EMIGRATION: THE "BRAIN DRAIN"

HL Deb 20 December 1966 vol 278 cc1960-2064

2.53 p.m.

LORD WINDLESHAM rose to call attention to the emigration of scientists, technologists, doctors and other qualified persons; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper calls attention to the emigration of scientists, technologists, doctors and other qualified persons". In moving it I am conscious that several noble Lords who are to take part in the debate have a much closer knowledge and wider experience than I have in working with scientists and others who are the subject of this Motion. What I shall try to do is to describe the general picture as I see it; to isolate some trends, and draw attention to some particular aspects of the emigration of qualified persons.

By way of introduction, my Lords, it may be worth remarking that this subject represents a fairly typical cycle in British politics. The emigration of scientists, technologists, doctors and other qualified persons has been going on for a long time. It is offset to a certain extent by similarly qualified persons coming into this country and by the return of British scientists who have been working overseas. The difficulty in measuring these two streams, one going out and one coming in, and the difficulty of categorising the people concerned, for some time obscured the fact that more were leaving each year than were coming in, and that the shortfall was increasing fairly evenly in a number of categories. About three or four years ago, early in 1963, if one can put a date on it, the subject emerged as a political issue. There were two debates in another place, and one in your Lordships' House within the space of twelve months; there were newspaper articles and speeches at Party conferences. There was a Party political broadcast in February, 1964, by Mr. Harold Wilson, Mr. Richard Crossman and Mr. Kenneth Robinson, all then in Opposition, and bidding strongly for political support from scientists and technologists before the 1964 Election. By this time the brain drain had become established as a fashionable issue; an issue on which it was necessary for politicians, editorial writers and others to have opinions.

Since then statistics have become available from more sources although, as I shall argue later, they are still very far from complete and the brain drain has continued at an accelerated rate. There has been a great deal of discussion, so much so in fact that I believe the danger now is that people are getting bored with what is often regarded as a clichéridden subject, and a complex subject when you come to look into it; with built-in tendencies towards over-dramatisation; a subject, moreover, in which one must frankly admit it is extremely difficult to see the role of the Government at all clearly. What I want to do therefore is to address myself to three questions. First, how many are going? Second, why are they going? Third, what is to be done?

How many scientists and technologists and doctors and other qualified persons are going to work abroad? There are two recent official statements which give some information. The first is some statistics for scientists and engineers from the Committee on Manpower Resources for Science and Technology, presided over by Sir Willis Jackson. The second is an estimate given in the House of Commons earlier this year on the loss of doctors by the Minister of Health. The first of these—the Report on the 1965 Triennial Manpower Survey of Engineers, Technologists, Scientists and Technical Supporting Staff, published in October, 1966 (Cmnd. 3103), had this to say, on page 36, paragraphs 89 and 90: The Ministry of Technology has carried out an analysis from available statistics and other sources, of the migration of British and Commonwealth scientists and professional engineers to and from the United Kingdom for the years 1958–63. This indicated an annual outward flow of some 3,000 to 4,000 people and an annual inward flow of 2,000 to 3,000. There was a net balance over the six years of about 4,000 in favour of emigration, with Canada and the U.S.A. accounting for most of this total. However, for perspective, in no year did net emigration exceed 5 per 1,000 of the stock of qualified engineers and scientists. What is not known is the balance in terms of the quality of scientists and engineers gained or lost. 90. We have no comprehensive information beyond 1963, owing to changes in administrative procedures whereby statistics of the qualifications of migrants are no longer collected. However, our impression is that there may have been a greater flow of scientists and engineers to the U.S.A. since then, unbalanced by a return flow, and that this has been particularly marked in the last year or two. That was said by the Willis Jackson Committee in October of this year. The Minister of Health, on February 28 this year, answered a Question in another place on the emigration of doctors. What he said was: The best estimate available is that on average the net loss of British doctors by emigration is between 300 and 350 a year"— I emphasise that he said the "net loss". My Department is engaged on a study to provide more exact statistics."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 725 (No. 57), col. 188; 28/2/66.] My Lords, there was also a Report, by the Oversea Migration Board, published in December of last year. The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, was Chairman of the Board at that time. The reference is Command Paper 2861. This gave some statistics for 1964 based on a sample survey of passengers leaving by sea and air from the United Kingdom to countries other than the Irish Republic. The Report provided some information on selected occupations including doctors, nurses, teachers, physicists, chemists and others, but I do not propose to base any part of my argument this afternoon on the findings of this survey. This is partly because the Board is no longer in existence; partly because, like so many other official statistics, the figures are sadly out of date—they are now almost three years old—and partly because the sample survey method used is not sufficiently precise for measuring the relatively small numbers of qualified people by occupation.

There was one additional disadvantage about this Report, mentioned by the Minister of Health in another place in February in the Answer to which I have referred; namely, that the figures were based on how the migrants described themselves, which, human nature being what it is, is not always the same as how they would be described by the professional bodies. I ought to say, in fairness, that I have been sent the figures for 1965 in advance of publication by the General Register Office, which has taken over the function of the Board in producing these statistics, which I believe will be published early next year. These take into account some of the criticisms made of the 1964 statistics, but their limitation as a source of reliable information on relatively small groups of qualified persons remains.

As the Willis Jackson Committee pointed out, there is a real need for accurate statistics, and I am sure many noble Lords due to take part in this debate will echo this remark of the Committee. Moreover, I suggest to your Lordships that it is important to discover something of the quality of the emigrating scientists and technologists. Anyone who saw the B.B.C. "Horizon" programme, titled The Wages of Science on B.B.C. 2 last night must have some questions left in his mind on this score.

This is the task which is now in front of a Committee set up last October by the Department of Education and Science and the Ministry of Technology, under the chairmanship of Dr. Jones, the managing director of Mullard. I understand that the terms of reference of that Committee are to study the international migration of qualified scientists, engineers and technologists as it effects Britain, to identify the advantages and disadvantages of such migration, and to make recommendations accordingly. Your Lordships will agree that the ad- vantages, as well as the disadvantages, of migration are an essential aspect of an inquiry of this sort.

The fact is that the brain drain runs both ways. The noble Lord, Lord Fulton, speaking last week at the University of Sussex, said that 60 per cent. of the academic faculty of Sussex University had overseas experience before they joined the faculty. Out of 229 faculty members appointed by the University in the last two years, 86—or 38 per cent. of the total—were actually in posts overseas at the time of their appointment. Beyond this there is the fact that scientists and others who have worked abroad often return with wider experience and skills which they might not have been able to acquire had they remained in Britain. And of the incoming slow we should remember that many of the most distinguished men in British science have come to work and live in this country from overseas. Approximately 10 per cent. of the Fellows of the Royal Society were born outside the United Kingdom; and that figure includes the immediate past President of the Royal Society. So it is far from being a one-way flow. If we are to see the brain drain in perspective, we must see it as a two-way movement. To that extent "brain drain" is a misleading description.

Nevertheless, there is a problem here. That is the reason why the subject is being debated in your Lordships' House this afternoon. I should like, if I may, to focus attention on four special categories of people. These are in no way exclusive and no doubt other noble Lords will be concerning themselves with other groups of qualified persons I have not mentioned; but I think that these four categories are particularly relevant to the present debate. They are, first, mature scientists and research workers in universities or research institutes; secondly, young men and women who have just obtained higher university degrees in pure or applied science; thirdly, scientists and technologists, including engineers, in industry; and fourthly, doctors.

The position of the mature scientist or research worker with some years of experience in a university or research insti-Scientists in this group are in contact tute is in many ways a special one. with others around the world who are working in the same field and this may lead them, in some instances, to take up posts abroad. Their decisions are likely to be influenced as much by professional considerations, such as experimental facilities or specialised schools, as by higher salaries, although these will inevitably be a factor.

It is the emigration of scientists in this group that tends to produce the recurring newspaper headline, "Top Scientist off to United States", which most recently appeared in yesterday's papers over stories on the departure to America of Dr. Kingsley Sanders, Director of the Medical Research Councils Virus Laboratories at Carshalton. It is interesting to note that Sir Gordon Sutherland, who was chairman of the Committee set up by the Royal Society in 1962 to consider the emigration of scientists, might himself have counted at one time as a permanent emigrant from this country under the criteria adopted by the Royal Society in making that report, as for some years he held a Chair at the University of Michigan. When this subject was last debated in your Lordships' House, three years ago, the noble Lord, Lord Todd, explained that had it not been for an unexpected offer made to him as a young man before the war, he also might have accepted a job in the United States and appeared as an entry in the Royal Society's report.

Therefore, to get the subject in perspective, it is necessary to appreciate that not only are mature, experienced scientists leaving, for the reasons I have listed, but people like Sir Gordon Sutherland are returning to work in this country. Although there is little evidence concerning mature scientists and research workers, the numbers leaving are small, even though the publicity is great, and the indications are that the improvement in university salaries and pension arrangements, coupled with the considerable expansion in universities in this country and the consequent increase in the number of Chairs, has made British universities much more competitive as employers.

The emigration of young Ph.Ds is a very different matter—and here there is some evidence. The recently published report (it is the fourth in the series) by the University Grants Committee on the First Employment of University Graduates 1964–65, shows that 18.6 per cent., of all men higher degree graduates in pure science got their first salaried jobs abroad, and that another 2.1 per cent. went overseas to undertake further academic study. That is shown in Table I, on page 34.

Table K, on page 35, shows that 164 men with higher degrees in pure science took up their first permanent employment in the United States, but the comparable figure for men with higher degrees in arts subjects and social studies was only 9.

Even more striking are the findings contained in the Report of Professor Swann's Working Group on Manpower Parameters for Scientific Growth (Cmnd. 3102) which was published in October of this year. On page 13 of that Report, Professor Swann's Committee commented that no less than 37 per cent. of physicists who obtained Ph.Ds at British universities in the six years from 1958–1963 are now working abroad, many of them in the United States. To me this is one of the most dramatic figures in the whole debate. In the same period, 43 per cent. of all physicists with a Ph.D. degree took their first employment abroad, and so far only 6 per cent. have returned. The proportion of chemists with Ph.Ds who returned is considerably higher—almost half, in fact—and there are probably a number of explanations for this that other noble Lords who are to take part in the debate are much more qualified than I am to speculate on.

But the Royal Institute of Chemistry has shown its concern in one way which I should particularly like to mention to your Lordships. This is their recently established Appointments Register for Qualified British Chemists who, although holding appointments overseas, might wish to return to employment in the United Kingdom. This system enables British chemists working in universities and research institutes in the United States, in Canada and elsewhere, to be kept in touch with potential employers in the United Kingdom. So, in this way, a communications system has been set up by the Royal Institute of Chemistry to enable young, highly qualified chemists to feel reasonably confident of getting a job if they return home to the United Kingdom after, say, a year's post-doctoral fellowship abroad, rather than taking the first job that may be immediately available to them in the United States or elsewhere.

The third category, of scientists, technologists and engineers who are leaving industry to go abroad, is rather a different problem again. Some of your Lordships will probably have seen the article by the Chairman of Humphries and Glasgow in the Daily Mirror this morning, in which he gives a number of examples in his own firm of people who have left to go and work abroad. He makes recommendations about altering the tax system to provide incentives. This may be a theme which other noble Lords will be taking up later in the debate. But industrial scientists and technologists are undoubtedly the main target for the organised recruiting teams which have been coming to London recently to interview and employ qualified persons to work in Canada and the United States.

One of the most active of these travelling recruiting agents, Mr. William Douglass, who acts for a number of well-known American firms, was in London earlier this month, after a recruiting drive which brought in a reported 1,500 applicants. How many of these will actually obtain posts and emigrate is not known, but the number of 1,500 is at least an indication of widespread preliminary interest. Then there is the case of the Boeing Company who reputedly went to Manchester University to recruit 150 mechanical engineers, when the total output of all mechanical engineering graduates from British universities is only 964 a year.

What then is the lure and attraction of the United States to the scientist and technologist?

LORD ANNAN

My Lords, before the noble Lord continues, could he explain whether the figures he was giving from Professor Swann's Report, which are rather startling, include all Ph.Ds., whether British-born or not, or whether they include only those who are United Kingdom subjects? I think there is a great difference here, because we in our universities educate many foreign-born students, who come to this country to start with, and if they go back to their own countries this is not surprising.

LORD WINDLESHAM

My impression is that the Report refers to British students. The figures I mentioned are on page 13 of the Report. The information for which the noble Lord has asked will be in the earlier part of the Report. It is not directly related to these figures. But I have the Report, and I can give the noble Lord an answer to his question later.

I was about to speculate on the attraction of the United States to the scientist and technologist, because it is clearly a key ingredient in our debate. There is, of course, the higher standard of living in the United States—which must be a major factor—based on a gross national product which is eight or nine times that of this country, with a population not much more than three times our own. There are higher personal incomes and lower direct taxation, particularly in the upper ranges. There are, also, in an economy which is still expanding fast, more opportunities for qualified men to get on. I should like to return to that particular motivation in a few minutes.

In particular, the United States seems to have the capacity to absorb large numbers of people horizontally, whereas in the United Kingdom promotion tends so often to be by vertical ladders. In the large firms in the United States (and it is the largest ones which recruit internationally) there are often better facilities for research, and an atmosphere in which the scientist feels he is making a significant and valued contribution. This last factor is particularly important. I have had a letter from I.B.M. in connection with this debate, a company which I suppose is one of the great success stories of the computer age. They are employers of scientists and technologists in this country of great distinction, as well as internationally. I.B.M. say that they have learned a number of lessons, and the first of these (and I quote a paragraph from the letter) is that you will retain people in this country if you offer them the scope, the professional contacts, the equipment and the feeling that they are in the vanguard of research. To keep the best brains, you must enable people to use their brains, otherwise, reluctantly, they will go elsewhere where they can use them. That is the first lesson learned by employers of the size and reputation of I.B.M. and I think it should be noted in this debate.

The fourth category are the doctors, and in particular the junior hospital doctors. There is undoubtedly, in the case of junior hospital doctors, a feeling of resentment over the conditions in which they work and the financial rewards which can be earned. The Review Body on Doctors' and Dentists' Remuneration, in their Seventh Report, published in May of this year (Cmnd. 2992, at page 23), put their finger on a crucial point, relating to the emigration of doctors overseas to the output of medical schools, when they said—referring to the 1964 figures of the Oversea Migration Board: When every allowance has been made for uncertainties in the figures, it seems clear that there has been a substantial permanent loss. Britain can and should make a contribution to the development and welfare of less highly developed countries, but we find it very disquieting that the net outflow of doctors with United Kingdom passports should be so high in relation to the output of qualified British doctors from British medical schools. If we take the figures given by the Minister of Health in the House of Commons in February, the statement I quoted earlier, the net loss of British doctors, according to the Minister' was approximately 300 to 350. If this is related to the annual output of British medical schools, which in 1964, the same year, was about 1,500, it seems that the permanent emigration of British doctors is equal to between 20 and 25 per cent. of the annual output of the medical schools. Some estimates, in fact, are higher than 20 to 25 per cent. Dr. John Seale, who has made a special study of the emigration of doctors, has argued in an article in the British Medical Journal of September 2 of this year, that in fact 550 doctors born and trained in Great Britain emigrated in 1965. Dr. Seale calculates the proportionate loss of British born and trained doctors in relation to the output of the medical schools at about one-third. So the estimates vary from a low of 20 per cent. to a high of 33⅓ per cent. The only other statistic to which I should like to draw your Lordships' attention, which received wide publicity in the Press recently, was that in September of this year no fewer than 730 young doctors sat examinations in London and Edinburgh which would qualify them to practise medicine in the United States. In 1965 there were 621 who sat the same examination, and in 1964 there were 504. So in three years there has been an increase of 226.

Finally, what is to be done? More pointedly, what can the Government, any Government, do in this field? So far as direct action goes, I would suggest to the noble Lord who is to reply to this debate that the Government's role is a subtle one, and consists of supporting in a sustained way the most exciting work. The word "sustained" is important here because the abrupt cancellation of major projects—the cancellation of TSR 2 in the spring of last year is perhaps an example—disrupts whole teams and fragments the knowledge they have built up. Beyond this, it is true that there seems to be an inevitability about many of the forces leading to emigration, depending either on personal circumstances or motives of the individuals—and politicians are often on rather shaky ground when they get caught up with motives—or on the plain fact that the United States is a larger and more prosperous society than Britain. British scientists go to the United States for the same reason that scientists and other qualified persons come to Britain from less developed countries.

I believe, my Lords, we should be very careful about imposing any restrictions on the freedom of the scientist to work abroad. Science is international in its nature; it is one of the very few disciplines of thought and mind that are not affected by frontiers or race. We should also do well to remember that it is one of the most dangerous of all tyrannies, and one of the most timid, for a Government to prevent its people living and working outside its national frontiers if they wish to do so. Tinkering around with a ban on advertising by American employers seeking to recruit scientific and technological staffs in this country, which the Government are reported to have been considering, is unlikely to get very far—1,500 applications are only a symptom of something much deeper.

Money must have a great deal to do with this, and I have no doubt that other noble Lords later in the debate will be concerning themselves with proposals for rewarding scientists and doctors in a manner that is more appropriate to the work they do, and in a more far-sighted manner, from the point of view of society. As the noble Lord, Lord Snow, remarked in a Daily Mirror feature this morning, talent will always go where the money is. That must be true. But the sources of the brain drain lie deeper than that. They are to be found in the subsoil—if I can describe it as such—ofour society which was so brilliantly described in The Times last Friday, December 17, by Dr. Lynn, of the University of Exeter: Would Dick Whittington fail in modern Britain? asked Dr. Lynn. He went on to correlate the level of what he called "achievement drives"—which a layman I suppose could define as the desire to get on—in a number of countries with postwar economic growth in those countries. The high-growth countries, West Germany, Israel, the Soviet Union and Australia, all had high levels of achievement drive. The low-growth countries had low levels of achievement drive. In Britain he reported these drives were low.

Moreover, in Dr. Lynn's view the value of achievement is not compatible with that of equality. This is what he said: The value of achievement is inseparable from excellence, quality and success in competition. The more highly equality comes to be regarded, the less room there is for achievement. Britain surely needs a change of attitude here. Undue emphasis on equality, by undermining regard for achievement, may act to the detriment of the nation as a whole. It is here, my Lords, that the Government have a vital role to play. Until they can show that they have the vision and the ability to create the sort of society in which Dick Whittington would succeed, scientists, doctors and others will continue to emigrate to societies where they feel they will have more of a chance to achieve more. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

3.35 p.m.

LORD BOWDEN

My Lords, may I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for introducing this subject to us this afternoon in such an extremely lucid and comprehensive speech, which, I must confess, deprives me of the opportunity of saying much that I had hoped to say this afternoon? It is an extremely important topic that we are to discuss, and one which in very truth is not merely a subject in itself but a part of what one might call the history of our times. I think it important to get it into proper perspective.

Scientists and scholars have wandered about the world for many thousands of years. When I was in Tiflis, in Georgia, not long ago, the Vice Chancellor of the University said to me that they had had a tradition of exporting their best scholars in order that they could have an opportunity of learning more ever since the days when they used to send them to work in the Academy in Athens under Socrates and Aristotle. The tradition of the migrating scientists is long established and is an extremely important component of the general world of scholarship. It has played an essential part in the dissemination of information which has led to the growth of our civilisation. This is certainly true. One hundred and fifty years ago, in fact in 1813, Humphry Davy, who was director of the Royal Institution, in Albemarle Street, went to Paris with Faraday, in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars, and was received by the French as an honoured guest because of his intellectual attainments, because of his distinction as a scientist and because it occurred to nobody that anything he ever did would be of any significance to the war or to the commerce of either England or France.

The situation has dramatically changed of late, because it has now become obvious to everyone that the future of all countries depends, as it has never depended before, on these very men who could be safely ignored a hundred and fifty years ago. In those days the secrets of industry were not in the hands of scientists but in the hands of craftsmen. In those days—and I hope that your Lordships' Commission will remedy this if the Act is still on the Statute Book—any craftsman who attempted to emigrate and thereby take with him the secrets of an important British industry could be arrested and was liable to be hanged if he was caught.

