BUILDING RESEARCH

HL Deb 07 November 1962 vol 244 cc369-78

7.48 p.m.

LORD MOLSON rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what will be the functions of the Director-General of Research and Development, and whether this will involve the removal of the Building Research Station from the responsibility of the Minister for Science. The noble Lord said: My Lords, until recently I was so much concerned with research and development in the building industry that I am anxious to know from Her Majesty's Government exactly

Their Lordships divided:—

Contents, 32; Not-Contents, 79.

CONTENTS
Alexander of Hillsborough, V.	Lawson, L.	Shackleton, L,
Attlee, E.	Lindgren, L.	Shepherd, L.
Burden, L. [Teller.]	Listowel, E.	Silkin, L.
Burton of Coventry, B.	Longford, E.	Stonham, L.
Chorley, L.	Lucan, E. [Teller.]	Summerskill, B.
Citrine, L.	Macpherson of Drumochter, L.	Taylor, L.
Crook, L.	Milner of Leeds, L.	Walston, L.
Francis-Williams, L.	Nathan, L.	Williams, L.
Geddes of Epsom, L.	Peddie, L.	Williams of Barnburgh, L.
Henderson, L.	Rusholme, L.	Williamson, L.
Kenswood, L.	St. Davids, V.

NOT-CONTENTS
Ailsa, M.	Forbes, L.	Mabane, L.
Ailwyn, L.	Forster of Harraby, L.	Margesson, V.
Aldington, L.	Fortescue, E.	Marks of Broughton, L.
Allerton, L.	Fraser of Lonsdale, L.	Massereene and Ferrard, V.
Amherst of Hackney, L.	Fraser of North Cape, L.	Melchett, L.
Ampthill, L.	Furness, V.	Merrivale, L.
Balfour of Inchrye, L.	Gage,V.	Mersey, V.
Blackford, L.	Goschen, V. [Teller.]	Milverton, L.
Bossom, L.	Grenfell, L.	Molson, L.
Brecon, L.	Hailsham, V. (L. President.)	Montgomery of Alamein, V.
Brentford, V.	Hastings, L.	Newton, L.
Bridgeman, V.	Hawke, L.	Perth, E.
Buckinghamshire, E.	Hayter, L.	Raglan, L.
Cholmondeley, M.	Home, E.	Rathcavan, L.
Colville of Culross, V.	Howard of Glossop, L.	Ritchie of Dundee, L.
Conesford, L.	Howe, E.	St. Aldwyn, E. [Teller.]
Cranbrook, E.	Hylton, L.	Sandford, L.
Croft, L.	Iddesleigh, E.	Savile, L.
Denham, L.	Jellicoe, E.	Sinclair, L.
Derwent, L.	Jessel, L.	Somers, L.
Devonshire, D.	Kilmuir, E.	Spens, L.
Dilhorne, L. (Lord Chancellor.)	Lansdowne, M.	Strathclyde, L.
Dudley, E.	Leighton of Saint Mellons, L.	Swinton, E.
Dundee, E.	Long, V.	Waldegrave, E.
Dynevor, L.	Lothian, M.	Weir. V.
Effingham, E.	Luke, L.	Wolverton, L.
Elliot of Harwood, B.

Resolved in the negative, and Amendment disagreed to accordingly.

what the function of the new Director-General of Research and Development will be and to satisfy myself that there will be no duplication of the research so admirably done by the Building Research Station under the D.S.I.R. There has been duplication in the past, which, it was generally agreed, was wasteful not only of money but of that far rarer commodity, research brains.

It was in 1944 that Mr. Duncan Sandys established in the Ministry of Works the first Scientific Advisers' Division. It was to carry out development work on various forms of prefabrication, on the use of machines and the strength of materials. There gradually sprang up at a requisitioned roadhouse, probably known before the war to some of your Lordships—the Thatched Barn—a costly research establishment rivalling the Building Research Station in size and encroaching on its proper sphere. A Committee investigated the matter in 1946 and recommended that the Building Research Station should take over the Thatched Barn organisation, with the single exception, for some peculiar reason, of sociological and economic research. It was at this time, and primarily to enable the Ministry of Works to continue dealing with sociological and economic research, that the Advisory Council for Building Research and Development was set up. When, a short time afterwards, the remaining kinds of research were transferred from the Ministry of Works to the D.S.I.R., this Advisory Council for Building Research and Development was not wound up.

