SCIENTIFIC POLICY

HL Deb 09 November 1960 vol 226 cc405-76

3.3 p.m.

LORD SHACKLETON rose to call attention to the Report for 1959–60 of the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy (Cmnd. 1167), and to move for papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I would first express some regret at the shortage of notice, but the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, will agree that we are having this debate primarily to provide him, as well as other Lords, with an opportunity to discuss a matter which is of great importance and urgency. I would also express regret at the absence of my noble friend Lord Taylor, who was responsible on the last occasion for initiating such a very interesting debate on science in civil life, when we really had our first opportunity to have a look at the noble Viscount in his capacity as Minister for Science. On that occasion both Lord Taylor and I welcomed the noble Viscount's appointment, and I have no reason as yet to express anything but pleasure that he has taken on this task. We have not yet had time to be disappointed, but I shall have some things to say on which, in the course of time—and we hope at not too great a length of time—we shall see the noble Viscount showing the determination, the enthusiasm and, indeed, the straight and firm speaking of which we all know he is so capable; and we hope that in this debate we shall perhaps succeed a little in strengthening his hands.

My Lords, this is a very wide subject and I propose on this occasion to keep rather more closely to the Report because there are so many things that have to be said which we shall have to take up on other occasions. The most important part of the Report deals with a review of the balance of scientific effort in resources and manpower in the civil field, and this was, of course, initiated by the noble Viscount himself. As the Council points out, it was a very difficult task, and I am not sure how far, in fact, they have succeeded in carrying it out. Although I do not expect the noble Viscount to suggest that he is disappointed, I think this is really too big a task for this Council to have solved on one occasion. However, they have successfully initiated an approach to planning and an understanding and co-ordination of our needs in this matter, and I hope that where the noble Viscount is not satisfied—not satisfied, that is, in the sense that the Advisory Council have not been able in the time to give him all the answers he wants—he will not fail and will not hold back in asking for more information. It may well be necessary that this type of review should be extended and extra machinery provided, in order to get answers to some of the questions which we know the noble Viscount would like to have.

One of the earlier statements made by the Scientific Advisory Council was that a country's wealth and power are today largely determined by the extent of its scientific knowledge and its capacity to use that knowledge. This seems to me to be a pretty clear statement behind social principles which I hope will not lead to political division, although they must, if they are to be applied, inevitably carry some recognition of the need for planning, and some recognition, too, of the fact that it may be necessary to interfere in the operation of private industry—or, indeed, in other directions, like research, and so on—if we are to achieve the objectives that this statement suggests.

At the same time I accept, and we must all accept, the total impossibility of planning all our scientific efforts. It would not only be impossible but exceedingly dangerous, and would lead us along paths that I do not think any of us would wish to go. As the Council say, disequilibrium is of the essence of scientific progress. None the less, they have revealed some of the gaps and have drawn attention to some broad needs about which we shall hope to hear something of the intentions of the Government or, at least, in due course, to get reports on what the Research Councils are going to do about the suggestions.

Our difficulty is that we do not know what many of these suggestions are. We are told in the Report that they have been referred, and it is a little disappointing that, in this important matter, so many of the suggestions which have been put forward have just been—I will not say shuffled off, but have been referred to other Research Councils. It would have been interesting to know what they were, and I would suggest to the noble Viscount that he should consider before next year whether, While sticking to the present form of Report, there should not be added appendices and a good deal more of the background information on which the Council base their conclusions. At the moment the Report is rather too sparse for us to judge some of the suggestions they have put forward. The words of the Report are that the … Research Councils and other governmental agencies … are the appropriate bodies to interpret our recommendations in terms of programmes of work". We should like to know what those recommendations are.

There is another point very early on in the Report of the Advisory Council to which I should like to refer, and although I have criticisms to make, they are none the less governed and controlled by a strong sense of appreciation of the importance of the work of these very busy and distinguished people in this Council. But I do not think I can allow to go unchallenged a statement that is made in paragraph 5—namely, that theories that such progress can be produced merely by pouring in money and resources are without foundation". This is one of those over-simplified statements that may be dangerous for scientists. Politicians are more aware that one can make sweeping statements capable of being misinterpreted. The Report suggests, quite properly, that Basic advances in science depend upon the creative individual". but goes on to suggest—although this may not be the intention—that massive support of the kind that particularly the Russians have been giving is not likely to yield results, whereas the evidence has been clear, particularly in the field of space research, that massive support and reinforcement has been able to yield remarkable results. This is what was done during the war. I make this point only because I think that we must be very careful to steer an exact line in these matters. Of course it is the individual who creates and achieves a success. What is distressing is the extent to which the individual is handicapped on occasion by not having resources at all. This is a matter to which the noble Lord, Lord Adrian, referred to in our last debate, and I shall have something to say about this later.

One of the most important of the Council's recommendations is for greatly increased contact and interaction between different fields of scientific activity, where the frontiers of traditional disciplines have already been crossed. Again, we are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Adrian, for this point about the need for "hybrid" studies. We should note the implication in the Report that the universities, due to the nature of the organisation of scientific studies, have not perhaps been so flexible as they might have been. Again, the shortage of money for developing these "hybrid" studies may be the explanation, and action has had to be taken by the Government on occasions, through the D.S.I.R., to stimulate some of these studies. It is interesting to note the comparison that the Council make with the United States of America. To our regret—because we are apt to consider that our own universities are very much better in many ways—we find that the Americans are much more flexible and have been much more successful in making adjustments for crossing the frontiers of traditional disciplines.

I should like to turn to one of the main matters with which the Report is concerned—namely, the amount of effort that has gone into science and technology and the increase that has steadily taken place year by year. The figures of expenditure on page 4 look encouraging. There has been a considerable increase over the last three or four years, but it is difficult for any of us to say whether it is enough. A comparison is made with the United States, and I should be interested to know whether other noble Lords think that this comparison is valid. The comparison shows that at the moment we are spending 2.35 per cent, of our gross national income, at cost, in research and development, as compared with 2.74 per cent. by the United States. Of course, the total United States effort is incomparably bigger—about nine times bigger —because of their much larger gross national product. This is an extremely important figure, on which I hope that further investigation will take place. As it is, we are left with a fairly comfortable figure, and I wonder whether this rough estimate is valid. It illustrates the case, which the noble Viscount mentioned, for more statistics and more careful investigation of figures in this field, if we are to come to the right conclusions.

Other aspects of these figures show that there is still not enough research being done by private industry. We must acknowledge that there is a good deal of improvement, but there are black spots, to which the noble Viscount, in the most forthright way—and we admire him for it—has himself drawn attention. The problem of persuading industry which is reluctant to do research is a difficult one for any Government, whether Conservative or Labour, and I think that it is one which is bound to occupy a good deal of our attention during the next few years.

Apart from what the Government have to do in stimulating research, there is also the problem of supporting existing institutions, some of which are really "up against it" so far as support is needed for carrying out their work. A week or two ago, when I was in Oxford, a distinguished scientist, a Fellow of the Royal Society, told me that they could not even buy a tape recorder. All the extra money had gone to paying laboratory assistants in order to retain them at all. At Oxford the Clarendon Laboratory had lost nearly half its staff, and therefore any money available had to go in keeping them. It is ludicrous that they are not given all the help they need in order to keep enormously important manpower and carry out their work. It seems that some of the universities—and I have heard it said that it is striking in some of the older ones; though I do not believe it—are up against the ceiling as regards capital expenditure. When the noble Viscount continues to develop his activities—and I notice in particular his interest in the organisation of Government research, of which we shall hear something when the Zuckerman Report comes out—I wonder whether he ought not to interest himself in this matter. Somehow or other, some funds from somewhere have to be ploughed back if we are to increase the efficiency of the scientific manpower in our universities.

One of the more difficult and, in a way, disappointing parts of this Report is the failure to distinguish between research and development, although that may be impossible in practice. I think that the noble Viscount was hoping to have some guidance on this matter. I do not wish to throw back to him his words in the very valuable talk he gave to the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, one of the best we have had, but on that occasion it was clear that he was expecting rather more guidance from the Council on this matter. When we look at paragraphs 20 to 26, we find it impossible to separate research and development. So much of what the noble Viscount is trying to do depends on this ability to analyse and sort out the difference between research and development that I must express some regret at the way the Report deals with this point—a regret which I am not the only one to feel. I was confused when I read these paragraphs, and when I talked with other people, including some distinguished scientists, I found that they were equally confused.

It may well be that this is again a matter on which more thinking must be done. I do not think, however, that we should draw the conclusion which we are all apt to draw, that necessarily the proportion is wrong. We are well aware that development tends to lag in this country, but there are signs that in some fields development may have gone too fast and we have laid ourselves open to all sorts of long-term ill effects because research has not kept up with the application.

I should like to refer particularly to the application of new chemicals in agriculture. If some of your Lordships experience difficulty in finding foxes in the course of this winter, it may be attributable to some of the developments in the matter of chemicals such as dialdrin. This is of really serious consequence: not that we need be so desperately concerned about the foxes; but there are other developments of pesticides of the long-term effect of which we are not at all aware. There are firms manufacturing these chemicals and spending vast sums on development and they take no responsibility for the effect. I am rather inclined to think that the Ministry of Agriculture is itself also to blame. We may make precisely the same mistakes in our countryside that the industrialists made in an earlier age. If one upsets the balance of nature for a short-term benefit, one wants to be very sure that the consequences are of a kind that we can at least make an effort to foresee, and, indeed, that we should foresee.

The danger of monoculture, concentrating on one thing and wiping out everything that is not relevant to that particular production, is that you may produce all sorts of peculiar facts: an area where there would normally be as many as 5,000 species of plant and animal will be completely changed. We" have seen the consequence of this in the cocoa crop. There D.D.T. or gamexine (I am not sure which), was used for killing a virus carried by a small coccid-like aphis which was protected by ants. There the application was made on the ants, but in the process this very successful attempt destroyed a number of controlling predators, and the result is that five new insect pests have broken out, one of which is a moth so little known that it has never been put into a family and is unidentified. If development is to be built up, let us remember the importance of a fundamental research going alongside with it. This is one of the borderlines of research. It is one of the places where we need one of the hybrid sciences.

I would refer again, as I did last year, to the need for the support of ecology. Before the war this country decisively led the world in the field of ecology, but now there is little support going into it. Important work is going on, and that is made clear in this Report. We have here a recommendation that there should be a new Research Council in regard to natural resources. Well, this directly involves, among other things, the extension of our resources for ecologists. I think it is not too farfetched to say that floods could be avoided if we understood the proper use of land; but we still do not know with certainty how to deal with this problem. There is still the simple idea that if you grow trees on a catchment area you will go a long way to solving your problem. Yet research carried out by the Nature Conservancy has in fact produced exactly the opposite result. One research carried out by Ovington suggested that sheep grazing in certain circumstances might be better than trees.

This is really of fundamental importance to us all; it is fundamental not in the long run but in the short run. Yet extraordinarily little is being done in regard to it. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will urgently take up the suggestion that another Research Council should be appointed to consider natural resources, but that he will not set up another Research Council but give the job in the first instance to the Nature Conservancy. They are already working in this field and are concerned with water, trees, fish and many of the matters mentioned by the Advisory Council. It is a subject of real importance. Furthermore, if I may go back to the ecologists, this is again one of the fields which is likely greatly to influence some of the other sciences. The work of the ecologists is of surprising interest to statisticians, and it may well be of value as providing precisely the fieldwork necessary for the development of statistics of a kind where, on the whole, there is evidence—and there is evidence in this Report—that we are lagging behind.

I have digressed a little to mention this subject, but I wanted to do so because it helps to illustrate some of the factors behind this Report and the need for much more consideration in detail of these matters. It is going to be difficult for those of your Lordships, like myself, who are not scientists. It is fortunate that we have a few scientists in this House: indeed, it may be that one of the jobs of the noble Viscount will be to urge that more scientific Peers be created, so that in this matter we can give expert knowledge and that those of us who are not expert can at least be helped.

I turn now to the section of the Report concerned with pure science. Here some interesting points are made. The particular point is emphasised that full support should be given to work already begun. This I would strongly endorse, although we must not shrink from cutting off the support if it should prove to be unprofitable. There is the danger that any scientific development may be of great interest but we do not expect it necessarily to be useful and therefore no criterion can be applied to it. I think, broadly, therefore, we must continue very much in fields where the work carried on is at least interesting to other scientists who may not be in that field. There are certain proposals for increased activity in particular fields. Oceanography is mentioned regularly. I do not know what the Government are doing about that. Obviously this is particularly suitable as a field for international activity. Oceanographers have always been an internationally-minded group.

There is also reference to taxonomy. Here It have a personal interest, because I have been told that some of the scientific results that we brought back from an expedition to Borneo 30 years ago have still not been worked out. The British Museum is full of collections which call for biological taxonomists, people who will do the detailed classification and work. This is necessary for the support of the biological sciences. We have some account in this Report of improved development in regard to astronomy, seismology and certain other matters; and I suppose there will also be support for radio astronomy and Jodrell Bank, and any debts that may still be outstanding will no doubt be paid—perhaps they have already been paid. At any rate, it seems to be one of our most notable shop-window bits of science, and it is unfortunate that it should still be in the red and that the hire purchase bill has not yet been paid.

THF LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE (VISCOUNT HAILSHAM)

My Lords, this is a pure myth to which currency is constantly being given. There are mo debts and, what is more, there have not been for a very long time.

LORD SHACKLETON

I am delighted to hear it. That is one myth the noble Viscount has disposed of, and I hope he will dispose of some of the others, too.