The American textile industry was introduced into Massachusetts by a man who had served his apprenticeship to Crompton and escaped by sailing ship from Liverpool, bearing with him no papers but the whole details of the spinning engines in his head. As soon as he arrived he was introduced to bankers, and as a result of his efforts the American textile trade began. In those days all countries regarded the secrets of their industries as important and guarded them jealously. It is remarkable in retrospect that the first man who conceived the idea that a scientist or engineer might be as important to the community as a mere craftsman was Bismarck. In the 1850s and 1860s he urged the German Government to try to stop the emigration of scientists, who might help to benefit the rest of Europe at the expense of Prussia.

Nowadays we have come to realise that scientists and engineers are important, but we should have done this earlier. May I remind you that a hundred years ago, when this was the richest country in the world, it was simultaneously the most illiterate in Europe. Many of the best engineers who helped to make the industries of Lancashire had learned their profession in Zurich and in Germany. Henry Simon and Hans Reynold built great industries, made themselves wealthy and exploited the great commercial opportunities of Lancashire, bringing with them the skill given to them by their universities. In those days the most important of the exports from Switzerland was probably its engineers. They built the great railway systems of America, including nearly all the bridges in New York between Manhattan Island and the mainland; they created some of the most important industries in Lancashire; and when the first chemical plant was established in this country about ninety years ago even The Times was moved to remark that it was a national scandal that every one of the senior scientists had been educated in Germany. For many years we have depended greatly on the import of scientists from the rest of the world and so have most of the developing countries. It is important to realise that throughout the whole of its history America has depended for many of its greatest engineers on the universities of Europe.

I have said that the American railways were built by expatriate Europeans. Your Lordships will remember the tremendous influx of scientists in the 1930s as the result of the persecutions of Hitler. If one reads a list of the men who worked on the American atomic energy project one finds that half of them were born in Germany and fled from Hitler. At this moment, as a result of the catastrophe in the Faculty of Science in Buenos Aires three months ago, when the police moved in and beat up every man in the Faculty, 300 scientists have emigrated from the Argentine and, strikingly, have gone to other countries in Central and South America in groups of twenty or thirty, in the hope of returning when the situation has improved. Two hundred scientists similarly left Brazil during the persecution by the Government about a year ago. Universities are often regarded by Governments as places which feel free to criticise without having regard to the authority of the State, and if this happens scientists migrate, quickly and very properly, and the country that loses them does so to its enormous disadvantage.

The process of migration is complex and all-important and, as I have said, has a great significance for the world as a whole. I have here some figures showing the immigration into America of scientists and engineers, which gives also the countries from which the men came. Last year France supplied 26 scientists and 56 engineers; Germany supplied 124 scientists and 300 engineers; the Netherlands supplied 102 engineers and 34 scientists and we supplied 155 scientists and 507 of our engineers. The great point I wish to make is that in every single instance the number of engineers was three times as great as the number of scientists, and from Canada there went into America 200 scientists and more than 1,000 engineers—about half of all the engineers produced that year in Canada.

Other countries feel this problem of migration to the States much more acutely than we do. The point I wish to make most strongly is that this thing which we call the "brain drain" is not a single process of the translation of people to America; it is in fact an enormous migration in which Europe plays the part of what I may call a staging post. The people who lose most scientists and can least afford to lose them are almost invariably the developing countries themselves. The new medical school in the French State of Dahomey has produced a total of 70 doctors of medicine. Only 16 of them remained in their native land and 54 of them emigrated to metropolitan France. That represents something like 70 per cent. of emigrants.

The difficulties which the developing countries face if they are to try to keep their own best graduates at home are so much worse than anything we have ever faced that one must regard them as the principal sufferers from the brain drain. It afflicts them far more acutely than it afflicts us. Many of these countries, at enormous expense and with the best intentions in the world, have established universities which they hope will produce men intellectually as good as any to be found in the world. In many instances these universities have achieved great intellectual distinction, but what is one to do with a university if nearly all its products leave as soon as they possibly can? We complain if 20 per cent. of ours go, but what must it be like in a small poverty-stricken country in Africa, for instance, or in Malaysia, which is doing its best to raise its standard of living by educating the men who will introduce new industries, if, almost immediately, two-fifths of them, or three-quarters, or sometimes 90 per cent., leave in order to replace people in England who have gone to the States? I was able to trace the course of one particular class of 49 students reading electrical engineering in Buenos Aires. Of the 49, 40 failed, one was killed in a riot, four went back home, times 90 per cent., leave in order to rechester. This leaves a total output of zero. How is any country to establish a university system if, as a result of its efforts, there is no product at all to help to build up industries whose profits are to pay for the universities?

This problem is far more acute and serious than one would think simply by investigating its implications for ourselves. In some parts of the North of England 50 or 60 per cent. of all the doctors in the hospitals come from India and Pakistan—countries which have perhaps one doctor for every 150,000 inhabitants, whereas we have one doctor for a couple of thousand inhabitants. We, in turn, are losing our doctors to the United States of America, where they have even more doctors than we have, and we are recouping ourselves by recruiting people from India, where the medical profession is more thinly spread and needed more than in any other country in the world.

We fail to realise the value to the community of these people whom we are regarding as statistics. It probably costs about £20,000 to educate a Ph.D. It may be said (and I think the Americans have worked out the figures) that his value to the community during his lifetime as a source of new ideas and an influential member of an industrial process is at least a quarter of a million pounds. On this assumption it may fairly be said that if we capitalise the value of those who have left England for America since the war, we have very much more than paid back the whole of the Marshall Aid. In fact, if one works out the value of the men who went last year and assume that this rate of drain is maintained in perpetuity, it is fair to say that they are worth together something of the order of a couple of hundred million pounds, and that this may fairly be said to be equivalent to the interest, not only on the sums of money which we have been obliged to borrow from the World Bank but also on the total foreign exchange which the country as a whole possesses.

This sum of money is large compared with the total foreign exchange drain which influences our balance of payments; it is large compared with the available interest which we draw on the total national foreign exchange reserves of the sterling bloc. It is an enormous sum of money, and the value to the community of the people we are losing is so great that one might almost say it is the largest single item in the balance-of-payments problem, and it is one which is never normally included in it. May I repeat that the estimated value of the foreign exchange reserve of the community is about £2,000 million at this moment, and 10 per cent. interest rate on this is approximately equal to the potential value to America of the men whom she recruits from this country every year?

One cannot any longer regard this enterprise as a mere variant on the type of emigration which, as I have said, has been a constant feature of intellectual society since the time of Socrates. It is now beginning to be a major component of the wealth of the States and a major reason for the relative poverty of this country. Every time we lose a Ph.D we have lost a man who cost £20,000 to produce and who may produce at least the equivalent of a quarter of a million pounds of improved value to society as a result of his lifetime's work, and he will do this wherever he lives. The Americans, being conscious of this, are anxious to recruit such men. Our own national policy seems to ignore completely implications of their loss.

When we try, as we very properly might do, to recruit people from overseas, we find ourselves frustrated by the Treasury regulations about payment for passages. I should like, if I may, to read a statement of the official Treasury ruling on the subject of payment of expenses for would-be recruits to the scientific world of this country. I had a letter from the director of a large research establishment in this country who wanted to recruit a man from Australia who had replied to an advertisement. He said, when asked if he would like to come, that he could not if he had to pay his travelling expenses to be interviewed in England. The Treasury ruling is: We are only authorised to pay fares to senior appointments"— that is, such appointments as principal scientific officer or higher— and then only if it can be demonstrated that no suitable candidate is available in this country. The Treasury is prepared, in order to save a matter of a couple of hundred pounds, to lose the opportunity of recruiting a man who might be worth £20,000 to produce. I would ask the noble Lord who is to wind up whether as a result of this debate we can change this absurd regulation. I should like, if it were possible, even to suggest that no Englishman should not be recruited if a suitable man could be found abroad.

The Americans appreciate these things and have come to regard the recruitment of foreign scientists as a national investment, an investment which pays them handsomely. They take people and treat them generously; they pay their travelling expenses, pay the travelling expenses and moving expenses of their families, give them long leave and the rest of it, because they know that by doing this they are making an investment which pays many thousands per cent. In this country the Treasury has refused to do as much, and for this reason our own efforts to recruit people to counter the brain drain is totally inhibited.

I must next pass to what I think is the most serious implication of the whole subject. I ask myself, and I ask your Lordships to consider, why has this extraordinary development of American industry come about and for what are these engineers being produced? One is forced to conclude that the most important motive which drives America to recruit engineers is her expenditure on defence and on the space race. And it is important to get these things into proper perspective. The total budget for defence and for the space race in the States every year is more than half of the gross national product of Great Britain, and it is between two and a half and three times as much as the total budget available to the Chancellor of the Exchequer of this country. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, referred to the achievements of I.B.M. in recruiting scientists from this country. I think it worth remarking that last year the total income of I.B.M. was as great as that of I.C.I. and the British Motor Corporation put together, and the total profits of I.B.M. were as great as those of I.C.I. and B.M.C. put together twice over. One must remember the quite extraordinary size of some of these enterprises in the States.

I have said that defence and the space race are enormous industries. I believe it is true to say that the only larger industry in the world than these two I have mentioned is organised crime in the States, which is now claimed by Americans themselves to have an annual income about three times that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer of this country. Without wishing to appear to be alarmist, I hope there will not be a reciprocal brain drain from America of people anxious to establish a market in this country for some of the things which seem to be so profitable over there.

The point I wish to make is that this immense industry, as Mr. Eisenhower forecast, has acquired a momentum and an identity of its own which is quite independent of its purpose, which is almost independent of the operations of the American Government itself. Very recently there was a 10 per cent. cut in the defence budget which was spent in California and as a result of this 2,000 qualified graduate engineers were immediately thrown on the labour market and could find nothing to do. The political pressure which they were able to produce was so great that a project which had been axed because it had no conceivable use as far as the Defence Department could discover had to be reinstated in order that these men should be kept in employment.

The economy of America is in quite an extraordinary situation. The total needs of the community, by which I mean food and houses, motor cars, roads and everything else, can be provided by the efforts of about half the working population. There is a very large number of unemployed, but the tradition of America requires that people shall work in order to eat, and for this reason the space race and the defence budget between them have now been elevated into what I believe to be the most extravagant, highly organised and nonsensical system of out-door relief ever organised by a great country in peace time. It is no use merely to note it and regret it.

We have to realise the vast sums of money which are at the disposal of the manufacturers who are engaged in supplying the various commodities to the American Government. Large areas of Western America, and many cities depend wholly on these two enterprises for their livelihood, and what began as an attempt to provide work for engineers have now grown until they have become one of the greatest forces in the world to-day. And the pattern of American education has been distorted to provide recruits for it. The brain drain is a reminder to us that the pattern of our own education may be similarly distorted in time, and if we are not careful we shall find we too are chained to the chariot wheels of the American machine which is to put a man on the moon. I read in The Times this morning an account of a proposal to launch a probe to Mars which was to cost £37,000 million over ten years. May I remind your Lordships that that is one and a half times the gross national product of his country? When one gets involved with figures of this magnitude the impact on the rest of the world is enormous and inescapable, and in my view may be disastrous.

I have said that engineers are moving from Nigeria and Ghana and India and Malaysia and all these underdeveloped countries towards this country and towards Europe to replace men who are going from here to replace men who themselves are working on the space race. It is beginning to appear that fields in India will remain uncultivated in order that America should put a man on the moon.

The problem is one of extraordinary complexity, but we should deceive ourselves if we thought that the solution was easy, or that American firms, whose profits have been made and whose livelihood depends, as does that of their employees, on the development of this immense enterprise, will be willing to refrain from recruiting people over here merely because we think it is not fair. I do not believe that it is possible any longer merely to submit to the forces of the market which are as distorted as they are at the present moment. I began by saying that this is a symptom of a much more important and serious situation than the migration itself. I think, in fact, it is true to say that the whole pattern of education, of engineering and the development of the whole world is being distorted and perverted by the enormous sums of money which at this moment are being deployed in the United States for purposes which are scientifically trivial and are due to what appears to be the almost inevitable growth of industries which have become all-powerful and irresponsible and are wholly beyond the control of those in Washington who should be responsible for them.

3.52 p.m.

LORD AMULREE

My Lords, I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has put down this Motion for debate to-day, because there has been a great deal of correspondence and talk in the Press about these problems and it is good that we should have a chance to talk about them now. We have just listened to an extremely interesting speech by the noble Lord, Lord Bowden. I do not propose to follow him at all in the few words which I shall address to your Lordships to-day. I must say at once that I know nothing at all about technology and I am not a great expert in the field of science. But I would mention one point which has occurred from my own experience. I think that the first thing we have to consider is what is the extent of the migration of scientists and why it occurs. The second thing is whether or not it is a totally bad thing.

My one contact with science is that I have served for a considerable time upon the Council of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, which is one of the big bodies doing research in this country. We are not as big as some of the American societies, but we employ about 400 staff, and there are 90 graduates, some medical, most of them scientific, working for the Fund. We have no particular difficulty in recruiting staff or, when they have come in, in retaining them. I should like to touch on why I think this is possibly the case. It is not because we pay them so much better than anybody else: they are paid roughly on the scale of the Medical Research Council, which is not a luxurious scale. They work, however, in modern premises, in new buildings which were constructed only a year or two ago. I think one of the reasons for our success is the fact that when they want some particular form of equipment, it can be obtained fairly easily. That is because we, as a voluntary body, are well supported by the public, and so if any member of the staff wants a piece of equipment, provided it is approved by the Director it can be obtained by the chairman and treasurer together, with no further trouble.

There I think we come across one dilemma or paradox of modern times. Until fairly recently it was possible for an institution like a university, a hospital medical school or a scientific department which was run upon a voluntary basis, to obtain equipment fairly quickly, if necessary. In the present world, as I think most of your Lordships will agree, that is no longer possible, and one must therefore obtain money from the State or from Government sources. In the case of the universities it tends to come from the University Grants Committee; in the case of the hospitals from the National Health Service, and in the case of the medical schools I think from the Department of Science and Technology. But if the money on which you are going to survive, on which your work is going to be done, is to be obtained from sources like that, there must be a great deal more control of the expenditure, or expenditure has to he a great deal more carefully planned, than if the money were to come from purely voluntary sources. So, at the present time, if one has not got these enormous voluntary trusts and bodies such as those one finds in the United States, I cannot see that one can expect a great deal of change. I am not sure whether the process can be speeded up—I am not enough of an administrator in that kind of field to know—but I feel that that is one of the causes of the troubles we may get into with some of our scientists who go abroad.

The second question is whether or not it is a good thing to export scientists. There I personally agree that scientists should, broadly speaking, be extremely peripatetic. One wants them to move around the world, and I think the fact that a certain number from this country go to the United States proves two points: first, that the scientists that we train here are people who are really well trained and brought up and they therefore become desirable to a foreign country. Secondly, even though there is all the money which one needs—and I think we can say that the United States has, in a way, got all the money that she wants—the researches cannot be made merely by providing money. In other words, if you were to double, treble or quadruple the amount of money you are going to spend, you would not thereby double, treble or quadruple the number of first-class scientists to make use of that money. You could get scientists of a certain quality, but the really efficient, expert person is born and not made. That is another reason why the United States needs to draw people from other countries. That is as far as I want to go on the scientific side. I agree that it is not a good practice to argue from the particular to the general, but it is a point I wanted to make to your Lordships.

The second matter to which I want to refer is the question of emigration of doctors from this country. In the first place, we do not really know the size of the figure of those who go abroad permanently. Certain figures have been given by the Ministry of Health, figures have been given by Dr. Seale, and various other figures have been mentioned from time to time. Therefore I should be very grateful if the noble Lord, when he comes to reply, could give the House some idea whether we are likely to find out the number of doctors who emigrate permanently. When I speak of the number of doctors, I do not include those who have retired from practice and gone to live in a warm climate, or those women doctors, though there are not many, who marry foreigners and go to live in their husband's country.

There are large numbers of young men and women who go abroad on postgraduate training jobs of various sorts, some for one year, some for two years and some for even longer periods. The purpose of their going abroad is to get experience in that other country and then to come back again to this country. In fact one tends to encourage young men and women to take post-graduate jobs abroad for a short time.

I should like once more to quote from my own experience. During the 17 years that I was a member of the consultant staff of University College Hospital, 99 young men and women worked with me—I am sorry I cannot make it one more to make it a nice round figure but the total number, as I say, was 99, of whom 68 worked as house physicians. These were quite young qualified people, doing their first job before they were put on the Register. A further 31 worked as registrars; they were the people who were training to become consultants in various branches of medicine. From a statistical point of view, this is a relatively unselective sample from a London medical school—I make that claim with some diffidence, because I know that one can get into great trouble if one talks of something being "statistically unselective". Of those 99 people, in the past 17 years a total of 9 have gone to live permanently abroad in countries to which they went to better themselves; three have gone to the U.S.A., five to Canada, and one to Australia. That comprises a figure of 10 per cent.

A few others have gone abroad, but I do not think they are in quite the same category. One has gone to Jamaica, a country which required people from this country; another went to Israel because he was a practising Jew and wished to go hack to help; two have gone to the Forces; two have entered the missionary field; and one has gone back to Bermuda, where he came from. The sample is not a very big one, and although one must be careful not to generalise from a small particular, I am not very worried by the particular figures I have given. I have talked over the figure of about 10 per cent. with the Dean and the Secretary of the Medical School. They agree that that figure is about right, although they have not worked it out in detail as I have done. Therefore, I should particularly like to know from the noble Lord who is to reply the actual number of doctors who emigrate permanently.

Is it a bad thing for young people to go to do some postgraduate work in America or Canada? Personally I think not. It is something which I have encouraged many young people to do. When they come back, they say that enormous pressure is put on them to stay, and this is because they are found to be well trained, well qualified, and are much liked in the countries in which they work. I do not think it would be right to put any control on their movements, and I should not like to see any control being imposed. I cannot talk about the technological side of the matter because I know very little about it, but certainly one hopes that scientific and medical work is carried out for the benefit of all countries in the world, and that if significant facts are discovered they are published and spread throughout the world.

I agree that there is a great need in this country for more doctors. The numbers have not gone up as much as the population has gone up, and we require more. That can be done in one or two ways. One is by making the medical schools which exist take more people than they do now. I think that that would be a mistake, for it would mean a fundamental change in the methods of medical teaching in this country. Our doctors are well liked and appreciated in foreign countries because of these methods of teaching. The other way would be to start more medical schools. I was very pleased to read a day or two ago that the Government have agreed to set up a new medical school at Nottingham, but I do not think there will be many people coming from it to undertake work in the country for perhaps 15 years or so. Therefore, we are not likely to see a great improvement in the situation. Could the Minister, in his reply, give the House some idea of the real figure of the number of doctors who go abroad permanently during their working life—excluding, as I have said, those who go abroad for other reasons?

4.7 p.m.

LORD TODD

My Lords, I was reading the other night the last debate we had in this House on this subject, nearly three years ago, in February, 1963, a debate in which I and several other noble Lords present to-day took part. It is true that it was not strictly a debate on emigration, but we were discussing a report by the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy. However, a great deal of that debate was devoted to the subject which is under discussion to-day. I must say that in the meantime we do not seem to have got very much further forward in this matter. Many of the points which were made in that debate are just as valid to-day as they were then. A good number of them have been made this afternoon by other speakers. I am afraid that I have little of great novelty to contribute, beyond what I have said on an earlier occasion, but I should like to underline a number of points which have been made by earlier speakers this afternoon.

I suppose that what we are all most concerned about is emigration, particularly emigration to the United States. As has been said before, this is neither a simple problem nor a new one. It is one of the group of problems which have been debated a great deal in recent years in this country, in your Lordships House, in the Press and elsewhere—a group of subjects covering not only emigration, but alleged backwardness in industry, failure to follow up new scientific discoveries, and so on. This is the situation which we now face, some twenty years after the end of the war; and I was very interested a few days ago to read a reprint of a speech in which a passage occurred which I may perhaps quote to your Lordships' to-day because of its relevance to this debate. This speech, which was also made some time after the end of the war, reads as follows: The return of the sword to its scabbard seems to have been the signal for one universal effort to recruit exhausted resources, to revive industry and civilisation, and to direct to their proper objects the genius and talent which war had either exhausted in its service or repressed in its desolations. In this rivalry of skill England alone has hesitated to take a part. Elevated by her warlike triumphs, she seems to have looked with contempt on the less dazzling achievements of her philosophers and, confiding in her past pre-eminence in the arts, to have calculated too securely on their permanence. Bribed by foreign gold, or flattered by foreign courtesy, her artisans have quitted her service—her machinery has been exported to distant markets—theinventions of her philosophers, slighted at home, have been eagerly introduced abroad—her scientific institutions have been discouraged and even abolished—the articles which she supplied to other States have been gradually manufactured by themselves…". There is a certain topicality about that statement, but it was made by Sir David Brewster in 1831, fifteen years after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. So I think it is fair to say that we are not dealing with a very new problem in this country.

