon the highly trained engineer or chemist, or whatever grade of science is used in the technology of the enterprise. We have been behind other countries in supplying this form of training and in attracting men who have it away from the very pleasant shelter of the university, and the research laboratories in the university, into the industries where their knowledge can be applied.

I am glad to be able to make to your Lordships a statement, which I hope will give some satisfaction to the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, of the Government's views on the matter and which is also being made this afternoon in another place by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is as follows.

"The Government consider that a most important means of increasing productivity in industry is to improve facilities for higher technological education. They are convinced that this can best be done by building up at least one institution of university rank devoted predominantly to the teaching and study of the various forms of technology. We are, therefore, urgently exploring the practical possibilities as to the best way of doing this. As regards the last Government's White Paper, I should say that we fully recognise the important contribution which technical colleges can make to higher technological education, and details of our proposals for improving financial assistance available for selected colleges and courses will be shortly announced by the Ministry of Education. We do not, however, pro, pose to establish a non-teaching, award-making body under the title of The Royal College of Technology." There ends the statement.

LORD STRABOLGI

Did the noble Lord say "actively explore"?

LORD WOOLTON

No—"urgently." There is no joke about it.

LORD STRABOLGI

I did not hear the noble Lord.

LORD WOOLTON

"Urgently explore"—they have every intention of doing something about it.

I hope that I have convinced your Lordships of the Government's earnestness in this matter of research and its application. I await with interest the views that will be expressed by other noble Lords, for I feel that our debate to-day will be invaluable in bringing to the attention of both industry and agriculture the facilities that are available to them, not only in Government organisation but through the whole realm of applied science. I beg of them to take advantage of the facilities that are available to them. I apologise for speaking for so long a time.

3.59 p.m.

VISCOUNT HALL

My Lords, I should like to associate myself with the words of the Lord President in expressing our gratitude to the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, for introducing this important debate. For thirty years I have sat and listened with admiration to speeches which he has made during that period. To-day, again in the method of the master, the philosopher and the idealist, he has presented his case in such a way that it must be convincing to all of us who have heard it and to those who will read it. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, particularly for his announcement, with which I will deal later. It indicates that some progress is now being made. I cannot pretend to approach this subject in the scholarly manner of the two noble Lords who have preceded me or the noble Lords who are to follow me. I am afraid I cannot claim to be a graduate of any university, although I have been honoured by having conferred on me honorary degrees of a university of my own nation and of one of the most progressive universities in England.

To-day I want to approach this matter from the angle of the harnessing of technical knowledge, technology and science, to industry. I like the idealistic note upon which the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, ended his speech. It was a proper end. But I am afraid I shall have rather to frighten your Lordships in regard to the industrial production position of this nation at the present time as compared with that of other nations. I say, without hesitation, that if we are to maintain our position in the world of trade we shall have to do something on the lines suggested by the Lord President of the Council, for it cannot be denied that we are facing sharply-growing competition in the world's markets, and our position is gravely challenged by other nations, some of whom are well ahead of us while others are overtaking us in relation both to their efficiency to produce and to their largely increased production.

During the course of the last three or four years I have listened with a great deal of interest to the warning notes which have been sounded in these debates by the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell. I have always felt that a great debt is owed to him and to others, including my noble friends Lord Chorley and Lord Calverley, who have been hammering home this particular point during those years. I was greatly impressed with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell, in February last year, when he gave the figures of productivity of the United States of America and of the United Kingdom. I recently visited the United States because I was anxious to study, in a short time, their industrial production and the effect upon that production of the use of scientists and technicians. I collected some information which bears out the information which I am now proposing to give to your Lordships' House.

In addition to seeing this system in operation, I have seen a statement made recently by Mr. Paul Hoffman, the President of the Ford Foundation, and formerly the Economic Co-operation administrator. Referring to the United States economic system, he said that the benefits accruing from it have been steadily increasing and have served all persons well in the United States. This is largely the result of the spectacular increase in industrial and agricultural productivity that has taken place in the last half century. He said that in America industrial output, including that in agriculture, per man-hour, is now roughly three times what it was in 1900. At that time there was little difference between the output per man-hour in Western Europe and that in the United States. Now, there is a difference of two and a half times in favour of the United States.

The output of steel in the United States is six-and-a-half times greater than that in this country. So great has been the momentum of United States production during the last twelve years that the American people are enjoying the highest living standards in history. The United States is now producing one-third of the world's goods and one-half of the world's manufactured goods, with nothing approaching one-third of the world's land, and only about one-fourteenth of the world's population. We might ask ourselves: What accounts for this commanding industrial position? Unlike Europe, America has not felt the full blast of two world wars. It has many advantages in the form of large natural resources; it has the great advantage of a large single market, and it can obtain all the machinery which industry requires. I saw a report issued by the American Government which stated that during the course of last year industry in America spent no less than 25,000,000,000 dollars on new plant expansion, improvement and new equipment. The relationship of that figure to our currency is something like £9,000,000,000.

But these advantages alone do not account for the great disparity in productivity. I think that we shall have to look not only to physical but also to psychological factors. The Americans are making extensive use of non-human energy which is being put to the use of their 62,000,000 industrial workers. There is an average, not of twice as much, as was mentioned by the noble Viscount, but eight-and-a-half horsepower, as compared with the two-and-a-half horsepower put behind the efforts of industrial workers in Europe. American factory managers are constantly installing new and improved machines in their works. Their managements are stalled with people with much scientific and technological knowledge and a deal of technical skill. For the past twenty years these specialists have been playing an enormous part in this great production effort and the saving of much raw material.

I have been interested in the forty-odd reports of the productivity teams which have been sent from Britain to the United States to study the situation there. They have proved beyond doubt that these modern methods of production and scientific management, with the almost universal acceptance of incentive payment schemes, have largely increased production; and that, in turn, made possible a very high wage, a rigid five-day week of forty hours, has improved the relationship between men and management, and has extended, rather than retarded, the influence and the scope of American trade unions. During my stay I visited some half a dozen large works. An interesting fact was that in each of those works I was met by members of the executive who are descendants of people from this country. In one works I was met first by a man named Parry, who told me that his father hailed from Merthyr Tydfil. Another man named Lloyd came, as a matter of fact, I think, from almost the home of the ancestors of the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd—Merionethshire. Yet another man, named Jones, came from my own valley. I did not know they were there, but they were. Each held a commanding position in this industry.

I spent two days in the neighbourhood where this industry is carried on. The average wage of the unskilled worker, not only in that industry but in the United States of America generally, is one dollar, sixty cents an hour. On the basis of a forty-hour week that works out at the equivalent of something like £22 a week. The average wage of the skilled worker is something like two dollars, thirty-five cents an hour, which gives a weekly wage in our money of from £33 to £35. All this is largely the result of the harnessing of this technical skill, the work of the technologist and, indeed, of the scientist, with that of the industrialist and the efforts of the workpeople. Consider the position in this country. Man for man, I am sure, the British workman is as good as his American counterpart, but he has not the tools; he has only about one-third of the equipment which the American has at his disposal. Moreover, apart from the larger industries, the British workman has little or no scientific and technological guidance. The result is that production in a given time is only one-half or one-third of what it is in the United States. I am convinced that if this nation is to maintain its place in the world it cannot afford to fall behind in the pursuit and application of new knowledge to industry.

In this matter the universities and schools of this country should devote themselves to a study of the new conditions which have been applied with such great success in other countries. The latest report of the Committee on Scientific Manpower gave these figures. The number of American university degrees awarded in science and technology in the year 1949–50, was 110,000. In this country the corresponding total was 14,000. Allowing for the difference in the sizes of the labour forces and in the sizes of the populations of the two countries, this means that America is turning out and employing three times as many scientists and technicians as we are. More than that, they are planning to increase their facilities for training scientists, particularly at higher levels, where at present we enjoy a relative advantage, as was pointed out by the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, and the Lord President of the Council. It is not only in comparison with the United States that we produce significantly fewer scientists and technologists. The same applies when we consider a little country like Switzerland, which is much smaller in every way than ours. Germany also is building up her scientific and technological strength. As we know, in the pre-war period she pretty well led the world in many fields of scientific discovery, particularly in regard to the synthetics of various materials. If we wanted any of the new processes for coal treatment in this country we went to Germany for them, for that was one of the matters in which she led the world.

I entirely agree with all that the noble Lord the Lord President of the Council has said with regard to the need for additional scientists and technologists. It is true that we have increased the number of people studying in the universities—we have doubled it. But when we talk of doubling the number, we have to bear in mind that the starting off number was very low in 1939–40. So when we speak of doubling the number it does not mean that the result comes to a very large figure. As a matter of fact, it comes to something like 10,000 or 11,000. And we are told that there is likely to be a very eager demand by many industries for this type of specialist. It is pointed out very clearly in the Report referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, and by myself, and it is certainly true, that for six years in this country—notwithstanding the fact that we have had numerous Reports from Committees—we have done very little, apart from increasing these numbers. Now there is something of a lull in relation to any further increase, despite the fact that the services of these people are so urgently required. I yield place to no one in the pride which I take in the high standard of university education in this country. But what many of us would like to see is many more of our young people sharing it. At present those advantages are confined to a comparatively small proportion of the population.

From figures which I saw in relation to the post-war position (and I have no doubt that the position is the same at the present time) I should say that we are well below nearly all the other industrial and civilised countries in this respect. Indeed, there is a striking disparity between the three nations which make up the United Kingdom—England, Wales and Scotland. In pre-war days the figure for England was one undergraduate in every 1,013 members of the population; in Wales it was one in every 741, and in Scotland one in every 480. In the United States it was one undergraduate in every 125 of the population. If there are advantages in a university education—as unquestionably there are—it should not be limited to the extent it is at the present time. I believe that if one could get statistics of the intake into the universities of this country it would be seen that, notwithstanding the fact that during the last sixty or seventy years there has been an enormous increase in the number of universities, the increased proportion of entries has been very small. While in the last four or five years the number, as compared with 1939–40, has increased from 50,000 to 85,000, I should not mind hazarding the opinion (I am taking a small risk here) that that increase is a greater increase than that which took place in the period from 1900 until 1939–40 notwithstanding the very considerable expansion in the population.

I am also somewhat concerned because many universities are not facing up to these modern problems. Let me take engineering as an example. From the report of the Ministry of Education, Education 1900–50, which gives the numbers of recipients and holders of State scholarships and supplemental awards attending universities, I find that in 1951, out of a total of 5,206, only 396 were engineering students, studying civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, aeronautical engineering and chemical engineering; and I have no doubt that a large proportion of that figure of 396 is made up of the 261 from the technical schools and the 58 scholarships for mature students. That indicates something of the situation.