On the section on applied science and technology—and here I should like to come back to what the noble Viscount has himself been saying—I would draw attention to this serious deficiency over the whole field of civil engineering. I was going to ask the noble Viscount what he was going to do about the situation in shipbuilding in regard to research, and in the machine tools industry. I think I am right in saying that he has already said that the report on machine tools research is to be published.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

No. Perhaps it would be better if I dealt with it in my speech. What is to be published, either to-day or to-morrow or very soon, is the report of the Mitchell Committee set up by the Board of Trade. To some extent that supersedes the D.S.I.R. Report, all though on a slightly different subject matter. I never said that the D.S.I.R. Report in that field was going to he published.

LORD SHACKLETON

It is clear that there is a serious deficiency in certain fields of industry. One has only to read this Report and hear the words of the noble Viscount on this matter to know that not all industry is pulling its weight. Some are doing exceedingly well, and others are lagging. As the Report says, some of the industries which have relied on traditional craft—and by this I think they have in mind particularly the Shipbuilding industry—are far behind what people competent to judge think they should be able to do. It has been estimated chat there are only 50 scientific 10,000 men has only four graduates.

Here we are in difficulty again, because graduates in the whole of the shipbuilding industry, and that one firm employing the estimate of technologists varies from industry to industry. The qualification in one industry may be a great deal lower—and I think this is true of the shipbuilding industry—than in certain other industries, and the situation to that extent is worse even than is suggested in these Reports. This is again a matter for which there is need for further investigation, as is the whole question of scientific manpower, on which the Council has little to say so far as the total is concerned.

In the last debate on this subject it was suggested—I admit I suggested it from the figures I had looked at, and nobody denied it to be so, and I think it was correct—from the figures of the Scientific Advisory Council, that there is likely to be a shortage of 5,000 or 6,000 scientists and technologists in 1962. It is arguable that these figures are extraordinarily rough. One thing is certain: that the number estimated to be available is likely to be lower than the real need, and that industry has shown a consistent tendency to underestimate its needs. I think this is something which we ought to have reported on every year. We ought to have a progress report on this matter, and in particular in regard to the proportion—the question which the noble Viscount himself hoped to have answered in this Report.

There are many interesting matters in this Report that I shall have to leave to some of the other noble Lords who are to speak, but I should like to ask one further question, and that is how the Government hope to carry out the suggestions in regard to development contracts for research purposes in civil industry. This has been urged, as the Council has reported, on a number of occasions. It was urged, I think, in 1952, 1954 and 1956. How many research contracts are there of this kind, and what further steps can be taken to carry out something on which the Advisory Council lays very great stress? They say: We hope that early progress will be achieved, as a solution to this problem could help to bring about a substantial improvement in the field of the practical development of the results of civil scientific research. There are a number of remarks of this kind. Research-mindedness is the characteristic of the go-ahead industries", and they then compare the position with other industries. This is a matter for Which the Government must take responsibility. They must take responsibility for the fact that so little has yet been done, and I hope they will tell us what is going to be done. We appreciate that there are difficulties, but obviously the Council reckon that these difficulties can be overcome. Whether the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, who is to speak with great experience, now that his lips are unsealed and he is no longer chairman of the National Research Development Corporation, can throw some light on this matter I do not know, but it is one on which I hope the Minister is going to act, and tell us how he proposes to act.

This brings us back to the noble Viscount's own position: the fact that, as Minister for Science, he is not himself in a position directly to achieve these things. There are some sops to the noble Viscount if the finds any of his colleagues a little inclined to resist these suggestions. The Council say that coordinated effort such as they propose is entirely compatible with a free economy. I am not sure whether the activities of Mr. Sandys in the aircraft industry were strictly compatible with a free economy. But I do not think we need worry about these words. What it is compatible with is a free society. The Government now have this responsibility, not only of action in industry, but of coordinating research or persuading others to coordinate research (and I share the noble Viscount's view that the more he can get others to do it, the better) throughout the country and, if necessary, internationally. The example of C.E.R.N., the international body concerned with atomic energy development, is evidence that this type of co-ordination and international co-operation can be achieved. There is much that we have to do in this country, and we shall do it more successfully if we have the guidance, not only of the scientists who are active in this field, but of a strong Minister who is prepared to fight these matters out.

I think the last question which we shall ask the noble Viscount each year is: What is the Minister for Science for? We are satisfied that he has made a good start, and we should like to hear much more how he is going to interpret these difficult responsibilities. In particular we shall judge him not only by the very brave words he has spoken on a number of occasions but by the success that we believe him to be capable of achieving if he really shows the determination we know he has in bringing about the changes and developments which are proposed in this Report. I beg to move for Papers.

3.38 p.m.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I should like to apologise for the fact that in the first week or ten days in this Session it has fallen to my lot to speak from this Box so often. This is not at all my conception of how the Leadership of the House should work, and I am sure that your Lordships will acquit me of wanting to hear the sound of my own voice. I hope that after the Monckton debate in the middle of next week is over, your Lordships will perhaps hear rather less from me for a time. But I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, not only for his comprehensive and friendly introduction of this extremely wide and difficult subject, but for introducing the opportunity for a debate in this House.

I feel that it falls to me, now that this Ministry is held in this House, to explain at intervals of whatever frequency is agreeable to your Lordships the way in which this venture in the relationship between Government and science is going. I think that the publication of this Report affords a suitable opportunity to look at the situation once again. I hope that there will be others. After all, as the noble Lord has said, the Report this year covers quite a narrow phase, or, rather, a limited phase, because it covers, in a sense, the whole field. For instance, it does not cover the question of atomics at all. It does not say much about medicine or agricultural research. Therefore I would not think that a mere discussion upon the terms of this Report can really be enough Parliamentary discussion. Nevertheless, it puts the subject in a nutshell; it gives us an opportunity to take a bird's eye view, and I am grateful to the noble Lord for the way in which he has introduced the debate.

The noble Lord finished by referring to the responsibility of the Government and of my own Ministry. I think perhaps he would be wrong to look for very rapid results proceeding from a Ministry of this kind. In the field of science things take a very long time to build up. After all, we are concerned largely with the production of scientists, and that means a proper educational system. This is, of course, a responsibility of my right honourable friend, but something with which I obviously must be intimately concerned, especially as the education becomes more and more specialised and reaches the university level. Indeed, a very great part of this Report, Part II, deals, with scientific education. It takes, I suppose, a good 25 years to produce a scientist (and we shall not see the results of this Ministry in that respect for some time) and then, I suppose, ten years of useful work and decisive results, following the Fellowship of the Royal Society, and gradual absorption into the vast army of scientists who are now doing public work of one sort or another in one or more Committees which work for the Government and help to manage Government science.

I think the truth of this matter is that the responsibility of the Government for science is very similar to the responsibility of the Government which we discussed in relation to the universities. It has been accepted for a very long time now that the Government are responsible for seeing that the country has a proper system of university education. That has always been recognised by the universities themselves, although they have always, rightly, resisted any interference with the university independence. I think our responsibility for science is something rather similar. It is to see that the country is adequately provided with a fully active scientific life on an adequate scale—that the gaps are filled and that the work is being done. It is not to do the work ourselves.

So I am, I think, a little unlike other so-called co-ordinating Ministers, because dependent upon me there are a number of Research Councils whose responsibilities towards me and to Parliament are to see that so much of the work as is done under Government auspices is done properly; and therein my responsibility is more or less direct, since I have the power, should I care to exercise it, to direct those bodies. But, apart from that, it is, in relation to this debate, to see that the scientific life of this country is as it should be. And this covers a very wide field in which one has to inquire into education, into the universities, into industry, into Government research stations and into the whole subject of science and technology, as indeed I think the noble Lord has recognised in his speech.

The main organ for advising the Government on scientific policy is, of course, the Advisory Council whose Report is now under discussion by your Lordships. This Council, of course, is not a new body. But it is true that I attempted to give it, in a sense, a new importance when I was appointed Minister for Science over a year ago, and at any rate the greater part of this document which we are now discussing, Part I, was the result of an inquiry I made to the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy as to the whole state of our scientific effort, and particularly its balance and its completeness, which I thought had best be done at the outset of a new venture of this kind. I was glad to see that the authoritative writer in Nature this week approved both of the fact that I had remitted this issue to the Council and of the way in which the Council have responded to it. I am glad, too, to feel that this approach has on the whole met with a very wide response, not only inside the Advisory Council but also in the very numerous bodies of one sort or another, from the Royal Society downwards, who have provided the solid material on which this Report is based. The Royal Society, in particular, produced a most valuable memorandum. The noble Lord asked me to say, and I gladly do, that this is the way in which I shall continue to try to use the Advisory Council.

Of course, my Lords, this Report is the first of what one perhaps might call a new series. It takes the form of an Annual Report which naturally goes back throughout the life of the Council. I shall continue to try to feed the Council with questions, and I should hope that of its own initiative it will be fed with questions by its own members and also that others who are in touch with it, such as the Royal Society, will be able to keep it fed with a suitable series of questions which will enable it to discharge the advisory function to which I personally attach such very great importance. In particular, I was very happy to receive only a week ago the officers of the Royal Society, who very kindly offered to see in what way they could supplement the work of my office and of the Advisory Council, and I am looking into the question, with them, of how an even closer liaison can be brought about between the Royal Society and the various bodies for which I am responsible.

The Report is in different parts, and I at this stage in the debate I should like to say only a few things about each one of them. I asked the Advisory Council, apart from this general remit, to advise on the question of scientific education. They were, in addition, kind enough, at my request, to look into the question of the subject matter of the Crowther Report in relation to the teaching of science and technology in this country. I thought it important that the answers they gave should be published, although, of course, as the House will not have failed to note, they have been overtaken by events, and the Government, in the event, preferred the original findings of the Crowther Report to the particular findings of the Advisory Committee.

On school science curricula and specialisation, which I think is perhaps one of the most important subjects which we shall have to consider, the Council's views are as relevant as when they were written. I must say that they were simply and forcibly stated. In the view of the Council—and I am bound to add that it is also my own view—specialisation in these fields starts too early and is carried too far. This is one of the main reasons for the gulf between scientists and non-scientists; and even within science it creates an obstacle to cross-fertilisation between one science and another. The findings about school science curricula are most striking. They show that curricula are overloaded—I think they suggest sometimes almost to the state of a quarter—largely because new material is being constantly added without removal of the old; and there is excessive demand for remembered factual knowledge which can have a deadening effect on teaching. There is, therefore, in their view—and again I am bound to say in my own—need for a thorough examination of syllabuses to see how they can be lightened and simplified.

It is fair for the House to ask, as the noble Lord has done, in this and in other fields: what are you going to do about it? It is quite clear that any radical improvement in such things as science teaching must take time, and will need the good will and active co-operation of a great number of independent and semi-independent bodies, some Governmental, some university and some connected with the local education authorities and the schools. In theory, of course, the schools are free to determine their own curricula. In practice, we know that the curricula of sixth forms are very largely determined by the universities through their own entrance requirements formulated in terms of the G.C.E. examination and through scholarship requirements. The Advisory Council have drawn attention to the disproportionate effect which some Oxford and Cambridge college scholarship examinations produce in encouraging over-specialisation in sixth forms. This is, of course, a matter for the colleges, but I am sure that they are already considering very carefully what the Council have said.

The question of syllabuses for the G.C.E. Advanced level is also of great importance in this connection. My right honourable friend the Minister of Education, with whom I am in close touch in this matter, has recently received a report from the Secondary Schools Examinations Council. Syllabuses are constantly reviewed and revised by examining bodies, and a number of bodies have recently made reductions. Nevertheless, the Secondary Schools Examinations Council are strongly of the opinion that the time has come for a further concerted attempt to reduce syllabuses, and they are seeking the cooperation of the universities in setting to work on this task. I am sure that they will have the good will and cooperation of scientists both inside and outside the universities.

Then there is the question of university entrance requirements and of the relation of specialist studies to general education, both among scientists and non-scientists. These, of course, are equally matters of debate in university circles. There are involved here fundamental educational issues which have to be discussed outside the Government machine. As a more practical step, the Vice-Chancellors have started on a full review of existing requirements, particularly as they affect the schools. I am sure that they have the problem of over-specialisation. much in mind, and will not overlook the fact that pressure on candidates to attain a high level in their specialist subjects, in order to obtain a place in a chosen university honours course, is one of the main factors in over-specialisation. Individual universities are also now in process of creating special machinery for the purpose of keeping in touch with the schools. This is a development which could be particularly helpful for science. It is, I think almost impossible to exaggerate the importance to science, and through science to the wellbeing of this country, of carrying these operations through to the stage at which curricula present a real stimulus to the minds and imagina- tions of prospective scientists and give a wider training and more common ground with people other than those of their own disciplines.

The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, quite rightly insisted that some of the recommendations in this Report were of a rather general kind. I am not quite sure that that is as much a criticism as he would have had us think. Obviously, as I have said, a great number of these recommendations can be carried out only inside the universities. My function was to some extent discharged, at any rate in the first degree, when I caused these questions to be asked. The members of the Advisory Council are themselves very closely in touch indeed with the universities, of which many of them are members, wish the University Grants Committees, and with the Royal Society of which they are often members; and I think the right inference to draw from the somewhat indefinite character of some of these proposals is that they are actively under discussion in independent fields as a result of the inquiry which has taken place, and that this is probably the reason why the Council did not feel they were in a position to say anything more definite about them at that stage.