As the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, said, one must get this problem of emigration in perspective. The trouble is that it is a complex one. But it is true that it has a very simple base, in that if there are two countries A and B, and the economy of the second is stronger than the first, and offers a higher standard of living, there will always be migration from A to B. In the case of science and technology, of course, there are other factors which come into play. As has been pointed out earlier today, science and technology are particularly international in character, and there has always been a great deal of movement between different countries. Scientific interchange and the movement, particularly of young people, from one country to another are things which we must by all means encourage. It is only when, through disparity in wealth or opportunity, one gets an undue concentration of talent in one particular country that there is any cause for disquiet. And this is, of course, what is worrying a great many people in this country today.

Are we, in fact, losing by emigration too high a proportion of our scientific talent, and are we thereby seriously weakening our own country's economic prospects? It is very important, if one is going to discuss this question, to know, first of all, what our losses are, both in quality and quantity. Here is one of the troubles, because we have nothing like accurate figures either for emigration or for immigration, especially in the field of qualified scientists and technologists. It is very heartening to me to know that, however belatedly, the Government have at last set up a Committee in order to get figures on these subjects, although I must say from my own experience of investigations of that type, that I am afraid the Committee are going to have a pretty difficult task.

At any rate, the situation as of now, or as of last year, 1965, as regards emigration is admittedly at least as disquieting as it was four or five years ago. It may even have been worse. Whether during this present year the situation has deteriorated still further one does not know, because the figures for 1966 are not yet available. But the economic freeze may very well have had an effect. The continued financial stringency in universities, the lack of expansion in industrial research—these things may well have exaggerated the situation as compared with last year; and I believe that there has already been during this year evidence of a distinct rise in the loss of people in the aircraft industry.

Another thing that is a little disturbing, from the point of view of emigration to America, is that last December the U.S. immigration laws were altered. They changed the quota system from a national basis to one which was related to the United States' needs. Particularly in view of the needs which the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, outlined, one must say that this change will mean that in the future it will be even easier for a qualified scientist or technologist to get an immigrant's visa to the United States. So that altogether there is not much sign of a betterment in the position.

Of course, migration of scientists and technologists, and indeed of all professional people, from the poorer to the richer and better-developed countries is of very long standing. A good illustration of this is the long-continued emigration of people from my own native country, Scotland, to England and elsewhere. We must also remember that until recently we took more scientists as immigrants from the Commonwealth than we lost to America or anywhere else. The situation may be changing now, but until recently that was certainly the case; and if one glances at our scientific community one will see how much this country owes to immigration of that type.

I think it would be fair to say that the "brain drain", so-called which we are experiencing pales into insignificance compared to the brain drain which Australia and New Zealand have suffered for very many years in relation to this country. Indeed, if, as has been said by some, we are to-day now slightly in deficit in the immigration—emigration balance, the reason for that is perhaps not so much that Australia and New Zealand are doing better, but that a bigger proportion of their emigrants are going directly to the United States instead of coming, first of all, to this country. And we must also remember in this connection that at the present time we import more doctors from the Commonwealth than we lose by emigration. So there is no case for making a moral issue of this matter.

Looking at the situation from a national standpoint, even if emigration and immigration were strictly in balance, matters could still be very serious for us. They would be serious if we were exporting a large number of our better scientists and replacing them by people of lower quality. But here again the available evidence does not enable us to answer that question. We are unable to say whether or not that is the case. True, it is said by many people that we must be losing a great many of our best people, because the most serious loss is at the level of the Ph.D. and the post-Ph.D. scientists and technologists—in other words, the people who have been chosen on the grounds of merit to do advanced training. But, after all, exactly the same can be said about the scientists who come to this country from Australia and New Zealand. They, too, have been selected on merit. So there is no prima facie case for assuming that what we take in is any worse—or any better, for that matter—than what we send out. It is very awkward that we do not have the answer to this question, because in this matter of emigration I believe that it is quality that counts and not quantity. I hope that one of these days we shall have some more information on this aspect of the problem.

The point which I really want to make however is one which I think the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, made. This problem of emigration of scientists, technologists and the like is actually a worldwide problem, and it does not affect us to anything like the extent that it is affecting the underdeveloped countries of Asia and Africa. There the effect is disastrous on the development of their economy, and I believe that for them some form of control of this emigration will have to be found; because if it is not found the gulf between the rich and the poor in this world is going to widen even further and faster than it is doing at present.

So far as our immediate problem is concerned—that is to say, the problem of emigration from this country to the United States—it seems to me that all we can do is to look carefully at the reasons for emigration, and see whether any of them could possibly come under our control. Clearly, unless we are prepared to restrict the movement of our people in the way the Communist countries do—and I cannot imagine that anyone in your Lordships' House would wish to do that—we must accept that the economic dice are currently loaded against us and that we cannot completely stop emigration, even if we would. I must say that I myself would be an opponent of any scheme to stop emigration, whether it were by contracting to have people work for so many years in this country or by giving loans or by any other means. I would be entirely against any such scheme to stop emigration. This is not something that can be stopped by penal measures. If we are going to stop it at all, we shall do it only by making things more attractive in this country than they are elsewhere.

Among the complex of reasons that you get advanced for emigration perhaps the commonest are higher starting pay for young men, earlier responsibility, better overall career prospects and better equipment and facilities. Money may not be the main reason for emigration in many cases, but it is undoubtedly a factor, and I rather think that if we could do something about this, at least so far as the younger people are concerned, it would help.

In this country, even in industry, I think we are altogether too much addicted to the idea of payment according to seniority. We are too much addicted to a kind of equality of treatment according to age and length of service irrespective of ability. For example, we tend to start the young scientist in this country at a salary a great deal lower than that of his American counterpart; and we try to offset this by giving him security of tenure and regular increments, so that it may be that by the time he is 35 or so he may be earning much like his American counterpart. But the trouble is that the young man has probably recently married and has a young family. In fact, he is at the very stage where some extra money would make all the difference to him. I wonder why someone does not make the experiment of paying a very much higher salary to a young man when he starts in an industry and telling him that he is not going to get any increment for five year's; in other words, take a leaf out of the American book—start high and go up a little less rapidly.

I think industry really must try to do something about this. It must try to make itself more attractive; and not only in this way. It must make the road to the top for the scientist and the technologist a bit easier; it must be much more ready to seek for, and encourage, technological innovation; and, above all, it must try to avoid so far as possible "Stop-Go" policies in research. How often, I wonder, does industry encourage young research men to follow the ideas they get right through to the production stage? Industrialists have often told me: "You do not do this sort of thing, because the trouble about these research men is that they will stick to the bench or the workshop", or whatever it may be. My Lords, I wonder whether they ever get very much chance to do anything else. I think it might be found that there are many more people among these scientists and technologists who are competent in management than people suppose, but I do not think they get much chance of showing it. And when I hear a lot talked about management studies in industry I wonder whether the job of management of research is ever included in these studies, because research is something which so far. I think, our industry has not been very good at managing.

We have also to consider the situation in our universities. Lack of contact with many aspects of industry has been one of their faults for a long time. Another of the faults has been their undoubted glorification of pure research as the only thing which is worthwhile for a young man. In recent years we have greatly increased the amount of money fed into university research by Government, but at the same time we have greatly increased the number of universities. We now have 44 of them; and if we are encouraging all of these to go in for large-scale research, we shall lose, I feel, practically all the benefit that we might have got from the extra money we put into them.

We have to recognise that we simply have not unlimited funds; and we must recognise, too, that if we spread the funds we have got thinly over a great many different places, as we all too frequently do, we shall end up by doing little or nothing except increase the number of young Ph.Ds who have been trained to look to, if you like, academic research as the real career for which they were being trained; who will find that there are insufficient academic research openings; and who may in many cases have been trained in a way and in subjects which make them not of immediate interest to industry. Such men are certainly going to be frustrated, and they are almost certainly going to start thinking about emigrating.

Is it not perhaps time that we took a leaf out of the book of some other countries—America is one of them—and took up the idea of creating a moderate number of centres of excellence in research? Why should we not concentrate our main spearheads of pure research in a relatively small number of institutions, provide these institutions with absolutely the best of facilities (and this we could certainly afford to do) and perhaps orient the effort of the other places we have, much more than we have done in the past, in the direction of what is industrially desirable or important? In this way we might produce a bigger flow of young men with a real desire to go into industry, having been trained all along with this in view. I should hope that if we did this, industry would be ready to welcome these young men and would, perhaps, treat them properly.

My Lords, I have spoken long enough, I think, although I have touched on only a very few aspects of this interesting and important subject which the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has introduced to us to-day. But, in a way, I think that the difficulties we face over emigration are merely a part of our primary problem in this country. I believe—and I have said this to your Lordships before—that if we are not prepared to select our priorities in science and technology, and the way we think our industry and other activities should go; if, instead, we continue to try to compete with everybody in every conceivable field of science and technology, we shall be spreading our effort far too thinly, and the result will be continued economic stagnation and a steady aggravation of this emigration about which we are worried to-day. We must face up to this fact, and we must take some action; because, although it is true that resources in brains and money are not unlimited, I myself think they are perfectly adequate if we really get down to it and use them properly.

4.28 p.m.

VISCOUNT ECCLES

My Lords, I should like to join with others and thank my noble friend Lord Windlesham for introducing this interesting debate, and for doing so in a speech which put before us the facts, and the lack of facts, about the brain drain in such an admirably clear manner. I am also very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, because I have never heard the global character of the brain drain described in such a remarkable way before.

I am quite sure from conversations that one has in industry that this brain drain has gathered pace in the last twelve months. I have sometimes even thought about the Communists. Can the Communists ever have had to take a more humiliating decision than to build the Berlin Wall? My Lords, in East Germany they must have had many debates on the brain drain—perhaps not unlike the one we are having this afternoon—before they sealed off the frontier and shot at sight those who wished to cross it. They were forced to their action mainly, I think, because they could not bear criticism of their own society or bring themselves to see themselves as others saw them; and no doubt it is very hard for us to see ourselves without a trace of prejudice or partial interest. And it must be very hard for the Government, with all the pre-Election promises they made to the clever young men who now want to leave the country which they are trying to govern well.

When I thought about this problem I found the origin of the brain drain away back in history, long before Socialism came to depress us. At the same time, I am convinced that the disparagement of financial success which has characterised the Labour Party for a long time has something seriously to do with the number of young men and women who are going abroad. Some 200 years ago the British were already the foremost Empire-builders in the world. This must have been a very exciting occupation. What was at first a romantic and perilous adventure, conquering and governing and civilising foreign lands, became in time a national habit; but after a few generations this habit must have entered into our blood so that it is now handed on from father to son. And the inherited urge is still there to get out of these Islands, to make a fine life, perhaps a missionary kind of life, somewhere else. I should be very surprised if there is a family represented in your Lordships' House which could not point to one or two members who had had a hand in the Indian Empire or who had emigrated to North America and settled there.

In the early days of the Empire, educated young men could go out as professionals, as soldiers, lawyers, administrators. Now the great majority who go are not in the public service, but seek their fortunes as business executives, scientists, engineers, salesmen, accountants and so on. They still want to go; you can feel that when you talk to them. This is the inherited wish to project Britain overseas. It still has something to do with many of their decisions. But this wish has now to be expressed in a different kind of career, and again the history book has something interesting to tell us. The business men or the qualified graduates who to-day go abroad often do so because they believe that a career in a profit-making enterprise abroad carries with it a much higher social prestige than in this country.

There are historical reasons for this. In the 17th and 18th centuries capital was so desperately scarce in this country that anyone who accumulated capital out of the acquisition or development of land or from some profit, scrupulously made or not, was something of a hero. Indeed, he had a very good chance of getting into your Lordships' House. But then a change took place, and towards the middle of the 19th century enough capital had been accumulated in stocks and shares, as well as in land, to start the fashion among educated men not to go into trade but it take up a professional career or, better still, to live the life of a gentleman of leisure. Therefore, the urge to "go out and govern New South Wales" was reinforced by the new social inferiority accorded to the man who stayed at home and went into trade.

I was in your Lordships' Library yesterday afternoon and I took down a volume of Murray's Extended English Dictionary. Under the word "trade", with the dateline 1813, I found this quotation: He was in trade; and Miss Atcherley was well aware his being trade was an obstacle impossible to surmount. The Empire has gone and the Miss Atcherleys of this generation are very different. Now they are only too happy to marry a young man from the City with a bowler hat and a rolled umbrella. But what about the chemist in his acrid white coat, or the engineer with his arms full of mechanical drawings? In their case some sense of social inferiority still remains. I believe that the feeling that production and distribution (and engineering in particular) are inferior to the professions and to merchant banking would have disappeared if the Labour Party had not come on the scene and mounted their attack against profits as something dirty, something to be taxed as heavily as possible. It is very important to notice that it is the attack on both flanks which has done so much to discredit British industry. Despised on the one side by the upper classes, treated on the other as politically and morally obnoxious by the Panty opposite, trade has had an unhappy time.

Contrast that with the newer countries to which these young men are tempted to go. In countries like the U.S.A. or Canada or Australia, business has never been attacked on either flank. There, the businessman, the salesman, the chemist, the engineer, is politically and socially as well regarded as a soldier or a lawyer or a landowner; and to make profits in those countries is as respectable as it was here in the time of Sir Robert Walpole. So the ambitious young man in Britain to-day, having the urge to make money, hears about the different prestige ratings at home and abroad. That is what makes him accept a financial offer which may, when allowance is made for the cost of living, be not all that better than he could have had if he had stayed at home.

It may be asked: "How could this disparagement of trade continue in the second half of the 20th century when politics is almost synonymous with economics?" The reason is not far to seek. My noble friend Lord Todd put his finger on it. The universities took the place of the upper classes as the source of the disdain and disparagement of business. It is the universities who have done so much damage to British industry with their preference for pure science over applied science and technology; with their advocacy of the honourable and comfortable security of public service against the ups and downs of competitive trade. If it had not been for noble Lords such as Lord Bowden at Birmingham, I do not know where we should have been. We should have had no higher technology associated with industry. We owe him and the other principals (or however they call themselves) of the Colleges of Advanced Technology a great debt of gratitude. I myself will never forget trying to get the universities to increase their courses in mathematics in order to meet the demand for mathematics teachers in the sixth forms of the maintained schools as well as the demands of the new atomic and electronic industry. It was a most depressing chapter at the Ministry of Education. In this hostile atmosphere in the senior common-rooms, many honours graduates must have felt that the choice for them was between going into research in this country or going abroad to make money. Of course, the prospect of earning good money counts.

I cannot agree with my noble friend Lord Todd that the dice are, as it were, always loaded against us. In money, we have loaded the dice against ourselves. Our British rates of surtax are not just a deterrent; they are a disaster. It may be that the standard of life of a young man, when he first goes to North America or to Australia, is not very different from what he might have had here. But he expects his salary to increase faster, and he expects to be able to keep a larger proportion of that larger salary, and he expects to be able to put by some capital for himself and his family. My Lords, young men choose one career rather than another, or at any rate many of them do, because they dream of the plums at the top of the tree. We offer far too few plums in this country nowadays. We offer far too few visions and dreams to our young people in our Welfare Society.

I should like to make just one further point. Young men I know who contemplate going abroad have said from time to time that they want to get out of the dull, drab mediocrity that covers, like a fog, so much of life around them. This drabness is the other side of the brain drain. For every restless ambitious man who goes abroad, ten equally clever men settle down in some suburb, satisfied with a modest salary and a prospect of a pension. These are men who did well at school and at university, who married happily and who have children. But, for one reason or another, half way in their career they reach an accommodation with dullness. When they are offered a rise in their salary of £1,000 or more—I have had experience of this—to move to a development area, they refuse. They prefer to say put in the suburbs, content with a small car, the bridge club and a holiday in Spain.

Their motives are mixed. Sometimes it is the wife's job or the children's school which determines their decision not to move up the ladder. Sometimes the man, realising that promotion will mean harder, more responsible, more worrying work, thinks that the extra, heavily-taxed money is not worth the trouble. He and his wife do not see how their social position can improve if he takes a job in the North of England. So they stay in the Home Counties and his brain stagnates, and with it the country stagnates. My Lords, brain stagnation is doing us far more harm than the brain drain.

What is to be done about this? If we raise the social prestige of being an engineer, a works manager and so on—and to do that we must welcome profits as a sign of admired success and reduce surtax on all earned income—the brain drain can be kept in hand and, far more important in my judgment, the able men who now opt for stagnation will wake up and achieve that personal success of which they are certainly capable.

4.44 p.m.

LORD SNOW

My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for introducing this important subject this afternoon, and we are all grateful, if I may say so, for the manner in which he introduced it. It seemed to me a model of detachment, and I found myself in very substantial agreement with something like 95 per cent. of what he said. I think I am more sombre about the outlook than he is, but I am also less resigned, so perhaps that just about evens out. I fancy that in this debate a lot of us will be repeating ourselves. The noble Lord, Lord Todd, for instance, produced three or four points which might have been taken literally from the speech of which, contrary to my habit, I have actually got the text in front of me. This is not a matter of collusion, although I was dining in Christ's the other night. In fact, the noble Lord was not present.

My Lords, I should like to begin by suggesting to your Lordships that we ought not to try to generalise this problem too much. I agree with all that has been said about the problem to the developing countries and what-not. The important thing near to our hand is what we can do with our own country and Europe? If we can get that right and prevent ourselves from becoming a kind of annex to the United States we shall have done something. So let us try to restrict our immediate consideration at least to what we can do ourselves.

The second point I should like to make straight away to your Lordships is that we ought not to worry too much about getting exact statistics, or at least we ought not to think that action should be inhibited until we have every Ph.D. labelled and classified. If we do that it will take us ten years; the thing will have gone too far and we shall have done nothing. These kind of statistics—I have spent much of my life on them—are terribly difficult to get, and they are not very meaningful when you get them. In fact, we all know the position well enough. I was in this from the beginning, years before the phrase "brain drain" was introduced. We know enough to know what is the position and, further, we have talked about this problem ad nauseam for more than long enough. The time has come to begin to find concrete proposals.

I should not inflict myself upon your Lordships this afternoon unless I had certain concrete proposals to make. The time for debate is really over. As several noble Lords—in fact, I think all the noble Lords who have spoken—have announced, though this is a very important problem and a very grave problem, it is not, of course, a new one. The only reason why it seems to us a new problem is that for two hundred years we have been on the good end of the brain drain and not the bad end. The drain from the Antipodes to this country which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Todd, has been one of the most remarkable examples of the brain drain operating in our favour. The last President of the Royal Society, one of the greatest of the presidents of the Royal Society, Lord Rutherford, was a New Zealander. Think of our senior scientific statesmen. Sir Solly Zuckerman is a South African; so is Sir Basil Schonland. Sir Harrie Massey is an Australian; Professor Philip Bowden is a Tasmanian, and so on. We could all reel off these names.

The other example which cuts nearer the bone, uncomfortably near the bone, and which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Todd (in everything but a legalistic sense it is a great deal too close) is the present position of this country and America. Have your Lordships ever thought of the brain drain from Scotland to this country? It went on for two hundred years. It still goes on. The noble Lord, Lord Todd, is a rather fine example in point. Quite out of proportion to the relative populations, the Scots sent us scientists, engineers, and of course all kinds of other eminent professional people. This is very clear, and the parallel with the 1966 relations of this country and the United States is only too demonstrably clear. Scotland was much poorer than England. There was no linguistic barrier—at least, no barrier that a determined man could not overcome. Further, the Scottish education for a very long time, probably until the First World War, was a good deal more rigorous than the English. In just the same way, British education, certainly at school and I think in general up to the first degree, is still a good deal more rigorous than the American. I do not want to rub it in, but there is one simple moral to be derived from this example—talent goes where the money is. Money is not everything, but it represents a chance to do one's best work.