I do not want to take up too much time, but I should like to mention one matter which is of great importance. There is no doubt that financially the universities have benefited considerably during the past ten years—and rightly so, because expenses have substantially increased. When Chancellor of the Exchequer, the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, increased the amount of the universities' grants from £2,000,000 to £5,500,000—more than double—and since that time the recurring grants have increased considerably beyond that figure. They are now £16,500,000. In addition, no less than £17,000,000 has been spent upon improvements, buildings and additions, which were essential. I am not complaining, but I should like to point out that the universities have reached the stage at which the recurring grants paid by the University Grants Committee form 75 per cent. of the total income of the universities, a percentage which is higher than that of the schools of this country. I am not suggesting that this is too much, but in view of the revised terms of reference to the University Grants Committee, which were given them in 1947, that they should take national requirements into consideration, I should have thought that here was an opportunity for the universities to give greater help in producing an increased number of scientists and technologists.

I was delighted with the announcement made by the Lord President of the Council. I can see behind it a good deal of work by the Paymaster General, and I am convinced that between the two of them this will not be merely a promise that is being held out. I should like to suggest that, for a start, the Lord President should consider his own college, the Manchester College of Technology, which he has served with such great distinction. What about the Royal Glasgow Technical College and my own college in Wales? It would be a fine gesture, which would appeal strongly to industry, if the Government would say that they would raise four of these colleges to university status. This would give status not only to the colleges concerned, but also to the whole technological educational system. Technological education would not then be regarded as the poor relation of our educational system. Technological education has now become one of the vital parts of our educational system. It has made great advances in all branches. During the last three years the number of students has increased by six times, from 40,000 in 1939 to 241,000 last year. In 1949, 8,770 students of technical colleges were undertaking university degree work, mostly external degrees of London University, on a full-time basis, and a further 11,200 on a part-time basis. Nothing could give them greater impetus than the speedy fulfilment of the plans outlined by the Lord President.

There is one thing that I should like the Lord President to take up particularly. Perhaps the reason is the shortage of science teachers and technologists, but the fact is that young people are not getting much scientific training in many of our secondary schools, particularly in our grammar schools and some of our public schools. The report of the Advisory Council shows that technical training is bad in our grammar and public schools. It would seem that it is so bad that the War Office are now to train their own technicians, taking in boys at sixteen for training, as the Royal Navy has done over a long period. That is an indication that sufficient is not being done in our secondary schools. There is no doubt that the big industrial organisations can afford to employ, and actually do employ, technologists with a university and higher technological training; and, as the Lord President said, large sums of money are being spent by these large firms. But it must be remembered that the major portion of production, both industrial and agricultural, comes from small firms with fewer than 500 employees. I would plead for something more to be done to bring the work of scientific and industrial research to the notice of these smaller firms. If they could be given an assurance that there will be no Government "Snooping," as some of them fear, then I have no doubt that a good deal of useful work would be done.

In conclusion, I should like to tell your Lordships what I consider to be the attitude of the trade unions to increased production by means of scientific and technological guidance, modernisation and re-equipment—I have no doubt that we shall hear a good deal of this during the course of the debate. I would remind your Lordships that, arising out of the report of the team of British trade union officials who visited the United States to investigate the operations of the American trade unions as they affect industrial production, the General Council of the Trades Union Congress recommended that unions should interest themselves actively in modern production and management techniques; improve industrial efficiency; employ staffs qualified to assist on production problems and establish, where appropriate, their own production departments; provide for their members generous education and training facilities, and consider whether their journals were dealing as effectively as they should with this problem.

Let me say at once that this represents a great change in trade union thinking. While British trade unions have no desire to apply American methods in their entirety to British industry, the trade union movement is insisting on the need of much modernisation and re-equipment. This involves assistance from the scientists and technicians, and also the maintenance of a high level of capital investment. There is no doubt that increased production per man-hour is the only way to enable us to compete in the world markets, to advance real wages and, at the same time, to bring down prices. If we are to win out of what might well be an economic defeat, and lay the foundation for an economy of abundance, such new techniques and new methods must be adopted and must become the general practice throughout British industry. Scientists and technicians can and should play their full part in bringing this about.

4.33 p.m.

VISCOUNT WAVERLEY

My Lords, I entirely agree with those who have spoken as to the great debt which this House owes to the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, for having initiated this important debate. I myself approach the subject that we are discussing with a deep conviction, which I share with other noble Lords who have spoken, that our future economic life, and, indeed, the position of this country as a great nation, is entirely dependent on the fullest application of the results of scientific research in industry. Without that our living standards will be in jeopardy and our authority and influence in the councils of the nations will decline progressively. I feel sure that everyone would agree that it is far from being the case that all that is necessary to bring about a satisfactory state of affairs is being done at the present time.

It seems to me that the problem is one which has to be approached from several angles. We have to consider the educational system of the country, the resources devoted to research, the means available for bringing the results of research to notice, and the attitude of industry. It is not possible for any speaker to deal fully in a debate of this kind with all these various aspects, but I should like to devote a few minutes to each of those separate matters to which I have referred. First, as regards our educational system. The noble Viscount, Lord Hall, referred to schools as well as technical colleges and universities. So far as our school curricula are concerned, there is probably not very much amiss. So lone as young persons in school learn the sort of things that they could learn only with disproportionate effort at a later stage; so long as the education they get serves to bring out hidden aptitudes, in addition to developing social sense and character, there is probably not much amiss. I should myself take a rather different view from that of most noble Lords about science in schools. I believe that the teaching of science in schools, especially at the earlier ages, can easily be overdone. It may exercise a quite fatal fascination for young persons who would do much better at that stage to devote their time and their talents to other things. There is a real danger that a misdirected school education may tend towards too early and too narrow specialisation. I venture, with a certain amount of experience, to stress that point strongly.

As regards the higher education of the country, it is the fact, as the noble Viscount, Lord Hall, recognised, that the measures taken a few years ago to increase the output of graduates from our universities have had a remarkable measure of success. The aim that was set before us by the Barlow Committee has nearly been realised. Whether the proportion of graduates on the highest intellectual level has been correspondingly increased, I rather doubt. It may be that investigation would show that the best graduates were being turned out by the universities years ago in much the same numbers as they are to-day. But even if the increased output consists largely of men who are below the highest intellectual and academic level, they are still very much needed and in great demand, and the increase in output can be cordially welcomed. There is still a great shortage of highly-trained technologists. I was glad to learn from the speech of my noble friend the Lord President of the Council that at long last, after protracted discussions and consultations, some decision has been arrived at in regard to the steps that are necessary to remedy this shortage of trained technologists. I am not sure that I fully grasped the implications of the statement that my noble friend made just now. I thought I heard him refer to one institution which was to be established. Was he, I would ask, thinking of something on the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or did I misunderstand what he had to say?

If I may just give my own view—and I have had to think about this a good deal—I would say that it would be an excellent thing if we could have in this country one, or more than one, institution comparable with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Californian Technical Institute or the great technical educational institutions in Germany and Switzerland. But it is going to be a great undertaking; it is going to be very costly, and it will probably take quite a long time. I feel that something must he done sooner. This is one of those subjects which in truth brook no delay. I should like to see a selection made—and here I am following very closely something which fell from the lips of the noble Viscount, Lord Hall—of some of the best and most promising technical colleges. I should like to see in that selection a good geographical distribution. I should like to see the colleges so selected deliberately raised to university level, linked up preferably with existing universities, and I hope that degrees would be conferred upon technologists on the basis of a broad curriculum and not a curriculum confined strictly or exclusively to scientific subjects.

I have been associated with scientists for more than fifty years. I went to Germany to do scientific research nearly fifty years ago, and I say to your Lordships that there is no more pathetic sight in this world than a badly educated specialist. We must take great care not to turn those out in undue number. If the course which I have indicated, or something similar, could be followed; if we could thereby raise the status of the technical colleges to full university standard and give degrees on the sort of basis which I have indicated, a very great step forward would have been taken. For the rest, the existing technical colleges could be encouraged to develop the good work that they are already doing, and it would be desirable that they should be left in association with the great local authorities. But those technical colleges which, in my view, should be raised to university standard should be detached from the ordinary educational system of the country and put in the position of universities, receiving their assistance through the University Grants Committee. I see no purpose in setting up a parallel body for that purpose. There would be ample scope for the existing universities, for the technical colleges raised to university status, for one or mere central institutions comparable to those great institutions to which I have referred, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as and when they can be developed; and yet something might still be left to be desired. I am rather concerned—as I am sure are other noble Lords—at the increasing shortage of men willing to devote themselves to the teaching of science. Unless, somehow or other, that deficiency can be made good, no development to which one can look forward in the organisation of teaching institutions can be fully effective. That is a matter to which those concerned ought to give very close attention.

I pass from the consideration of the educational system to the question of the resources which are being made available for research in industry. I believe we make a very great mistake if we underestimate what has been done in recent years in that direction. I have no exact figures, but it is probable that not less than £50,000,000 a year is being devoted to-day to industrial research in the great firms and in the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and, under its auspices, through that most wonderful and effective institution the research association, which was invented, I think, by a former Lord President in the middle of the first European war, and which has been developed on an extensive scale under successive Lord Presidents of the Council, until now practically all the important industries share in the benefit of research associations. So far as that is concerned, the problem to-day is largely one of filling the gaps which still exist.

Apart from that, there is, I believe, a great need for giving more attention to research at the development stage. It is not unusual, in discussing these matters, to distinguish research from development, but research passes by insensible degrees into development, and I am sure that it is better to consider both together. But while much work is done and great assistance is given to industry through the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and in other ways at the research stage, I think there is great need for assistance (for which facilities do not at present exist) in promoting development, particularly so far as the smaller units in industry are concerned. Whether anything can be done under the guidance of the Lord President and his Departments to encourage the development in this country of institutions comparable to the Battelle and Mellon Institutes in America I do not know, but of the existence of the great need I have no doubt at all. This is a matter in which the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research could probably give material assistance.

I wish to say a word about a subject to which my noble friend the Lord President of the Council referred—namely, the facilities at present available for disseminating knowledge already gained. I cannot help thinking that he took perhaps too optimistic a view of the present position in that respect. A few years ago the Royal Society organised a series of conferences devoted entirely to this question, but my own experience leads me to believe that there is still a great deal which needs to be done in order to bring the latest developments effectively to the notice of those who have the will and would wish to make practical use of the results of scientific research. There is the whole question of the publication of abstracts showing what work has been done and where someone seeking information on a particular subject should look in order to get it. There are great difficulties over the pedestrian task of reproducing reports and distributing them. I know of industrial concerns which have been led by a realisation of the grave deficiency in this country in this respect to make, from their own resources, considerable grants to assist in the distribution of scientific literature which has a bearing on industrial development. I was glad to hear the Lord President say that his Scientific Advisory Council were giving attention to this matter. It seems to me that the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, with the scientific societies and the various professional bodies, perhaps in association with the Federation of British Industries, might usefully apply themselves now to this technical problem, because it is surely the height of folly to spend large sums of money and devote the energies of large numbers of highly-trained people to finding out things which can be applied practically with great advantage to the whole community, and then fail to provide the people who have the will and the opportunity with the means of informing themselves as to how all that can best be done. I do commend this strongly to the attention of those concerned.