Some ten years later, when I became Minister of Works, I thought it absurd to have operating simultaneously and separately the Advisory Council on Building Research and Development and the Building Research Board. The first of these was the remnant of the General Scientific Advisers Division which, as I have already mentioned, was set up by Mr. Duncan Sandys in 1944. Its functions were, first, to collect information about all current activities in building research and to compile annually a book giving details; secondly, to detect what needed to be done, but was not being done, and to urge the appropriate body to do it; and thirdly, to supervise the Ministry's general work of disseminating technical information to the industry.

The task of the Building Research Board was nominally to direct the building research programme of the Building Research Station and to give it guidance as to what it should do. Unfortunately, it is inclined to put a rubber stamp on whatever the British Building Research Station wishes to do, and has not, in fact, been very effective in prescribing programmes of work spontaneously on its own initiative. Nevertheless, it was quite clear that the Building Research Board's work very largely overlapped with the second function of the Advisory Council for Building Research and Development. I therefore decided to wind up the Advisory Council and to try to get an enlarged and more representative Building Research Board to do the job of both bodies.

I managed, not without difficulty, to persuade the present Minister for Science, and his predecessor, the present Foreign Secretary, to agree to something on these lines. My noble and learned friend agreed that there should be a standing conference of building research and development, which should assume responsibility for the general oversight of all building research, and include within itself the Building Research Board without any change of its constitution; and that would continue to give directions to the Building Research Station. From Sir Harold Emmerson's Survey of Problems Before the Construction Industries it appears that this standing conference has met only twice since it was created. That falls far short of what I had intended, and of what I think my noble and learned friend the Minister for Science had intended, when we discussed this matter. My Question to-day gives him an opportunity of promising to press for greater activity in this matter.

My Lords, let me say bluntly that the Building Research Board might with advantage be reconstituted so that it will show more initiative. It should impel the Building Research Station forward to do work desired by the industry, instead of merely approving the work, excellent as most of it is, undertaken by the Station of its own accord. I suggest that it is desirable that some of the Board's members should be appointed not in their individual capacities but as the accredited representatives of the national organisations of the architects, surveyors and builders.

It is easier to waste money on research than in any other way. That is why everyone, I think, who has given thought to this matter believes that the D.S.I.R., with its wide experience of administering research in many fields, is more suitable for that purpose than any Department. I want to be assured that the new Director-General, whose qualifications for this post are recognised by all who have studied his career, will not seek to establish a new "Thatched Barn". What has long been needed is some organisation for making readily available to all in the building industry—architects, engineers, surveyors and builders—the technical knowledge which research provides. It is impossible to draw a clear line between research and technical information. A simple technical question may be answered by turning up the appropriate technical publication; a difficult one may necessitate months of original research. I spent much time looking for a satisfactory solution of this problem. I hope very much that the appointment of this Director-General will lead to a solution.

The part of the new Director-General's title which deals with development is of immense interest. When Mr. Marplesl was Postmaster General he and I set up a large study group of high officials from the two Ministries who sat and worked together to improve and to cheapen building of all kinds which we undertook for the Post Office. It paid immense dividends. The cost of one particular type of building in particular cases was reduced by 40 per cent. I did the same thing when, after an interval of a hundred years, we began to build prisons. The first prison was very extravagant and not particularly good. With the co-operation of the Prison Commissioners and a joint study it was possible for us to make great improvements, including, for example, a prison cell which was both better and cheaper than the old one. There is an immense amount to be done on these lines for all kinds of building, and the scope is greatly extended since the Ministry of Works has taken over the building activities of both the Air Ministry and the War Office, where I understand that Sir Donald Gibson had organised much development work of this kind.

I hope that I have not gone too deeply into this matter. It is one of complexity, and it is certainly one of importance. I hope to hear from my noble and learned friend that the appointment of Sir Donald Gibson will result in an expansion of these development organisations and an improvement in the technical information for which the Ministry of Works is responsible. But I hope that he will make it plain that this will be done without any trespassing upon the responsibilities of the D.S.I.R. in the matter of actual research which that Department discharges so efficiently and so well.

8.0 p.m.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, I am not, as some of your Lordships will know, the member of the Government in this House who normally replies for the Minister of Public Building and Works, or for the Minister of Housing and Local Government, but I thought it would be proper for me to answer this particular Question myself, partly owing to the circumstances which my noble friend below the gangway mentioned in the course of his introductory remarks, that he and I had arrived at a solution of one particular problem some years ago, and partly also because of the manifest interest which the D.S.I.R., for which I am personally and departmentally responsible, has in the Question itself. I could not go too deeply, therefore, into some of the matters my noble friend raised, and in so far as this Answer which I am about to give is a Departmental Answer from the Ministry of Public Building and Works, I must stick fairly closely to a brief which I have been given.