Scientists are no more mercenary than the rest of us, but they have a driving motive which is to do the best science of which they are capable. For that they need equipment and assistance and, quite as important, the company of able colleagues. The rich countries can give them all of that. Further, let us not be hypocritical, as scientists sometimes are. They are not specially mercenary but, like the rest of us, they like the status that money can offer and the comforts that money can buy. If one can cross the Atlantic and do good work and earn 20,000 dollars rather than £2,500, well, that is an attraction and I think it would clear the air if someone occasionally said so. Here I am not referring to Dr. Sanders, who was getting a good salary here and is completely uninterested in money and could have got much more in the United States.

I do not wonder that there is a brain drain, but I wonder why it is not larger, though I believe that it is dangerously large and, unless we take realistic steps, that it will increase. That had been obvious to most of us who knew American resources a long time ago. Ten years ago we knew it was already happening. In fact, it is nearly nine years since a letter was sent to a large number of young scientists, whom we can identify, working in the United States and Canada, signed by Sir John Cockcroft and myself, asking them to consider the position and to discuss it with the Committee which we were sending out, so that we could try to find what inducements would bring them back to this country. My friend and then colleague, Mr. H. S. Hoff, went out a few months later and has been out there for a large part of each year since then, interviewing these young men over the length and breadth of the American continent. So we have first-hand information on a large scale and in great depth for the whole period from 1958 to 1966. I may say that this has been one of the most thankless pieces of public service I have ever known and no one could have done it with more imagination and more patience. We have good information, not only statistically but psychologically as well. This total effort has brought back a considerable number of valuable men and a great deal of real information.

The facts are brutal. Professor Swann's Report was bad enough. In 1961, we were losing 12 per cent. of Ph.D.s and in the decade from 1952 to 1961 we probably lost something like 16 per cent. of all Ph.D.s over the range of subjects that the Swann Committee were considering. It has got worse since then. It is probable that at the moment of the recent crop of Ph.D.s we are losing one in five or one in four. I think that the Swann Committee are probably pessimistic, but they are not too far off. This loss is very large. No country can take it for long.

I also have to warn your Lordships that in my view the position will get worse, not better, because people tend to follow their friends. Fashions tend to be infectious. Once we get a group of young Englishmen sitting round San Francisco Bay, other young Englishmen will go and find them. Unless we show some initiative and imagination, we may get too near the position in New Zealand, which now has to train two first-class scientists to keep one. Of all Anglo-Saxon countries, they are in the most precarious position. We do not know the exact extent of the same kind of emigration from other European countries. I did not know the figures my noble friend Lord Bowden quoted, but it is clear that they are serious, but not so serious as ours. This country is obviously more vulnerable than, say, France. It is partly owing to the language problem and partly owing to the fact that, like most Englishmen, scientists do not really feel foreigners in America. This is one of our real liabilities in this respect.

I ought to say that throughout my speech I am using "scientist" to cover "engineer". It is too difficult to go on saying, "scientists and engineers" every time I want to use the nouns. No sane person wants to see us by a natural historical process stripped of our best young scientists, and no sane person—certainly not in America, where there are far-sighted people (I stress the word "far-sighted") who are as concerned as we are—wants to see the United States taking over the advanced science and technology of the whole Western world. They are already doing a very large slice of it—too much. It is time that we had a declaration of scientific independence. So we, and to a lesser extent other countries of Europe, are obliged to take steps.

There is a certain kind of step which we cannot take. Here, I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Windlesham and Lord Todd, that they may be a temptation to some, but they are right out. I mean anything in the nature of the making of restrictions on young scientists, or of making them serve a period of time in England in order, as it were, to pay for their education. I am sure that these attempts would do us moral harm. We must not make our lives smaller than they already are. We want to make scientists and science more expansive, not less. Further, as a more pointed argument, such attempts would do us practical harm. Anyone who has attempted to manage scientists will know what I mean. It cannot work. The word will get passed round the schools and soon we shall have fewer young scientists than we have now, and that is few enough. This is out of the question.

The steps we take are going to require more imagination than that and harder heads. I think I can suggest them in two words: one is choice and the other is pay. The trouble is that our kind of society is not well adapted for paying, and even worse adapted for making choices, particularly when the choice suggests that one kind of activity shall be preferred to another or that we ought to give favourable treatment to the excellent in any shape or form. That goes right against the contemporary grain in this country, much more than either in the United States or in the Soviet Union. Yet we have to do just that. We have got both to choose and to pay. If we choose right, the money will come back.

The first thing to accept—and here my noble friend Lord Todd and I are saying the same thing—is that neither this country nor any European country, except Russia, nor any combination of European countries, can do all the things that America does, either in pure science or in technology. That may be hard, but it is a fact of life and only fools quarrel with the facts of life. On the other hand, this country is already doing some things in pure science and in technology as well as the Americans. The sensible thing is to invest in strength and, of course, invest in necessities. For example, our atomic energy technology has been a major success. We ought to increase that investment. And that sort of choice means that there will be other things we cannot do. We have to keep our grip on the technologies that any advanced country requires—computers, micro-electronics, machine tools—even though the Americans have an enormous lead. These are necessities. In fact, that was one of the first decisions of the Ministry of Technology two years ago. If we choose in cold blood our strengths and our necessities, then a good many technologies will have to be sacrificed. There is just no argument against that. Other European countries do this somewhat better than we do.

Exactly the same is true of pure science. I will say more about this in a moment. In practical terms, pure science is not such a problem as technologies. Dr. Sanders said this week that pure science is international and that we all gain from it, wherever it is done. Nevertheless, I am convinced that without so many schools of pure research of the highest class, this country would in the long run—and not-too-long run—sink into the dingy and third-rate. It is very dangerous to think that we can separate technology from pure science in a clear-cut way. The real point is that if we make the choice, we can have some technologies and some fields of research where we can be as good as any country in the world. That ought to be our programme. Once that is established, the climate will be healthier, and it will help to influence the young scientists to stay.

But that is not enough, or anything like enough. We have to make their own conditions better. This means, I am sure, that we have to pay. Probably the easiest method would be by using some fiscal devices. I will suggest three, although fiscal things are not really my speciality; I am very bad at them, and I believe that others can produce more.

The primary intention of my first two suggestions is to make some engineers and some scientists better off. As I said before, this is the kind of preference that goes right against the grain of our society, but it is better to go against the grain of the society than to see it decay within quite a short time. Scientists and engineers are, by and large, very much underpaid in British industry. They are very much underpaid by the standards of their American counterparts, and appreciably underpaid by the standards of their counterparts in this country who are not in industry. This is one of the reasons why so much of British industry is struggling—or perhaps it is one of the symptoms. We have far too few first-class scientists in industry now, and a good many of those industry is not good at using. As a rough generalisation, only substantial groups of scientists are effective in industry. It is no use putting them round in penny packets. Take the firms who employ 1,000 qualified scientists and you will write down the names of most of the British firms who are competitive by world-wide standards. But they will not stay competitive if their scientists migrate across the Atlantic.

I suggest here that we should bear in mind one of the few imaginative fiscal measures of this century. I mean—and I am banking on automatic Pavlovian laughter from certain noble Lords—the selective employment tax. We all know that this tax, as at present administered, performs both anomalies and certain absurdities. But it can be refined; it can be got right. At the very least, it represents an idea, and a cardinal idea. Just for once a Government is not afraid of showing preference or even indicating that one kind of employment may be more socially valuable than another. I believe that the positive aspect of S.E.T. should be adapted—obviously in far smaller numbers, and with much larger allowances—to those firms employing more than a minimum number of scientists. This will make it possible for firms in industries of critical importance to pay their scientists something more like a competitive salary.

My second suggestion is also designed, though not entirely, to attract more talent, even if it be part-time talent, into industry, and to meet some of this divi- sion that we see in the universities and the industrial world. It is shamelessly borrowed from America; it is also of the nature of a fiscal device. It is remarkably simple. A number of American universities now employ their faculties on contracts which engage their service only for nine months in each year; that is, the full salary is paid, but the faculty member is entirely free to do anything he likes, or, of course, to do nothing; to take up employment, take up consultancy, or even write books. He has three months where he is not at all under the control of his university. I believe that this concept would cost us nothing, and would be more valuable to us than to the Americans. We have an abnormal amount of ability in our universities in proportion to our numbers, probably more than any other country in the world. On the other hand, it has not until very recent days been usual, or even approved of, for this ability to take much part in the working world, and certainly not in industry. It is one of our crying needs that it should do so.

The third suggestion is concerned with the universities themselves. By choosing and by paying we stand a chance of getting some branches of technology—both in the public and private sectors—attractive to good scientists and engineers, and so able to hold their own in the world. But I am certain that all this will go quite dead unless we have some universities which are centres of supreme excellence. Here is another body of unconscious collusion with the noble Lord, Lord Todd. We have now forty-four university institutions; the Continent of Europe has many more. Each of these institutions ought to find its way to doing something well; but it is totally unrealistic to think that many can live at the same height as Berkeley or Harvard or something like ten more of the best American universities.

By centres of supreme excellence, I mean people who are taking original thought so far as it can at present go over a great variety of fields; I mean no more than that. With great effort, and deliberate and discriminating choice, we in this country might produce two or three such centres; the continent of Europe might produce perhaps another three or four—because the standard here is very high. Remember that the days of the 'twenties and 'thirties, when Cambridge, Copenhagen, Gottingen, and for a short time Rome, were the major centres of world physics, have gone, and unless we show great nerve and skill they have gone for ever. But still, there is a great talent in England and Europe. With good luck, and if we are not afraid to concentrate some of it, we have the intellects which could attract other intellects from allover the world.

But how to do it? To begin with, I am fairly sure that these centres of excellence—I apologise for the jargon—will have to be constructed, with perhaps one exception, on national bases. Universities are tricky and organic things, and I think that, once again, the sensible course is to build on strength. But it is very hard to see any administrative machine in this country saying, as we probably ought to say: "We can only afford, both in money and high talent, three great universities"—I am choosing the number three at random—"We are going to choose. Whatever else is sacrificed, these three will not be." I do not see that happening through any political or administrative machinery, and I must say that I do not blame any decision-maker who flinches from that particular choice. But I suggest that we have to find a way round.

Once more, we can borrow a fiscal device from America. It will have struck anyone who knows the United States how very large sums annually are raised from private sources, even by quite small colleges, with perhaps 1,000 students. Several that I know personally each raise privately, as a matter of course, every year more than private benefactors contribute to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge put together. Now, of course, there is more private wealth in the United States than there is here, and Americans are by habit more generous givers. But there is more to it than that. It happens—or, rather, it does not happen; it is considered policy—that such contributions in America carry substantial income tax relief, just as contributions to art galleries do. If we had this touch of fiscal imagination, I have no doubt that a good many of our universities would benefit; and I also have no doubt that within five or ten years we should have one or two or three universities, which would not be endowed like Harvard, but which would be rich enough to do anything we, or Europe, could reasonably possibly or even hopefully expect to do.

The cost of these suggestions, I think, roughly, would be something of the order of £30 million per annum in terms of direct current account. But if we are not too hypnotised by income tax theology, we realise that a great deal would flow back into the Exchequer. Anyway, can we afford not to do it? The alternative, before the end of the 'seventies, appears to be some approach to the New Zealand situation. I am not greatly addicted to agricultural metaphors, but if ever there was a risk of losing most of the seed corn, this is it.

I want to conclude by making an appeal to Her Majesty's Government not to be slow about this matter. If we go on collecting statistics, putting up committees and thinking for the next ten years, then such are the complexities of the interlocking English machine that we shall have reached the stage that just when we know what to do, it will be too late to do it, and we shall be left with the melancholy satisfaction of watching something which has already happened and which is irretrievable.

5.11 p.m.

LORD ANNAN

My Lords, I should like to begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for the admirable way in which he opened this debate, with such a wealth of factual information which was a great help to us, and also the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, for a remarkable speech because it surveyed the whole field in a way which, in my view, was quite outstanding.

I wonder whether I could try to follow more the noble Lords, Lord Todd and Lord Snow, and the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, in trying to see what, if anything, can be done about this situation. Before I do that, could I add one other statistic which came to my notice in a recent issue of Minerva, where a survey of just over 1,200 scientific emigrants just made shows that the physicists and chemists predominate. When this survey was taken, four-fifths were under the age of 40; the median salary offered in America was between 8,000 and 10,000 dollars at universities, and in industries 12,500 to 15,000 dollars. When asked why they went, low salaries in this country was the answer which only 6.5 per cent. gave. Low status was a much more common answer, and also irritation with the conditions in this country. They stay, so they said, in America because they find it more stimulating. They did not see their emigration as a political act nor as having any moral issue or connotation about it at all. They thought that the atmosphere of America was less congenial than in this country, but more stimulating. They prefer change to stability, challenge to tranquillity, and they preferred an aggressive society in which hard work, and the frank advertisement of the successes that go with hard work, prevailed. In other words, they preferred this to the society in this country. They also preferred the more egalitarian society of North America.

So much for certain facts. What, if anything, can be done about it? I am afraid that the answer to this at the moment is very little. I think we have to recognise that this situation, which has been actively diagnosed this afternoon, may well get worse. To begin with this country not only cannot but, I believe, should not, try to compete with the United States and try to match the working conditions which are offered to scientists in that country. The Americans have put a large slice of their gross national product into fundamental, pure, scientific research, not only in the form of State and Federal aid, which comes out of taxes, but in the form of massive grants from foundations, fund raising and private benefactions. In fact the money and the space—that is to say, the pure square footage in laboratories—has outstripped the supply of first-class men. That is why they have to raid Europe. Universities or research laboratories in America compete for scientists with an aggressiveness which is quite unknown in institutions in Europe. They compete for the big names in science.

This has some deplorable results, as well as good results. They offer scientists attractions which can only be described as Babylonian. The delights facing the sultan surrounded by his houries are as nothing. They pale into insignificance compared with the salary and fringe benefits which American universities try to offer to the big names in science and the best young scientists. No teaching, no administrative chores, frequent leave of absence, paid trips to Europe and to conferences, special medical facilities and school arrangements—these are some of the lures which institutions try to match or to better. As a result, it is often impossible to keep a scientific group together in the United States because its members are always being lured away. The top scientists are frequently on the move and rarely in their own institutions when they are supposedly static. Such a system—and of course it is a wonderfully competitive, aggressive, enterprising system—also carries a large number of expensive and mediocre passengers. So let us not think that everything is entirely perfect in American science as compared with our own science.

Then again, we cannot compete in the size or the scope of institutions. One private university in the United States of which I know has a department in a particular branch of biology of 150,000 square feet. That is an investment of about 25 million dollars. It has a staff of 50, which is an investment, I suppose, of another 25 million dollars. It has grants totalling annually some 3 million dollars, and its sole obligation is to turn out a mere 20 Ph.D.s a year. If we try to compete with that kind of big science we shall be lost.

I am in no way trying to denigrate American achievement in scientific research: that would be absurd. The achievement is enormous, and the fact that their system produces the diseconomies to which I have referred does not really alter the fact that the scientist has a special status and position which is buttressed by salary scales far in advance of his colleagues in the social sciences or in the humanities. This is even truer in industry, which goes after the young Ph.D.s as if they were hunting valuable furred animals. And, what is more, industry knows how to use the Ph.D.s and the mature scientists when they get them, which industry, with some notable exceptions, such as the Shell Company, in this country does not always do. I am attempting to point out that however much we increase the salaries or improve our laboratory facilities, we shall never be able to match the princely conditions in which scientists live in America.

The question before us is, should we? Should we try to improve conditions for scientists and, if so, how much? The answer which was given to us by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, this afternoon was in Party political terms. May I say, without any attempt at flattery, that I am one of the noble Viscount's greatest admirers for his work as Minister of Education. Not even the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, could compare with what he achieved in his two tenures of office in that Department of State. It was he who first instituted, I think for the first time for over thirty years, an inquiry into technical education in this country; that is to say, the sub-university sector. It was he also who initiated the Crowther Report, the Robbins Report and inquiries into the educational system of the country as a whole, which asked a lot of exceedingly awkward questions. So if I criticise him now, my admiration is in no way diminished. I criticise him now only because I could not quite follow his argument about the fact that we no longer live in a competitive age in this country, that competition is blown upon by Socialists and Members of the Labour Party and that therefore this is what leads indirectly to the brain drain. I did not follow him because he spoke about the 19th century which historically was an age of ruthless competition and aggressiveness, and yet led to mass emigration from this country.

The other thing which I also did not entirely follow, though I agreed very much with one part of it, was his discovery of one of the causes of the brain drain, which is the universities themselves. I followed the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, very closely. I agree with him when he argues that in the 'fifties the universities were insufficiently aware of their duty Ito society and to industry; their duty to do something more than (if I may use the term) merely reproduce their own species in terms of Ph.Ds who would then become dons. But I did not quite follow the noble Viscount when he referred to senior common rooms and. by a sleight of hand, suggested that their occupants were in some way identical with Left-Wing intellectuals. Has the noble Viscount even been in a senior common room? I assure him that they are the most conservative parts of this country. However, perhaps I may pursue the argument and agree, in part at any rate, about some revision of the system of taxation, although I would not go as far as the noble Viscount did.

It would be disastrous in my view if, in attempting to stop the brain drain, this country tried to compete with America. Only this morning there was a letter in The Times arguing that we could minimise the drain by altering our taxation laws. Such a minor adjustment as Professor Wheat croft suggested in his letter might indeed be useful, but to alter our system by determining the rate of national investment would be wrong. The Treasury—rightly, in my view—controls the national investment between different sectors of life in this country: it allocates so much for health, so much for relieving poverty, so much for education, so much for research, so much for improving transport, and so on. And it does not permit private charity to upset the general pattern by inducing benefactors to part with large sums of money and then to get tax relief for so doing, as is done in the United States of America. My own view is that this is right. We cannot allow the structure of not merely our administrative machine but also our vision of social justice in this country to be distorted by any one sector, however deserving, claiming some special exemption from a major kind of tax.

Saying that, however, is very different from saying that our present set of priorities in national expenditure cannot be changed. I believe that they can and should be changed. Those of us who deplore a vigorous East-of-Suez policy; those of us who are, once again, frustrated by the Government's refusal to cut our forces in Germany; those of us who regret that our present tendency towards dependence on the United States of America causes us to distort what should be our foreign policy, do so, not because we are "Little Englanders"(for that matter, I am a convinced European) but because our national prestige does not, in our opinion, rest on aircraft carriers or on aircraft operating off Asia. It rests on our economic power, as the example of France, Italy and Germany since the war has shown; and our economic power, in turn, rests in large part on our educational and research system. For years we have been squandering our resources on so called weapons of defence, and whenever there is a call to cut defence costs noble Lords opposite spring to a defence of those costs. Indeed, in this House, when the Territorial Army was under threat, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Lovat, actually said that it was folly to denude Scotland of this shield she had when it was known that the Russians had four parachute divisions in Western Russia.

This is the kind of argument which causes the brain drain. Unless we can cut defence costs we cannot give science and education the support they ought to have, for science needs massive support. It does not need the support which will enable scientists to live the lush life which their confreres live in America, but the kind of support which will produce more scientifically trained students at all levels, and perhaps most particularly at the C.N.A.A. degree level and the O.N.A.—below the ordinary university level. The British shipbuilding industry has suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Japanese since the war, but it is not because Japan produces more Ph.D.s and Nobel Prizewinners than Britain does. What Japan has produced is vastly greater numbers of low-level trained technicians and technologists who have gone through a university or sub-university type course. These are the men who work in the Japanese shipyards.

If the Foreign Office is one of the first Departments whose sails should be trimmed, the second which I think should be taken on by the Government is the Treasury. The noble Lord, Lord Bowden, gave an admirable example of Treasury cheeseparing, and one of the things I would wish Her Majesty's Government to do is to institute an inquiry, either through the University Grants Committee or through the Committee on Scientific Policy, to find out what precisely are the main reasons which induce people, and particularly scientists, to emigrate. I wish very much that this could be done as a matter of urgency, because I think it will be found that many of the reasons are in fact administrative.

I am gloomy about the brain drain because I think it will get worse. It will get worse because, I suspect, the total extra money available for education is going to be spent—rightly, in my view—on the primary schools, when the Plowden Committee report, and on the technical colleges and polytechnics, rather than on the universities. If the University Grants Committee and the Research Councils are wise, priority will be given to a comparatively few elite departments in a comparatively few universities. We must husband our resources and not spread all the butter we have at the moment thinly over the whole of the loaf. That means that many scientific departments will be starved of research equipment, and this in turn means that some of their most adventurous members will set out for the land of milk and honey.