LORD WOOLTON

I am very much obliged to the noble Viscount.

VISCOUNT WAVERLEY

Finally, I turn to the attitude of industry towards scientific research. We are suffering as a nation from having had too easy a time several generations ago, when there was no serious competition and when we enjoyed the benefits of our insular position and of ample supplies of material, of coal and of iron. We built up industries—traditional industries, as they are called—which worked on well-tried and well-established lines, with no particularly obvious need to go in for innovations or novelties. If you look at the whole field of industry, you will see a sharp distinction between, on the one hand, the older and traditional industries, and, on the other hand, the new industries established on the basis of science, such as the chemical and electrical industries, petroleum technology, and so forth. There is a sharp distinction, and it is folly to suppose that the attitude of mind of those who are concerned with the traditional industries can be changed overnight. But it is changing. There are most encouraging signs in some of the old industries that are now having to face competition—the textile industry, for example, which is having to compete with similar industries overesas and with the new synthetic industries that are being developed.

I was interested, as a director of Imperial Chemical industries Limited, in what the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, said about terylene. It is being developed in this country as rapidly as the resources of labour and material and the difficulties of the licensing departments allow. As the noble Lord rightly said, there is a parallel development in America, a fibre called, think, dacron, which is identical with terylene. It is being produced in increasing quantities and will be produced more and more in this country. It is important that such development should not be hampered unnecessarily. I do not suggest that it is. But there are difficulties in this country which do not confront industrialists tackling similar problems in other parts of the world—not only in the United States, but in other countries, including perhaps Japan. If the noble Lord can use his influence to ensure that facilities are made available to those who wish to develop in the way I have mentioned he will be rendering a very great service.

I believe that the prejudice—a largely unconscious one—on the part of those who are carrying on the smaller units of industry, is being progressively broken down. But there are many small firms who, although they are doing very important work—more important in some cases than that which is being done by the larger concerns—cannot afford to employ scientists of sufficient standing and in sufficient numbers to make full use of the latest scientific discoveries. I think that the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research should give special attention to these smaller industries. It would, I have no doubt, be a very good thing if in the management of those industries there were, as there is now in the management of the larger and more recently established industries, a higher proportion of scientifically-trained men. That will come with time. Do not let us suppose that an efficient scientist or research worker has necessarily in him the quality of an effective executive. The great thing is to ensure that there are no artificial barriers; and if men who are not scientifically trained can develop the scientific habit of mind, and if they have associated with them men who are scientifically trained and in addition have executive capacity—as a great many certainly have—then progress in industry will be more satisfactory in the future than it has been in the past. In that respect we need only remember the achievements of such men as the late Lord Cadman to see what can be done by scientists in executive positions in industry.

Finally, I should like to ask the representative of Her Majesty's Government who will be speaking later whether anything can be said in this debate about the proposed Science Centre. It is some years since the predecessor of my noble friend went a long way with the Royal Society in outlining a plan for the development of the South Bank as a great Science Centre. I know there is considerable concern among those who were associated with those discussions as to the fate of the proposals. There are difficulties of accommodation which cannot be tackled so long as there is a state of uncertainty in regard to the future of that ambitious but praiseworthy plan. It would be a comfort to all these people if they could be told something as to the probability of some future development.

4.57 p.m.

LORD BRABAZON OF TARA

My Lords, we have had some very interesting speeches and we are to have more. But what has been satisfactory, I think, is that every speaker has drawn attention to the fact that if we are to survive as an industrial nation we must equip ourselves on the scientific side in order to compete with the outside world. That is a satisfactory state of things because it was not always thus. I can remember very vividly in my own life the attitude of industry towards science, an attitude which was admirably summed up by Hilaire Belloc when he said: Never, never let us doubt What nobody is sure about. That was the attitude of industry. They looked upon science rather like a cow looking at a passing train. There is a change —and that is quite right because we are, basically, a scientific nation.

As one looks at our country, it is clear that there is no body in the world like the Royal Society. It is pre-eminent throughout the whole scientific world, without question and without rivalry. To have the great letters "F.R.S" after one's name, as my noble friend Lord Waverley has, is, apart from the honours which flow from the Crown, the greatest honour in English life. But those are the stars in this great society. There is no reason why, if we can produce stars like that, we cannot produce scientists, technologists, technicians and others. In the last ten years that curious body the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee has done noble work. It shows what a non-Party body with drive and imagination can do and it has made the whole country realise the importance of this subject. Here I must pay a tribute to the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley. There was a time when we went to him, and there were times when he went with us to see various Lord Presidents of the Council, as they changed with political changes. In office and out he has been a great ally of science and an inspiration.

The noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, told us—and I am sure that nothing is more true than this—that we are short of technologists and technicians right through industry. Examples have been given to-day of British inventions which have been developed and brought to commercial success in other countries when that should have been done in our country. It was not done, owing to lack of initiative and attack, and to a shortage of technologists. I do not want to make a long speech but I want to put this thought before your Lordships. We are not getting for the money we are expending the right proportion of people following up from technician to technologist, and up to scientist. Many of the boys who are being educated to-day, when they get to about seventeen years of age, are anxious, as indeed they should be, to earn money for their families. They go away to some smallish job, rather than remain another two or three years to get that education which would give them a much bigger and more important part to play in our industry. That situation ought in some way to be stopped.

I make the suggestion that industry should give a guarantee, firm by firm, to colleges—or should invent some machinery whereby they can do it—that they will take a certain proportion of these boys from these technical colleges, because they have just as great a responsibility as the State has. As noble Lords have pointed out, the State has spent a great deal of money, quite rightly, on this important aspect of education and industrial development, but your Lordships must remember that it is a partnership between State and industry. I consider that the State has roused itself and done important work in this development, and it now rests with industry to play its part to see that our money is not wasted.

5.2 p.m.

LORD CROOK

My Lords, I was in your Lordships' House when this Motion was moved by the noble Viscount but, some one and a half hours before. I was in an armchair, after an excellent lunch, hundreds of miles away from this Chamber. I was, in fact, in the air in the "Comet" with other members of this House, guests of Sir Miles Thomas, on a trip round the coasts of England and Wales. I refer to that for a deliberate reason: I regard the "Comet," in which it was my privilege to travel to-day, as indicative first of the great ability which we have in this country for scientific research, investigation and discovery and, more important still at this moment, of the ability of British industry to turn those discoveries quickly to the use of this country.

It seems to me that one of the main problems raised in this Motion is the continual ability of this country to produce ideas and of other people to exploit them. I suppose it was only right that we should look to a nationalised industry to give the lead that it was possible to give by taking the decision to build a plane of this kind straight from the drawing board. I suppose, too, that it is to those industries that we must look for the building up of better relations between the two sides of industry. That is one of the great difficulties facing the user of some of the scientific discoveries of to-day, and it is rather from that angle, as distinct from that so far adopted by noble Lords, that I wish to speak as the result of some thirty years of being a trade union official in this country.

Whatever may be the position in nationalised industries, I think that, in spite of the competitive content of industry, some private industries find it more difficult. I suggest to your Lordships that there has been too much antagonism in many of the private industries of this country to developments. There has been, too, a lack of desire to reach genuine agreement between the two sides of industry, and that feeling has militated against the use of some of the scientific productions which could have helped to the greater productivity of our industry. If more managements would take to heart the wise words which Lord Wool-ton's colleague, the Minister of Labour, used last week in his speech on a number of these new productive instruments, when he urged that the two sides of industry should secure a greater consultation in order to exploit the means of production and handling to a greater extent, we might get better use of some of the scientific research than we see to-day.

The trade union movement wanted something rather different from what it received from the Labour Government in 1947, in the Industrial Organisation and Development Act of that year, but it gave its support to the provisions of the Act, indicating its preparedness to co-operate sincerely in the tripartite development councils. The trade unions wanted to take part in a co-operative effort to increase our industrial efficiency through a variety of methods, and not least by the application of scientific research to indus- try, which is the subject before your Lordships this afternoon. The trade union movement was realist, and I would that many of the employers had been equally realist. What we are anxious to secure is that there should be a greater realisation by those in charge of industry that it is of vital interest to the workers employed in the industry that they should be consulted about, should know about, and should take part in, the research work and the preparation for improvement in the industry. The noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, has already referred to the point which I mentioned in opening, that all the great discoveries have come either front Britain or from Europe and have been exploited elsewhere, notably, of course, in America.

I would direct your Lordships' attention to the recent post-war report of the President's Scientific Research Board, a board containing many of the names most famous in American life, who make it clear what their view is. It has been our genius in America, the Board tell the President, to take innovations and develop them tremendously and swiftly, and we have done this exceedingly well. The Report goes on, But now much of Europe is impoverished and many of its laboratories destroyed, adding we are no longer able to profit from European scientific advances to the extent we have in the past. I will not detain your Lordships by quoting further, but this extract in itself is indicative of the realisation by our great allies on the other side of the Atlantic of the way in which other countries are able to get ahead in exploiting the things that this nation has thought of first. It is that state of affairs that I am sure the noble Lord will want to remedy by the great interest he is taking in the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and the like.

We are all aware that the larger British firms have their own laboratories, and they can make a major contribution through their own scientists. We are equally clear that the average British firm cannot be in possession of an efficient laboratory of its own, and certainly cannot possess staff capable of directing the firm's activities. That was the justification for the co-operative organisation and for the suggestion of development councils to which I have referred, of which only four were established. As I understand it, they are functioning as well as can be expected, in view of the antagonism which employers have shown to development councils as such. The opposition to those councils has come ostensibly for a number of reasons: from a dislike of statutory organisation and of the recognition of trade union status, and also, it has been suggested, from the existence of what has become an industrial focal point alternative to the employers' own trade association.

I refer to these development councils quite deliberately, because I believe that they are, and could be, of great value, and that in the main this opposition was an emotional one on the part of employers. Because this Act was put on to the Statute Book by a Labour Government a number of employers regarded it rather as a halfway scheme towards nationalisation, instead of as a serious endeavour to make private enterprise efficient and enterprising. In my view, and I think in the view of most of your Lordships, that was not an Act of Parliament based on Party politics, and I venture to believe that had that Bill been brought to this House in 1952 by the present Government, and not by a Labour Government three or four years ago, the wiser elements in industry would have found themselves supporting the Government that made the proposals to Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Woolton, said that we speak to a wide audience when we speak here, and therefore I throw out to employers the hope that they will look at some of the ideas which development councils express, so that we get in industry the beter relationship that will give us the production required.