I turn now to Pant I of the Report. The first two questions to which I wanted an answer were, first of all, whether the general arrangement to which we had committed ourselves in the past was a satisfactory arrangement. That, the Advisory Council came to the conclusion, was the case—I refer now to paragraph 36. But I would say to the noble Lord that, in detail, the particular arrangement of the rapidly increasing work within the scope of the Research Councils is a matter for further consideration. In the Report the Advisory Council draw attention to one or more deficiencies in the use of natural resources to which the noble Lord referred. This is a very striking view, and I would think that probably one of the things which the Council should be asked to consider in the fairly near future is the detailed pattern in this respect. Before we come to setting up a new Research Council we ought, I think, to have a clear idea of how it will fit into the general scheme, and what sort of work one would ask it to do. In the meantime, I agree with the noble Lord that the matters which he mentioned relating to ecology are very much within the existing terms of reference of the Nature Conservancy, and they are, in conjunction with the Agricultural Research Council and other bodies carrying on work so that time is not being wasted upon any of them.

The second question that I wanted the Council to consider was the general size of our scientific effort. There, I think, the Report is rather encouraging. I refer, as the noble Lord did, to the Statistical Report beginning at paragraph 9. I have been responsible for civil science, either as Lord President or as Minister for Science, since the summer of 1957, and although I should be the last to say that finance is an altogether adequate measure of the value of these things, it is rather encouraging to be told that the field for which one has been responsible has grown by a factor of about 40 per cent, in three years; that the balance, which was well down against civil science and in favour of defence science, is gradually beginning to be redressed, and that the interest being shown by private industry, at a time when Government science is increasing on the scale at which it is increasing, has developed so much that their proportion of the total figure has also increased in relation to that of Government. These, I think, are very encouraging signs, and I feel that one is entitled to a certain feeling of gratification that this has been found to be the case.

I also found it gratifying that the comparison with the United States of America in the realm of civil science has shown that a relatively similar proportion of the gross national product in each case is being spent. One always knows how dangerous it is to make comparisons between the requirements, of one country and another in these matters; but in my view it is inevitable that we should do so; and unless we do make some cross-check of this kind it is very difficult to know what kind of yardstick one can apply to our own efforts.

I was gratified to know that the figure at which we are now actually spending is approximately proportionate to that in the United States. I would, however, make one general warning—and I think this was apparent to the noble Lord. Some of the figures in this part of the Report are difficult to calculate exactly. I believe it is important not to overestimate their exact accuracy. Many of them are estimates. The figures of industrial expenditure on research and industrial development, for instance, are based on a sample survey of costs. Inevitably, therefore, there must be a margin of error, and some allowance must be made for improvements in coverage and technique between the earlier survey, to which this Report refers, and the later survey. All the same, with all those allowances, I feel that I am entitled to claim that the Report is encouraging.

I turn now to the question of the deficiencies to which the noble Lord has referred. The Council themselves point out that we cannot hope to be in the first flight in every field of science at any one time. That, I think, would be impossible for any nation, however wealthy or whatever the resources it might have at its disposal. But there are some fields in which the Council regard it as important or urgent on national grounds to build up a greater effort than that which we are showing at the moment. Those include, in the fields of pure science, pure mathematics, oceanography, astronomy and seismology. I need hardly overestimate the central position of pure mathematics. It is obviously extremely important, and even urgent, to correct the deficiencies to which the Council refer. More especially I must point out, of course, that the deficiencies, except in so far as they exist in the school curricula or methods of teaching mathematics, exist very largely at the universities. One of my first actions on receiving this Report was to draw the attention of the various responsible bodies to those of the findings which I thought particularly concerned them; and I know that the universities and the University Grants Committee will be taking this Report into account when they deal with things of this kind.

The noble Lord also referred to oceanography. As the noble Lord knows, Her Majesty's Government have, since the war, financed the work of the National Institute of Oceanography under the supervision of the National Oceanographic Council, of which the Civil Lord of the Admiralty is President, to the extent of £1½ million. We recently approved the construction of a new oceanographic ship for the Institute, costing about £750,000. I would agree with the noble Lord that oceanography is essentially an international study and capable of international co-operation. I think it is true that its world-wide importance has been increasingly recognised in the last year or two. The Royal Society have now set up a British National Committee for Oceanic Research, and this Committee will consider further the rôle which the United Kingdom can play. I hope to have the opinion of this Committee shortly. The field is also one which concerns a wide range of Government Departments, and discussions have been carried on in the meantime both in this country and at international conventions.

I do not think the noble Lord made more than a passing reference to astronomy, which is also a subject to which the Council have drawn attention. In particular, the Report remarks on the insufficiency of existing resources in the Southern Hemisphere. Various proposals involving international cooperation are being considered, and through my office we are in touch with developments, as we are, also, through the British National Committee on Astronomy of the Royal Society. I think it is important that there should be an early decision on this subject. The Council also emphasise the importance of making the best use of the existing telescope and equipment maintained at Pretoria by the Radcliffe Trustees. In this way an immediate contribution can be made to improve resources for the exploration of the Southern sky. Her Majesty's Government have accepted this recommendation, and specific proposals for improved financial help to the work at this observatory are under consideration by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.

In seismology, the Council recommend that seismological centres should be established at Cambridge and Edinburgh. This is a matter, in the first place, for the universities concerned. I understand that they have it under active consideration, and as your Lordships know a matter of that kind will be dealt with in the coming Quinquennial Review. Whilst I am on the subject of university science I might perhaps refer to what the noble Lord said on the need for, and the difficulty of obtaining, money for the day-to-day administration of scientific departments in the universities. This is a matter to which I have given some attention. I cannot pretend to have found as yet a very happy answer. As the noble Lord will be aware, it is primarily a question for the University Grants Committee.

I think it is fair to say—and I am anxious not to say anything which might cause any offence outside my own sphere—that scientists in the universities are sometimes dissatisfied at the kind of thing to which the noble Lord also drew attention. At the same time it is a fundamental rule of the University Grants Committee not to give what they call "earmarked" grants, and the difficulty therein arises of how to ensure that greater resources can be made available without earmarking the grant for that purpose. I suppose this is a difficulty which is made only to be overcome, because it is, I think, a difficulty which one should not allow to daunt one in dealing with a problem which ought to be solved. It is, however, a very real difficulty, and the noble Lord can be sure that, in so far as it rests with me to solve it, what he says in this matter has my sympathy.

I come now to the applied sciences, and in a sense this is a field in which the public, not unnaturally, have the most intense interest. The Report touches on one of the weaknesses—and in my view one of the more important of the basic weaknesses—apparent in this country today. This is the shortage of qualified engineers, which I think has been only briefly and partly brought out by the Reports of the Manpower Committee of the Advisory Council which are available and appear from time to time; and also the insufficiency of engineering research in the universities and in industry. The Council described this weakness as the "kernel of the problem" and I think in many ways it is. Because however highly developed our pure sciences and basic sciences may be, it is more and more coming to be true (I think it always was true) that its achievements are stultified unless, side by side with our basic science, there is a. strong, flourishing technology which can develop applications of new scientific knowledge for industrial use.

We have in this country some industries in which scientific progress is rapidly reflected in technological advance. There are others (not seldom those older established) which have flourished on the sound basis of craft skills and commercial experience. But some of these, at any rate, are now threatened by their competitors in countries which place more emphasis on technological training and research than we have done. Statistical comparisons, again, are difficult and dangerous. Graduation, for instance, as I have more than once had occasion to point out here, does not mean in one country what it means in another country. But the figures for engineering graduates are so startling, even with the allowance one cares to make for differing definitions, that I cannot help referring to them.

In 1958 the universities in the United Kingdom produced just over 2,000 graduates in engineering. To this we ought to add, in all fairness, another 4,000 who have qualified in other ways. That is in 1958. In the United States graduations alone total nearly 37,000 a year: eighteen times as many graduates as in this country, and six times as many if you care to take the figure for qualified engineers; although, to conclude the comparison, the population is only 3½ times as great as our own. I cannot believe that the disparity in the requirements is as great as that, whatever qualifications one may give to the figures.

LORD CITRINE

My Lords, could the noble Viscount tell us whether there are any reliable comparable figures in regard to Soviet Russia?

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I was just about to do so. Again we must be careful about using the word "comparable", but in Russia diplomas of higher education in engineering, including degrees, amounted to some 89,000 in 1958—compared with 2,000, or, to take the bigger figure, 6,000 in the United Kingdom and 37,000 in the United States. I may say that I am taking those figures from U.N.E.S.C.O. sources. The Russians have thirteen times our total output of engineers although their population, again to complete the comparison, is only four times that of our own. There, again, I want to put this extremely moderately. I suspect that if I were a responsible official in Russia, with my present opinions I should think they were probably producing more than they required for a balanced society. But what I do not believe, in the light of these figures, is that our production is nearly enough.

No one doubts the quality of engineering in the United States. Less is, of course, known about the Russian system. But I would say—I expect the House would say—that Russian achievements suggest that it produces engineers of a very high order. An American authority recently declared that in relation to total employment the United Kingdom has as many pure scientists as the United States; but the same authority pointed out that it has only half as many technologists. It is a sobering thought, perhaps, that one institution, the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology, probably produces more engineers than the United Kingdom. My Lords, I feel justified in rather underlining the importance of these figures because I have come to the conclusion that this is perhaps the most important part of this Report and the most important fact for study.

What can we do to strengthen our position? We already have plans for doubling the output of qualified scientists and engineers. We are currently reviewing our estimates of supply and of needs over the next ten to fifteen years. The Council's Report has some valuable advice on this topic. It points to the part which the colleges of advanced technology and our growing younger universities can play in filling the gaps in technological education and in developing technological research. It suggests that the facilities already existing in Government establishments should be used more than they are now to provide advanced technological training. But I would not say that this is enough. The problem will not be solved until it is recognised that this is a field which ought to attract, as it certainly does abroad, a due proportion of the best intellects in the country.

I must say—and again I am anxious to cause no offence outside my own field —that engineering should enjoy a far higher status in the universities than it has hitherto been allowed to do; and only the universities, I must emphasise, can bring this about. Again, I would be cautious about this—I know the arguments on both sides, but I see most of this from the outside. I can remember the totally false atmosphere of complacency towards science which existed in my youth on the part of arts students. That has died out among most of us. We know we were wrong, those of us who studied the humanities, and I think this is generally recognised in the present generation. But I cannot help comparing the attitude towards engineering of some of the higher-grade scientists in universities with that attitude towards the sciences which I remember so well on the part of, say, a very highly-developed classical specialist. I am wondering whether there should not be a revised attitude in that matter.

The Report touches on many other technological fields where our research effort needs to be strengthened. The importance of the development of materials of improved performance is one of them, and the desirability of exploiting our coal resources to the utmost is another. It mentions the importance of furthering the progress of automation in industry and singles out—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, would rejoice at this, in view of his Question to-day—the problems of noise, and industrial economics, as topics where the research effort might with profit be intensified.

The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, raised a subject in which I have tried to interest myself very much: the subject of the D.S.I.R. Reports into individual industries. Broadly speaking, there are two to date which need discussion. They are the Report into the machine tools industry and the Report into the shipbuilding industry. Both are Reports, not into the industry generally, but into the research and scientific aspect of it. I should first like to establish the importance which both the Council and I attach to these Reports. They are the product of a section of the D.S.I.R. Council called the Economic Section—very small, and deliberately kept small —whose purpose is to conduct or commission in universities studies of this kind. I think that primarily the purpose of these Reports is to advise the Research Council (that is to say the D.S.I.R. itself) from time to time and as required on the economic aspects of their scientific research and upon their particular research programmes, and to enable them to advise industry upon what they may regard as their research requirements. It is in no sense designed primarily as a means of finding fault with industry or to pillory particular industries as being backward; quite the contrary. The idea is to help it. Nor is it in the ordinary sense a Government inquiry, the ordinary result of which would naturally be a published Report. The object of these Reports is to put us in a state of knowledge about a subject which, without inquiry, we are naturally not able to study.

Each one has proceeded on a slightly different basis. The Machine Tools Report was compiled with the full co-operation of the industry, and contained such a mass of confidential information from individual firms that an undertaking had to be give that it would not be published without the consent of the industry itself. It has, I think, already yielded very important results. It brought to light, certainly for the first time to my mind, that the educational pattern for the production of engineers in our universities and colleges was really not particularly suitable and helpful to the machine-tool industry; and I think that one of the first pieces of action to emerge from this Report is likely to be that new courses will be available, so that there will be less cause than heretofore for not employing scientists of adequate calibre.

It brought to light forcibly the need for a research association; and, in the result, one is in the course of being formed. It brought to light, I think, the need for development on certain lines, and in a day or two there will be published the Report of the Committee under Sir Steuart Mitchell, which was held under different Government auspices a little later than the D.S.I.R. Report which I have been discussing, which I think will emphasise that particular need. My Lords, I do not want to take up any more of your Lordships' time than is necessary, but in a moment I should like to say a word about research and development contracts.

LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH

My Lords, could the noble Viscount say whether the Report on the shipbuilding industry is to be published?

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I am coming to that. I am afraid I feel a little guilty about the length of this speech, but, as the noble Lord has invited me, I will deal with the other of the two Reports. That information was not acquired on quite the same confidential basis as the first one; that is to say, I do not regard the D.S.I.R. as having given an undertaking that it should not be published. But, naturally, having regard to the purpose of the Report, their first inclination, and their first duty, is to discuss it with the industry. The industry has shown a marked disinclination towards publication of the document, which, factually, they do not wholly accept. My own feeling is that I should be guilty of a breach of faith, or at least of courtesy, if, while discussions are current as to what can be said about the Report and what shall be done as a result of it, I were suddenly to publish the document.

I must tell the House that I personally have always favoured publication of these documents. Exaggerated rumours undoubtedly fly about if they are not published, and sometimes unauthorised versions appear in print. Therefore I personally have always favoured publication, but I should far rather feel that I was acting with the consent of all concerned than feel that I was acting against the will of those concerned, where the main object is the achievement of results and not the publication of new facts.