While I support the noble Lord, Lord Todd, and the noble Lord, Lord Snow, in their support for centres of excellence, we must realise that although this is the right way to organise scientists, it may lead some scientists in institutions to emigrate precisely because they feel they have no chance of getting what one might call "over and above" support. If I may dot the "is" of what the noble Lord, Lord Snow, said when he spoke of two or three universities being pre-eminent I wish he had said two or three departments in a particular university being excellent, because I think it would be wrong to try to concentrate all the excellence into three universities. This would drain other universities of talent. What matters is that there should be in each university certain departments which are internationally known.

LORD SNOW

My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? He may be crossing the "is" of what I said, but unfortunately I did not mean at all what he appears to mean.

LORD ANNAN

I apologise if I misunderstood the noble Lord's argument. I am delighted to understand that he is in agreement with what I am saying.

LORD SNOW

No.

LORD ANNAN

Would the noble Lord then please explain the difference?

LORD SNOW

My Lords, perhaps I may explain quite briefly. In fact, I believe that centres of great excellence will contain a number of different departments. I do not believe that in any really great university in the world to-day that is not true; and I believe that if we had one good department in each of 44 different universities it would not produce the effect I wish to produce.

LORD ANNAN

My Lords, I think the noble Lord is entirely right when he says there should be clusters of departments and places known for their great science. What I believe is dubious is whether they will be known also for their great social science, great departments of language, great departments of history. If you try to have universities which have supreme excellence in humanities, supreme excellence in social sciences and supreme excellence in all branches of science which are taught there, I think they will get indigestion. I am delighted to hear there was no support this afternoon for those who, like Mr. Godman Irvine in another place, wanted the Secretary of State to seek from our students by legislation a pledge that they would undertake employment in the United Kingdom for not less than two years after taking their degree. It is absolutely right, I am sure, that all speakers this afternoon have set their face against this method of attempting to solve the problem. It would, in fact, solve nothing.

There are three things, in particular, which I think could be done. One has already been alluded to; that is, the attitude of industry to scientists and to engineers here, paying much more attention to the young man who is a young man of promise. The second thing is that they should pay their Ph.Ds and recognise that in a Ph.D. they may not have a person who at the moment he joins the organisation is a first-class industrialist, but they have someone who, potentially, has the brain to contribute enormously to industry. Sometimes industrialists are a little apt to think that people who come directly from the universities ought to be fully trained as good industrialists, as men who are going to be the tycoons of the future. That is expecting too much, because young men at that time will not have orientated themselves to the competitive atmosphere of industry and the problems which industry provides; they will have been preoccupied entirely with their scientific researches. Better and more sensible treatment of the young scientists they get, treating them not as backroom boys—unless, of course, they declare themselves to be backroom boys and nothing else, in which case very likely the organisation will not have much use for them—but trying to train them to be front room boys as soon as possible.

Secondly, the universities. Here I do not think we need flexibility in salaries. I do not want to suggest that there should be a differential salary for scientists and engineers vis-à-vis social scientists and university teachers who work in the humanities. I think this would be met with a storm of protest from the universities and tremendous opposition from the Association of University Teachers. But having said that, I wonder whether, in the case of some young scientists, particularly engineers, who are willing to leave their laboratories and go into industry for a few years—even though this means that they will then not have the record of papers published that some of their colleagues have—it would be possible to institute a series of merit awards, very much on the lines of those which were organised for doctors who work on the medical staffs of universities, but a much wider scheme. Those merit awards were for very outstanding physicians engaged in university work, in recognition of their supreme distinction. This would be much more on the lines of an inducement to get good scientists of a particular kind, not merely in universities, but sometimes an inducement to them to go out into industry for a period of years.

Lastly, my Lords, can I appeal again for a change in the attitude to the status of scientists and technicians? We have still not got this right in our society. This is not something we can do by legislation, but is something which I believe can only occur if people understand and realise the value of these admirable men and women to our economy as a whole. May I apologise to the noble Lord who introduced the debate, because I shall have to leave before the end of it as I must return to my university, not to try to stop the brain drain but to do everything I can to discourage it.

5.37 p.m.

THE EARL OF KILMUIR

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, has raised, in my view, one of the most important aspects of our economy and also of the happiness of our people. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Snow, said that we ought not to spend more time getting more information but should be content with what we have. Using what we have, and taking what seem to me the most important points, I think the importance of the brain drain is clear and it has shown that its dominant cause is the very high taxation in this country at the moment. I was very tempted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, into the relative positions of persecution and over-high taxation, but for many reasons I restrained myself from that.

I take the four points that seem to me most clear from the facts that we know. The rate of tax on salaries of over £1,500 a year is higher in this country than in any other advanced industrial country. A scientist emigrating to America has 50 per cent. more spending power after tax, after allowing for the difference in prices, and apart altogether from his ability to build up capital. On the other aspect, I myself have examined carefully and accept Dr. Seale's figures that British born and British trained doctors emigrating in 1965 were more than a third of those produced in the medical schools; and I also accept, as one must, the Canadian figures showing that the total managerial and technological export to Canada in, creased between 1961 and 1965 from under 500 to over 2,000. If these points are right, no one can say that it is not a serious subject.

I was most charmed by Lord Bowden's speech. I would put his point slightly differently, but I think it shows the seriousness of the problem. Behind each success in rocketry of the United States or the Soviet Union there are armies of trained scientists, technologists and managers, specially trained in advanced techniques and correspondingly excited by the limitless possibilities. That is the world we have to face, but that is what is happening. It may be that our best answer is a combination with European countries and the chance of competing with these existing technological armies by creating a European counterpart. In fact, last year a most unhysterical collection of European scientists and businessmen said that, unless we were prepared to act on a barrier less basis in Europe, we should within ten years come to the position that European countries would be developing countries as compared with the United States and the Soviet Union. That is our problem, and it is in order to answer that problem that we must have the highest managerial qualities in our science-based industries.

I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Todd, is not now with us, but I should like to say one word in defence of what industry is doing to deal with this problem. There is no question of industry fading to recruit graduates. In the company of which I am chairman we recruited 250 graduates last year as compared with 10 in 1960. They come to us because they believe that we constitute an exciting modern industry. They want to see the millions that we have already spent on research and development put into a production which is both exciting and rewarding. They do not want to face an aura of depression in their own future, however good their work. It is up to us, the top management of industry, to see that their futures are under constant consideration and that there is a continuing interest in their progress which will be clearly shown. That is our job. It is not enough to take men; it is not enough to give them a chance. We have to study the conditions under which they work and constantly improve them and hold out greater hopes of a more exciting life. But there is also a Government responsibility.

In order to have a continuing high managerial level you have to have—I was so glad that my noble friend Lord Windlesham, I believe, shared this idea—achievement motivated people. My former colleague Mr. Marples put it more shortly and tersely. He said that they had to "have knowledge in the head and fire in the belly"; but I think that is the same idea. These are the men that we are in danger of losing from industry, and these are the men who, if they stayed, would not only fulfil their own work admirably but also give that magnetism which would lead on other people. I state my first point as an aim—I was going to say "despite Lord Annan", but I do not think there is an entire conflict between us. Our aim should be to let them earn and keep as much in Britain as their opposite numbers get elsewhere. I think it was most interesting that such an authority as Professor Wheat croft should write the letter which appeared in The Times this morning advocating a cut of all surtax rates to one-half of those of 1964–65. Professor Wheat croft, with his experience, gave as his reason that it would take only two or three years for that amount to be recovered by the Treasury. That is a matter of an aim.

But there are two matters which I ask the Government to reconsider. The first is the question of the stock option scheme. As we know, at the present moment that is possible and indeed greatly used in the United States. It was possible here up to a year ago and, speaking for myself, I put it to my shareholders and said that I wanted to devote a certain amount of capital to a stock option scheme for employees because I thought it would bring these employees nearer to, and identify them more with, the company. The shareholders entirely agreed. That has now gone because of the financial provisions that any increase in value in the stock option has to bear ordinary tax. I ask noble Lords not to throw this suggestion immediately out of the window. It is something which can give to the executive the chance not only of identifying himself with the company but of building his position and creating some capital power in a period when that is most difficult owing to high taxation.

The second point which I would ask the Government to reconsider is the question of covenants. The executive gets to his finest flower, if I may put it a little poetically, somewhere between 40 and 47. By that time, at the present day, he will in all probability have children over 21. There is no question of anything being done for children under 21 but if when he moves into the £10,000 to £15,000 bracket he could transfer part of his income to his children over 21 and to his grandchildren, it would give him an enormous satisfaction and I believe improve his work because of the satisfaction he would get in working for his family. I put it this way because I should like noble Lords to consider it or put the point again to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Most of these men have not inherited wealth. If a man has inherited wealth, I suppose that out of £50,000 he can transfer £10,000 to a child over 21 and the child will pay the tax and he will not. But if he has not inherited wealth and he makes, say, £15,000 a year, and wants to transfer income to his child or grandchild, he cannot do it under the latest legislation.

My Lords, I have tried to put practical points. These are practical matters which could help the executive and could make him more anxious to stay here. I do not think there has ever been a time when it is more important that we should retain our highest brainpower and our highest scientific and technological experience. I ask Her Majesty's Government to consider whether they will not at any rate have another look at how that can be done to what I believe would be the great benefit of our country.

THE MINISTER OF DEFENCE FOR THE ROYAL AIR FORCE (LORD SHACKLETON)

My Lords, I have been listening most carefully to the noble Earl's arguments. Is he suggesting that this concession on covenants should be confined only to those who earn their incomes?

THE EARL OF KILMUIR

Yes, my Lords, and I am grateful to the noble Lord for mentioning the matter. I am sorry I missed it. There would be no practical difficulty in doing this because, as the noble Lord knows well, there is already a distinction between earned and unearned income. My suggestion was that this should he confined to earned income in order to deal with the situation of which I have already spoken.

5.53 p.m.

LORD WYNNE-JONES

My Lords, like many other speakers to-day I should like to pay my tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for his admirable introduction to this debate. Everyone will agree that he presented the whole facts of the position with great clarity, and the rest of the debate has been concerned with the facts which he presented. We are all very much indebted to him. With regard to the actual problem of this so-called "brain drain", I speak as a chemist and I want to present some of the information which has come my way with regard to chemists. The position of the chemist is not quite the same as that of the physicist, the engineer and the doctor; nevertheless, I think that one can take the position of the chemist and consider the factors which influence this migration of scientists.

The migration of scientists is a process that occurs all over the world. It takes place even within the United States of America, where there is a continuous process of migration. There is, first, the general migration from East to West, but it is interesting to note that, taking the chemical industry in particular, the migration in recent years has been towards the Middle West, and there has been a flow from the East to the Middle West. I think this is connected with the fact that the chemical industry depends to an enormous extent, as your Lordships recently will have become aware, upon an ample supply of water. Perhaps it would be a good idea if we were to move our whole chemical industry to Cumberland or Westmorland. It might well be that in that way we should ease the problem of giving them the water which they need. In the United States they have very largely had to move back to the Great Lakes to get an adequate supply of water.

This migration which takes place in America occurs in exactly the same way as in this country, by financial inducements. One must recognise that these financial inducements are necessarily an important and determining factor in moving people about. But the problem with which we are faced, despite all sorts of ingenious suggestions which noble Lords have put forward to-day, is that in the matter of finance we are in no position in this country to compete with America. I do not believe that any sort of adjustment which we cared to make, fiscal or otherwise, would have any dramatic effect in stopping the brain drain. The brain drain takes place partly because people want to move for their own financial benefit, but partly, as was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Annan, and by other noble Lords, because of the conditions under which they are able to work. I myself had the good fortune to live in America for two years. They were years—the years 1933 to 1935—when the American economy was in an appalling condition, when America had twelve to fifteen million out of work; and I actually saw the soup-kitchens there in the streets.

The position of America was appallingly bad at that time, but even under conditions when the American economy was practically down-and-out the attitude in America was very different from the attitude in this country. This is a very important consideration for the young man and for the scientist. The general attitude in America has always been that if someone tells you that a thing cannot be done, you go out and show that it can be done, whereas throughout almost the whole of our life in this country, whether it be in industry, in education, or in Government service, we tend to go by authority. Some expert tells us that something cannot be done, and consequently we do not even try to do it.

I believe that to the young man this makes an enormous difference. When I think of the brain drain, I think mainly of the young man, for he is the important person we have to consider. Some of these sensational "captures" which have been made are rather like capturing a football star when he has passed his best. They may look very sensational, they may in one way be important; but what I believe is much more serious is to lose a young man, a man in his late twenties or in his thirties. He is the person who is really important and valuable to the country. And we are undoubtedly losing him.

There are many factors involved in this matter, but the biggest factor which is going to affect the loss from this country to America, and which is almost bound to do so over a number of years, is the fact that, according to the most recent estimates, the Americans reckon that in the decade 1960 to 1970 there will be an absolute shortage in America of their own graduates of 450,000 engineers; that there will be an absolute shortage of between 50,000 to 60,000 chemists over the same period. This is an ominous sign for our own chemical industry, for it means inevitably that nothing we can do will stop it. They will try to get young people from this country to go over and work in the United States. We have to recognise that this is bound to go on, and we must ask ourselves how we can make the situation better inside this country. I believe that we must concentrate on status and on the provision of proper facilities and proper conditions of work. I do not believe we can do it by simply saying we will pay them more, because we shall never be able to pay them as much as the Americans are going to pay them. In my view, it is an illusion to think of the matter in those terms.

With regard to the position inside this country, there has recently been published, as has been said to-day, the Swann Report, Interim Report of the Working Group on Manpower Parameters for Scientific Growth. In this Report a good deal of play has been made (not so much deliberately in the Report, as by other people interpreting the Report, I think) upon the way in which university graduates have apparently been retained in the universities. It is perfectly true that this has been going on, but it is inevitable for two reasons. First, there has been a period of rapid growth of universities, and it is not possible to double the number of universities in the country without also increasing the staff. Secondly, we have also enormously improved the facilities for work in the universities over this period, and the last Government deserve credit for having played a part in this. Far better grants have become available.

But the position in this country is remarkably similar to that in America; and this point has apparently not been realised. For instance, in the five years 1958 to 1963, the years referred to in the Swann Report, so far as chemists are concerned (I hope your Lordships will forgive me for referring to chemists all the time, but the shoemaker naturally likes to stick to his last), in higher education and research 20 per cent. of the product of the universities have been retained; 9 per cent. have gone to schools and colleges, 50 per cent. have gone to industry and to Government, and 17 per cent. have emigrated. We do not know whether or not the emigration is permanent. It is always difficult to know exactly what these figures on emigration mean. In the United States of America, the percentages over the same period of graduates who stayed on for higher education and research were 35 per cent., as compared with 20 per cent. in this country, while industry got 53 per cent., compared with 50 per cent. in this country, and the schools got only 1 per cent., compared with 9 per cent. in this country. It is, perhaps, one of the most dangerous and ominous trends in America that such a small percentage goes to the schools.

It is true that over the same period the position with regard to physics was very different. With regard to physics 37 per cent. of our physicists trained in that period emigrated, and that is a grave matter. I should explain that when I talk of 37 per cent. I am referring to those who have taken higher degrees. I am not referring to those who have had just physics training. But one wants to bear in mind that there is an important factor here. During the same period we were largely running down our atomic energy establishments. If one looks, for instance, at the companion Report which has been referred to, the Willis Jackson Report, one finds the actual numbers with atomic energy degrees employed over this period, and many physicists trained in excellent laboratories in this country had no opportunity of getting employment in their own field.

People are not just undifferentiated physicists. They are physicists trained in certain ways, and if a man has had a great, expensive and excellent training in nuclear energy you cannot blame him if he goes to a country where he can get employment in that field. We have to remember this, when we ask ourselves: What is happening? Why is there this emigration? We have to remember that it is covering a whole range of different training, and unless there is in this country the right opportunity, then a person will naturally, inevitably and rightly emigrate. Why should he remain in a place which will not employ him in the way in which he has been trained? So I feel that our real problem is one of solving the status, the conditions and the actual equipment on the job. If a person gets those, then he will stay.

It is interesting to notice, again in the field of chemistry, that it is the general opinion of American scientists visiting this country that our university laboratories are better equipped than theirs, and I believe—I am referring only to chemistry—that is one of the reasons why these people have remained here. I believe also, and I say this gladly in the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Fleck, that, in the main, our chemical industry has shown a much better appreciation of how to use people, of how to use scientifically-trained people, than many an industry has done. If industry is not prepared to use its scientists properly it cannot hope to retain them. It will not, in the first place, get them. We have frequently found in the universities, that young men who have gone into an industrial position have come back to us afterwards and said, "Can we move? Can you find another job for us? Because, frankly, we are not being used properly." I know this to be true in some cases, at any rate.

A young man who took a Ph.D. and who was working with me as a chemist was offered a job by a firm. He took it, but came back in three months' time and said that he had been completely misled. They were wanting him to do some work which was more appropriate to an engineering draftsman, which he was not trained for and he did not understand what he was doing. Although they were paying him £1,500 a year, he asked me whether I could offer him a temporary demonstrator ship at £900 a year, in order that he would be able to have a look around and get another job. This is a very serious matter. If our industry is not prepared to use scientists properly, then it cannot hope, whatever it pays them—and it will never pay as much as America—to compete with America.

There is one final point which I should like to make, and that is that when we try to get back to this country young men who have gone over to America, Australia or anywhere else, we often find, as the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, said, an astonishing amount of misunderstanding of the position. I believe the noble Lord said that someone in Australia was not going to be paid his travelling expenses to come over to this country in order to attend an interview. That is one point which certainly ought to be looked into.

But there is another point. The Science Research Council has for some years now been offering fellowships in order to entice young men who have gone to America to come back and put in a year in an English university while they were looking around and seeing what jobs were available. We have in this way tried to get back several graduates. They are graduates who have taken a Ph.D. in this country, gone over to America, been two or three years there, and have probably been getting 6,000, 7,000 or 8,000 dollars a year working in a university. We go along to the Science Research Council and are informed that they have specially attractive fellowships, ones which will certainly seduce any young men in this way, and the maximum is £1,350 to offer a young man who has been getting 6,000, 7,000 or 8,000 dollars in America. We expect people to be attracted back in this way, but it is in stupid, niggling ways like this that I believe many a good intention is frustrated.

6.10 p.m.

VISCOUNT CALDECOTE

My Lords, I should like to make my humble apologies to the House for not being here at the beginning of this debate, and particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, who introduced it. I had a longstanding commitment outside London which was not, perhaps, totally unconnected with the subject of this debate. Many noble Lords have already congratulated and thanked the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, on his most interesting opening speech. I cannot do that because I did not hear it, but I should like to thank him very sincerely indeed for introducing this important subject at this time. I shall read his speech with great interest.

I do not believe that any more evidence is needed that this brain drain is a real problem. We all know well from our own experience that the problem does indeed exist, but I think it is important that we should see it in perspective, that we should not jump to false conclusions and therefore take the wrong actions. So I welcome very much the setting up of the Ministry of Technology Working Group on the Emigration of Scientists, Technologists and Engineers, and I do not think it could possibly have had a better chairman than Dr. F. E. Jones, who has such a wide experience in university research work and in industry. That Working Group will establish the facts, it will disentangle theory and fiction and it will provide a chance to diagnose and to take action where action is needed.

There is a great tradition in this House that we each speak from our own experience, and this I should like to do to-day in the field of engineering. I hope your Lordships will not think it presumptuous if I say that I believe that is also the most important aspect of the brain drain, not because engineers are more important than scientists—and I include technologists in engineers—but because we have a great background of successful scientific work in this country and because I think the problem is much more pressing in the engineering field, where we often seem to have considerable difficulty in applying our scientific knowledge in a practical and economic way.

As I say, many facts are already known, but I should like to give two examples that are well known to me. After the TSR2 cancellation, over a period of about ten months in which these figures were measured some 760 technical staff left the company for which I work. Some 22 per cent. went abroad, including 17 per cent. who went to the United States. If you add to those another 13 per cent. who went to work for Consolidated Designers Incorporated, you will see that about 30 per cent. of those qualified technical staff went to work on United States projects. This, I think, is a very serious figure indeed, particularly as—though I have not got details of this—I am pretty sure that the best-qualified ones went abroad and the less qualified (those with less initiative probably) stayed in this country.