In the absence of the development councils, the research associations, whose Reports are included in the Report of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, recognise that a central organisation can expedite the changes which are essential if our industry is to go the way we want it. I should like to pay a tribute to the way in which these research associations are working, even though I do not think they are ideal instruments, or that they co-operate with many people in the way that they should. I should like to say to the noble Lord who led for the Government that it would seem to me to be madness and a false economy if any attempts were made to cut down the amount of grants given by the Departments for which he is responsible, leading to a reduction of the resources of these associations for the great work that they have to do.

I am sorry that more of the research associations do not take the trouble to co-opt representatives of the trade union movement. One of the differences between the research associations and the development councils is that in these councils the trade unions have direct representation. There is need for the realisation that the trade union movement cannot take the view that anything which increases production must always be supported, forthwith, in all circumstances. The workers have got to be considered by the management. I commend the astonishingly good words of the present Minister of Labour, in a speech last week dealing with this factor. When he opened in London an exhibition which everybody on both sides of industry ought to see, he said: Many managements underestimated the amount of preparation which any change required before it could be introduced. He went on to say that if one machine can do the work of three or four men, it is not unnatural that the men who would be replaced should look askance at the installation of the machine. If we are going to solve these problems, so that the results of scientific research can contribute to the speeding up of production from each man, and so improve the economic life of this country, it becomes vitally essential that the support of the trade union movement should be forthcoming. The trade union movement has not hesitated to help with production. I am sure the noble Lord opposite will be the first to agree that it has shown its capabilities by what it has done in respect of the Anglo-American councils on productivity, and by its recent decision to help form the British Productivity Council. It has done everything it can to expedite that work.

Since I have spoken partly in critical vein, I should not like it to be thought that I want to suggest that British industry has not done a great deal indeed since the war. Without doubt, the best firms in this country, as was shown by the Report of the Anglo-American Pro- ductivity Council, compare favourably with the best in America. I think it is further down the line that our standards decline, by comparison, and it is there that we have to look for the improvement that research and the application of science can give. The truth is that in the post-war years some 20 per cent. of the production of this country has been devoted to gross capital investment. New processes have been introduced and have been recognised, and new methods have been adopted in industry. Although the spotlight occasionally turns on those little "flare-ups", by way of strike, the plain truth is that there has been great harmony between the two sides in industry, and there can be continued and extended great harmony in the application of new resources and new discoveries to industry.

My Lords, I am afraid I am keeping you a considerable time, but I ask your indulgence for a few minutes more because I should like to say something about the second part of the Motion. There can be little doubt in the mind of anyone about the general attitude of the Trades Union Congress towards higher education for technologists. The general line has always been to lay emphasis on the urgency of the need for an expanded provision, the need for taking prompt action rather than for spending yet more time debating what action should be taken. Long delay without decisive action is something which the trade union movement would criticise. If we were to see all the Reports that have accumulated in our Library since the Report of the Percy Committee in 1945 and contemplate how little has come out of any of those Reports, I think many would be greatly shocked.

I believe that the trade union movement would be behind the general proposition put forward by the National Advisory Council on Education for Industry and Commerce, for the establishment of a Royal College of Technologists. I am not capable of expressing a firm view about that. I know that even on this side of the House, as well as on the side opposite, there are divergent views as to whether of three different methods of progress, this is the one which is most desired. But I believe that the trade union movement would support that proposal. What is certainly sure is that the recommendation for a radical improvement in the technical colleges so far as finance, staffing, accommodation and equipment are concerned, would be supported, because improved facilities in all respects and at all levels are the desire of those who represent the working side of industry.

I should not like to sit clown without a brief reference to the valuable Report of the Department of Scientific and industrial Research which the noble Lord presented to the House within recent months. Believing, as I do, that we stand nowhere in the industrial world unless opportunities for industrial research are there, I think we must be careful what we do about finance. The noble Lord, Lord Woolton, was probably right when he said that we must work our way, and that new ways must be found. Notwithstanding the need for economy, we shall not work our way and we shall not find new ways if we restrict unduly expenditure on some of these research equipment propositions. For instance, the hydraulic research station must, I am sure, be completed by 1954, as the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research urges. If we are going to hold our own in respect of equipment of quays, harbours, docks and waterworks, the Mechanical Engineering Research Laboratory must not be slowed down. The Water Pollution Research Laboratory must he got on with. If it is not, your Lordships who have devoted so many hours to discussing the pollution of rivers will have wasted many late nights spent on these Benches in the belief that you were creating an effective piece of legislation.

If the extension of the London Airport is in fact to absorb most of the existing site of the Road Research Laboratory, I suggest to the noble Lord that a new site and construction of a new laboratory is urgent. It is not much use your Lordships having debates about the number of deaths on the roads if we do away with the Road Research Laboratory. I hope that we shall go ahead with that very quickly. The same applies to the Building Research Station. It is not much use trying to go ahead with the construction of as many houses as possible in a limited period of time if the Building Research Station is not developed as it ought to be. I was amazed to read in the Report —probably the noble Lord was amazed also—that we, who are the great shipbuilding country, have to try to hold our own in the shipbuilding industry without the proper apparatus. We learn that the United States, the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, Holland and Sweden, possess up-to-date tanks for testing ship models, whereas we have two tanks which are completely obsolescent and incapable of meeting the needs of industry for tests for which, in any case, the industry pays, and not the Government. Something should be done about that new tank without any unnecessary economy. I use the words "unnecessary economy" because I am as conscious as anyone of the need for economy in this country in these difficult days. But there can be good economies and bad economies, and economies which merely make more difficult the task of those who have to build up industry on which our future depends are economies which ought not to be made by any Government, whatever its political colour.

May I make one final observation about research organisations and the Report? I am not a financial expert, therefore I can speak only as an innocent, but it seems to me to be absurd for us to go on with the financing of these great projects in the way we are doing. After some thirty years of life in and around Her Majesty's Civil Service, I know that our financial system is the greatest and the most efficient in the world and that our system of properly presented Votes is the right one. I also know some of its effects, and they are very obvious in respect of the work of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Money not used by the end of the year for which the Vote is given is money which is lost in respect of the projects concerned. The building of these huge machines, these vast tanks, must take one, two or three years. No one can forecast with accuracy the time which their construction will occupy. It seems to me, therefore, to be absurd that money cannot be carried over from an annual budgetary amount in order to facilitate this construction in some way. It is clear that in the business world, people would not dream of not making the necessary financial arrangements. I do not suggest for one moment that I can tell the noble Lord who presented the Govern- ment's case anything about business. He knows a thousand times better than I do how well and effectively business would deal with this. I shall feel happy, therefore, if only I have succeeded in putting into his mind the idea that something should be done to ensure that money from Votes is not given up at the end of the year merely because of the theory of finance which, very rightly, we have operated in this country up till now.

My Lords, I have kept you too long. I have deliberately taken rather a different line from that which most other noble Lords have taken, and probably a different line from that which most of you would expect me to take, seeing that I am the only practising trade union representative in this House. I end by saying that the war showed very clearly that the delays of which this industry of ours was guilty in the pre-war years were not due to any inability on the part of this country. We made co-operative discoveries during the war and we used those discoveries freely, honestly and immediately in the interests of winning the war. I have already indicated to industry how much I think many of the major units of industry could do. I am convinced that we have a great deal more to do. It is clear to me that we in this country are capable not only of making major discoveries but of exploiting them in the interests of our own nation, and not leaving it to others to exploit them. This is something that calls for immediate action and not for unnecessary economy. Therefore, I think I can do no better than draw the attention of the House to some words which I hope many of your Lordships will have read, but which may not be familiar to all. They are the closing words of Professor Sir Ian Heilbron in the report of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research: If this country is again to be prosperous, British industry must make science a real and living force in its daily life. There is no need to learn this lesson as we have learned so many in the past through bankruptcy and unemployment—but time is getting short.

5.27 p.m.

LORD WOOLTON

My Lords, I wonder whether your Lordships will allow me, for the benefit of noble Lords who may be speaking later, to say with reference to the question of the building of the tank for the shipbuilding industry to which the noble Lord, Lord Crook, referred, that that is not being held up. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has agreed that we should spend that money. There will be delay, of course, but that will be the result of matters relating to design and will not be due to economy. We shall go ahead with this project as quickly as the design is available. Perhaps your Lordships will forgive me for intervening at this moment, but I did not want there to be any misunderstanding with regard to this particular matter.

LORD CROOK

May I thank the noble Lord on behalf of myself and other noble Lords on these Benches for a very valuable contribution to this debate?

5.28 p.m.

THE EARL OF HALSBURY

My Lords, in speaking on the Motion of the noble Viscount, I would ask the House for that indulgence which your Lordships' kindly tradition accords to those addressing you for the first time. The matter on which I should like to speak is the Report of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Advisory Council, which the noble Lord, Lord Crook, has been discussing in his closing remarks. That Report has been issued in somewhat critical terms, and, as a member of that Advisory Council and one of those who drafted the Report, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, for his courtesy in allowing me to speak on these matters this afternoon. I feel that the greatest contribution which the Government could make in making the nation and industry more science-minded would be to set it a uniformly good example—that is to say, they should have a correct policy towards scientific research, and that policy should be implemented with understanding and executed with resolution.

There is no question of the good will that clearly pertains between the world of science and successive Lord Presidents of the Council and successive Governments. Great generosity has been shown on many occasions. But, somehow, between the good will shown by Governments towards the scientific community and the actual execution of agreed policy there comes into play a misunderstanding as to the terms upon which scientific research can actually be carried out. Scientific research is a long-term problem, and nothing short of the steady pressure of organised curiosity upon the unknown will result in the winning of new knowledge. If that were not the case we should all have been very wise long ago. It is therefore necessary to have long-term plans and to stick to them through all difficulties and discouragements.

The Lord President has referred in complimentary terms to the work of the fourteen research establishments which operate under the authority of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research; but one does not realise just how good they are until one goes abroad professionally, as I do, and hears the opinion of other nations upon these establishments. Then one learns that their directors are men with international reputations and that the work which they do commands the esteem of their scientific peers throughout the world. After the war it was thought that the conditions under which many of these excellent establishments were working were unsatisfactory. In many cases the establishments were started a long time ago, and occupied somewhat archaic sites under unsatisfactory conditions. A post-war plan of expansion was accordingly agreed to. The Report (Command Paper 8494) expresses grave disappointment at the non-fulfilment of these plans. I should abuse your Lordships' patience if I went at too great a length into the details of why that has been. Suffice it to say that we seem to be trapped in the cobwebs of our own legislative spinning.