I must say to the House, too, that the ultimate decision as to whether these Reports should or should not be published must rest with the Council. Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, knows, I have the right to direct the Council; but he held the position of Lord President not very long ago, and he would almost certainly agree with me, I feel, that, although I might express my opinion on these issues in a friendly way, it would not be the kind of thing about which the Lord President's direction, or the direction of the Minister for Science, would be appropriate if, in all the circumstances, the Council came to the decision that they did not feel able to publish in any given case. However, that is the only news I can give about this. I will now answer briefly, if I may, the question about research contracts and will then sit down.

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, before the noble Viscount leaves that subject, may I ask whether when he refers to the decision being that of the Council he is referring to the Scientific and Industrial Research Council?

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

Yes, my Lords, I am. It is the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the body we have set up. Since the Act of Parliament in 1956, it now has executive functions; and whereas I do possess the power to direct, and therefore must accept Parliamentary responsibility, I should not myself feel that this was the kind of subject on which I should exercise that power in any way, and I should not seek to override in any way their better judgment.

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, before we leave this point, which is a very important one and one which I think we shall need to examine in more detail, may I say that I certainly am not disagreeing with the noble Viscount's view that he ought not to direct D.S.I.R., which is, of course, one of the Research Councils in regard to this matter. We are not discussing direct action against any of these industries. But if there is matter of public importance, I hope the Council will not be left in doubt—and I am sure it has not been left in doubt—as to the noble Viscount's personal view, that as much as possible should be revealed; and I hope that they, for their part, do not feel that it is not for them to publish but that it is for the Minister to direct them. I hope there will be no misunderstanding.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I do not think there is any misunderstanding about this at all, or any difference of opinion between the Council and myself in this matter. I have accepted their view in each of the cases which I have endeavoured to put forward; but I must assert the right of the Council to form their own view if it ever differed from mine. I do not think it does differ from mine at all. Of course, I feel it my duty, as the Minister responsible to Parliament, to urge on the Council the general advantage of publishing matter which is of public importance. The only other considerations should be either, as in the case of the Machine Tools Report, that it is of a confidential character, and an undertaking has been given, or, as in the case of the shipbuilding Report, that some of the facts are in dispute and it is desirable to get action and co-operation on the Report itself. These are two considerations which must be balanced against one another, and I do not feel that, while discussion was proceeding, the House would feel that I was doing right in prejudicing the discussions by trying to insist on a premature publication or even discussing the question of publication at all.

LORD REA

My Lords, would the noble Viscount say whether this Report has been published to the industry itself, and is known to them?

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

Yes, my Lords; the leaders of the industry have copies of the Report. More than that, it has been under discussion with them for a matter of months.

There is only one other thing I want to say, and that is on the subject of development contracts. I had intended to say more, but as I have been going on longer than I intended I will say only one thing. I agree with the noble Lord that it is desirable to try to solve this problem. As long ago as 1957, I think, the Research Council published the fact that it was open to receive applications for development contracts, which indicated the then view of the Government as to their desirability. But it says something for the reality of those responsible that, notwithstanding that they had this general approval from the Government, not one project emerged which led them to give their own approval to it.

Now I have some hopes that this situation will be altered in the coming months. There are, or there are shortly going to be, proposals that development contracts should be available in the field of machine tools, which would go through either the National Research Development Corporation, of which the noble Earl on the Cross-Benches was such an ornament for so long, or through the D.S.I.R. Also, there are under discussion proposals for computers. It is impossible to say in advance that these will be approved, but I should hope that in one or more of them it will be possible to solve the problems which are very real and which arise from giving a development contract in respect of an article of which the commissioner of the contract is not the ultimate user. If that should happen, it might well be that we should develop a new technique in this direction. If not, we shall have to think again. But that, I am sorry to say, is the best I can do for the noble Lord this afternoon in the way of information.

My Lords, if I may just sum up in a sentence, I think this Report is an encouraging one. It shows rapid growth. I think it would be difficult to parallel it in other fields of Government activity. It shows, on the whole, a satisfactory organisation. I can only say, also by way of conclusion, how grateful I am to the scientists on the Advisory Council for doing this public work on behalf of the Government and on behalf of Parliament; and I am also grateful to all the other scientists who play their part in the Government machine, often unpaid, although not always unpaid, for doing work which would otherwise never be done at all, and indeed could never be done but for their voluntary efforts.

4.31 p.m.

LORD ADRIAN

My Lords, the first thing I should like to say is that I do not think we could have a better body than the Advisory Council to report on our scientific effort and to de-aide what might be done to improve it. The Council includes some of our most eminent scientists, and they are also eminent as very well informed and sensible people, the sort of people who would not hesitate to give an unfavourable report and unpalatable advice if they thought it was needed. Naturally, the Government have to balance the claims of science against the multitude of other claims, but with the Advisory Council and the Minister for Science we cannot complain that our future is going to be decided by rulers who have never heard at all of the second law of thermodynamics or the machine tool industry, two touchstones of scientific understanding. The Advisory Council has given a moderately favourable Report; but whatever the Report had been, I think that scientists in this country are glad that the Council is there to report and that the Minister is there to hear its advice, and, I hope, take some of it.

The first part of the Report, on the balance of scientific effort, is, of course, reasonably favourable, for it shows that the country is expanding its scientific research programme. Three years ago the Council thought we were spending far too little, and now we are spending 40 per cent. more. It seems that, in proportion to our size and our resources, we are not spending very much less than the United States. Of course, no one supposes that the value of scientific work done can be measured by the amount of money spent, although in fact, the United States spends, in terms of hard cash, almost nine times the amount we spend. But although one cannot equate money spent with scientific work accomplished, there ought to be general correspondence, if the money is used sensibly and if we have a reasonable number of able and properly trained scientists, with the few exceptionally gifted ones to lead them. At all events, so far as spending goes we are not doing too badly. But we want to be sure that our spending is on the right thing and that we have the right men to do the work.

In paragraph 43 of the Report the Council give a list of suggestions for improving our scientific effort by developing neglected fields, by better training, better co-operation in very expensive work, better ways of disseminating knowledge, and so on. For instance, they think we ought to do better in optical astronomy and seismology; in pure mathematics and oceanography. I expect that most of us would have our pet field to add to the list, though most of us would be willing to accept the Council's order of priority.

However, there is one field not mentioned, chiefly, I expect, because the danger there has only just arisen. It is not a very expensive field, and I think the danger can be avoided at relatively small cost. I want to bring it up now, however, because it might have quite serious effects on our progress if we do not bear it in mind. It concerns the future of our independent scientific societies, and the danger is that there may be a reduction in the help they get from the State owing to an unexpected and unintentional reduction through a proposed change in the way they are rated.

The scientific societies are a very important part of our machinery. Progress in both pure and applied science is immensely helped by all these independent bodies that have grown up, some of them to encourage particular branches of science, like the Chemical Society or the Geological Society, and some to encourage science in general, like the Royal Society and the British Association. They have been the main forum for the interchange of ideas. They have meetings and libraries. The Royal Society of Medicine, for instance, have the best medical library on this side of the Atlantic. They publish their own journals and they become the representative bodies that award merit and can be called on for advice. I do not think there is any need to stress their direct value in bringing scientists together, and they have an even greater direct value in providing incentives and guidance to young men.

Our scientific societies began, like most of our hospitals, supported entirely by voluntary contributions; but for more than 100 years they have been assisted by the State in the provision of buildings for some of them, by exemption from rates, and recently by grants for publications. It has been a thoroughly British arrangement. They have kept their freedom and independence, but the help they get from the State makes it possible for them co shoulder the much greater responsibility they have to face nowadays when science grows overnight.

We have no serious complaint about the way the arrangement has been working recently, or about the good will of the Government toward our scientific societies; but we have just become aware of this danger which is threatening their finances. I may say that the finances of none of them are very large; they spend what they have got, and some of them spend more. Part of the aid which the State has given to them has been in the form of exemption from rates, because the societies have come under the heading of a special kind of charity. But the system by which charities are rated is full of inconsistencies and needs to be tidied up—I think nobody denies that. The Pritchard Committee has considered how to do the tidying up, and one of its proposals is that, in future, the societies which are now exempt ought to be made to pay half the full rateable value of their premises. The scientific societies will not be the only sufferers if this proposal is adopted, but I shall leave the Arts to look after themselves, for the present at any rate.

If the scientific societies have to shoulder these new burdens without any increased help, they must put up their subscriptions and cut down their expenses—that is to say, cut down the journals they publish and the meetings they arrange. It is true that we all complain bitterly about the immense volume of scientific publications we are supposed to read (the Advisory Council had something to say on that) but no one would wish to see a reduction in the publications of these learned societies. If this change takes place, no doubt the large national societies will survive it. They may be maimed, but they will survive. But some of the smaller bodies, which look after highly specialised branches of science, may be faced with extinction if the recommendations of the Pritchard Committee are adopted and the State does not come to the rescue by putting up its grants, which would be paying out of the national pocket to balance the demands which the local authorities are making for securing their revenue.

I will not enlarge on this matter, because I am sure that the Minister is aware of the position and that it will be taken into account when new legislation is brought in. But it does need emphasising that we may find ourselves paying too high a price for a tidy system of rating. The price may be a really serious reduction in the great scientific asset we have now in some of these independent societies. They can manage their own affairs and say what they please. Some local authorities would gain financially, but we should all lose in the long run. In fact, I think that the Government might well consider going a good deal further in the aid that they give to this particular sector of our scientific effort.

Communist countries spend a good deal in providing for congresses, the housing of meetings and the journeys of scientists to visit one another. They have fitted up palaces and castles to accommodate symposia, meetings of experts, which have become rather an essential part of the modern way of advancing in science. A country which can offer facilities of this kind has a considerable pull over one which can only rely on private funds. In organising our own meetings, we have been greatly helped by industry and by research funds, as well as by private benefactions, and are not so badly placed. We still get many foreign scientists who come here at their own expense or at the expense of their own country, but a country which will pay the travelling expenses of foreign scientists has a much better chance of learning what they are doing. It is sometimes rather embarrassing to find how little we have here to offer to the people whose visits are a real source of profit to science in Britain.

There is one other point that I want to mention. It concerns the second part of the Council's Report, where they discuss the education and training of scientists. There the position is not so favourable, though I think that that is scarcely surprising. There can never have been a time when the older generation were satisfied that the younger generation was being taught the right things and in the right way—certainly not in science, and not now, when the subject grows so vast. At all events, I cannot remember a time when we were not trying to improve the Natural Sciences Tripos at Cambridge, trying to bring it more up to date; and I cannot remember a time when we were not trying to prevent scholarship examinations from being too specialised. We shall go on trying, and I can only hope that something will come of it.

In these days, the prevailing difficulty is that of supply and demand. We want to train more scientists at every level, and the scientists who would make good teachers are absorbed by industry almost before they have left school. Clearly, the Advisory Council are very right in calling attention to the difficulties we are going to have in staffing our expanding schools and the new universities with teachers, particularly in mathematics and in physics. But I hope that we are not going to frighten people away from the teaching profession by painting too black a picture of what it is like. Science masters are as likely to be dissatisfied with what they can accomplish as most teachers must be. Whether they teach at infant school or at university they would all like to do it better and have better apparatus and schoolrooms.

For all that, and with all the difficulties they have to put up with now, I have been greatly impressed by the enterprise which is shown by science masters in schools of every kind. The journal of their Association publishes excellent papers on methods of teaching, and on new and ingenious apparatus and class experiments, and there are reviews of scientific papers which are very well written and well worth reading. We ought to assure science teachers that their work is more important for our scientific progress than a great deal of the routine measurement that passes for research, and we could do worse than respect their judgment and allow them some latitude in the development of their own methods. The curricula in science can certainly do with a thorough re-examination, as the Council believe, but the revision ought to be done partly by the science masters themselves, as well as by the Ministries and universities.

The Report we are discussing represents an experiment in directing our scientific activities. The Advisory Council is an experiment and the Ministry is an experiment. Scientists are used to experiments and we do not expect them to work miracles. In fact, if they were invariably successful we should feel that there was a snag somewhere. These experiments have not yet gone on long enough for us to see very clearly where they are going, and how they are going to affect the future, but I am sure that we shall all be glad that they are being made. We have no misgivings about the way they seem to be going, particularly about the competence of the two component parts of the apparatus—that is to say, the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy and the Minister for Science.

4.49 p.m.

LORD CHORLEY

The noble Lord, Lord Adrian, paid a proper compliment to the Advisory Council, but I am not sure that I completely agree with him when he said that we could not have a better body. Like the noble and learned Viscount opposite, I come from a different university from the one which the noble Lord represents. When I look down this list I see, Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridge. No doubt it is true that concealed under some of the other designations Oxford may be found.

However, I did not rise to make this remark about the list, but because I think that there is one really serious omission. This list of distinguished scientists does not contain the name of a single woman. It is undoubtedly one of the great weaknesses of British science that there are so few women engaged in scientific work. We know very well, from the few who are and from the eminent women scientists in other countries, that many women are just as well qualified as men to engage in scientific work. If there is one reservoir, so to speak, of manpower (and perhaps I may use that expression in regard to this reserve) it is our women. It is noticeable to anybody who goes to the U.S.S.R. that they are recruiting women into quite high positions in scientific work in that country in a way in which we are not doing it here. And although in earlier debates, going right back to the middle 'fifties, this point was raised time after time, there seems to be very little improvement: there is still a great shortage of women teachers of science in our schools and universities, and a great shortage of interest among the girls in the schools in scientific subjects. The noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, did not refer to this and, if I may say so, that is symptomatic of the general lack of sympathy with this point, which I am sure is a very real and important one.