On another occasion, when we had a major missile contract cancelled several years ago, the three best men who left—they were fully qualified engineers—all went to the United States of America. One of them is now the chief engineer of a division of one of the largest electronic firms in the United States. It is interesting to note that at the time representatives from that American company came over here to interview him. But they were not satisfied with that: they flew him over to the United States to see where he would work, and to see the laboratories and the living conditions. He is probably now paid some 50 per cent. higher in real terms than what he would have been paid here now.

There is no doubt that the demand for these engineers exists at both ends. It would seem that in the United Kingdom the demand is going up by about 7½ per cent. a year and the supply by only about 4½ per cent. We all know what demands the United States space and defence programme is making on engineers of high quality over there; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Snow, said, when, in these circumstances, engineers, or any type of men, are in short supply, they tend to gravitate towards the areas of high reward. This is precisely what is happening. As I indicated, the real improvement in salary by going to the United States is about 50 per cent.—this is a fairly general figure—and I do not mean multiplying the salary here by three to get dollars. I mean multiplying it by five, because this is a more realistic figure. When you take that into account, you find that the average is about 50 per cent. higher in real salaries in the United States.

To this must be added the effect of taxation. For instance, a man earning£4,000 a year in this country would be taxed at an overall rate, if he is a married man with two children, of 25 per cent., leaving him £3,000 net. In the United States he would get the equivalent in dollars of about £6,000. His tax would be 16 per cent., leaving him about £5,000; and so the man in the United States would be some 65 per cent. better off. It is often said, "Ah!, but the cost of living in the United States is so much higher that there is not much in it". My experience, through talking to people in the United States, to friends who have gone out there and come back and to people who have left us to settle out there, is that the cost of living is not all that much higher in the United States. Of course, food is more expensive, but, then, motor cars and television sets, owing to the great scale of production and the lack of purchase tax, are considerably cheaper; and, on balance, I do not believe the cost of living is all that greater in the areas where these men live and work.

My Lords, as has already been said, these influences, though important, are not paramount, but they do become of very much greater importance when men get an unsettled feeling. A great deal has been said and written about cancellations in the defence industries, and I need say no more about them and the tremendously unsettling effect they have. But there is also the problem of uncertain leadership, of the frustrations and doubts which come to men about the technological future of their company—or, indeed, of the country. There are doubts as to whether the "top brass" really understand, whether they really believe in technology. In too many cases, it seems, the leadership, on both a national and a company level, turns down good ideas—ideas that engineers and scientists believe to be first-class and should be exploited. In industry, this is mainly due, or is often due, to the lack of appreciation at the top of technological problems, and in my view there are still far too few senior people within industry with engineering qualification.

Then, again, there is the lack of incentive to take risks. If a man has a good idea—and this applies more and more as the development of engineering projects becomes more expensive—then somebody has to back it with money. Somebody has to undertake development. Before you can sell, you have probably to put down a production line. You must tool-up for production before you can offer realistic delivery dates. This means a substantial investment; and, at the moment, there are many penalties for failure but not very large rewards for success, owing to our taxation system. I am talking now of our company taxation system.

My Lords, this attitude to profits is very difficult to understand, although at the Prime Minister's recent Productivity Conference I heard a very firm statement from the Prime Minister and others that this Government believe in profits well and fairly earned. But the Government do not yet seem to me to be putting that theory into practice. For instance, in talks between industries which do work for the Government, there are still long discussions going on as to whether the standard profit rate should be raised above 8 or 9 per cent. Everybody who works in industry knows that a profit rate of at least 15 per cent. is necessary if you are to pay reasonable remuneration to capital employed, to refurbish equipment and to buy the most up-to- date machines in order to make a company efficient. Thus I believe that company taxation is a very important factor acting against the taking of risks which are essential if new ideas are to be exploited. For if new ideas which are created by engineers and scientists are not to be exploited, how can we expect good men with fertile, creative minds to stay in this country?

My Lords, let me turn to Government service. I make no apology for repeating this point. I still believe it is of great importance. In Government service, power is with the administrators and politicians; particularly it is with the Treasury and with the Permanent Secretaries of the great Departments. They are admirable men; many of them are my friends and I hope they will not feel disturbed by anything I shall say. But it is a very odd fact that to-day the vast majority of politicians, of Permanent Secretaries and of high administrators in the Civil Service still have no technical training whatever—in spite of the fact that many of them are in charge of large technological Government Departments. I think it is high time that this is changed. I hope the Fulton Committee on the Civil Service, who are now sitting, will make recommendations in that direction.

Then, there is the point already touched on by many other speakers, that in the United States better facilities for engineers and scientists are usually provided; that there is more challenging and exciting work in pleasant and excellent surroundings. Anyone who has been to the United States, to Cape Kennedy for instance, and seen such places as the mission control centre for space work, cannot fail to have been impressed by the teams of relatively young men in charge of vast communications systems for many of the satellites that are going around up above us. These young men receive the technical information which is coming back from the satellites and, moreover, are controlling them when they have men on board. This is one example of the kind of exciting work that attracts people to the United States.

Why is it that we cannot provide better facilities and more challenging work in this country? Why do we not? I think there are two reasons. One is that the United States has greater wealth to devote to the development and growth of such projects. Secondly, there is a different attitude to technology and science in the United States from what we have here. May I briefly enlarge on these two points? Is it really true to say that we cannot afford this sort of expenditure on development and growth? We spend more than £1,000 million a year, excluding tax, on alcohol and tobacco; we have a thoroughly wasteful Health Service; we have an inefficient taxation system which is at the moment becoming more and more geared to the redistribution of wealth and to taking away the fruits of a man's labour. This has an important secondary effect. As my noble friend Lord Eccles said, there are those who do not want promotion, who do not want a wider horizon because they are happy as they are, because their needs are satisfied. Their needs are too often satisfied because so many of their needs are provided free or at subsidised prices—they do not have to work for them.

Anyone who has worked closely with men in industry will tell you that the real incentive for a man to work hard, to work long hours and in difficult conditions, is that he wants to make some money for himself and his family as well as to do a first-class job. If we continue to provide all the essentials of life free, or at subsidised prices, we take away a large part of the incentive to hard work. I am not in any way suggesting that we should penalise those who have bad health or misfortune of any kind and who cannot support themselves. All I am saying is that a great deal of the money derived from taxation goes to support and to subsidise people who could perfectly well look after themselves by working a little harder.

If money could be saved in this way we could afford to spend more on development and growth; we could do more exciting things. We could have communication satellites. It is one of the great failures of the last Government and of this that, although we were in the cable business for years, although we were in the short-wave radio communication business for years, we are not now in the satellite communication business—except in so far as we have good ground stations. This is not because we could not do it, but because we have not the will to do it. What can you expect from engineers who are interested in the field—and it is a very wide field—of electronics and mechanical engineering when they see other countries taking a share in this kind of work, when they see what the Americans have done so successfully? Do you wonder that they doubt that the leaders of this country take technology seriously?

Finally, and perhaps most important of all—and other noble Lords have touched on this—is the attitude in this country to engineering and technology and, indeed, to industry as a whole. The engineering industry particularly is a pretty challenging and tough life and people need to feel that it is important and that it is as good a life as that of professional men or men in the City or commerce. It is a commonplace view that stockbrokers have country houses; but I do not think many people believe that engineers have country houses. What are we to do about it? I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Snow (and I am sorry to see he is not here), that one of the two important things to do is to choose because he never told us who was to do the choosing. If he meant that the Government were to do the choosing; then I should think that that is the road to disaster.

But there are other things we can do. First, we can make further progress on the acceptance of engineering and industrial technology as something really worth while. There have been quite big steps forward recently in this direction. We are all now chartered engineers; and I am proud to be one. But it will take time to get across this new status of industry and technology. It is a long, and must be a continuing, educational process. The noble Lord, Lord Annan, said that we must have a more aggressive society. With that I agree. First of all, we must be aggressive in recruiting good people, in recruiting them back again from America if necessary. I heard the other day of seventeen British young men doing a business course at a well-known business school in the United States. In spite of the fact that all seventeen of them would have liked to come back to work in this country, only one company went to see those young men in this business school and only one of the seventeen came back to this country. All were anxious to come back to work here, but only one came back because they were not approached by enough British companies; although they were wooed in no small way by the American companies.

We must be more aggressive in taking risks in industry, and in encouraging industry to take risks, by better company taxation structure. I am quite sure that we should review the Welfare State to ensure that the fruits of the Welfare State are made available to those who really need them and not given to those who do not, and so be able to reduce personal taxation. Her Majesty's Government must set an example in other ways, too. They must give more scope to engineers in the Government service. Let them rise to the highest positions (including promotion to Permanent Secretaries of great Departments); give them real responsibility in the Government service. I am not as despondent as some that we cannot do anything about the brain drain. I believe we can achieve a great deal by the means that I have mentioned—and others have been mentioned in the debate—but not by means of Lord Snow's suggestion about more S.E.T. But, my Lords, we shall achieve this objective only if we have the will. If we prefer security and equality of misery, we shall very soon go down to being the third-rate State that we should deserve to be.

6.30 p.m.

LORD TAYLOR

My Lords, I have always been in favour of the brain drain and I still am; and after hearing to-day's debate I am even more strongly in favour of it because unless there is a brain drain away from all this gloom I cannot see any stimulus to make anybody get a move on here. Some 25 or 27 years ago a friend of mine, a general practitioner in a small country town in the West of England, emigrated to North America. Had he stayed, he would still have been a general practitioner in that small country town, and a very good general practitioner. He would have been senior partner now and getting £3,700 a year. But he settled in a big North American city and he is now head of the department of anesthesiology, as they call it, in one of the greatest North American universities. He has trained, I suppose, hundreds and hundreds of North American citizens—I will not say whether it is Canada or America—to be first-class anæsthetists. I venture to suggest that his contribution to society has been infinitely greater than if he had stayed at home sitting in that little, pleasant West of England seaside town as a G.P. He was a very straightforward, decent sort of chap, not an immensely clever person, but there was an immense opportunity for him. There are still immense opportunities all over the New World and in the underdeveloped world.

I am amazed at the words "brain drain"; I hate those words. It seems that you may go to a developing country, to which it is perfectly respectable to go, and do work; but the moment that country has a little more money than Britain has, or the average earnings per capita are a little higher, it ceases to be respectable to go along that particular "drain". I think it a first-class thing for the movement to go both ways, and long may it continue to do so—scientists, doctors, engineers and technicians. I used to be proud when I heard of a British engineer who had got some great position in America, like the gentleman just mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, who had become head of a great electrical engineering firm. I am still proud to think that Englishmen do this sort of thing. I do not see anything wrong with it at all. I think it is admirable. Mark you, my Lords, I think that we sometimes waste our people a bit, but this movement has been going on for ages and I hope that it will go on for a very long time yet.

I do not know whether I am in the brain drain or not. As some of your Lordships will know, I am going off to Newfoundland to help to run their university. I do not know whether you count that as a developing country, or no. If it is a developing country, I am not in the brain drain; it is a perfectly respectable thing to go to a developing country and to help them with their university. If, however, it is a developed country, it is not such a good thing to do; certainly it is something which the Ministry of Overseas Development will not look on with favour. But, like very much of North America, Newfoundland is an underdeveloped country. There are lots of portions of North America which are underdeveloped, and I see nothing wrong at all in young British people going out to help to develop them; to help to make them become as they should be.

My noble friend Lord Bowden made a most fascinating speech. He mentioned the problem which a developing country has when it starts to train its own scientists, engineers and technicians. He quoted the case of Dahomey, if I remember aright. He said that in order to get 30 per cent. of the medical students to become doctors in Dahomey they lost 70 per cent. to metropolitan France. I am sure that this is absolutely true, and it is bound to be true in most developing countries. I certainly anticipate that when we start a medical school in Newfoundland, we shall lose at least 50 per cent., possibly 60 per cent., of our graduates to somewhere else; but I do not think that matters. I do not think that is a terrible thing. I think that those first-class chaps will make excellent doctors. And it is a very good reason why metropolitan Canada should pay something towards the development of this medical school—and indeed anybody else who can be persuaded to pay, if we are going to supply them with doctors; just as we help to finance the medical schools in Scotland in order that they may supply England with doctors as they have done for donkey's years. There is nothing wrong with that at all. Doubtless the same applies to schools of engineering. I think this must just be accepted.

My Lords, what is rather gloomy, rather miserable and rather sad is when one hears of developing countries having created their Ph.D.s and then these Ph.D.s are left wandering around, searching hopelessly for jobs in their own country. These countries have doctors whom they cannot employ. There are biochemists who are going to America from India to try to find a job because there appear to be no jobs for biochemists in these developing countries. The scandal and the shame of it is the bad organisation within that country; and if we lose people I do not think it is wrong. I have a sneaking liking for some, but not all, of the things that were said by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles. I think we have an inherent, genetic desire to go off and conquer the world, and I do not think this is bad, provided that we do not do it by force of arms but by intellect and brain power. It seems to me a very proper function for the British nation, and one which I think we are doing prob- ably better than ever before, under a Labour Government, with the proper financing of the universities.

Nevertheless, if we do not pay our people in industry properly, this is something we have to put right. I quite agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, and indeed with my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones, when they speak of the repute in which chemists and physicists and engineers are held in industry in this country. I must say I think their repute stems largely from what they are paid. They are badly paid in British industry. The average scientist in the industries about which I know most gets £1,500, £1,700 or £2,000 a year, and it is not such a good career structure for the average scientist as is the university. The result is, of course, that a university-trained scientist prefers, if he can, to remain in a university; it is more ineresting there. I think that the only way in which industry can hope to get the graduates if it wants them is for industry to pay them better and make the jobs more exciting. In so far as industry fails, it is the fault of industry. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Snow, who said that one must have large parcels of scientists to make any impact at all in industry. I do not think one can achieve much with just one, two or three Ph.Ds in a particular firm.

One of the remarkable things about the migration of scientists is the great difference in the methods of recruitment employed. In this country, in Australia, in New Zealand, and indeed in India and other Commonwealth countries other than North America, it is usual for scientists to be recruited by advertisements in which the actual terms and conditions of work are stated. In Canada and North America, to advertise university jobs is thought to be slightly indecent: it lets the side down. So advertisements are frowned on, and heads of departments go round in a sort of continual talent-chasing and bargaining for people, trying to offer the conditions they want; but in the end they get somebody who may or may not stay for long. I think that this is a bad method of recruitment, which in the not-so-long run is self-defeating. Recruitment for the Commonwealth universities is done in this country by the Association of Commonwealth Universities, who advertise posts for most Commonwealth countries except Canada. Only a few Canadian universities can bring themselves to adopt the normal process of advertising. But I think this is something which will fairly quickly change.

In my experience, it is not as a rule the very great and good who are recruited for overseas service. Work in another country gives certain opportunities which a man may not have here, but those who are quite outstanding are probably unrecruitable. It is the experience of the Association of Commonwealth Universities that at least 80 per cent. of academics in this country cannot be recruited at all for overseas service; 10 per cent. can be recruited on the basis of a good opportunity in terms of equipment and facilities, and 10 per cent. on a basis of interest in an experimental situation, in a change of environment or in adventure. So it is only a small group among the total academical population who are ready to go adventuring overseas, whether it be to rich America, to slightly less rich Canada or to the rest of the Commonwealth.

I hope very much that the Government will do nothing to inhibit this flow. It would be to the long-term detriment of both Britain and the world if we were artificially to restrict it. It is worth bearing in mind that young people in Britain do not always appreciate that they get a free university education, and that this involves a certain obligation to society. One is tempted to suggest that they ought to give some service in some of the less pleasant places in Britain or in the rest of the world. But, on balance, it is probably best to leave it to them; and, if we do, on balance we shall probably get the right response.

6.44 p.m.

BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY

My Lords, we have listened to a most interesting debate this afternoon. There have been so many excellent speeches, and so much good advice, that I feel as though my brain had been completely drained of any further ideas. Yet I have a special piece of pleading to make, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for giving me this opportunity of making it. To begin with, I want to say how much I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, in his optimism about the brain drain. But we must keep a sense of proportion. As the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, said, our Empire was founded on the brain drain from this country and on our blood relations with the old Dominions.

There is a difference between the brain drain in the old days and that which is taking place now. The population then was much smaller, and the drain much larger. And it was of a mixed kind. The other day I was thinking over the various contributions that were made—Patagonian sheep farmers, Scottish engineers, Assam tea planters, Hudson Bay settlers, Hong Kong merchants, penniless younger sons, proconsuls, stranded sailors, political outcasts, and, even more important perhaps, especially in view of what has been said about America to-day, the Pilgrim Fathers. If the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, whose arithmetic is obviously far better than mine, could calculate the compound interest on the export of the Pilgrim Fathers, it might pay our debt to America several times over.

The reasons then were much the same as they are now—a desire for adventure, for greater opportunity; and dissatisfaction with the Government and with the Administration. Those reasons which were potent then are more potent today. The drain from some professions has doubled under the Labour Government. This is undoubtedly due to excessive taxation, broken promises and disappointment over technical and research development. I think it is interesting to note that the drain is to the free Western countries and not, except for a few treasonable people, to places beyond the Iron Curtain.

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, is it also the noble Baroness's contention that the greater brain drain in the days of the previous Government was due to dissatisfaction with the Government?

BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY

Yes, my Lords, that goes right back to the Pilgrim Fathers.

I think that there is one way, which has not been touched on this afternoon, in which we could help ourselves. I should like to lay stress on the greater contribution that women could make, if they were encouraged to do so. I do not like figures, but I have a few here which I think underline my argument. Of 69,000 registered doctors, only 24 per cent. are women. Of the 21,000 doctors in the National Health Service, only 13 per cent. are women. Of 16,279 registered dentists, only 9.8 per cent. are women. And I could go on through various professions—teachers, lecturers and scientific and technological experts—with even worse results. Yet it seems to me that there is here a source of recruitment which we have neither explored sufficiently nor exploited. But it will not have a fruitful result unless our taxation system is altered.

A great deal of research has been done into the effect of taxation on professional married women. If I may, I will give your Lordships two simple examples. One is of a couple, with the husband earning £1,700a year. If the wife's earnings came to £1,338 a year, they would be, after taxation only £217 better off for the working of the wife. In the case of a husband earning £5,000 a year and the wife £3,000, the only benefit to that couple in the end would be £324. Going back to work must inevitably throw an extra burden on the wife. But the result financially does not make it worth her while; and, what is more, it encourages the living in sin that is going on quite happily now in several cases to avoid these heavy taxation results.

We need more women in these professions. I do not know whether your Lordships saw the Daily Telegraph to-day. It contained an article headed "Physicists Honour Woman". It goes on to say: Doctor Daphne Jackson, 30, Lecturer in Physics at the University of Surrey, has become the youngest Fellow of the Institute of Physics. She is also the youngest woman ever to be elected a Fellow. Doctor Jackson has been to America four times; she spent a year in research there, and then came back again. I think that we want a great many more women like her.

There is one other rather small but interesting point. A great many nurses, as we all know, have migrated. Pay here is very much on the low side. But I am told now that an element is creeping in which may be helpful. Marriageable girls are going to be at a premium shortly, instead of the other way round, due to the losses in the two wars, and I think if young men are on their toes the girls will stay at home.

But, when all is said and done, I think we come back to what I said in the beginning. Unless this country encourages intelligent, adventurous, imaginative people who want to live here, they will migrate, and we shall be unable to compete in the front rank of the nations of the world. We shall sink into a despond of equal mediocracy. It is not for us to build a Berlin Wall, like the Communists, to keep our people at home. We must not build walls of constraint, as the present Government are doing, to hamper effort and enterprise, cutting out reward for extra effort. We do not want constraints; what we want are ladders to reach new heights, and to take others with us, and so create a country that brilliant people will not want to leave but will want to live in.

6.53 p.m.