Wherever one of these establishments turns for a new site, there is always some authority or other which has been set up with power to say to a Department operating on behalf of the Government, "Get out" or "Keep off." One authority, for instance, has power to say to the Road Research Laboratories, "Your site must be cleared and razed to the ground in order to make room for the expansion of London Airport." We live in a small and crowded country, and if we want anything so large as an international airport, clearly obstructions must be moved out of the way. But what has been done to find an alternative site? After several years of effort and the inspection of forty different sites, the Road Research Laboratories are still prospectively homeless. If it is not the county agricultural committee, it is the local council; and if it is not the local council, it is the Town and Country Planning Act. Even squatters have added their note of tragi-comedy to the situation by saying, No, you cannot come here; we got here first." When one thinks of the tribute paid to the Road Research Laboratories by the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, that they are saving us many millions a year in surface dressing, and that under the authority of the Road Research Laboratories comes the Road Safety Organisation, whose responsibility it is to supply the knowledge with which our Legislature and Administration endeavour to keep death off the road, I cannot help but feel that we could do better than that for the Road Research Laboratories.

The noble Lord, Lord Woolton, also spoke of the Radio Research Board. The Radio Research Board appear to have beaten the Road Research Board by a short head, because at the fortieth attempt they appear to have found a site and need no longer be divided between temporary buildings on a site at Datchet and a temporary site which they occupy in a corner of the National Physical Laboratories. In 1947 the great Commonwealth country of India, to mark its independence, decided to build a chain of research laboratories throughout the length and breadth of the land to provide the people with the knowledge with which they intend to govern their affairs. After five years that chain is completed. It stands as a monument to the vision of Mr. Nehru and the drive and energy of Sir Shanti Bhatnagar. That is what India has done since 1947. Since 1927 the Water Pollution Research Laboratories have been waiting for a home. They are still dispersed over five different temporary sites. A definite beginning for building on their chosen site was promised in 1939. Another definite beginning was promised in 1950. And another definite beginning, I am glad to say, has been promised in 1952. One can only hope that it will be a case of "third time lucky."

Again, the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, spoke of the Mechanical Engineering Research Establishment as if that were a completed establishment. It is scarcely one-quarter complete and has been subjected to a temporary cut in its building programme. I am told that the corresponding organisation in Germany, which was started after the war, now stands two-thirds completed and occupied. Can we afford to fall behind in mechanical engineering research which, so far as the products of its associated industry are concerned, accounts for £750,000,000 worth of our exports? Can we allow the Germans to steal a march on us? I am glad indeed to hear the assurance which the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, has given us about the ship tank. The same applies to the Hydraulics Research Station and to the Fuel Research Station. Was there ever a country so dependent on fuel for its life-blood as this country? The Fuel Research Laboratories occupy an unsatisfactory industrial site, where their surroundings are polluted by the very products of combustion which they are trying to study; and the whole nature of the site is so unsatisfactory that the establishment is working at only two-thirds of the level of employment at which it seeks to operate. Yet one gadget, the joyous overplus of a piece of war-time research carried out by the Fuel Research Board, if applied in industry, could pay for the Fuel Research Board's establishment ten times over every year. With the nine-tenths remaining in the first year, we could still pay for a new home for it twice over. That concludes what I have to say about the research establishments of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.

I must make it clear that for all these sad matters the Lord President is, of course, in no way to blame. He has been responsible for these matters for only a matter of months. Nor would I in any way seek to blame his predecessors. If we must blame anything, we must face the fact that the nation as a whole is not yet what I may call science-minded; not as science-minded as it should be. "Where there's a will there's a way". In Norway, football pools are made to pay a levy, and that levy is paid over to a committee which administers it in the interests of science: so much so that Norwegian scientists now have an embarras de richesses so far as endowments are concerned. It is a pleasure to go round and see the fine new buildings which they are determined to have and the first-class set of scientific establishments which they are producing. Must we fall behind Norway, a little country with scarcely one-twentieth of our population?

The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research is fortunate in that its Minister is the Lord President, who can be relied upon to bring to the conduct of its affairs a large measure of the authority that stems from seniority. The structure of the Department was wisely conceived when it was founded during the First World War, and I can assure your Lordships that it commands the respect of scientific administrators throughout the world. There is nothing in the world quite like our Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. No indigenous product compares with it and, with the exception of Commonwealth and Scandinavian countries, who are copying it, there is nothing like it. In particular, in the United States they have nothing so good on the administrative side as our Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. We have an excellent machine. We must lubricate that machine with the modest finance that it requires in order that it can grow at its natural rate.

It is not my function to say what the nation can or cannot afford by way of capital investment every year. That is the function of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in another place. But let us look at the matter against the background of our own wealth. We have a national production which is estimated at £13,000,000,000. Naturally, we all want to spend that to-day and to spend it on ourselves. Collectively we decide to spend £4,000,000,000 of it not on ourselves but on one another. That is our investment in society. Further, we decide to spend some £2,000,000,000 not on today but for to-morrow. That is our gross annual capital formation, our investment in property. Our expenditure on education comes to some £200,000,000. That is our investment in people. The total cost of running the universities is £30,000,000, of which the Exchequer, through the University Grants Committee, bears about £18,000,000. That is our investment in leadership. On knowledge we invest, through Government funds, some £16,000,000 a year, of which the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research accounts for about £5,500,000.

What the Command Paper to which I have referred pleads for is that the Department should be allowed to spend, with a certain measure of elasticity, an annual increase of about 5 per cent.—namely, £250,000 a year extra, until its affairs have reached what is regarded as a satisfactory condition having regard to its responsibilities. So one has to regard what is being asked for against the background of what we have. I cannot believe that that modest programme, together with the completion of the Department's building programme, at whatever maximum speed the nation can afford, is beyond our resources. This Department is a sort of cement: it unites the free research of the universities to the directed research of industry. It is an absolutely essential link in the chain, and we must not let it mark time through failing to provide it with the modest marginal sums that it requires. I know that the Lord President has these matters very much at heart, and I trust that in winding up this debate the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell, will be able to give us an assurance that some real energy and drive will be directed to the completion of the Department's programme.

5.42 p.m.

THE EARL OF LIMERICK

My Lords, I know it will be your Lordships' first wish that on your behalf I should express to the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, our pleasure at hearing a speech not only so felicitous but also so charmingly phrased. The arguments he so clearly put, and the chain of thought running through his whole speech, could not fail but give great promise and hope to your Lordships' House that in the future we shall hear the noble Earl frequently and for a long time. I say that, not with the intention that each individual speech of the noble Earl should be long, but in the recollection that the noble Earl's grandfather lived to the age of ninety-eight. He was a friend of my father, who in those days of the last century sat in the room of my noble friend, Lord Fortescue. For those personal reasons, it gives me great pleasure to speak after the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury.

I have a little purely personal crumb of comfort for the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, who not only stressed his own personal opinion that the supply of scientists should be increased, but referred to the White Paper recently published, which also made that point. I have no doubt that many noble Lords anticipated both his wish and the White Paper—certainly I did—about a quarter of a century ago. One of my children is, therefore, now on post-graduate research in physics. There is only one part of the noble Viscount's Motion to which I want to address myself, and that quite briefly, on part (a); and there is only one section of part (a) on which I want to make a point. I can claim no originality in this. My noble friend the Lord President of the Council has already mentioned the personnel research during the war, and has called for a closer alliance between science and industry, which was a point also touched on by the noble Viscount, Lord Hall. It is, therefore, not on materials, nor on processes, but on the human efficiency side that I want to say a few words.

Frankly, I do not like the phrase "personnel research." I do not like the word "personnel," but I have never had the wit to think out a better one. The phrase, "personnel research" suffers from some slight disability, too, in that it is a very vague one, and it is within the experience of many noble Lords that where you have vagueness you are apt, in the matter of human relations, to attract men of immense good will but of rather woolly minds. Therefore, I hope that the undeniable good which inheres in many branches of personnel research will suffer in no way from some of the more exuberant efforts, which are perhaps less scientific. As has already been said this afternoon, there were many notable examples of personnel research in the Fighting Services during the war. There, time was of the utmost importance, and an enormous number of our young men were working at the limits of human endurance and human capacity. Therefore there was a pressing need for research in order to adapt machines to the men. The margin between success and failure was very small, and the results of failure could be both dramatic and tragic. A life was always at stake. Even now we remember —indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Crook, has just referred to an incident in question—that jet aeroplanes cover roughly 1,000 feet per second, and, therefore, some error in judgment, or in the speed of judgment, shows how close we are to the limits of human capacity.

The amount of work in experimental psychology in the speed of reaction and the complexity of duties reached its zenith, I suppose, in the Royal Air Force. Without it our success in the air would, I imagine, have been gravely jeopardised. Of course, the other Fighting Services came into the picture. Those of your Lordships who served in the Navy will be able to reinforce that argument. We know that it came into endurance tests and a great many other tests in the Army, particularly in tanks. All this is past history, and I mention it only to show that where a strong, close link exists between our scientific team—in this case very largely the medical profession—and those who exist to carry knowledge into action, quick and good results can be achieved.

The noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, and the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, among others, stressed that our future lay along the lines of the better use of new knowledge. The Fighting Services provide this good analogy with industry, but it is not a full analogy, for the reasons we know—namely, that the Fighting Services have their own medical branches. The medical branches had two functions. They lived with a complete knowledge of the Service conditions, and they had a large knowledge of their own profession. They could therefore interpret to the Fighting Services the opportunities which existed for setting a problem to the scientists and then later, when the scientists had done their best to solve that problem, they could put the solution back to the Fighting Services. It was an ideal combination which unfortunately we do not always get and cannot expect to get in industry. One or two noble Lords—I think the noble Viscount, Lord Hall, was amongst them—mentioned that whereas large units of industry had their own teams of scientists, that was not so with the smaller units. If my memory is right, the smaller units in industry (defined as those employing fifty and under) employ no less than 80 per cent. of the working population of the United Kingdom. It is to those smaller units particularly that we must address what words we can to incite them to set up such machinery as existed in the Fighting Services to get the good news across so that the solutions can be put into operation.

There is no counterpart of a medical service for industry, although some of the big units have their own medical officers. My hope, therefore, is that through the medium of the Press and Hansard, and through your Lordships' personal efforts in industry—in which so many of your Lordships engage—no opportunity will be lost of helping scientists, medical men and those in charge of units of industry to go out and "missionise" on this thought, so that even in the small units of industry they shall be aware (be it through D.S.I.R. publications or otherwise) of the great body of help which exists to solve the problems of industry and assist them to overcome difficulties arising in this instance from the human factor. Thus we shall finally be able to translate into terms of greater efficiency or less strain on the human all those endeavours which we must make for greater production, new production and greater export of those things which it is still open to us to export.

Those matters are based partly on a remark which the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, made regarding the ethical question—the British character, which at no point in our lives, he it in factory or in school, can we afford to neglect. There are two other great assets which we need to exploit first, last and all the time—our minds and our bodies. It is in the practical application of scientific methods and new thought that I see a great hope for recovery in this nation. That was the only point which I wished to make.

5.54 p.m.