I have made reference to some of the earlier debates. We should be grateful to my noble friend Lord Shackleton for giving us another opportunity to discuss these problems. My mind went back to a particularly valuable debate which we had exactly four years ago, initiated by my noble friend Lord Simon of Wythenshawe, whose lamented death we were mourning only recently. It was typical of his vision that he kept on bringing these important subjects to the notice of your Lordships and, indeed, to the notice of the nation as a whole. On that occasion we had the advantage of hearing other noble Lords who were well qualified to speak from the point of view of their practical knowledge of these matters. I have in mind, particularly, a remarkable speech by Lord Weeks—it was, I think, almost the only time that he addressed your Lordships—and the well-informed type of speech which we were so accustomed to hearing from the late Lord Waverley. This debate is a little academic compared to the one in which those giants took part. However, we did have on that occasion a most valuable speech from the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, who, as my noble friend Lord Shackleton has said, is able to look at these matters from a practical point of view. I am particularly glad to see his name appearing on the list of speakers this afternoon, and I look forward to hearing what he has to say.

I think it is clear from the Report we are discussing that the position since 1956 has improved a great deal, especially perhaps in regard to the arrangements being made for education and training. This is still far from perfect, and we have a long way to go; but it is clear that we are now making real progress. I am afraid, however, that the Report does show—and, indeed, the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, has not concealed this—that there are a number of parts of the field of battle, so to speak, where the situation is not at all good and where the troops are hardly dug in. The shipbuilding industry, to which he referred, is obviously one of those. I felt yesterday, when I was listening to the noble and learned Viscount, that he rather brushed this problem aside, but I am grateful to him for what he said about it this afternoon, and I am glad to know where he stands. I hope that he will succeed in getting the D.S.I.R. Report out into the open. There is no section of our industry which is more important to us than our shipbuilding industry, and none which has a finer record in the past. As one who has taken a particular interest in the law relating to the carrying trade of this country, which has from the Middle Ages been almost our most important source of wealth, it is upsetting to read these rumours in the newspapers.

And it is not only a question of the D.S.I.R., because some time ago, I remember, that lively periodical the New Scientist, in the edition for May 21 last, pointed out that roughly twice as many main-hours are needed to build a British ship in a British yard as in the modern foreign ones. Yet the process of building a ship is one which, because it is untouched by modern production methods, offers the greatest advantage for their application. It was pointed out that, having led the production in this area of industry literally for centuries, we are now losing it to Japan and West Germany. This is most disturbing. We are losing it largely, so far as one can make out, because (it is a branch of engineering) shipbuilding engineers are not bringing themselves into line with the findings of modern science and the technological achievements which are there going on. As the noble and learned Viscount said, that matter is emphasised—and it is perhaps one of the most important matters that is emphasised—in this Report.

At a later stage, on page 14 of the Report, attention is drawn to another important problem: that which is raised by the fragmentation of research in industry. I think that is an important matter, to which perhaps the noble and learned Viscount did not attach the importance that he might have done. The Report says: Fragmentation of our industrial research effort can be a source of weakness and of waste both in terms of money and, even more important, of scientific manpower. When it says "can be", I think that is rather an understatement: it undoubtedly is. I think that is one of the points to which the noble and learned Viscount might well direct a good deal of his attention. There is, I am sure, a great deal of wastage in industry of the scarce scientific resources and manpower that we have. Some of our great industrial concerns have a splendid record, and I should not want that not to be recognised or anything that I say to be taken as reflecting on all of our great industrial concerns. Imperial Chemical Industries, for example, have for many years recruited scientists of the greatest ability, and have carried on scientific work of great value; and some of the great oil concerns have done, and are still doing, exceedingly valuable scientific work. But undoubtedly in many other areas it is not at all good and there is a great deal of waste.

Since the war, I am afraid, it has become rather a sort of fashion in industry to employ a "bunch of scientists in the concern"—that is the expression one hears as one goes around. And there, I am afraid, with some of these business concerns it ends. No real attempt is made to organise work for these scientists, and many of them are sitting there doing little more than twiddling their thumbs. I was talking to a young man only 'the other day— well, he is not so very young, because he has been in the industrial business for five or six years—with a first-class scientific degree and a doctorate, who says that the work on which he is employed in his business could be done by anybody with an advanced level in the G.C.E. I do not think chat is an isolated case: I have come across it too often not to think that there is a great deal of waste of scientific manpower going on in industry at the present time. The Council are aware of this situation, and I only wish they had "rubbed it in" a little harder. Other young lads come from the universities into industry, with very good degrees and bursting with ideas, and have to fit themselves into stereotyped departments, often run by rule-of-thumb scientists who took their degrees years ago and have given little thought to the development of modern science since then. The result is that the lads get frustrated and "browned off" very quickly.

A young lad that I know from Cambridge told me only the other day that he had been having a talk with the education officer in one of our biggest engineering concerns with regard to whether he should transfer to this concern from another equally well-known engineering company. He was explaining to this education officer how frustrated he felt at the works where he is at present because he saw no opportunity for developing his ideas. The education officer said to him, "I'm afraid, my lad, it is very unfortunate, but you will have to reconcile yourself to this, because it is not possible in industry for all you bright young people to get the chance of developing your ideas." One can see that the young entrant may be too enthusiastic, and may have hopes which are pitched too high. But if this feeling is to he found throughout industry, it is obviously going to have a bad effect. Again, I say this is not an isolated case, because quite a number of young men from the universities whom I have met have been going into industry with these high hopes and at the end of two or three years have got this feeling of depression and frustration as a result of this inability to make real use of their talents in the industry.

It is perhaps significant, and I think it appears from this Report that a comparatively small amount of research work of real outstanding value has been coming from the industrial side. The Report shows that enormous sums are being put into this from industry—larger sums from industry than anywhere else—and yet a great deal of the research which is going on in industry appears to be just the perfecting of technical processes and matters of that kind, which are undoubtedly of considerable importance but which do not provide any discoveries in the field of research which are of any great importance. I can see that it is exceedingly difficult to overcome this problem. In industry as it is carried on in this country on the basis of private profit, and with everybody playing for his own hand, everybody trying to conceal from his competitor what is going on in his own business, it is obviously difficult for somebody like the noble and learned Viscount to come in and attempt to co-ordinate it and carry it on on a basis in which there is not a tremendous wastage of talent. It is difficult to get these big competing industrial concerns to pool their research resources in the way they ought to be doing.

Undoubtedly the U.S.S.R. and countries of that kind which have a Socialist system, even if it is not a libertarian one as we should like, have a tremendous advantage over us in that way. Meanwhile, while industry is on the whole having it so good, scientists can be, and are, by high pay, attracted away from universities where most of the fundamental research is being done. Universities are finding it more and more difficult to retain the best of their young scientists. They have to meet the competition of industry which can pay much larger salaries than are provided in the universities. They have also to meet the competition from the Government's own scientific service, where again, although the salaries are not so good as they are in industry, remuneration at the younger end, which is so important, is considerably better than in the universities. It is a great temptation to a young man to go into the Government scientific service, especially if he is married and beginning to have a family, because during the first ten years he will earn a much better salary than he can as a lecturer in the universities.

Again the colleges of advanced technology are drawing off from the universities quite a number of their young men into fairly senior positions. The colleges of advanced technology have a more variegated hierarchy, if one can so describe it, than the universities, and through this they can attract into their ranks able young men from the universities whom the universities cannot afford to lose. So in these ways the situation is not at all satisfactory, and I hope the noble and learned Viscount will have it looked into a little more carefully. No doubt in some ways this Report has been deliberately drawn up to be short and attractively written. It does not go into detail in the way that one would like it to. In that way the picture which is presented is possibly a slightly misleading one.

I should like to finish what I have to say by making one or two observations in regard to pure science. The noble and learned Viscount himself referred to the very short section on that subject in the Report, which was also referred to by my noble friend Lord Shackleton. I feel that this particular section is quite inadequate. On page 7 the Council properly point out that we have reason to be proud of our achievements in pure science since the seventeenth century, and that our contributions in this field are second to none. They go on to say that some fields in which we have formerly excelled have become temporarily neglected. I do not know how they know they are only temporarily neglected. The noble and learned Viscount put his finger on an important aspect of this when he pointed out that there is a shortage of pure mathematicians, mathematics being the basis of so many of these scientific subjects.

The whole emphasis at the moment is towards the development of the technological sciences, and in a sense that is a proper thing, and I should not like anything I say to detract from the importance of that. But of course all this is based on fundamental research—fundamental work in the pure sciences, as the noble and learned Viscount himself realised and in effect indicated in his speech. There is a feeling among quite a number of my scientific friends in the universities that the situation in regard to the neglect of the pure sciences is more serious than appears from the words of this Report, and I should like much closer attention to be directed to this particular point.

There are a number of ways in which the work of the universities in the pure sciences is undoubtedly being held back. My noble friend Lord Shackleton referred to some of them. He referred to the difficulties about the technicians. Fundamental research work depends more and more on really able technicians in the laboratories, and it has been the experience of most universities' scientific departments during the last years that they are losing their ablest technicians to industry at an alarming rate. They are able to keep them only by bribing a few of the best to stay on at the expense of not being able to take on as many in subordinate positions as they ought. The result has been, and I think still is, a difficult situation which undoubtedly prevents much of the valuable research work from being carried to a conclusion.

Again, there is undoubtedly a feeling that the younger scientists in the universities to whom I have referred are not being at all adequately treated in the way of salaries and that sort of thing. Science is one of the subjects in which work of fundamental importance is usually done by young men. I think it was the late Sir James Jeans who said that hardly any work of really great value was ever done by a man over thirty. That was probably an exaggeration, but it does indicate that this is the most fertile period of a man's life, and if you give him a salary on which he cannot keep his wife properly and educate his children you establish a sort of emotional frustration which makes it exceedingly difficult for him to do his work effectively. I think that even now, although there has obviously been an improvement over the last years in the provision of new laboratories and new scientific apparatus in the universities, the situation, as the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, indicated, is far from satisfactory. So we have all these directions in which pure science is not really being fostered in the way that it might be at the present time, and I hope that the I noble and learned Viscount will look into this matter, because it is one of great importance.

Finally, I would just say—a point which I had intended to make before— that there is also undoubtedly a difficulty in the way of providing young postgraduate students with sufficient scholarships and that sort of thing. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research have done a good job of work within the limits of the finances which have been entrusted to them over these last years, and the D.S.I.R. grant is much appreciated by the young graduate who wants to go on and take a Ph.D. and do some research work. But there is not enough of it, and I have the feeling, which is I think shared by many people, that the scope of the D.S.I.R. has been widened too much over recent years, and it ought not to be worrying itself with having to deal with these problems of providing money for scholarships and research work among the young graduates.

I feel that there is a case to be made for setting up some new committee, possibly at the University Grants Committee, which would look into the whole of this problem and perhaps take responsibility for seeing that the young scientists are properly financed during the period, so to speak, between their taking their first degrees and their becoming teachers in the universities or entering the higher ranks of the scientific army in industry. It is obvious from what the noble and learned Viscount has been saying that he is paying a good deal of attention to these organisational problems and I hope that he will have a look at this one too. We are at the present time obviously at the parting of the ways, and if all that energy and determination which he can bring to bear on these matters is now focused and brought to bear on these problems I am quite sure that we shall advance much more rapidly than we have been doing during the past generation.

5.4 p.m.

THE EARL OF HALSBURY

My Lords, in common with the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, for bringing this matter before the House so that we may have our annual debate on this topic. When approaching the Report, the sub- ject of the debate this afternoon, I did what I expect most Members of your Lordships' House do when reading such documents. I gave it a first reading through quickly, to see what was in it and what sort of impression it made on me. Then, later, I studied in more attentive detail the bits with which I was particularly concerned.

On that first reading I must say that I felt rather as the noble Viscount seems to have felt on reading the statistics as to the percentage of the gross national product which is being spent on research in this country and in America. The two percentages look sufficiently similar to be not too discouraging; they are 2.74 per cent, and 2.35 per cent. There is a difference of .4 of one per cent., which does not sound very much until we remember what the gross national product in this country is—£20,000 million. And .4 per cent, of that is £80 million. If we regard this country as a scaled-down version of the United States, from this point of view we are £80 million behind. If we regard them as a scaled-up version of this economy they are about £750 million ahead. I think these figures are worth remembering to serve as a reminder that there is a big difference between 2.74 per cent, and 2.35 per cent, if you are dealing with such very large figures as the gross national product of big countries. As I shall be pleading to some extent for a slightly more generous attitude towards scientific expenditure in some fields at a later stage, I should like your Lordships to bear in mind that we are £80 million behind. It is a figure very large in comparison with anything that I personally should be inclined to recommend.

LORD WILMOT OF SELMESTON

Would the noble Lord tell us what he means exactly by gross national product, because it is a very interesting figure?

THE EARL OF HALSBURY

The last time I looked at it, it was about £20,000 million.

LORD WILMOT OF SELMESTON

What is that figure?

THE EARL OF HALSBURY

It is published by the Central Statistical Office in an Annual Blue Book, which gives statistics of the national income and expenditure.

LORD WILMOT OF SELMESTON

It is expenditure?

THE EARL OF HALSBURY

One balances the other.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

It is a slightly obscure figure. It is not exactly the same as national income, but is a figure we talk about as showing the sort of size of annual income of the country —about £24,000 million.

THE EARL OF HALSBURY

I am obliged to the noble and learned Viscount for coming to my assistance on this complicated economic matter.

The two matters in the Report which were of very great concern to myself were the development gap, on the one hand, and supplies of technological manpower on the other. It is difficult for me to say very much on the subject of the development gap as presented in this Report, because I agree with so much that is in the Report. In fact, I have had the privilege of many discussions with the A.C.S.P. in an attempt to help them at one time or another, and I know that their views and mine are very close.