LORD STAMP

My Lords, as a medical professor in daily contact with doctors and scientists at a medical school, I feel that perhaps I may be in a position to contribute to the present debate on why doctors and scientists leave home, though, as will be apparent, in a very different way and on very different lines from those followed by other noble Lords. It may seem rather a dash of cold water. There is undoubtedly a continuing deep discontent among scientists and doctors in university life that is impelling many to emigrate, and many more to consider doing so, and it is this aspect of the problem on which I should like to concentrate. It is one facet of the deep-seated malaise that has afflicted university life for many years due to inadequate financial assistance to the universities, and this, therefore, will be my main theme. I should like, also, to touch on the present situation with regard to the hospitals as a factor in this discontent.

First of all, I should like to refer to some passages from speeches I made in two previous debates in which I have taken part, which are relevant to the present discussion. The first was in the debate on Government Assistance to the Universities on May 16, 1962. On that occasion, I said: Everybody knows that the universities have had a difficult time, hut few outside the universities know how difficult it has been. Trying to make ends meet in an age of inflation, on budgets largely fixed on the basis of grants allocated years before, has led to cuts and economies in all directions. Important posts that have been established have been left unfilled, or no successor has been reappointed when a holder has left, possibly for a better post abroad; and I can assure your Lordships that emigration of university staff and leaders in research is a most serious matter, as other noble Lords have said. There can hardly be a head of a university department in the country, particularly those concerned with research, who does not know of such cases, either from his own experience or from that of his colleagues. Many are leaving, not for any reason of financial advancement—though they certainly could not be blamed if they did—but because they can no longer put up with inadequate facilities, constant frustrations and anxieties about financing—an atmosphere which is sapping morale and destroying idealism. Some men are being forced to take advantage of offers from abroad."—[OFFICAL REPORT, Vol. 240, col. 666] I then gave as an instance a young research worker of the greatest promise in my own department who had been offered a higher university post in the United States. I tried to dissuade him from going, even though we had no permanent position on the staff to offer him but for this reason, he was finally forced to go. He is now a professor, the head of a large department. My Lords, how thankful I am that, although he is a first-class scientist, my efforts to hold him were unsuccessful If he were still here. I could never look him in the face. He, of all persons, was fully conscious of his obligation to the country in which he had been trained. But a born research worker has even higher obligations. He will have an urge, amounting perhaps to an obsession, to make the most of the all too few years given to him to make a worthwhile contribution to his subject. He must, therefore, at all costs work under conditions where he has a reasonable chance of achieving that ambition.

In concluding my remarks in that debate, I stressed the complete inadequacy of the Government's proposal to meet the universities' present needs and future obligations, which amounted to a policy of attrition. I said: Such a policy, which among other things leads to the banishment of some of our best research brains on reaching maturity, in the early thirties—and, after all, these are among our greatest national assets—seems absolutely suicidal."—(col. 671). My Lords, that steady flow of scientific brains from the country that looked so ominous four years ago, as has been stressed to-day, is still continuing. There has been no let-up in the frustrations and anxieties of those days. In fact, they have become worse. There has been much squealing in the country about the squeeze that has been imposed in the last few months. Compared with what the universities have been going through for many years, the country does not know what a squeeze is.

What are we doing about it? What can be done about it? Spokesmen for successive Governments have pointed out the considerable increase over the years in university grants. But this has to be offset against the continuing inflationary trend, and—what is even more important—the vastly greater commitments the universities have had to undertake as the result of Government policy.

That brings me to the second debate in your Lordships' House to which I should like to refer. It took place on December 11 and 12, 1963, on Higher Education, following the publication of the Robbins Report. I shall never forget the atmosphere that pervaded your Lordships' House as the Government were congratulated on all sides on accepting the principle that there should be a university education for every person in the country who wished for one and was fitted for one. It was with a distinct feeling of not being "with it" that I intervened on that occasion, rather as I feel to-day. I referred to the continuing drift of scientists abroad, and went on: One must sincerely hope that there will be no repetition of the 'Go-Stop' tactics that have marked our progress in recent years, because, once having embarked on this expansion programme, it would be disastrous if the costs were not met in full, and these may still have been under-estimated. The last state might well be worse than the first, with inevitable cuts and lowering of standards all round. I continued: There seems a very real danger that in spreading the resources available for education as widely as is planned, some important fields of higher education will not receive the support they should, unless priorities are constantly kept in mind. While not wishing for one moment to detract from the need to expand facilities for a higher general education as far as practicable, it is the subject of priorities in higher education that I should like to develop…".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 253, col. 1298; 11/12/63.] and then I proceeded to do so, among other things emphasising the need for more doctors, scientists and technologists. Those words have proved only too true. It is said that the grant allowed to the universities is all that can be spared. I just cannot believe it, in view of the colossal sums spent in other directions. But if this is so, our educational resources are being spread too widely. The "Stop" has come again, and the full costs of the expansion programme have not been met. The fears that I expressed in the debate that priorities would suffer as a result have been only too well founded. Adequate finance to support university research, the expansion of our medical schools and the modernisation of our hospitals, has not been forthcoming, and the disillusionment of our scientists and doctors continues.

I have just referred to the situation with regard to the nation's hospitals as a factor contributing to the frustration of doctors that finally impels them to leave the country. Here again I speak in a different vein. I must confess to a feeling of deep anger as I walk down Victoria Street and in the City, and see acre after acre of vast new office blocks, many of them only half occupied. I cannot help wondering how far the vast amount of material and labour involved in their construction can have been justified during these past years. How much are they contributing to the export drive? All this is accepted in the sacred name of free enterprise. I think of the hospitals in the streets behind, with out-of-date and completely inadequate out-patients departments, dispensaries and residents' quarters, with operating theatres and wards often a breeding ground for cross-infection—a problem with which I am particularly concerned.

I must also confess to an equal feeling of deep anger when I think of the crass stupidity born of political expediency in the reintroduction of free prescriptions even though the great majority of people could afford some payment, at the same time as drastic cuts and delays in hospital rebuilding were being announced. It makes one wonder what future generations will think of the present one, of which it has been truly said: "Never have so many in this country had it so good"—and which clearly intends that it shall remain that way. What will they think of the legacy we bequeathed to them as we fall further behind in modernising our hospitals and the other social services?

I should like to look for a moment from a more personal angle at the problems facing the medical schools and hospitals, as perhaps the most effective way of emphasising the points I wish to make. For nearly thirty years now I have had the great privilege of being associated with one of the great post-graduate medical teaching and research centres in this country and, indeed, in the world. Like so many other medical schools, we have suffered from the disadvantage of being associated with a hospital which, although it has a world-wide reputation, is almost completely out-of-date. Like so many others, we experienced that deep sense of frustration when, after years of work on plans to modernise our hospital, involving days and weeks of time given by busy doctors and, incidentally, hundreds of thousands of pounds in architects' fees, we were told to scrap everything and start all over again, and now face the prospect of six or seven years' further delay in hospital rebuilding.

Like medical schools throughout the country, we face a desperate situation in this the last year of the present quinquennium, when we are told that at all costs we must balance our budget. After years of struggle we can do no more, and are faced with a very large deficit. In order to come anywhere near reaching it, we shall have to resort to our research fund and completely wipe it out. This fund is provided from money paid by private patients for the purposes of research. To use the fund in this way is quite immoral, but we shall have to do it.

One can imagine the intense resentment at this, particularly among those of my colleagues who have been mainly instrumental in bringing this money to us. This resentment at seeing money which they so badly need for further research work for which it was intended diverted to plugging the gap in the school's finances, is certainly no inducement to them to remain in this country. Indeed, more than one of them have talked of leaving Britain for this reason alone. I do not know how other university schools are going to cope with the situation, but I have a shrewd idea, and the Treasury are not going to like it.

Unlike other medical schools, though, we have one tremendous advantage. Thanks to an appeal over the last ten years in this country and overseas, we have now acquired a magnificent new laboratory block. Among the facilities provided in this block is a whole floor to be devoted to my own speciality, medical microbiology. This floor includes fine accommodation for teaching and research in virology, chemical microbiology, cell biology and immunology. It was essential that this floor should be included, for several reasons. In the first place, these subjects are among the most important growing points in medicine. This is evident from the fact that in recent years a high proportion of Nobel Prizes in Medicine have been awarded to workers in these fields. Furthermore, they are essentially subjects to be taught at postgraduate level and, as has been brought out in a recent report of the Society of General Microbiology, there is a very grave shortage of workers in these fields.

We all become very excited when we hear of a possible breakthrough in the fight against disease, and we may, and I hope we do, feel impelled to give such research some financial support. One example of this in recent days has been some new developments in the field of cancer research. But no support for research can possibly bear fruit, as the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, said earlier, unless adequate numbers of research workers have been trained. It is here that the universities have a vital part to play, and in particular schools such as my own.

As I have said, we have fine laboratories for microbiology, for which the University Grants Committee have underwritten the equipment. We have, however, for reasons I have already given, received literally not a penny from university sources to staff them, and at present they are completely unoccupied. Nor has any hope been held out that sufficient additional finance will be forthcoming in the next few years from the university for this purpose, particularly in view of the school's other commitments. We are therefore being forced to go cap in hand and beg from every possible source for money to provide the salaries of the teachers and research workers, and meet all the other running expenses of the new departments to get them off the ground. Even if we are successful in this—and it is a big "if"—such support can last for only a few years.

An obvious solution would seem to be an earmarked grant to meet the special circumstances of the case, particularly in view of the substantial increase involved in the school's budget. But while a block grant is normal procedure for capital expenses—such as the purchase of equipment—it is apparently quite out of the question in order to meet exceptional recurrent expenditure, even if this is essential to ensure that the equipment purchased can be used. When medical schools in general are suffering so acutely from the lack of such facilities, it seems incredible that when they are available they should not be used to the full.

I do not know whether this anomaly with regard to block grants to cover recurrent as distinct from capital expenditure will ever be remedied, but I do know that other university schools are labouring under a similar disadvantage. In any case, as things stand at the present the university cannot afford to provide any additional finance. This is but one example among many I could give of the immense difficulties facing our medical schools—and, indeed, the universities as a whole—owing to the failure of successive Governments to give them adequate financial assistance. The continuing financial stringency bears particularly hard on the more progressive dynamic and rapidly expanding schools—in fact those that have the greatest contribution to make. In this continuing atmosphere of deep despondency and discontent, is it any wonder that increasing numbers decide they have had enough?

In taking part in this debate I do so with a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness. I might also add futility. For some days one thinks about what one is going to say; one is listened to (I hope) attentively by your Lordships and one's remarks are duly recorded in Hansard, to be read perhaps by a few. What happens then? Judging from past experience, precisely nothing. In matters such as this, the Treasury will have the last word. Or must it? Is it not possible that this Government at least will face up to what is happening and will do something about it? Of what use is it to put the country on a sound economic basis if, at the same time, we do not ensure that we are in a position to take advantage of it when this has been achieved? This must involve as a fundamental principle conserving our present brain power and ensuring that the supply of specialists for the future is adequate, both in quantity and in quality. The Government will be judged on how far they ensure this, just as much as on the success of their economic measures on which they are laying such stress.

7.12 p.m.

THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH

My Lords, we must all be most grateful to my noble friend Lord Windlesham for initiating such a profound and interesting debate to-day. If I may say so, I thought his own speech was moderate and well arranged, and it has inspired other noble Lords to make other, most valuable, contributions. At this stage there is inevitably little more to be said: what statistics exist have, I think, already been quoted. It seems, however, to have been made abundantly clear that more scientists, technologists and doctors are emigrating than can make us feel altogether happy. While I agree that we should not exaggerate the situation, and that some of the best do return, I am nevertheless disturbed by what I have seen and read on the subject. I cannot be as optimistic as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, and I am afraid that I am slightly more inclined to the views held by the noble Lord, Lord Stamp.

There is one type of case which particularly disturbs me. I remember that a couple of years ago, when I was going around research establishments in the United States of America, I met a certain number of those who, having made distingiushed contributions to research in this country, are now in important research laboratories in America. I remember having a long meeting with a well-known cancer research specialist, who had been working in a famous hospital in London and who had become deputy head of one of the largest cancer research establishments in America. He told me that he now had such a vast organisation to administer that he had little time to do any original research of his own; and I think his case was not untypical of some others. It is certainly unfortunate when a man who may be capable of doing further original research should have his talents wasted in this way. If the world as a whole is not to benefit from such research work, I consider that a case of this kind constitutes a serious brain drain, not only for this country but for the world as a whole.

I was interested to see that Dr. Kingsley Sanders, whose name has already been mentioned in this debate and whose proposed emigration to the United States was reported in yesterday's Press, said the term "brain drain" did not apply to a pure scientist, since he was not likely to find out anything which could be commercially sold and thereby help American exports, and that whatever he worked on, and whatever he found out, would be made internationally available. I only hope this will prove to be true. One distinguished scientist in this country, however, told me recently that he thought this was sheer nonsense, and I must say that I am a little sceptical about what Dr. Kingsley Sanders said. I only hope that his move to the Sloane-Kettering Institute, where he will undoubtedly find facilities not available in this country, will in fact prove an important gain and not a loss to international science. I think the noble Lord, Lord Snow, was also rather concerned about this matter, although I was not quite clear what was at the back of his mind.

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Earl? I do not understand the point he is making. Is he suggesting that this particular move is likely to handicap further progress in the field of cancer research, or that there is some economic disadvantage? He expresses anxiety but I am not quite sure what his anxiety is.

THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH

My Lords, I think my anxiety is that it is difficult to isolate basic science from its ultimate application. I do not want to stress this point—perhapsI have overstressed it. But I am just a little unhappy about it; and I see the noble Lord, Lord Snow, nodding his head. However, I leave noble Lords to make their own judgment on this matter.

I think there is no doubt that more scientists, technologists and doctors are on the move than can make us feel entirely complacent. As to the actual numbers, we may have to wait for Dr. Jones's committee to report, and I hope that this will not be long delayed. Again I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Snow, about this. From the figures so far available the rate of migration must surely cause us considerable anxiety. What has been said in the Reports of the Willis Jackson Committee and the Swann Working Group is in itself sufficiently disturbing, and it seems clear from what statistics are available that the rate has increased in the last two years, since the present Government have been in power. I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Todd, say that he thought the situation may have got worse recently.

The fact, as has been stated, that about 40 per cent. of Ph.D.s in chemistry took first employment abroad is very striking, even if half of them did return; and in physics, as we have heard, the situation is considerably more serious. In fact, I calculate that only 6 per cent. appear to return. One of my friends in industry who is well qualified to make the calculation estimates, on the basis of the figures in the Swann Report, that it is possible to conclude that from United Kingdom universities in chemical engineering, chemistry and physics alone, we lose annually something like 400 Ph.D.s to education and industry abroad, chiefly to the U.S.A.; and these could be valued at about £4 million worth of total education which is, in a sense, given away each year. The total figure, including all disciplines, could be as high as £10 million, or even £20 million, a year. And some say (and I think the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, would agree with this) that in the value of qualified talent the United States is gaining more than it spends on overseas aid. It is of course true that some may be retrieved, but there must be in Britain a substantial net loss. The figures issued by the Canadian Bureau of Immigration, some of which were quoted by the noble and learned Earl, Lord Kilmuir, are certainly impressive; and I think Canada is also acting as a kind of stepping-stone for qualified men to go ultimately to America.

It is true, as the noble Lord, Lord Fulton has pointed out—and my noble friend Lord Windlesham repeated it—that to a certain extent the brain drain does run both ways, and that this country, and especially the University of Sussex, has benefited from the 60 per cent. of their present academic faculty who have had overseas experience. But we must remember (and I think no noble Lord has yet mentioned this) that the University of Sussex is a special case. It has appointed all its senior staff first, and any new university can fill its professorships, especially, I would judge, if it is located on the South Coast. I think I am also right in saying that the professor-student ratio there is uniquely high.

If you look at the country as a whole, particularly in regard to science and technology in the universities, you will find that a great many of the Americans who come over are only on sabbatical leave for a few years; they are not a permanent gain to this country. The Americans have a very good intelligence service which is well aware of the areas of growth here. They study those areas and quite naturally they go back to the United States taking their knowledge with them; so that this two-way traffic which has been mentioned is not, in my view, in true balance. It is clear from what my noble friend said at the outset that the position in regard to mature scientists may not be too bad, but that the position is worse in regard to young men and women who have just obtained higher educational degrees, for they will, after all, he our future leaders and they will prove later to have been a very serious loss.

In regard to the American recruiting campaigns in this country, I must say, and I think other noble Lords agree with this, it would not be in our tradition to forbid advertising in the Press. I am sorry to hear that those with great authority have said that the refunding of loans or the paying back of the cost of education is impracticable and perhaps undesirable, but I hope the Government will look at this matter very closely. As the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, has said, the British public is probably paying some £10,000 to £20,000 to educate each of these highly qualified men, and the noble Lord, Lord Todd, said that he thought some kind of control would have to be found to stem the very serious drain, even more serious drain, from the poorer countries. If the drain gets worse here, shall we not have to come to the point of having to exert some sort of control in this country over the situation? I do not know, but I should be grateful for Lord Shackleton's views on this point.

In addition to the overt recruiting which I have mentioned there is also an invisible drain. The Americans buy up companies over here and attract really first-rate men on to their staffs. They first use them for research work over here, asking them to think up new ideas, then later they may move all the research department to the United States and the curtain can then come down on their research there. I know that a number of firms have suffered from this and I thought it was worth mentioning. I have many American friends and by and large can be considered to be very pro-American, but I do not think we can just sit idly by and watch these things happening.

The situation in regard to doctors, as has been made very clear already by the noble Lord, Lord Stamp, is certainly very serious indeed, and I agree with what the noble Lord has said. In my view, putting it very briefly, I think that the only way to remedy the situation would be to change the whole basis of the present Health Service, and any responsible Government must give this matter very urgent consideration. In this connection, it is perhaps interesting that the number of dentists emigrating appears to be quite small compared with the number of doctors, and I wanted to find out why. It appears that the reason is that dentists, most of them, are in general practice which they can organise in the way they wish, and the payment their receive is directly in accordance with the work they do. Under these conditions it is possible to earn a fairly good living in this country, even if this involves them in working very hard.

It is clear from what the Prime Minister said in his broadcast in 1964 that the Government are pledged overall to do something. The Prime Minister said then that Britain had got the brains and that it was the job of the Government to see that we kept them here by making better use of them. How do we do this? How are the Government going to implement their pledge? I do not know. They certainly have not done so yet. I do not think that we in this country should be justified in this connection in increasing the flow of public money into Government research establishments. This is already very considerable and some people strongly hold the view that there is a good case for the redeployment of scientists from Government research establishments into industry. This is a matter on which the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and I had a brief exchange very recently. As I said then, I hope the Government and industry will be able to tackle the whole problem of the transferability of pensions for those who are willing to transfer from Government research establishments into industry. I know the noble Lord is sympathetic on this point. I understand from Professor Galbraith's last lecture that the Americans have almost solved this problem. I think we must make great efforts to do so too.

Some blame industry for not attracting more scientists to remain here, but it would be a mistake to conclude that British industry itself is not spending all it should on research and development. One very large firm in this country has made it clear that they are spending as much on research and development as large firms in America such as Dupont or Union Carbide, perhaps 30 per cent. rather than the 10 per cent. which has been often mentioned, of their gross profits.

It is clear also that the "squeeze" and the "freeze", and above all increased taxation under the present Government are having a serious effect. I have no doubt that the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, and the noble Earl, Lord Kilmuir, agree with me on this point. There is no doubt that this is one of the main reasons why migration appears to have increased. The whole climate in this country, fears of further creeping Socialism and nationalisation of industry, must give cause for concern.

The fact that Americans have admitted that the quality of our own scientists and engineers which they have recruited in this country is higher than in the United States is indicative of the fact that our methods of training, hard rather than soft, are producing the best results. We heard a most interesting speech from the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, on the drain from the aircraft industry, which was due mainly to the cancellation of projects there. I listened with the greatest possible interest, as other noble Lords did, to his most valuable speech.

Apart from the Concord, the United States seems in a way to be engaged in many more enterprising and imaginative projects than we are, in particular of course in space. Here our space efforts are much less dramatic and less appealing to younger men. They are parcelled off in a number of departments and there is still no kind of United Kingdom Space Authority or space administration, such as I advocated in our debate on the Space Age in November last year. I remember that my noble friend Lord Jellicoe, who was with us a moment ago, supported me in this, and he asked me to say that he continued to support me in it. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, was entirely opposed to the idea himself. Nothing, however, so far seems to have been done, except the appointment of Sir Solly Zuckerman as chairman of a new Central Scientific Committee, which will, I understand, deal not only with civil science and technology and manpower resources generally but also with space and defence.