I should, however, like to do one or two things by way of introduction to that Answer. In the first place, I am grateful to my noble friend for raising the problem, which is an interesting and important one, and gives us the opportunity of stating something in answer to his Question which I think at any rate will give him some reassurance. The second point is that he quite rightly has raised one or two questions of principle which are not, I think, adequately understood by the public in relation to the organisation of research under Government auspices. I have always attached importance to these principles, and I hope to reassure him that they still remain inviolate. The first principle is that research, so far as we do it under Government auspices, should be undertaken: under the general supervision of scientists. This is the purpose of the D.S.I.R. By "scientists" I do not mean Government officials with scientific degrees; I mean scientists who are in active practice on scientific pursuits of one sort or another in industry, or in the universities. This is the purpose of the Research Council system, and so far as I am concerned I attach a good deal of importance to it.

The second general principle which I think is involved, and to which I also attach a good deal of importance, is that the organisation of research should at any rate be co-ordinated centrally. This is not because I deprecate—and I do not deprecate—the carrying on of research in proper cases, either by executive departments or individual industries. Indeed, in another field it can be one of my responsibilities to see that this very thing is done on an adequate scale. But in order to prevent duplication—"parallelism" as the Russians call it—it is important that research should be co-ordinated centrally under a research council. The third principle, which is very closely related to it, is this. If you allow research to be undertaken centrally by, as it were, the person or organisation who ultimately will benefit from the research, you are apt to get research of too applied and too unfundamental a kind.

All this really adds up to the Research Council system which, in spite of the fact that it has come occasionally under criticism is, I think, on the whole envied and, certainly if not envied, at least copied by other countries. To that I certainly attach a good deal of importance. On the other hand, I think I should say, as I indicated a moment ago, that I by no means deprecate research by executive departments who are responsible, or sponsoring departments, in relation to industry, provided these principles are accepted. For instance, and to use a very different building case from that which my noble friend has raised, the work done by the Ministry of Education very largely in conjunction with the Building Research Station in developing designs for schools in recent years has had exactly the kind of effect to which he referred himself in connection with the Post Office and the Prison Commissioners. Purpose designed buildings need to be developed, and research into their design needs to be undertaken by executive bodies of one sort or another, and not only by the Research Council in its stations. Therefore I am very happy that this should be done, and I do not want my noble friend or the House to believe that I am in any way jealous of this new Department. Indeed, I thoroughly support it.

Now I return to the actual Question which has been asked, and must now apply myself very closely to the text of my Answer. The reply to my noble friend's Question is that the functions of the Director-General of Research and Development will be to co-ordinate and extend the activities of the various research and development groups through out the Government service; to assume direct responsibility for the work of development groups in the Ministry of Public Building and Works; to encourage and develop generally the use of new and rapid methods of construction; to standardise the use and production of building components to the greatest possible extent, and to secure the widespread dissemination of the best modern practices. This appointment does not involve the removal of the Building Research Station from the responsibility of the Minister for Science or, of course, from the responsibility of the D.S.I.R., which has executive responsibility for it.

This appointment is a necessary step in the assumption of responsibility by my right honourable friend the Minister of Public Building and Works for coordinating the extensive work which is already going on within the Government machine in the development and use of new. cheaper and speedier methods of construction, and for focusing attention on these matters and securing their widespread adoption in the very large field where the Government are either directly responsible or in a position to exercise considerable influence over methods of construction. Nearly half the total output of the construction industries is for public authorities.

There has been a tendency in some quarters to assume that my right honourable friend has been in some way given the task of making the construction industries more efficient. The construction industries have made very great strides in the introduction of modern methods since the war, and have shown themselves well aware of the need for progress in these directions. My right honourable friend has emphasised that his task is to improve the efficiency rather of the machinery in the field of public authorities which, because of the weight behind it, can, if it is properly directed, go far to help the industries to achieve further progress on the lines which they are both willing and anxious to pursue.

The appointment of the Director-General of Research and Development does not in any way represent a reversal of the arrangements which my noble friend, when he was Minister of Works, and I made some years ago for winding up the work of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Ministry of Works, and transferring to the D.S.I.R. and the Building Research Station full responsibility in the field of scientific research. Sir Donald Gibson's functions will lie far more in the operational field than in that of pure research, although undoubtedly he will be greatly interested in the processes of research and will wish to stimulate and direct research along the most fruitful lines. I am sure that this appointment will provide my right honourable friend with the necessary instrument for moving rapidly and on a broad front towards the more efficient use in the public field of the great resources of the construction industries.

My Lords, That is the Answer to my noble friend's Question, and I think it will do something to give him the assurance that he sought at the beginning, that there was to be no duplication of the work of the Building Research Station.

House adjourned at ten minutes past eight o'clock.