It is remarkable what the Government, through the Defence Ministries and defence research contracts, have done in the way of scientific development. But there is no analogy between military expenditure and civilian expenditure, because in the latter there is no General Staff representing the user who will specify what to do. I believe that that point is a valid one. There is in some cases a rather distant approximation to a General Staff, in the sense that the D.S.I.R. sponsors some 40 industrial research associations which are joint enterprises between itself and various industries: the cotton industry, the steel industry, and so on. These are the nearest we have to a General Staff on the technical front of industry. They do not, of course, operate in the field of consumer industry, but it has often seemed to me that in the field of inter-industry transactions, which are an important part of the national economy, we might be able to make use of the industrial research associations as the authors of specifications for civilian development targets. If these associations cannot specify anything, I must confess that I do not know where to turn to for information on this difficult point.

Of course there are always developments one can specify, which are usually going on already in industry; and a critic might say they were going on at too low a level of expenditure. But the difficulty is knowing whether the critic is right. It is one thing to assert to a man, "I know you are doing fairly well, but I do not think you are doing very well", and then to add, "I believe I could do much better". There is no difficulty in asserting it. The difficulty is in proving the second half of the proposition to the satisfaction of third parties who have got to advance money. It can be done on the small scale, but I rather think that if we started altering all the priorities in industry and the development work going on, on a very large scale—on the same sort of scale that Government defence research expenditure occurs—then there would be widespread complaint that the judgment of industry was probably better than the judgment of those who were trying to interfere with its natural scheme of priorities. I have always been rather sceptical that this sort of development contract, unrelated to any specific invention or anything like that—a contract launched into the blue—has very good chances of success. Nevertheless, I have always been in favour of giving it a trial on a small scale to see what comes of it. I do not see why our experimental attitude should be confined to the laboratory. I think we must be prepared to experiment in life as well, although, of course, the experiments must not be too expensive in the early stages.

Two matters have been mentioned which relate very much to the development gap: computers are one, and machine tools are another. I have had a lot to do with each of them in the last ten years. It is perfectly true that a computer gap which nobody seemed able to fill did yawn, and perhaps the reasons for it are worth remembering—because there nearly always is a reason for something. The story started when the Atomic Energy Commission in the United States of America decided that they wanted a bigger and faster computer than any other. As an interested user, they accordingly placed a development contract to build what they said they wanted. The Atomic Energy Authority in this country was not then convinced that it needed a computer to that specification. By the time conviction had grown in the minds of those responsible that they were going to need a computer of such a kind, the research and development work on the American computer was beginning to be far advanced, and it looked as if the purchase of an American computer in due course was going to be a better proposition than waiting for the development of a British one.

Those are the historical facts. How one intervenes in a situation like that I do not know. You have got to persuade somebody to put up money. What for? You cannot say that you have got a user, because that is exactly what you have not got. So how are you going to convince people? You cannot say, "I want it for fun, because computers are my hobby", or, "I want to engage in an Anglo-American race with computers, like the American-Russian race with rockets". It is rather a difficult question to decide. You are going to spend several million pounds of somebody else's money, but you cannot get anybody to say that he definitely wants the result.

The machine tool gap is another one in regard to which I have been privately and publicly concerned for a long time. The great difficulty in this case was to find somewhere where the requisite facilities and sympathy for new ideas coincided—one would not have got very far without a combination of the two. At the College of Science and Technology in Manchester, there were a professor and a couple of assistants who had the facilities, on the one hand, and the sympathy, on the other. Thus it was possible to make a small beginning. But it was only a small beginning—just one man and two assistants. I think that in this field we have got to be prepared to make small beginnings unless we are going to fall into the sort of mistake that the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, was warning us against—namely, the uneconomic use of scientific manpower which occurs when one deploys people broadcast on to jobs that are not worth while.

When I was considering what I might properly bring up in the course of the debate to-day, I was a little uneasy as to whether speaking about higher technological education would be a little "off the beam", because it is not the main topic of the Report, though there are references to it. But both the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, have themselves paid so much attention to this matter that I conceive myself to be in order in talking about it, even though it is not the main topic in the Report. One reason why it is not the main topic, of course, is that the Crowther Report was referred to the A.C.S.P., who appear to have accepted, and in many cases welcomed, the conclusions of the Crowther Report. Nevertheless, what they do say on the subject is rather ominous. It has the old sinister ring: not enough equipment; not enough technicians; not enough facilities in our universities, and so on.

In anticipation of talking about this, I have spent the last few days talking to friends and colleagues, co-directors of mine in industry, to inquire from them where the shoe pinches worst. I think that a sample should be representative if possible. I therefore added up the total turnover of the companies of which my friends were directors and it came to between £1,000 million and £2,000 million, which is up to 10 per cent, of the gross national product. They were perhaps a not unrepresentative sample accordingly. Every single one of them said the same thing: "Give us more men. We must have more engineers and technologists. Scientists are not wanted so much; it is the engineers and technologists, the people who can apply science." In particular, they said, "Give us more of the most highly qualified and trained types of technologists—those who have been in the universities not just for three years on a first degree course, but perhaps for four, five or even six years." There is a very definite demand in industry for technologists. Everybody with whom I have ever discussed this matter puts but one proposition to me "Solve this problem and we will solve the others."

My Lords, how are we handling this problem of the outturn of technologists? I have the honour to serve on the Council of the College of Science and Technology in Manchester, and once a month I go there for a Council meeting. Coming back in the train from these Council meetings, I have often reflected that, had I been attending a commercial board meeting and not a meeting of the Council of the Technological Faculty of a University, my next call would have to be on my solicitor to inquire what were my liabilities on account of running a business, knowing it to be insolvent. Time and time again we have had to take a chance and commit ourselves to running expenditure without knowing where the money was coming from. Through the generosity of local industry, we have now met by private grants the anticipated deficit of £320,000 over the quinquennium.

I have no quarrel with the University Grants Committee: they are a most loyal and devoted body of people who do the best they can with the money that is given to them. But they do not control the total of what is given to them; they only dispense it. And they dispense it according to a scheme of administration which sometimes baffles understanding, as so many schemes do, because they run one kind of budget for capital expenditure facilities and a second kind of budget for running expenses. One is dispensed with the left hand and one with the right. The lateral communications between these are somewhat tenuous, and the one hand sometimes appears not to know what the other is doing. You accordingly find that a building has been built, but you have not the money with which to occupy it.

I do not know whether anything can be done about this situation. In industry if you are given an assignment which should take four years, and you get it through in three, it is a feather in your cap. If you are responsible for training students from a technological college, and you exceed your quota and train them too fast in response to the undoubted national need, it is rapidly borne in on you that you have become a public nuisance. It is not that you have spent more money than is eventually to be spent; you have probably spent less, because doing things with speed and dispatch usually results in doing them economically. There is nothing like delay for increasing expenditure. But if you spend it at the wrong speed, then, however economical you may be, you find yourself in hot water. It seems to me that there ought to be some kind of provision enabling our more energetic and active leaders in the field of technological education to get a move on.

I have never myself been one for following blindly the statistical performance of other countries. Whatever the Russians, the Americans, the Dutch, the West Germans or anybody else may do, there is no reason why we should do the same. I have always maintained that we should play 'the hand that is dealt to us, and try to play it right and to get the answers right. I have no doubt that we are not the only people who are short of technologists. Any one of three firms in Holland—Philips, Shell or Unilever—could absorb the entire output from the Technische Hochschule at Delft. So I expect the Dutch are short of technologists. What are they doing about it? They are spending twice as much a head on technological education as we are in this country. I am glad to know that the noble and learned Viscount has taken the wind out of my sails by what he said with respect to the future of technological education here—namely, that we are to double our expenditure on it. If so, we shall be following the Dutch example. That is how I interpreted what he said, and I hope I was right.

I do not want us to copy the Dutch because there is some magic in two to one. I want to copy people only when they are showing results; getting a move on; getting something started, on the way, completed and finished; then on with the next job. It seems to me that that is where we have failed since the war in measuring up to the realities of what we have needed to do. Time and time again we have put up just a little bit of effort and money in the hope that it would be enough to see us through. We have not got down to the job of calculating what we must face up to before we are through. We are going to need more and more technically educated people because others—our competitors—are spending more and more on technological education; and it is very good news to me to hear the noble and learned Viscount say, after the change of heart four years ago, that increases would go on. We then started to spend much more money on technical colleges—although what we spent was only the cost of implementing plans which had lain in cold storage at the Ministry of Education for many years past.

The process will go on, however, and the school-leaving age will rise and rise because we shall require more and more educated people in the community. Technology gets more and more difficult. It does not stand still. That is no doubt very awkward because it will mean that there will always be a need for more and more money to be spent on education. It is easy to make light of winds of change when they apply to other people, but we have to accept the fact that they apply to ourselves, too. We have to accept the fact that we live in a community which demands an expansion of its economy. Every expansion of the economy causes an automatic and immediate increase in our imports. The increase in our exports which would pay for that increase in imports does not follow automatically but only by sales promotion and after a time lag. Exports are not sold by fiat: they have to be promoted in competition with manufacturers in countries to whom we export or with manufacturers in other countries who are competing with us as exporters. And if those other countries are backing up their industries with a better supply of high-grade technologists than we are, then we shall not win the battle for our trade.

5.35 p.m.

THE EARL OF LUCAN

My Lords, it is a remarkable fact that one or two points have been touched on and brought out by every speaker in your Lordships' House this afternoon. The one that I should like to deal with at the start was mentioned first by the noble Lord, Lord Adrian, when he said (not in these words, although I believe that I am paraphrasing him correctly) that it is a good thing to spend money so long as the objects on which it is spent are useful. That theme was taken up in various forms of wording by my noble friend Lord Chorley and by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury. Indeed, I think he put it most clearly when he asked, "Is there a General Staff for considering scientific and technical policy?"—because reading the Report of the Advisory Council (and I realise, of course, that they are only an Advisory Council) it struck me that, in dealing with the source of finance for all this national expenditure on scientific research, they quoted private industry as being responsible for 29 per cent, this year, as against only 23 per cent, last year. That is to say, private industry is supplying more money for research year by year.

That is admirable, but only if, as the noble Lord, Lord Adrian, says, that money is being spent to good purpose. And who decides and who advises the noble and learned Viscount the Minister to use his influence to direct the total national effort in research into the right channels? My noble friend Lord Chorley mentioned the misuse of scientists when they were employed by private firms. One has heard over many years that those firms which can employ scientists almost without regard to expense use them sometimes for purposes which, taking the national view as a whole, should not be given the priority that in fact they get as a result of the resources being available in the hands of private firms. I believe, therefore, that we should like the noble and learned Viscount to say something on the question: is there any machinery?

Your Lordships will see that the Report says that much research nowadays must be done on a co-operative basis; that the apparatus required for different forms of research is beyond the resources of most concerns or, where it is not beyond their resources, that it is a waste of resources if more than one concern engages in this form of research using scarce and trained manpower. From the form of the Report it seems that the Committee considered not only apparatus that is too expensive to justify its employment for a large number of firms within the country but also research, such as space research, which can usefully be carried out only on an international basis, if it is regarded as beyond the resources of this country on its own, in competition with countries with much greater economic resources.

The other thing on which I think we should like a word is this. The review which the noble Viscount asked the Council to carry out for him was of civil expenditure. Is he contemplating any similar review of defence expenditure? The second point, and equally important, is the question of manpower. Again and again we are told by everyone who should know that the output of science and engineering graduates in the next ten years must be very greatly increased. The percentage of increase that is said to be needed varies; one can put almost any figure one likes upon it. But that expansion means expansion of training institutions, other universities or other colleges-It means, of course, an increased output of graduates in order to train the staffs of these future colleges.

At the moment two factors obviously limit the number of science graduates who go in for teaching: the low pay offered in the education world and the far more attractive prizes offered by industry. Unless the Government are prepared to see the pay of science teachers in schools increased, and unless they are prepared to carry the country, and the education authorities, with them, this expansion of the numbers of scientists and engineers will not take place. Her Majesty's Government must realise this. But do they fully realise that they need some planning and control of the research facilities in private hands and improvement of the pay and prospects of science teachers in schools? This we hope to hear about from the noble Viscount.

5.43 p.m.

EARL JELLICOE

My Lords, being an amateur in these matters and following professionals, I was in any case proposing to make only a brief intervention in your Lordships' debate this evening. I was proposing, briefly, to refer to the application of science to and research and development within the shipbuilding industry. I must confess I have an interest, being connected with the shipping industry. I think I can now be briefer still, since the noble Viscount has commented on this subject—and very frankly—in his full statement earlier in the debate.

Having recently had the luck to visit a large number of our shipbuilding yards, I can only express my unease at much of what I have seen and heard and read. Admittedly, in the more progressive yards, as your Lordships know, there has been some investment in recent years. In many respects, though not all, our best yards are the equals, if not the superiors, of their competitors abroad. But, speaking from my own observation, I believe that the gap between our better yards and those which are not so good is very wide indeed. In some there is far too little willingness on the sides of both management and labour to apply scientific methods, and there is too little willingness to go out and recruit sufficient and really good young scientists and engineers.

Apart from this, I have been worried, to put it mildly, at what I have learnt about the state, by and large, of our marine engine industry. Neither in the case of the marine turbine nor in that of the heavy marine diesel engine have our marine engineering industry the reputation, both at home and abroad, which they once had. I will not go into details; I should like to cite only one fact. Not long ago more British designed heavy marine diesels were installed in. new ships at home and abroad than those of our next foreign competitor. That is no longer the position. I think a Danish designed engine is now in the lead; and, paradoxically, Switzerland being a land power, a Swiss designed engine is in second position; a German is third; and we now, I think, are fourth. Why is this so? Is it due, as I suspect, in quite a large measure to insufficient research and development in terms of both money power and manpower? Is it due to too great a dispersion of our marine engineering industry? Or are there other and perhaps deeper causes?