LORD STRABOLGI

My Lords, as the first speaker on this side of the House since the maiden speech of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, I should like to join with the noble Earl, Lord Limerick, in congratulating him, I am sure, on behalf of all your Lordships, on a very worthy contribution to our debate and on having passed through that always difficult ordeal with great success. With the noble Earl opposite, I hope that we shall on many occasions have the benefit of Lord Halsbury's wide knowledge and experience.

I have sat through this interesting, if somewhat long-winded, debate, and I think the noble Earl, Lord Limerick, is the only one who has referred—and then only in passing—to science and scientists and the Fighting Services. If I may, I wish to address a few remarks to your Lordships on that question, which I think is of tremendous importance. It links up with the second part of the Motion of the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel. First of all, may I draw the attention of your Lordships to what I think is a rather curious fact, if my information is right. It is that on the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy—appointed, of course, by the last Government and to whose Report, to a certain extent, we have been directing our attention—so far as I can make out there is no representative of the Services or any scientist employed at the Admiralty, the War Office, the Air Ministry or, what is even more important, the Ministry of Supply. The Ministry of Supply particularly are responsible for the research and scientific experiment for the three Services, yet, so far as I can make out, nobody is directly represented on the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy.

When I turn to the Committee on Manpower of the Advisory Council I should have thought that the Services were intimately and urgently concerned, but I see the same thing. So far as I can make out, there is nobody representing the Services or the Ministry of Supply. The Royal Botanical Gardens are represented; and the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Education and so on; and there is one representative of the Ministry of Defence. But there are no representatives of the Ministry of Supply or of the three Fighting Services. If my facts are right, I think that shows a curious gap somewhere. Again, when I look at the Percy Committee on Higher Technological Education, appointed by the Minister of Education in the previous Government, I find the same thing. I should have thought that the Services should be represented. They may have been—I do not know. There is nobody that I can identify as being concerned in advising the Board of Admiralty, the Air Council, the Army Council or, most important of all, the Ministry of Supply on scientific matters who appears to have been enrolled on that highly important Committee on Higher Technological Education. I think that is rather a pity.

I believe that I am right in stating that over the last half century, and, indeed, before that, there has always been a distinct time lag between invention and the development arid perfection of certain discoveries and their application to the Services, whether in their weapons, their equipment or their training. The noble and gallant Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Cork, is present, and I believe that he will bear me out. They have always had a tendency in both the older Services—the Air Force is comparatively new and I will exonerate them—to look backwards and to prepare their weapons, their training, their tactics and so on, from the lessons they learned in the previous war, and not to look ahead to what they will have to do in the case of the crowning misfortune of another war. I am going to quote two exact examples which apply to all the Services, except possibly the Air Force. One is the slowness in taking advantage of recent discoveries in rocket projectiles and methods of rocket firing and propulsion. Both the Navy and the Army have been far too slow in that respect. I think that the Navy, particularly, is still clinging too long to the heavy gun and not realising the tremendous potentialities of the guided rocket and similar weapons in the future. That is an example.

I believe that the Admiralty, the War Office, the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Supply are well served by most eminent scientists—men of very great standing in the scientific world—but they do not listen to them sufficiently. There remains a tendency in the Royal Navy, and still more in Her Majesty's Army, to regard scientists as gentlemen with long beards which they trip over occasionally, who are extremely absentminded and are generally "terrors." We should try to reach a much closer liaison between the scientific world and the Services. Until the Services begin to take greater advantage of the wonderful new inventions and the tremendously rapid developments in discovery which are taking place, there will be that time lag.

In this connection may I draw your Lordships' attention to the different procedure between the research organisation of the Ministry of Supply, for example, and the experimental work carried out by the corresponding body or bodies in the United States of America? There are advantages in both methods, but the differences, very briefly, are as follows. In the United States, when the Navy, the Army or the Marines want a new weapon, or a development of a weapon, for a particular purpose, or a special article of equipment, they turn to one or more of the great manufacturing concerns in the United States and tell them what they want and say, in effect, "Please produce this for us." These great manufacturing and contracting companies have their teams of highly paid, highly skilled and highly experienced scientists and technological officers, and they set to work to produce what is needed—the rocket or the land- ing craft, the piece of artillery or whatever it may be. And then, of course, having produced one that meets the requirements of the General Staff, they naturally expect to get the contract to make it—and generally do. By that method they get results in America rather faster than we do.

But of course there are disadvantages in the American method. It is a great advantage that they should get results quickly because in rearmament you have to be one jump ahead of the other man, otherwise your weapons become obsolescent very quickly. The British method is to employ directly the best people they can afford to pay and their own technicians trained in the various Services and in the experimental Department of the Ministry of Supply. They work out an experiment, try out the prototype, and eventually produce what they think is the best weapon or device or machine for the purpose required. Then they give it out to contract or to the ordnance factories. Undoubtedly the results are very fine; but the method is a slower one than that of the Americans. The disadvantage of the American method is that it is not so easy to arrange for any of America's associated Powers and Allies, members of N.A.T.O. and so on, to have the new designs; and, of course, the patent position enters into the matter—there are patent difficulties and so on.

At the same time, I have always understood that liaison between the Ministry of Supply, for example, and the research departments of the Admiralty, the War Office, the Air Ministry, and their opposite numbers in the United States, is very close, and I am told that exchange of information is satisfactory—with, of course, for political reasons which we all understand, the one exception of the atomic bomb. Incidentally, I quoted the example of rockets but I think that the new rifle is another new weapon which has taken too long in development, and still longer in application. There are others also with which I will not detain your Lordships.

What is the remedy for this state of affairs as regards the Services? I will make a suggestion, though it may cause a little pain in some quarters. Take, for example, the Board of Admiralty. I think that one member of that Board at least should be a scientist of very high attainments. He might even be Fourth Sea Lord or the deputy of the Fourth Sea Lord. I do not know very much about the inner workings of the Army Council, but I suggest that there also a scientist of great eminence should be a member of the Army Council. That could be done by legislation. The same would apply to the Air Council.

I would go further and say that I hope that the present practice of having an eminent scientist in the Cabinet will always be followed in future Governments. In the last Cabinet we had a very learned man in the person of my late lamented friend, Lord Addison, who was a scientist of great reputation; and in the present Cabinet we have the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell. Some of my friends on this side may say that Lord Cherwell is a great scientist but that he does not seem to have done much good, judging by the performance and programme of the present Government. I would answer that if Lord Cherwell had not been there things might have been worse. I am delighted that there is one man of scientific attainments in the Cabinet and I hope that will always be the case. That is a matter of convention. I am reminded of the authorities of an American university who put up a notice to this effect: From the first day of next month it will be a legend of the university that nobody crosses the campus smoking a pipe. I hope that it will become a convention that there should always be one member of the Cabinet who has had scientific training and who has great scientific attainments to his credit. If we have more than one, so much the better.

After all, there is a convention which applies even to the Woolsack. As your Lordships know, it is only in comparatively recent centuries, compared with the life of this venerable Assembly, that the Lord Chancellor has had to be a member of the legal profession. Even now he need not be a member of this House—he can be a Commoner. But, by convention, in recent centuries priests or laymen have not been appointed: the Lord Chancellor has for long been a member of the legal profession. But he need not be a lawyer at all. In the same way, one office—that of the Paymaster General, if you like, or even that of Lord President of the Council—should always be held in the Government by a man of scientific training and scientific attainments. It would be good that there should be such a man to bring the scientific approach to the problems of State.

I cannot close without thanking the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, for initiating this debate. I believe that it has already produced some results in the matter of the question of the ship-testing tanks which was mentioned by the Lord President of the Council. I hope that it will bring great results, and I hope that one of them will be to attract public attention to this highly important subject, and especially the attention of the leaders of industry and the leaders of the great trade unions.

6.9 p.m.

LORD HANKEY

My Lords, I should like to join the last speaker in congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, very heartily on his speech. It was a remarkable speech. I think it is the more a subject for congratulation, because of the many debates to which I have listened in this House I do not remember one in which the speeches as a whole were more remarkable. There is a rule—a very proper one, in my opinion—that members of either House of Parliament who are chairmen or members of Ministerial Committees do not speak on the subjects with which they are concerned. In taking part in this debate, I am slightly embarrassed by the fact that, continuously from 1939 onwards to this very day, I have been concerned on a voluntary basis, usually as chairman of Government Committees, on scientific matters covering an extremely wide range. The terms of the Motion, however, are so broad that, after consulting the highest authorities in the House, I believe I can say what little I want to say and steer a course between the Scylla of banality and the Charybdis of indiscretion.

After all this long association with science and technology, I am bound to look at the matter in rather wide perspective. I have been connected with it for many years. When in 1939 I became Minister without Portfolio and was given by Mr. Neville Chamberlain the task of putting science "on the map" in the war, we were at a comparatively low ebb and had to make a great number of improvisations. We could raise the personnel for radar, for instance, only by using the War-time powers to turn almost every young scientist at the universities into a man for radio-location (as we called it then), radar (as we call it now). We did produce these people for radar, and they numbered more than double Wellington's Army at Waterloo. They were trained for that purpose. It was a terrific trouble to get trained people who could teach others, and a matter of improvisation to get the apparatus—but it was all done.

Looking at the problem in that perspective, I am less pessimistic than some—perhaps your Lordships will say I am too optimistic. Ten years ago the Scientific Committee and the Engineering Committee of the Cabinet, of both of which I was Chairman, conducted full inquiries into the state of British science, and nearly all the criticisms that we hear to-day, many of which have been repeated, were raised then. We made all the recommendations we could to get things improved, and, whether because of that or in spite of it, matters have improved greatly, as we have heard to-day. It may be, as the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, said, that the nation is not as science-minded as it should be, but it is much more science-minded than it was. Parliament is much more science-minded than it was. This House in particular, and Governments, are very much more science-minded than they were. They have built up these great blocks of sciences, many of which have been spoken of to-day, in the Ministry of Supply and the Colonial Office—such bodies as the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Medical Research Council and the Agricultural Research Council. They really form a huge network of science and they are all doing most admirable work under the Government.

That is a matter which gives me some cause for optimism; and many of the things that we have heard to-day have given me similar cause for optimism. The noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, whom I most warmly congratulate on raising this question, mentioned some himself: the famous inventions, many of which have been really got going since 1939, which is my datum point—radar, which was brought to full fruition; atomic energy, and, in more recent days, the jet aeroplane, which has given us now a special lead in commercial aircraft. And then there is the tank. Tanks were a great and difficult problem during the war, as the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, will remember. Now there is the Centurion tank, which is constantly claimed to be the finest tank in the world. Those are no small achievements.