Cannot the Government do something imaginative in this sphere? Would it not be possible to establish a co-ordinated space authority responsible to the Government through Sir Solly's new Committee, so that all our separate space efforts might be drawn more effectively together?

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl, but is he suggesting that we emulate the United States? Because he is aware that there is no co-ordinated space authority in the United States, and there are a large number of agencies involved, including N.A.S.A.

THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the main body.

LORD SHACKLETON

The noble Earl must get his facts right.

THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH

But the noble Lord would agree that space is better co-ordinated there than it is here. At all events, I consider that our own efforts are by no means negligible, and they are recognised by the Americans themselves as playing an important part in the free world's space effort.

But the fact that it is possible for the French Minister for Science to claim that the French are now the third space Power is certainly stinging. Will it sting us into some sort of action? I personally believe that our efforts are just as important as those of France, even if we are not spending quite so much money as they are in space technology. I believe that if we had a co-ordinated body, this could play its part in a European space authority, but I think we have still to co-ordinate our own effort more effectively. This European authority might be tied to a kind of European technological community. I know that the Prime Minister has advocated this, but I am thinking particularly of the plans proposed by Sir Anthony Meyer in an admirable brochure.

Thus, I believe it would be possible to divert more of our scientists to the Continent of Europe rather than to America—to Switzerland, Germany and France. Many people consider that it would be preferable to do this if we are eventually going into the European Economic Community. None the less, the enterprise, the enthusiasm and, above all, the money and the vast facilities and the enhanced status of engineers—I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Annan, about this—which America provides may well prove a strong lure, and it is not surprising that the climate in this country and all our bureaucratic controls extending, as we read in The Times to-day, into many fields beyond the Civil Service, make the young somewhat disillusioned about our efforts.

I do not wish to speak of space alone. There is equal fascination in the whole range of creative sciences—in chemistry, of which the noble Lord, Lord Todd, is such a famous exponent; in technology, whether it be the gas turbine or the production of a new car, or hovercraft, or even a collapsible barge, or the development of mini-radar, among other things, which British industry can do singularly well and which can be of real benefit to the economy of the country. All in all, I am uneasy about the situation here, and my unhappiness stems, as I have said, largely from the economic policies of the present Government. These have at one time or another been roundly condemned, not only by the Opposition but also by highly distinguished noble Lords on the Cross-Benches.

Money and excessive taxation—the noble Viscount, Lord Caldecote, was very good on this—are certainly at the root of the matter. Here I agree very much with what Mr. Congreve said in his tremendous article in the Daily Mirror this morning. He is head of a leading chemical engineering firm which has a remarkable export record. He has, incidentally, just sent me a message to say that the man in question whom he lost to Spain is being paid by his employers in Madrid not £10,000 a year tax free, as it says in the Press, but £12,000 a year tax free; and that if he were to get an equivalent sum in this country he would, I think, have to be paid not £70,000, but £180,000.

The noble Lord, Lord Snow, has said that tax-free concessions are "just not on". He certainly said it in the Daily Mirror, and I think he virtually implied it in the debate to-day. He has said that firms should be helped perhaps on the lines of what he described as the positive side of the selective employment tax. But, with clue respect to the noble Lord, I do not think that that is enough, for if you pay back the money to the firms, they cannot pass it on to their own employees tax free. After all, companies are made up of people who are taxed. They are human beings, and it is difficult altogether to blame them for going abroad if they can in fact earn so much more elsewhere. But I think that some of the fiscal proposals made by Lord Snow, and those concerning stock options made by the noble and learned Earl, Lord Kilmuir, as well as the transfer of income to children, should be carefully examined. I am sure that the noble Lord will say something on this.

But above all, I think we must do everything possible to appeal to the youth of this country. At present, many of our young who might in the future wish to take a trip to the moon have certainly better prospects of doing so if they go to America than if they remain here. If they would ultimately like to do it—I know some of them would—then I should like to see them do it not, as the song writer has said, "on gossamer wings" but in a well-built Apollo capsule. Your Lordships may not wish to embark on such an adventure yourselves, but I know the son of one noble Lord in this House who would sincerely like to do so. It may be, again as the song writer said, "just one of those things—just one of those crazy things." I am glad that the noble Lord enjoyed one remark in my speech. If I went myself I should like to ensure that I am issued with a return ticket. But surely we cannot but admire those who wish to take part in such exploits, just as we admire the achievements of those who climb Mount Everest, those who explore the North and South Poles and those who, like Francis Chichester, cross the oceans alone. We must give the young in this country a chance to concern themselves more actively not only in the adventure of space, but in exploring the depth of the ocean for food, and maybe eventually the centre of the earth itself.

There are many other points which have been made in this fascinating debate, in notable speeches by other noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, who evidently is a self-confessed and most distinguished member of our brain drain. I should have liked to comment further on what he said, but as time is getting on I must again thank the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for raising this matter and merely wish your Lordships a very happy Christmas.

7.38 p.m.

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, I shall make rather a brief speech, largely because I think the debate we have had has been one of the most interesting, and indeed one of the most valuable, that I have heard; and I do not doubt that a great deal of what has been said will be of value to Dr. Jones and his Committee. One of the reasons why I shall make a short speech is that I shall try to avoid being drawn into some of the Party political cries which we have heard from a number of recent speakers but which were so markedly absent from most of the speeches on this side of the House, as indeed they were when we were sitting over there. In those days, we never chased the noble Viscount, Lord Hail-sham, anxious though he was to be chased, when we were discussing a serious subject. None the less, I accept that the fundamental issue here is the climate and the nature of the society in which our scientists and technologists will operate.

Perhaps I may repeat the congratulations voiced by so many noble Lords to the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, for a quite outstanding speech: one of the best speeches I have heard introducing a subject of this kind, and one which I think has greatly enabled many of us, certainly myself, to shorten our speeches. Indeed, from the standpoint of any Government I would commend it as a clear presentation of the facts and regard it as an authoritative statement. The noble Lord can be well pleased, because we have had a number of really outstanding speeches. I shall seek to pick up only a few points, and then perhaps indulge briefly in a little of the general philosophy. I shall not be quite so poetic as the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, on some of the points which have been specifically raised.

The starting point, I think, is the availability of statistics. It is to me a little surprising that statistics are not available, and have not been collected, even in the limited form in which they were collected up until 1963. I do not condemn the previous Government for a decision taken, in slightly different circumstances, in which these statistics ceased to be collected, but it points to the need for having this sort of information. Although, as my noble friend Lord Snow and others have said, the picture is clear enough for us to take a general view, it will be of value when Dr. Jones has studied the subject and has obtained what information he can.

I was asked a number of specific questions. The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, asked for figures relating to doctors. Here again it is difficult to obtain precise figures, but the best guess is that the net annual loss is somewhere between 300 and 350. This allows for those who leave and say that they intend to return, but in fact do not do so. To put the figure in perspective, one can say that it is small when compared with the national stock of doctors, which is around 60,000, and which we hope will show the benefit, as time passes, of the increased output from the medical schools. Clearly, we could start a whole debate on this subject, and, having regard to the powerful feelings displayed by the noble Lord, Lord Stamp, I am careful not to go any further because I might stimulate him. And this is, of course, only one aspect of a much wider subject.

The question of the desirability of a brain drain, its real significance socially and internationally, its value to us in this country and the damage it causes to us—and, indeed, to other countries—has been discussed quite freely. The noble Baroness, Lady Emmet of Amberley, has said that there has always been a brain drain, or at least a drain of some kind. While the noble Lady was speaking, I was trying to scratch back in my memory to the undoubted extent of the Greek brain drain which occurred during Roman times and which, on the whole, helped to civilise the world. This is a purpose to which I am sure my noble friend Lord Taylor would suggest that we are able to contribute.

Nevertheless, the movement of professionally qualified people, whether pure scientists, engineers or doctors, has reached such proportions that it now constitutes a major international political problem. There is no doubt that this is of the most serious importance, not just for this country but for the world—and the movement is mainly to the United States of America. In a very brilliant speech my noble friend Lord Bowden examined this matter in great detail. Unfortunately, I did not hear the speech of my noble friend Lord Snow, but I had an opportunity of reading some of what he said and I know that it was a very important contribution. There is, of course, a very considerable migration of professionally qualified people to this country from countries which cannot provide the same opportunities of employment or the same scope as they find in more developed parts of the world.

The message that has come out of this debate is that this problem is something which the Governments of the world must face. I entirely agree with noble Lords who say that the last thing we want to consider is to put any form of restriction on movement, and certainly the Government have no intention of doing so. It is even doubtful whether it is desirable to discourage this practice beyond a certain point. A point may come where it is the duty of the individual to go to another country so that he may make the maximum contribution of which he is capable to mankind as a whole. It is interesting that the United States themselves recognise that they may endanger the peace of the world by extending the gap between the wealthy and the less developed countries. I quote from a Bill which has in fact been introduced into Congress. (I must say that I find the Congressional Record a great deal less easy to read than Hansard.) Mr. Mondal has introduced a Bill in order to reduce the amount of brain drain. The Bill is headed "Brain Drain from Developing Countries", and there are some startling statistics. It has been calculated, for instance, that the whole of American aid to other countries has now already been cancelled out by the value of the scientific and technological manpower which has gone to them in exchange.

LORD SNOW

My Lords, may I interrupt my noble friend to reinforce what he is saying? I had the privilege in Washington in January, when I was a junior Minister, to testify before the American Space and Astronautics Committee, and without exception this extremely able body of men were saying exactly what my noble friend is now saying.

LORD SHACKLETON

I expect that my noble friend Lord Snow has continued his classical role as an educator and stimulator, and possibly Congress listened to him as we so carefully do here. This piece of legislation—I do not know whether it will ever become law; I am not sure what happens in Congress—is entitled "The International Brain Drain Act." It proposes certain measures and it is very interesting to see this awareness in the United States of this problem. One must pay tribute to the fact that the Americans, who are so often accused of pressing on regardless, are aware of the implications of the position of enormous power which they occupy in the world. There are proposals which would discourage students from less developed parts of the world seeking permanent employment there. Ninety per cent. of all Asian students who go to the United States remain there, and this legislation would seek to encourage them to return to their country of origin.

This is only one aspect of the problem of the widening gap between the "have" and "have-not" countries. It is to be remembered that new technological developments—and this is why a discussion of this kind in your Lordships' House has gone as wide as it has to-day—can also critically affect the economies of countries. For instance, the changes in packaging materials and the use made of synthetic chemicals can have a serious impact on countries which at the moment have a stable basic industry of natural fibres, such as jute. This is not a new problem, and it has certainly become more acute with the differential growth in the world of technologically-based industry.

The Government are very conscious of the gravity of the problem of the brain drain, and of its dangers to this country, but as the debate has gone on for so long I do not propose this evening to suggest any particular solutions. However, I should like to comment briefly on some of the points which have been made. I was particularly interested in some of the specific suggestions of my noble friend Lord Snow, and of course the Government will look very closely at the various suggestions which have been made. The underlying reason why successive Governments since the war have provided for the growth of our universities is the increasing need for professionally trained scientific manpower—and, like my noble friend Lord Snow, I should like the word "scientific" to include all technically and technologically trained people—in industry, in central and local government and in the teaching profession.

Of course, the object must be to provide opportunities for employment at home which in total are as appealing as those which are offered in the United States. But again I say this with some caution, because one does not want to erect more than fairly low barriers of a kind which will enable a balance to be held. Of course, if we are to do this, are we then to encourage those other countries which supply us with so much brain power to stop sending it to us? Indeed, are we even to follow the example of the United States and consider some form of restriction on that most valuable of immigrants—namely, the scientific and technologically trained one?

I think we are all agreed that we cannot match all the monetary incentives which are provided by the United States, but we ought to be able—and this, I think, is really the main theme of this debate—to create an environment with a sense of purpose. Interesting points about this have been made by a number of noble Lords, particularly the noble and learned Earl, Lord Kilmuir. Of course, industry has a far more important part to play than Government in regard to its direct impact. This is not to say that Government, and indeed the whole of British society, do not have a major part to play. But professional scientists and engineers are still used far too much in a purely vocational capacity, and for them to feel they are truly wanted they must be given greater opportunities and encouragement in developing and exercising the obvious managerial talents which the Americans seem to recognise in our people so much more readily than we do. Therefore, again, I thought the contribution of the noble and learned Earl, Lord Kilmuir, was in this respect of particular importance and I hope that his words will be listened to throughout industry. Indeed, I would encourage the Institute of Directors or the British Productivity Council, particularly, to pick out this very clear recognition of the responsibility of management; a recognition which I am sure your Lordships will agree is by no means universal in British industry, or for that matter in other aspects of life, including Government itself.

VISCOUNT ECCLES

My Lords, would the noble Lord allow me to intervene? Would he not think it a good idea if Government Departments and the nationalised industries set some example? What proportion of the scientists does he believe are employed by the public authorities? I think it is more than 30 per cent.

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, perhaps the noble Viscount knows the answer. Is he asking me to give it to him now? This, I take it, is a general point in relation to the Government's attitude. As he knows, this is a matter which the Fulton Committee is going to look at. But I think I had rather conceded the point to him in advance. I had, in fact, said that Governments should help. I am not quite sure what the noble Viscount is asking me to say now.

VISCOUNT ECCLES

My Lords, I am asking the noble Lord to recognise that as a matter of fact the Government are the biggest employer of scientists and engineers in the country. My experience may not be the same as the noble Lord's, but I believe they are not all that well treated in Government service.

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, if the noble Viscount would like to have a debate on this, I should be very happy as it is a subject in which I personally am extremely interested. All I was saying—and I repeat it—was that both industry and Government need to recognise their responsibilities in this field. But I do not think I will be drawn further along that theme now, although it raises interesting questions, such as the point to which I think the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, referred: the question of mobility of scientists and their movement within our rather stratified and hierarchic structure of organisation, both within Government and within industry.

This is such a fascinating subject that I have already talked for a quarter of an hour, and I have hardly begun to make the speech which has been prepared. Perhaps the kindest thing I can say to your Lordships is that I shall not, in fact, deliver it at all at this late hour. I am sorry about that, because a number of people have worked hard to prepare it, but I find myself in agreement with so much of what has been said. The Government take this issue very seriously, and we are also particularly interested in the efforts that have been made by certain firms and certain companies. I mention in particular the appointments register, which has been set up by the Royal Institute of Chemistry as a contribution towards a better knowledge of the problem, and as an aid towards the re-engagement of British scientists and technologists in this country.

The noble Earl, Lord Kilmuir, made a very definite appeal, in his usual kindly way, that we should consider once again the question of share options. He will not be surprised if I give no undertaking beyond saying, as I have said before in this House, that the Government clearly recognise that incentives do play a part. The question of these particular share options is a difficult one, and I am not proposing, especially with the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, sitting here, to start arguing it on technical grounds beyond saying that it is not as simple as it sometimes appears.

THE EARL OF KILMUIR

My Lords, would the noble Lord allow me to make one point which I did not make clear? In my own case the options do not apply to directors. When I said executives I meant executives, and in my own case I did not ask my shareholders for the scheme to apply to members of the board. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for allowing me to say that, as I think it is valuable that it should be on record because it obviously raises a number of other points.

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, it never occurred to me that the noble Earl put this idea forward with other than the most serious and altruistic interest—when I say "altruistic" I mean intelligent—from the standpoint of his firm and of the country. We are quite right to identify our firms and organisations as operating in the national interest.

My Lords, there were a good many references to taxation, both of individuals and of companies. In fact, the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet of Amberley, gave a most remarkable figure of taxation. I think, on a quick calculation, she was about £1,400 wrong as to the rate of tax paid on a combined income of £8,000.

BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY

I may have misled the noble Lord, because, taking into consideration the extra cost of transport, of clothes and of employment for the wife, and having deducted that figure and the amount of the taxes, what was left—and what I quoted—was the correct figure. And I can show it to the noble Lord.

LORD SHACKLETON

This raises a piece of domestic economy. It is, as somebody suggested, best in these circumstances, if you are a good Christian, to divorce your wife and live in sin in the eyes of the law, but not of God, and thus avoid taxation. But this is a form of tax evasion which I have heard suggested; and I am sure that the noble Lady has heard it suggested on occasions.

BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY

It is in existence.

LORD SHACKLETON

But, my Lords, comparisons are always difficult. I have here a collection of figures (we have argued this matter out in this House before) which show that the rate of company taxation in this country is by no means out of line with, and in fact in many cases is lower than, those prevailing in our competitive countries. I give this answer flatly, and not to encourage further argument, in view of the fact that this point was made by certain noble Lords.

The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, I agree, is a regrettable form of export, of brain drain, but I gather from what I hear and from what he tells me that in his case the conditions are peculiarly favourable, in that he win be able to fly back to your Lordships' House whenever he wants to. This seems to be the flexible approach which various noble Lords have been suggesting should be the policy of the Government, and particularly of the Treasury—and I have noted the point which one noble Lord made in regard to the payment of fares from other countries.

My Lords, if we were to find the solution to the problem of making this a country in which everybody, including the noble Lord, Lord Stamp, was happy and did not feel frustrated, the Government would have taken us, as will any Government in the future which can do this, far ahead and far out of the climate in which present-day political and social problems exist. I should have preferred it if the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, in his implied criticisms of the Government in certain respects, had perhaps recognised that his own Government had wrestled with these problems and had not wholly succeeded in solving them.

I think it is the contention of certain noble Lords that the previous Government failed to put this situation right, and that the present Government have just made it slightly worse. My contention is that the purpose of this Government is to solve some of the basic problems which have handicapped this country and have held us back from fundamental solutions; and against the background of a critical national struggle to cure inflation and to contain wages and prices, it is no good expecting that we can have the sort of flexibility and opportunity to expend money as freely as I hope we may be able to do in the future.

This really is fundamental to our consideration of this problem at the moment. The noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, made a delicate allusion to the dangers of (I think he said) too much equality, or an egalitarian approach. I hope that the purposes of all of us are, in fact to build a society which is satisfactory enough and rewarding enough for people to be broadly contented to live within it. We should not wish to discourage them from going abroad where particular opportunities occur. Certainly I do not visualise a society where there are no salary differentials—and we know that differentials in the Soviet Union are probably very much greater, proportionately, than they are in most Western countries—but there are certain social differentials which we hope will gradually disappear and which I think most of your Lordships would be content to see disappear.

One of them, of course, directly affects the status of the engineer and the scientist. It is still a fact, despite the efforts of successive Governments, that too many clever boys, particularly in the private sector, the public school sector, tend to go up the classic side and not over into the science side. Again, this is not a question of compelling boys to do certain things, but of the fact that, on the whole, science and engineering do not yet occupy the status which their social importance demands they should. I hope that one of the things which we may achieve in these debates in your Lordships' House is to establish certain clear priorities, a clear recognition of what is important and I think the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, can feel that this debate has served his purpose very well in that respect. If I am unable to give specific solutions to some of the problems he has raised, I would only say that I am quite sure he did not expect me to be able to do so.

Undoubtedly, this is a matter upon which the Government will have to focus a great deal of attention; but so will the British people, and so will industry. Indeed, so will the other nations of the world. I would end on the note that this is one of the growing international problems: not intended, not planned, but the consequence of free action, under free institutions, which, on the whole, we commend strongly, until the point comes when we see that this freedom is beginning to threaten society as a whole. I think the problems for the undeveloped countries are so serious that Governments, including the British Government, will have to take an initiative in international discussion. I would close by congratulating all noble Lords who made such interesting speeches, and by once more telling the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, that he can be well satisfied with the debate which he so admirably introduced.

8.10 p.m.

LORD WINDLESHAM

My Lords, it remains for me only to thank those noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. There has been a formidable list of speakers, many with the highest qualifications for taking part in a debate of this kind. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, I think has shown in his winding-up for the Government that the Government are gravely concerned at what he described as a major international political problem; and it was the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, who in his speech first raised in this particular debate the very profound international implications which are not discussed nearly so often as the emigration of individual scientists from this country. Also, there is in what the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, said an implied acceptance of the seriousness of the emigration of British scientists and technologists and others, and the establishment of the Committee under Dr. Jones is an indication of that. A number of proposals have been made in the debate to-day, and I think I should like to close our proceedings in the hope that some of them, at least, will be implemented. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.