I am dwelling on this not because I am a masochist but because I believe that we must face these facts, unpleasant though they may be. And I am dwelling on this, too, because I believe that marine transport, and therefore the shipbuilding industry, stands on the eve of a great technological revolution. This presents a great challenge to a conservative and traditional industry. But it also presents great opportunities if this industry can be progressive as well as traditional and if it can demonstrate an absolute determination to apply—I do not think it does at the moment—the most modern and scientific methods to its research, to development, and to the organisation of all phases of its production.

Having heard the noble Viscount, I think we can be confident that the Government are fully alive to their responsibilities in this field; and without wishing to press him after his careful statement this afternoon I should like to put just two points to him. The first is whether, in view of the great and natural public interest in this matter, next year's Report of the Advisory Council could not dwell more specifically on marine research and development; on its adequacy, its organisation and the contribution the Government are making and proposing to make in this field.

Secondly, there is the vexed question of the possible publication of the D.S.I.R. Report. I quite appreciate the noble Viscount's inhibitions about this at the present time. I realise that the Government may not now wish to go the whole hog, like Penguin Books, and publish this controversial Report in all its stark nakedness. But would the noble Viscount, in consultation with the Council of D.S.I.R., perhaps consider the possibility—and I think this is very much a second best—of letting us have, at the appropriate moment, an expurgated version? In any case. I must express my personal view that the present position is not very satisfactory. Before too long the full facts about this vital industry should really be brought out fully into the open. I feel confident that this is in the interest of the industry itself. But it is no less important that the many people, both inside and outside this House, who are interested in this vital industry should have access to the real facts about it, particularly in this crucial sphere of research and development.

5.50 p.m.

LORD PETHICK-LAWRENCE

My Lords, I intervene for only a few moments; and, in the questions to which I shall attempt to address myself, I shall keen well within the number that the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, mentioned yesterday. I want to deal with one question which is, I think, of considerable importance. Scientific persons, particularly those who have reached the higher realms of scientific knowledge and experience, are not avaricious persons. They are not concerned to have very large salaries or very large sums of money at their disposal in order to lead a luxurious life. On the contrary, they are persons who are quite willing to put up with humble conditions so long as the main objects of their scientific work are not interfered with.

Now in the course of my life I have come across a number of scientific persons, and they make two very serious complaints against the money that they are able to command. The first complaint they make—and it is a vital one—is that they are not able to obtain the apparatus that they need for their work if it is expensive; and I know for a fact that scientists have left this country to go to America, not because they want more money for themselves, bat because only in America can they get the expensive apparatus which is really necessary for carrying out their experimental work. I hope that the Government will look at this question, because it is a very serious complaint, and it means that we are losing scientists. I know one of them personally, and he is a man who has gone to America, whereas he would much rather have stayed in our own country, in order to be able to carry out the full extent of his work. He was forced to go to America to get the apparatus which he could not succeed in obtaining here.

Allied to that is a somewhat similar matter of finance. There are persons in the employ of the Government—and I think, in particular, in the employ of the Astronomer Royal—who are subjected during the course of their lives to visitations from scientists in their own walk of life from other parts of the world, and who are put to considerable expense in entertaining these people and in showing them over the work which they are doing. They find that the expense allowance and the salary that they obtain compares very unfavourably with those of persons in other walks of life. I suggest to the noble Viscount, who I am sure recognises what I am driving at, that the salaries and the expense allowances of these persons in high places in scientific work in the Government service should be looked into with a view to their being put up in consideration of the great change in the cost of living generally; and also that the Treasury should be more open-handed with top scientists who demand, for the sole purpose of their investigations, expensive apparatus.

5.54 p.m.

LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH

My Lords, the point raised by my noble friend is undoubtedly one of considerable importance and is worthy of the attention of Her Majesty's Government. We have had an interesting debate, ably opened by my noble friend Lord Shackleton and ably followed up by the comprehensive survey which was given to us by the Lord President and Minister for Science. The noble Viscount said that he was not one of those who liked the sound of his own voice. As a matter of fact, all politicians enjoy the sound of their own voice, especially if they are active and have led a very controversial life. I have listened to the noble Viscount, before he was a Viscount, in another place. I am sure he enjoyed every minute of it, although then there was no hesitation on the part of anybody else in the House in indicating agreement or, particularly, disagreement with him when he made those speeches.

If I may say so, I think that one of the embarrassments of addressing your Lordships is that when one has finished one has not the least idea whether one has made a good speech or a bad one. Noble Lords have a long tradition of not manifesting any emotion, any approval or disapproval. It is dead silence and complete impartiality. I was talking to a noble Lord a little while ago who said that he was worried to death about a speech which he had made recently because he had no means of knowing whether it was a good speech or a bad one. I said, "My boy, you never will know in this place whether your speech is a good one or not". Mind you, it has its advantages, and I am not trying to change your Lordships' traditions—it would not be any good if I did. It has its advantages; and whereas, in another place, they get up to little tricks with a view to attracting applause, or even with a view to attracting a row, your Lordships, having no constituencies and no ulterior purposes, are able to say what you like as briefly as possible, and then sit down and not know whether you have made a good speech or a bad one. But I find it difficult to believe that the noble Viscount does not like to hear his own voice. I thought he always did. Indeed, I read the report of the Conservative Party Conference when he was Chairman of the Conservative Party organisation, and it seemed to me that he had a jolly good time. He liked the sound of his own voice and he liked the sound, even, of his own bell. I believe he enjoyed it thoroughly, and I think that what he has said to-day was a little bit of maidenly modesty on his part which I find it difficult to accept.

One of the mysteries to me is why, when the Lord President of the Council was the scientific member of the Government, or at any rate was the member in charge of scientific services, it was necessary to create a Minister for Science, except that it sounded nice and was calculated to please the scientists. Perhaps the noble Viscount will tell us. It does not appear to me that there is much difference between the present functions of the Minister for Science and those of the Lord President of the Council as things were. I gather the staff is bigger, but there is nothing easier than to increase the staff and even to persuade yourself that you are doing better work. On the face of it, I do not see any change. And I do not like Ministerial designations, especially honourable and ancient ones like the Lord President of the Council, being displaced by something else unless there is a real reason for it.

Of course, there is in existence a considerable number of research associations serving particular industries, largely, but not wholly, controlled by representatives of those industries, which are doing important work and drawing substantial financial aid from the Government. In my own experience as Lord President, I sometimes wondered whether we were not a little too nervous of examining their work, possibly criticising it and possibly stimulating them to greater and more useful activity. Of course, there is a lot to be said for leaving scientists alone, because they are delicate plants. On the other hand, when the State is paying a good deal of money to research associations, there is something to be said for taking an interest in them and even for having a friendly talk with them now and again and making suggestions to them. I am not sure whether the industries to which they are attached take enough interest in the work of the research associations. My impression is that they put people on the committees and do not know any more about what they are doing. I do not want to interfere brutally with them, but I think that, both on the part of industry and possibly j on the part of the Government, there can be a little more active interest taken in their work.

There is the point about where research ends and where implementation or development begins. There is a little danger in the Council's able Report of the two things being somewhat confused and mixed up. Research has a purpose. It may produce noticeable and material results. On the other hand, it may come up against a brick wall and not do so. You cannot be quite sure where research ends, but it is profoundly important that research should have the purpose of producing practical results of real advantage to the nation, to industry, and so on. It ought not merely to publish a paper or a research document or hand it to the Government, and then let it be forgotten. The more we can apply the results of scientific research to practical industrial questions, the more easily shall we get value for our money.

I think it is legitimate, in a good deal of the scientific activity financed or aided by the Government, to put the scientists on notice, wherever it is a feasible and practicable thing to do, that the community expects to get value for the money it spends on science, and that it expects to get results of a material character which are of advantage to the nation and to industry. That, it seems to me, is desirable, rather than leaving people with the impression that they can have all the money they want for scientific research and that we are not going to have an accounting day at the end which shows something of the nature of a profit and loss account, even if that is by no means always possible.

There is another danger to the scientists and the research people in leaving men on the same job for very many years. They can get stale, and it is a monotonous life if, for example in research, a man is doing the same job over many years. A change of life is good for people because it enables them to approach a subject with a different and a fresh mind, and I would commend these considerations to the Minister for Science.

The Minister referred to the investigations into the machine tool industry and the shipbuilding industry by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. My Lords, I do not think that because people in a given industry may be a little sensitive about an investi- gation and may not like the idea of a Report being published, or even may refuse to co-operate except on the basis of a favourable report being published, it is good public business always to give way. There is no hesitation in investigating the affairs of the publicly-owned industries, even by Select Committees of Parliament, and their Reports are published even if they are severely critical of those industries. Other investigations have taken place into them, the results of which have often been published.

As a Socialist, I do not too much like these Select Committees of Parliament, composed of politicians, poking about. But I do not object, in principle, to publicly-owned industries being investigated and being put on notice, so that we get to know what are their virtues—and they are many—and what are their faults, exposing them to the light of day. I do not object to that so long as the gentlemen who are on the public corporation concerned have the right to reply and to argue with the Government and with Parliament, which right has been denied in the case of the publicly-owned industries, as distinct from the perfect freedom of privately-owned industries to argue with Government and Parliament, and even severely to attack the Government about the matter.

I do not see, on the face of it, why these Reports should not toe published. If there is something in the machine tool industry Report which is dangerous from the point of view of security, let us be told so, and we will listen. But I do not think it is right that industries which are the subject of investigation by a Committee should have the publication of the Committee's report embargoed. It would not be tolerated as a general rule in the case of the publicly-owned industries, and I do not see that we have to accept the principle that privately-owned industry has no resonsibility to the nation. It has, and it ought to have, and the best of these industries accept that.

Take, for example, the late Lord Ashfield when he ran the London traffic combine which I attacked and criticised. I attacked him too, but we became very good friends, and in fact I achieved one of my ambitions—that of socialising him in due course, when he became Chairman of the London Passenger Transport Board. That man was a nuisance to me as a Socialist agitator, because he ran the London traffic combine with such a degree of public spirit that at was not easy to make a case against him. He told me: "Morrison, I am the worst enemy my shareholders ever had, because I won't let them have any dividend above a given amount; beyond that we shove it back into tine business". That is public spirit. The time has gone by when private industry can bold itself up as a sort of supreme private empire of its own, with no sense of accounting responsibly to the nation. I say it is not good for private industry that it should do so, and therefore I regret that the Minister for Science has not insisted on the publication of these Reports, unless he can find good reason to the contrary.

In the case of the publicly-owned industries, I wanted them to have at their disposal an instrument, such as an industrial consultancy or efficiency audit, so what when they were up against headaches they could bring these chaps in and produce a report. Some of the emperors who were the chairmen of publicly-owned industries did not like it at all; they thought it was a reflection on their capacity. It was not. It was an effort to help them solve some particular headaches confronting them, when they could not see daylight. If an efficiency audit or the use of industrial consultants, which I wanted in this case carried out jointly by the boards—not for them to be spies on behalf of the Government—is right in the case of the public corporations, I do not see that it is wholly wrong that we should have an efficiency audit now and again in the case of certain industries we are not too happy about.

It is not as if the noble Viscount is happy, for example, with the shipbuilding industry. He does not propose, if he can help it, to publish that Report. In the Financial Times for November 4 there was published a series of questions put to the Minister for Science, which is a very convenient way of being interviewed and getting all the advantages of an article without getting into trouble about it.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

And without getting paid for it, either.

LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH

And without getting paid for it, either. I am sorry about that, but the noble Viscount is not badly paid otherwise. One of the questions was this: Recently you criticised the shipbuilding industry in this respect. Are you satisfied now with their effort? The answer was: No, I am not. They produced one new diesel engine six months ago after I made my speech and said that this was an answer". If the Minister for Science can criticise the shipbuilding industry in a very sharp way, what is the matter with publishing this Report which is critical of the shipbuilding industry? Is he the only person who can criticise the shipbuilding industry, apart from us, and must not the Committee have its views published as to the shipbuilding industry? I think it was a courageous thing for the Minister for Science to say, but I do not think it is consistent with what he says now.

Bearing on the question of the use of science by private industries, he mentioned another thing. The motor industry, for example, has a turnover of £625 million a year but spends perhaps £250,000 on its co-operative research centre at Nuneaton. Well, put them on the spot and make these fellows accountable, if they are guilty, for their scientific neglect. I wish the Minister would encourage the motor industry, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, who are a fairly self-satisfied lot of boys, to investigate how to make motor cycles which are not the beastly noisy things which they are now, and I wish he would persuade the Minister of Transport and the police to enforce the law about silencers. Some of these motor cyclists are a menace, the way they like making a big noise on these things which frighten gentle drivers on the road or make them swear, which is just as bad. It is not a good thing.

There is the case of the building industry. When I was Lord President, I came up against this hod to which the Minister for Science has referred and against other proposals whereby the costs and speed of building could be much improved. I tried to get the Minister of Works to shake them and I daresay he did his best, but apparently not successfully, because the present Minister for Science is still trying to shake them up. He was asked in this interview about other concerns. He replied: The building industry is a good example here. The building research station of the D.S.I.R., which is doing much valuable work, has recently tried to persuade the building industry to use a new type of hod for carrying bricks which is suitable for modern mechanical handling methods. That they should have to try and persuade a major industry to accept such a development in this modern age is pathetic. There are many other examples. I like the Minister when he talks to private industry in this way. It is a good thing. Shake them up and put them on the spot. What he says here is exactly what we were saying when the Labour Government was in power. We ought to have an investigation and a report published and put them on the defensive, because we cannot tolerate inefficient private industry any more than we can tolerate inefficient public industry, though some of the public industries would be better run than they are if the Government would not try to make their life so difficult as they do.