We have heard much to-day about the doubling of the output of the universities in science since the last war. That is a most important point. We should remember that that doubling has not yet taken full effect. It has taken partial effect, but people who come out of the universities are not really proved scientists or technologists as the case may be. They go into industry, and industry gives them a tremendous training after it gets them. I was in a large and important firm last Thursday, and I saw a great number of these young people who are rising up to the higher ranks. Some had started at the bottom and it had taken them six years to get through the various courses to the top rank. Others came in from technical colleges, public schools or grammar schools, probably with a national certificate, and it had taken them four years. Even the people from the universities had taken two years. This firm had a most admirable college through which it passed these young people and which did all the things which noble Lords have said ought to be done. They bring in a certain amount of the humanities and give them, of course, powerful technical courses as well. Therefore, we must not consider that double the numbers have been produced in five years, for the numbers that are coming out do not reach their full effect for some time.

We need at the present time more highly-trained scientists. We all know what happened in the war, when they were all taken away from their sciences and put into war jobs. We know why they are still rather hard to find. And we want people in the second rank too. These scientists will come before very long from the best of the people leaving the universities. We have heard of the large sums which have been given to the universities and the large sums given by the late Government. There is, more- over, the statement that the Lord President of the Council has made to-day as to what is going to be done. What I wish to say can be summed up in this way: we are not at the beginning of a new era; we began the new era at the beginning of the last war. We are in the middle of the new era, and these things necessarily take a long time to reach full maturity. But what has been done, and what is being done now in this middle stage, gives me great confidence that we shall pull through now as we have pulled through hitherto.

My Lords, I want to clear up, if I may, one point of comparative detail. It has not yet arisen in the debate but it may arise. It bears closely on the use made by industry of science, and it has been mentioned in this most valuable Fifth Annual Report of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy. The point is that in some of the White Papers that were published by the Technical Personnel Committee on the Supply and Demand for Persons with Professional Qualifications, it is stated that in connection with particular sciences and industries the realised demand exceeds the estimate of the Committee. As Professor Zuckerman's Report says, it is not surprising that several of the forecasts … need revision in the light of events. In justification of the admirable, hardworking people who joined me in these inquiries, I would remind your Lordships that they began in 1948 or 1949, when the economic condition of the country was such that it was very difficult either for the Government or for industry to make accurate forecasts of full programmes or of what personnel would be required for them. Most of the criticised White Papers contained definite warnings on this subject, and with your Lordships' permission I will read one or two very short ones. The first I take from the Physics Inquiry, which was the first of the batch over which I myself presided, and the Report of which was dated November, 1948. It mentions the undoubted effect which changes in the general economic situation of the country would have on the estimates, and it states later with so many economic factors … the conclusions arrived at here are merely the best guess that can be made on the evidence available. They had got all the best estimates that the Government and industry could give them, and they recommended that while the subject is in this state of flux the position … should be kept under constant review. Again, the Chemistry Inquiry, dated July, 1949, over which I also presided, emphasised and re-emphasised that all these estimates, more particularly on the demand side, are based on estimates which may be falsified by events. The White Papers on Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering contained similar warnings, and the White Paper on Chemical Engineers advised a review of the supply and demand position after three years.

These White Papers gave warning of the change that might come about in the economic situation, and it has come about in this year, with the rearmament programme. Before these Reports were published in 1948 and 1949, no responsible authority in this country would or could say either that there would or would not be a rearmament programme, when it would be required, or of what it would consist. I had that in my mind the whole time, but there was not enough information available to enable anyone to say that a rearmament programme would be necessary or what would be required in it. I say that in order to justify the large number of distinguished people who devoted much time and gratuitous effort to these inquiries. I am not reflecting on anyone, and I am all in favour of this important factor being taken into consideration in the debate.

My next point, which in a way is also a subsidiary one, though of vast importance, I need not develop at any length, because it has already been dealt with by my noble friend Lord Waverley—I refer to the great importance of facilitating these publications. I wrote to the noble Lord, the Lord President of the Council, to warn him that I should be raising this matter, but Lord Waverley has made the point so fully that I need not elaborate it at all. I would just mention one point about agriculture. I think in this respect the ground is covered by the Imperial Agricultural Bureaux, This is a most interesting inter-Commonwealth organisation, which serves the needs of the United Kingdom and members of the Commonwealth and Empire and so admirable was it that it was adopted some few years ago by the United Nations. Therefore, I think it would be well worth while, if the noble Lord is looking into this question, just to inquire about that, because I think it is a very good model. I happen to have been associated with the reorganisation of that body in 1943, and therefore I know quite a lot about it.

There is a third point—namely, that I want to associate myself very strongly with the powerful appeal which was made by the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, on May 21 on aid for undeveloped areas under the Colombo Plan and elsewhere in Asia. Although this does not sound as if it connects much with the Motion, it does in this respect, that these people must be obtained from the same sources as those required for industry, and they will have a very big effect ultimately on industry. After what I have said about the White Papers and difficulties arising in connection with the supply of skilled scientists and engineers, your Lordships may be rather surprised that I should support the plea for experts to go to the aid of distant countries. It is true, of course, that during the rearmament period there are some categories of personnel that cannot possibly he spared. But Lord Reading's plea was spread over a very wide field. He spoke of three kinds of technical assistance, first of bringing personnel home to this country for training from countries of the area. I saw that method at work a week ago in the college of a big firm that I visited. There were numbers of these people in that college, and it seemed to be working very well. His next point was that we should send out from here specialists to assist on the spot. Then there was the provision of technical equipment, as well as helping methods of instruction in these countries, in schools, technical colleges, laboratories and so forth.

If I may say so, Lord Reading rightly insisted on the advantages of these schemes from the international and humanitarian points of view, which I think are unrivalled. But in passing he mentioned also that the Colombo Plan countries already took 20 per cent. of our exports of machinery, with values of £53,500,000 in 1949–50 and £58,000,000 in 1951. Of course, that means a good deal in the way of replacements and spare parts in future years. What of the good will and contacts established both by sending emissaries on long-term or short-term assignments, and in entertaining their young people in our universities, colleges and homes? On a long view, I believe that our civil servants, industrialists, scientists, engineers, medical experts and, especially, university professors and teachers have a unique opportunity, now and for the next few years, of making a great contribution in laying the foundations of prosperity, not only for the distressed regions but also for this country and for the world. I hope that we shall receive some wider publicity for this subject not only in the technical and scientific world but, if possible, in the public Press and broadcasting systems.

I am not going to speak on the problem of technology because others much more competent to deal with it have already said more than I could. But I wish to speak, for a few minutes only, on the subject of a science, or perhaps I should say a science and art, which has received no notice so far—that is the science and art of co-ordination. Co-ordination of the sciences is most tremendously important. It has been built up, I think, very much on the lines of the system evolved by the Committee of Imperial Defence over fifty years. It consists, I think, under the Lord President of the Council, and certainly below Cabinet level, of two high-level Committees, the Defence Research Policy Committee, which is of course in close liaison with the Chiefs of Staff and the Ministry of Defence, and the Advisory Council on Defence Policy, for the civilian side of science and technology. Both have appropriate sub-committees, and through them, or otherwise, are linked up with the great blocks of science which I have already mentioned under the different Departments; and through those groups they link up, again, with a vast range of industry which also has its great blocks of sciences and technologies.

Under the wise guidance of Sir Henry Tizard, that system has reached a high state of efficiency. But—and this is my real point—on the analogy of the Committee of Imperial Defence there is one point lacking in the scheme—namely, anything corresponding to the Imperial Defence College. The Imperial Defence College has spread all over the place The system has been adopted by the United States of America and now by N.A.T.O. Lord Ismay told me two days ago that he was just about to open—on this very day, I think—the second course of the corresponding college of N.A.T.O., which has been a great success. I venture to submit to your Lordships and to the Government that there is much to be said for a super-post-graduate (I apologise for coining such a horrible term) college for science and technology on the lines of the Imperial Defence College, and of the Administrative Defence College at Henley, the latter being run by private industries.

There, carefully selected scientists and technologists of the middle ranks would meet for a year or so, as do the officers of the three Fighting Services—and now also of N.A.T.O.—to teach and learn from one another all about their respective sciences and technologies. But on the Imperial Defence College and Henley analogies, they would not meet alone; nor would they meet for that purpose only; they would meet in a varied circle drawn from other professions and walks of life—administrators, industrialists, bankers, civil servants, diplomats, trade unionists, maybe representatives of the Fighting Services (who invite scientists to their colleges) and representatives of universities, including the humanities and technical colleges. I believe that that would give them a sabbatical year which would be well spent.

With minds broadened by this experience, these men, like the graduates of the Imperial Defence College, would, I believe, provide some of the leaders and many of the thinkers of the scientific world in the days to come. From among them would often be nominated directors—men with a broad outlook—of those great groups of science and technology which are so remarkable a product of the scientific renaissance of modern times. In a few years they would provide the nucleus of personnel available for those purposes, and they would provide a powerful addition of scientific strength to modern Governments. And very soon you will find that, as in the case of the Imperial Defence College, it will be copied by other countries internationally and nationally. This idea, which I published in a lecture last autumn, had a very sympathetic reception by The Times and Nature and other newspapers. It would be premature to ask the Government for a reply to-day, but it would be interesting to obtain some impression of your Lordships' sentiments towards the idea.

6.37 p.m.

VISCOUNT CALDECOTE

My Lords, I welcome very strongly the statement which has been made by the noble Lord, the Lord President of the Council, about the decision which the Government have now taken on the future of technological education. I hope that the new technical university which is to be set up will not be started from scratch, but will be based on one of our present universities—perhaps the Imperial College in London, or one of the great Midland universities. But, as I say, I welcome very strongly the fact that the decision has at last been taken. If I may take a point concerning the decision which was made by the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley—though I hesitate to question anything that one of his experience says—I should like to sound a note of warning about the question of allowing technical colleges to confer degrees and making them straight away into full-blown universities. I hope that I shall not be accused of being a "dog in the manger" over this degree question but I feel that the whole prestige of the degree is that it has something of its own to offer. If we merely turn technical colleges into universities because we want more people to have degrees, then the degree is debased. But if the technical colleges are turned into universities because they have earned it, and the men there have earned it, that surely is the way it should be done. If it is done in that spirit I would welcome the move wholeheartedly.

If I may, I will also take up a point which the noble Viscount, Lord Hall, made. I did not altogether understand him, but I think he said that so far as engineering was concerned, universities were not facing up to their responsibilities. I am sorry that the noble Viscount is not here now, but I shall read his remarks with great interest in Hansard tomorrow. I can speak with any real knowledge only of my own University of Cambridge. I do not think anyone can say that Cambridge has failed to meet its responsibilities, so far as engineering is concerned. The number of students taking engineering is increasing. I have not the figures with me, but I think there has been an increase of at least 50 per cent. since pre-war days. One of the reasons why the figure cannot be increased further at the moment is lack of buildings, such as laboratories; but the situation in that respect is already being improved. I shall speak a little later on about the new courses which have been started recently in the University.