I think there is a gap in our research institutions. There should be some research association which could investigate our natural resources, of which we have so few—for example, an association to investigate the use of water power for electricity and other purposes. Not that I want to say too much about water power, because we have had too great a share of it recently, especially in the West Country and Kent. But this is worth thinking about.

The Minister has an important and interesting job. I appreciate that he has to be careful how he handles things and particularly people. He needs to be something of a leader of science, to inspire scientists and check and encourage them. I do not think that he can jump in and usurp the responsible work of the scientists, but much can be done in leadership, inspiration and encouragement. I hope that the work of the Minister in the field of science will be beneficial to the country as well as inspiring and beneficial to the scientists themselves.

6.14 p.m.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I can speak again, whether I like the sound of my own voice or not, only by leave of the House, which I hope I may have, because we have had an interesting de- bate and I should like to say a word or two by way of thanks to the various noble Lords who have played a part in it, some of whom have made amusing, some interesting and all delightful speeches.

First of all, I should like to refer to some things that the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, said while they are still fresh in my mind. I still think that I was right to apologise for appearing so much in the debates in the first two weeks. I think that the Leader of the House should perhaps be seen, and not heard quite so often. Incidentally, I would say that it is a considerable strain on a Minister to play a part in succesive debates on different subjects. He soon finds that the quality of his work suffers and that arrears of work accumulate in the office.

The noble Lord is still slightly unused to the designation, Minister for Science, and asks me once more to explain why there has been such a new appointment. Apart from the general kind of supervision which we have been discussing all this afternoon, I do not think that I am doing work different in kind from what he was doing as Lord President in 1951; but I can tell him that I am doing a great deal more of it. I should think that, in terms of the throughput of my office, we are doing about five times what was being done then. The Research Councils were spending about a quarter of the money they spend now, and the Atomic Energy Authority were spending rather less than a quarter. Public interest has developed a great deal, particularly in the field of technical education.

I would say—and I want to say this very delicately—that in the last year or so I have spent a great deal of time visiting universities and places of higher technical education of one sort or another, with a view to trying to influence policy by persuasion, and indeed by acquiring knowledge, in a way in which previous Lord Presidents certainly had not done. I do not think that there is any magic about being called Minister for Science, but as the noble Lord says, it is a mark of the importance which the Government attach to science. If, as the noble Lord says and as I am not entitled to say, it has pleased the scientists, all I can say is that that in itself is a very good reason.

LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH

My Lords, did I say that?

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, the noble Lord was unwise to say it, and I was quick enough to take advantage of his having done so.

I do not want to spend a lot of time on these two Reports, because I think we have spent a disproportionate time on them, but I think that the noble Lord should remember that the Machine Tools Report was obtained by securing confidential information from firms. Every firm has its trade secrets and all these were put at the disposal of the Council. It was not a Government inquiry intended to put them "on the spot" and on the defensive, as the noble Lord so delightfully put it. It was an inquiry by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to see what research needed to be done and to try to help them to get it. The object was to bring out the need for a research association, to discover any difficulties in the pattern of technical education for the industry and to inquire a little into the possibility of a development contract.

For this purpose a great deal of confidential information was put at our disposal. The Council undertook that it should be kept confidential, and though, at my request, they approached firms again with a view to publishing the report, they received the answers that the information had been placed at the Council's disposal on this understanding and the firms expected the Council to keep to their undertaking. Whatever may be thought about the desirability of the public having the information at their disposal, I, for one, am never going to be a party to breaking a promise. This was a promise given by the Council in good faith, on which the other parties acted, and those parties are entitled to feel that their private information should be kept private. I therefore think that we are under an obligation to keep this undertaking.

As regards the Shipbuilding Report, I have not at all ruled out the possibility of the publication of either that Report or some modified version of it, or some programme of research which will embody part of it. All I said was that while I was engaged in confidential discussions with an industry with a view to producing action, which is the most important thing they can produce, it would be a great pity to prejudice those discussions by publishing a certain number of facts about the industry which the industry certainly does not accept as true. Nobody who knows my reputation would doubt that, if it came to a row, I should be quite willing to take part. But my view is perhaps a little less belligerent than that of the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth. It is not, "Put them on the spot; put them on the defensive", but, "See how you can help them, even if they do not necessarily welcome one's help, and try to induce them to do what is reasonable". That requires that they should have a certain amount of confidence in me, as well as my having a certain amount of confidence in them. On the whole, I think that what I am doing, and the way I am doing it, is for the public good.

The second thing I want to say in general about this debate, which I think emerged in the discussion, is that I made in my original speech probably too little mention of the research associations. I should like to say this to the noble Earl, Lord Lucan, and the noble Lord, Lord Chorley. Party politics, of course, do not enter into this matter at all. Nor is it true, I think, as a piece of abstract political dogma, either that a private enterprise system is more suitable for scientific research or that a socialist system is more suitable for scientific research. Nor is it true that the American system is better than ours or that ours is better than the American. But, broadly speaking, what is true is that in any country the relationship between science and Government, and between science and industry, must be appropriate to the type of industrial and social organisation which that country in fact possesses. Ours is not the same as the American. We have this curious system whereby Ministers are responsible to Parliament; they have their curious system whereby their Executive is divorced from Congress. Therefore, their chief scientific adviser is, or was until recently, a prominent figure in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and our Minister for Science is a lawyer and politician and a member of a political Party. That is quite suitable, and it is in fact the only way in which the particular country fits to its particular needs the science which it requires.

As regards the pattern of industry which we have, I do not at all agree with the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, that there is anything in the private enterprise system which is inimical to science. Quite the contrary.

LORD CHORLEY

I think the noble Viscount must have misunderstood me. I said that it may be much more difficult to get a co-ordinated system because of all this breaking up into a number of individual competing firms.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I do not think that is necessarily so at all. I think the difficulty arises from the purely technical size of the industrial plant in each case. What is important in each case, although you are doing it in a quite different way according to whether you are working a Socialist system or a private enterprise system, is to have scientists in the plant doing work appropriate for them to do in the plant, and scientists outside the plant doing work of a more general nature, which it will then become the duty of the scientists in the plant to apply.

The philosophy we adopt in order to achieve this is the philosophy of the research associations, of which there are 50—there ought to be more; but they are continuing to grow in number—and they perform this particular function in relation to a particular industry. The difficulty is partly a question of educating the industry up to realising the value of co-operative research, but it is none the less parallel with the case that if they do not educate themselves up to having the individual scientists in the individual firms to make use of the work of the cooperative association the work of the co-operative association will be largely wasted. Therefore I think it is wrong to regard the co-operative association and the research association, which is partly financed with Government money and partly by industrial concerns, as the rival of the scientist in the firm. The truth is that neither can do the job properly unless there are both. I feel that some of the discussion that has taken place has been slightly vitiated by the fact that I should have said that in my original speech but did not get round to saying it.

I will, if I may, look into the question which the noble Lord, Lord Adrian, raised of the rating of the learned societies. I am aware of the position only in general. I would, as a matter of fact, appreciate it if he could induce his learned brethren to memorialise me or the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the exact position. It is under consideration by the Government, I am not sure what the answer is. There are difficulties in the way of exemption from any tax, and I do not know what the result will be. However, I see the force of what the noble Lord has said.

I should like to point out to the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, that the D.S.I.R. has in fact been distributing grants to the universities, both for research projects and for apparatus, including expensive machines, on a much increased scale in the last four years. Speaking off hand, I think that, since 1956, the new applications, as compared with the last year for which the figures are available, have increased by a factor of three, from about 115 to 325. The total number of projects current has increased by a factor of, I think, more than two. It has indeed been one of the big lines of advance in the last three or four years that the D.S.I.R., in particular, have increased the number of university grants. Whether or not this is the ultimate pattern is, I think, something which I cannot usefully discuss this evening. The fact that it might not be has occurred to many people and it is one of the questions that we shall have to investigate. I do not think that any reproach can be levelled at the D.S.I.R. in this respect.

LORD CHORLEY

I am sorry if the noble Viscount felt that I was levelling any reproach at the D.S.I.R. I said that the grants were of the greatest value, but it was a question of whether the compensation was right; and it is that point at which I was asking him to look.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

I appreciate that this is a question which has been raised more than once, and it is one which I shall obviously have to investigate. I do not want necessarily to raise doubts in people's minds as to whether this is working well. I think it is working well, but I am not at all sure that there are not other changes in function inside the Government machine which would take care of this particular problem rather more efficiently. However, it is a point that I will examine again, and I am glad that it has been raised.

I agree largely with what was said by the noble Earl, Lord Lucan, about the need for teachers. Of course when one is dealing with teachers' pay, one must bear in mind not merely that it is governed by bodies like the Burnham Committee, but also (as I think the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, put to me in the last debate that we had) that if you start paying scientists in a school or a university, as it were, on a different basis from other people, while it may be that you are driven to do it by circumstances of greater demand and what they can command outside, it does not, on the whole, make for a very happy feeling inside the schools or teaching institutions. One knows that this principle has been breached over and over again, but one can see the point of those who think that in the main the teaching profession ought not to be broken up into different parts with different salary scales.

THE EARL OF LUCAN

Merely that the whole of it ought to be better paid.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

This is something which has greatly improved in recent years; and, clearly, the whole convention of the matter is that it should not be a matter of direct negotiation with the Government, but use should be made of the ordinary apparatus and machinery for negotiating pay scales.

I should like to thank your Lordships once more for taking part in this interesting debate. I want to emphasise also the value that this debate will be to me in my work. I felt, as I listened to the speeches, that I could count on a certain amount of support in the work I am trying to do. A great deal of it has to be done, I am afraid, by making speeches; in other words, once more we are talking of government by exhortation. But this is not quite the bad thing that it is sometimes represented to be, because although we get tired of exhortations from time to time—and I think we have every reason to—at the same time, it is astonishing how often the door to doing a thing can be opened by a member of the Government stating that it ought to be done.

I have been talking long enough for this afternoon, but I will say this before I sit down. Even in the purely political field, where a Government have a certain amount of power as well as influence, the formulation of a need is often a step towards meeting it. In this field, where you are dealing with university teachers and school teachers, about five or sax different Government Departments on all levels, industrial and research associations and scientists, fifteen research stations owned by the D.S.I.R., a great number of others owned by the Agricultural Research Council and two or three more by the Medical Research Council, a great deal can be achieved by public discussion and public statement of the public need by Ministers and others. Therefore, quite apart from the inherent pleasure of taking part in this debate, I should like to thank noble Lords because they have made my work easy.

LORD PETHICK-LAWRENCE

My Lords, before the noble Viscount sits down, could he say that the point I mentioned will be looked into? Because it has produced injurious results.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I will certainly do that. It does, of course, come within the ambit of the D.S.I.R. to provide apparatus of this kind for projects for the U.G.C. and for generalised university work. It would have been a great help in the particular case which the noble Lord mentioned (it is now far too late to do anything about it, because his friend has gone and no longer wants the apparatus) and it would be a great help in general if, when noble Lords or others find or feel that some particular aspect of science is not being properly cared for by the provision of apparatus, they would let me know in some way. I will then have the matter looked into so that it may well have some results.

Perhaps one thing I should say, since I find myself rather unexpectedly on my feet again answering the noble Lord, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, is that another great need which has emerged from this debate is the need for technicians to support the work of the high-class scientists. I mentioned on too narrow a front the difficulties in dealing with the universities who are up against the loss of technicians. There is a general need I for technicians in industry, and I should like to end by stressing the importance which the Government place on the new plans for technical education.

6.33 p.m.

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Viscount, the Lord President of the Council and Minister for Science, and all noble Lords for their speeches to-day. We have covered much useful ground, and I am particularly appreciative of the Lord President's frankness. I think he has done precisely what one hoped of him, and I hope he will continue on the same lines. I am rather glad that he remembered with a sense of guilt that we have not done justice to the research associations, but clearly we cannot cover everything. Nor have we said anything about overseas research. I will not start talking about it now, beyond saying that it has been a notable omission which we shall obviously have to talk about at some other time, especially if we are to have continuity.

I think I should say again, as I did last year, that I disagree with my noble friend with regard to the title of the Lord President. I believe it is desirable that he should be called the Minister for Science. I think this is something which needs to be recognised. It is a fortunate combination that he should at the same time be Lord President. I cannot think of a better arrangement. I am assuming, and I am afraid it looks likely, that the Government will go on for some time yet, and I hope that he will remain in this job, because it is a new field and what he contributes to it will be of great importance to the development of this field. It has to be thought out. It is quite different from any other Ministerial appointment in the past. I would ask the noble Viscount whether, because it is so different, he will consider the various points rather specially this time, and ask his Department to do so, so that in subsequent debates we can keep continuity and not just repeat the same points again. It is apparent from remarks made that some of us would like a little more detail. We have a great mass of paper. We have all the recommendations of the research associations, research councils and so on.

Finally, I would say that I hope we shall not suggest, as has been suggested, that we necessarily expect the scientist to be doing something useful. Obviously in the field of development we want him to be useful, and I should be perfectly prepared and content to see industry directed where necessary, or nationalised where necessary. But when we come to the scientist doing pure science, as with an artist I think we have to be very sensitive indeed. There is a danger that we may forget. The scientist will not, and I am sure the Minister will not, and, therefore, I am sure it is worth saying again. With those words, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.