There is no doubt that there is a great variation in industry in the use made of scientific knowledge. It is sometimes assumed that the small firms are the only ones that do not make proper use of scientific knowledge. I should like to suggest to the Lord President that sometimes the big firms fail to do so. In the universities we hear too often of first-class engineering graduates who go to a big firm and whose training and experience are not properly used. Either they hang on and hope for better times, or they leave that firm and become lost to the industry altogether. In either case, all the training and the work which has gone into their teaching is largely lost. I think that is an important point, and I hope the noble Lord will consider that when he is exhorting industry to make proper use of scientists. This country has often been compared with America and it has already been made clear, both in the debate to-day and in the Report of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy, how different is the outlook of management in America. Already there is a change in this country. I am sure that the action which the Government propose to take will accelerate the movement that has already started, to bring engineering graduates and others with technical education to positions in the board room more rapidly, and to give them a fairer share than has been the case in the past.

It has also been suggested, in this House and elsewhere, that the universities could quite easily expand the number of technological graduates they produce. I believe that if that policy were to have any success, it would be necessary to tap new sources of supply from which the students would come. My impression is that the tail-end of students is not of a high standard, and that if an attempt were made to bring in more it would simply mean that the weak tail would get longer. I believe that a good deal of propaganda is necessary in the schools, just as it is in management, to overcome the old-fashioned idea that a man with a technical education is not educated although a man who has had a classical education, with no science, is. I am sure that much could be done by propaganda in the schools to encourage boys to think that a technological career is a first-class career, as good as one in what is normally called business, which will reward them with as great responsibilities and as good jobs.

Your Lordships will remember that a year or two ago the University Grants Committee supported post-graduate courses in certain universities. At Cambridge the first of these courses is just coming to an end. The numbers have been small but the course has been an undoubted success. In its own sphere of structures and materials it has certainly provided all that industry wants. The men came from industry and had several years experience in industry, and they will soon be returning to their firms. They will not be full of academic ideas but will go back keen to apply their new practical knowledge to their everyday jobs. I believe that the courses are economical, because the facilities which they require are almost always already in existence. They are economical in manpower, because only men whom industry itself thinks will benefit from the courses take part in them. Some people think it is disgraceful that the universities should take part in anything so practical and immediately useful, but to some of us the courses indicate the new way in which the universities can serve the nation without damage to the old ideals.

These courses, however, cannot succeed unless they are backed up by industry. I will give one example of the difficulties. One great national engineering organisation admits the advantage of these courses, but out of all their great organisation they cannot spare a single man to come. That is the sort of attitude we have to get over and I have no doubt that the Lord President's exhortations will do a great deal to get over it. Now that decisions have been taken, I hope that the foundation of this new university, the alterations of the conditions of the technical colleges, and the encouragement of a new outlook in industry and in the schools, will be pressed forward with the utmost energy, for, as all speakers have said, our very life-blood depends on it. May I end by saying how much I feel we owe to the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, who moved this Motion to-day, and not least for his reminder that technology and science are neither the end of all nor the most important thing in life?

6.47 p.m.

LORD CALVERLEY

My Lords, I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, who has just resumed his seat, on one point, and on one point only. I know he has a train to catch and I give him full absolution if he wishes to depart. I agree that we are all grateful to my old friend Viscount Samuel for introducing this Motion and for recruiting a double cricket eleven to support him. I can support him only as a layman. I feel rather more optimistic to-day than when we debated this subject before. So long ago as 1924 I tried to rouse greater interest in technical education by writing to the Press, and only on Saturday I was glad to learn that the technical college in whose administration I have taken part for many years has now 2,000 students on the books—500 day students and 1,500 part-time students, studying in eleven departments. If the Lord President of the Council is interested in what he called "sordid details," I may say that I have looked up the insurance policy of the college and I find that the buildings are insured for £1,000,000. I hope that the Lord President has read the findings of the Committee on Education of the Association of Municipal Corporations. Has the noble Lord seen it?

LORD WOOLTON

My Lords, I have not had the pleasure, but I shall be very glad if the noble Lord will give it to me.

LORD CALVERLEY

If the noble Lord would allow me to hand it over to him when the House adjourns, I should like him to read it. I should like him to realise that the Committee unanimously support the Lord President.

LORD WOOLTON

Good! I certainly will read it.

LORD CALVERLEY

The Committee support what they call an evolutionary change, with a central college of technology. This is where I disagree with the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote. We have to start from scratch. I do not think the noble Viscount realises the incontestable evidence that we are always a generation behind in our encouragement of technical and technological education. I do not think it is fair to this House to read extracts from this document, but I should have liked to see them in Hansard.

The Lord President gave me a text. He talked about insatiable curiosity. There was a former member of this House whom I knew as a boy, who was tilled with insatiable curiosity, and because he had money he was able privately to invent what was called a wool comb to deal with mohair, which was a revolution. A friend of his was a Member of the other place later, and his son sat in this House. One invented the Lister comb, and the other the Holden comb. Lister put the whole of the world in his debt by finding a method to make use of what was silk waste, turning it into what we call velveteen, in which noble Lords' ladies are going to be beautifully arrayed at the Coronation. All that will be really thanks to Samuel Cunliffe-Lister, whose grandson has been sitting in this House this afternoon. Those men did it out of insatiable curiosity. Lord Masham was so full of gratitude to another man filled with insatiable curiosity, who was a parson in Kent, that he gave up the whole of his ancestral abode. He said: "Pull it down, and let us have a monument to Doctor Cartwright," who was the country parson who invented the power loom. Again it was due to research. I believe the doctor was a doctor of philosophy, and not of science. Lord Masham said: "This monument shall be called the Cartwright Hall," and that is what it is called to-day. He spent a great deal of money on it, in gratitude to the parson who had made it possible for him to make a fortune.

The point I want to make is that, so far as this country was concerned, what we call research, like Topsy, "sort of growed up"; and we cannot afford to leave it to do that to-day. We have to canalise our scientific endeavour. In passing, I would say that I was very glad to listen to the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley. At this college of ours, with its 2,000 students, we recruit young people at, say, sixteen years of age, when they have had an all-round education, part of it higher education—because the education authority on which I served was the first to put all it knew into higher education and make it free for all. The noble Lord, Lord Woolton, is to blame for my talking like this. He mentioned Edward Appleton. His mother and father are neighbours of mine, and Sir Edward Appleton went to the school of whose committee I happen to be a member—we could not call ourselves governors. I could mention other men and women who have come from those schools, but I must not delay your Lordships at this late hour by talking too much about that.

We had a problem to deal with 25,000,000 gallons of sewage every day. We had engineers who had failed in what they wanted to do. So we took the advice, not of Lord Cherwell, but perhaps of one of his colleagues, and we got a pure scientist and said to him: "Apply your science, and see if you can conquer our problem." We said: "Get cracking," because what he had to do was to crack the sewage. The result was that he did it. That is where I agree with Lord Cherwell when he says that if we are to have pure scientists with physics degrees, we must have men who can apply their science inside the laboratory and who can also come outside of it. It is now four minutes to seven o'clock, which some people tell me is our bed time, but I tell them that we do not go to bed before eight. I want to get back to this point. I was looking at the report regarding the "cracking" of the sewage, and I find that since we had this pure-minded chemist to go into the impurities and save money for the ratepayers we have a balance sheet of £4,500,000. Next year, being Coronation Year, we hope to have £124,000 surplus, because we have a very valuable by-product of our sewage, which is called—well, I do not know what it is called, but I know your Lordships' ladies use it frequently in order to beautify their complexions.

For my sins, I did go through the symposium which the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, was good enough to send me for my holiday task this Whitsuntide, and I found that we have to pay a great tribute to the large firms. But the country is made up of many small firms. We are advised that there must be a collective effort in order to help these small firms. In the place from which I come we produced Edward Appleton. As a boy I went up the street where Delius's father's place still is, although the old chap is now dead. "There is the warehouse; get into it," he said to Delius. But Delius said: "I will not. I am going to learn music." Well, he did a great job of work; he became a great master of music. We have to help the small firms, and the way to do it is to have technical colleges, but not to deny incentive, as the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, suggests—he knows what I am going to say—by saying that these fellows should never go for a degree. I think the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, said that after they have studied for three or four years, a degree in technology is far better than a pass degree at, say, Oxford.

LORD PAKENHAM

Or Cambridge.

LORD CALVERLEY

No; Cambridge is more scientific minded. I do not want to have controversy with the noble Lord on the Opposition Front Bench.

LORD PAKENHAM

On that subject you must have it with the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell.

LORD CALVERLEY

I am not going to quarrel with my bread and butter. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell, is going to reply. I want to get on. I wish to touch upon textiles for a minute or two. We have always done best in the days of adversity. When we had the McKinley tariff to jump over, we did it. We started a development scheme in textiles, and the income is now £200,000 a year. I should like to know how that money is being dispensed and whether our own college, and similar colleges in Huddersfield and Halifax, are benefiting from that £200,000. Without going to poor Mr. Butler, who is at his wits' end just now, we have here money which we ought to spend in the proper way. I hope that the Lord President, without being sordid—

LORD WOOLTON

I hope that I did not say that I was sordid.

LORD CALVERLEY

I agree that the Lord President is not sordid but he said that he was talking of sordid matters. The Lord President puts such a silver lining on the most sordid things that we think he is presenting us with another golden opportunity. I want to assure the Government that we are a bit "fed up." Great technical institutions have been looked upon as if they were of the Lazarus clan, and can get only the crumbs from the Universities Grants Committee. They are like the favourite parson of the late President Coolidge who said of sin that he was "agin it." So are they "agin" these technical institutions, and if there is a vested interest to look after the universities they will go on being "agin" them.

The point I am trying to make is that some of the great technical institutions of this country are suffering from a sense of frustration. I myself started in an optimistic way in 1924, and I am not filled with gloom. The noble Lord, the Lord President of the Council, fills me with a great sense of happiness in looking forward to brighter times for our technical colleges. We want these men or women in our chemistry departments in the textile trade. If they can prove that they are worthy of a degree they should not be fobbed off with a certificate, or something like that. I have had to cut down what I wanted to say to your Lordships, but I ask the Government not to take this debate—as I am sure they will not—simply as another debate but to follow the advice of the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley. I have listened to all the noble Viscount's Budget speeches, and he always had the same peroration: "Mr. Speaker, Sir, the same mixture as before," when he had given us a heavy dose of taxation. But this afternoon I believe that he is on the side of the angels. I believe that the Lord President is on the side of the angels, and I am certain that in the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell, the Paymaster General (I know him of old) the technical colleges have a firm friend for the development of applied science.

THE EARL OF LUCAN

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Wise I beg to move that this debate be now adjourned.

Moved, That the debate be now adjourned.—(The Earl of Lucan.)

On Question, Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned accordingly.

House adjourned at five minutes past seven o'clock.