HL Deb 19 March 1969 vol 300 cc880-902

2.50 p.m.

LORD WYNNE-JONES rose to call attention to the Swann Report on The Flow into Employment of Scientists, Engineers and Technologists [Cmnd. 3760] and the allocation of national resources for research and development: and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in initiating this debate I realise that your Lordships are being put to a certain strain in having in successive weeks debates on scientific and technological subjects. I hope, however, that it will be appreciated by your Lordships that the purpose of this debate is to call attention to the significance for our whole economy of scientific research and development and the importance of our maintaining scientific research and development effectively in this country. I am very gratified to find that a number of noble Lords have put down their names to contribute to the debate. I think they will succeed in bringing to it something which is not just an academic or technical contribution, and that is very much to be welcomed.

No doubt your Lordships will all have seen the Swann Report, which is the peg for the debate. It is issued by the Swann Working Group on Manpower for Scientific Growth of the Committee on Manpower Resources for Science and Technology. After making a very exhaustive study of the whole position it makes a number of recommendations with regard to manpower so far as scientists, engineers and technologists are concerned. This Report is clearly one of outstanding importance, and therefore it is essential that we should give it close consideration. I do not propose to go through it in detail because I know that many of your Lordships who will be contributing later will be able to say much more than I can on the various aspects of the Swann Report. But there are certain matters in the Report on which I feel I can comment, and therefore I should like to refer to them.

In dealing with the flow of scientists, engineers and technologists into industry the Report, quite rightly and naturally, deals with the educational system. In particular it deals with the university sector of the system. It makes certain recommendations. The Group probably regarded itself as necessarily constricted in its terms of reference, and little reference is made, except indirectly, to the general school system of the country, although I believe that this may be quite crucial to all our discussions. Among the recommendations made in the Swann Report is one which is summarised in particular in paragraph 162, and also is referred to in paragraph 165, in which it is suggested that in order to make scientists better equipped for industry the width of courses given to scientists should be increased. The actual recommendations made, if I may refer to them specifically, are as follows: We hope to see experiment in this field— that is in the field of widening courses— in every university, and we look forward to the day when all science, technology and engineering students gain some broad understanding of the society in which they will work. Only in this way can our educational system produce a well-balanced output of such graduates. A little later they say: We conclude that a detailed study of current curricula in science, engineering and technology in university education should be undertaken in relation to career needs and to the balance between specialised and generalised studies.

This appears at first sight to be an excellent suggestion, but we want to bear in mind that while it is highly desirable to have scientists who are well educated it may perhaps be equally desirable to have other people educated in science. Indeed, my Lords, it may be one of the criticisms of our society to-day that very many who have passed through our complete educational system have a knowledge of science which is barely minimal and is quite inadequate for dealing with modern problems. Further, if one is going to put into a university course restricted to three years a further course in these broad studies, there is little doubt that one is bound to reduce the content of the scientific and engineering studies undertaken in the university course.

But the position is perhaps even worse than that, because in another recommendation in paragraph 143 of the Report the Committee suggest that since it is obviously desirable to get a supply of teachers trained in science into our schools, we should extend our teaching courses into the actual university course. They actually recommend that there should be brought into the university courses for science graduates. They say: To attract more able graduates to teaching we recommend that experiments should be encouraged, to combine study in a major field of science or technology with preparation for teaching…". My Lords, if we are to have every scientist and every engineer in the university not only given a broad training in social studies but also given training adequate to turn them into teachers, remembering that it is the intention in our whole school teaching system to have a full year at least of training in teaching, it can be seen that the normal three-year university course would provide very little science or engineering. So it seems to me that the Swann Report starts by making the usual assumption that you can go on pouring more and more into the pot irrespective of the capacity of the pot. That seems to me quite ridiculous.

I suggest that it is here, to begin with, that there is a wrong approach because they have misunderstood the point at which general education should really be given. I submit that general education is a function of our school system. It is highly important that one should have a very general education in schools and not a specialised education. I think that the biggest error which has been made in this country has been the introduction of specialisation too early into the school system, and that it is there that one wants the general education.

Of course, my Lords, general education must also take place in universities and in all colleges, but this general education usually takes place in universities and places of higher education as the result of the whole environment and the way in which students discuss and argue with one another and teach one another. That, surely, is why we do not have a whole set of specialist institutions, each one of them simply teaching a different subject. It is by having all the different subjects together inside an institution of higher education that we are able to get the width of education brought in in a proper way by the students themselves.

The Report goes on to suggest that certain things can be done inside the universities in order to make the training of scientists, technologists and engineers more widespread. There is one recommendation, in paragraph 35 of the Report, which I find very difficult to take seriously. It says: We agree that, in science and technology, priority should be given to undergraduate rather than postgraduate places; and we recommend that, to maintain the growth in the numbers of scientists, engineers and technologists who qualify each year, universities should make every effort to accommodate students to study for first degrees in these subjects. It is a little surprising that a Committee which had on it a number of university people should make that comment, when we find that the Universities Central Committee for Admissions pointed out, in October of last year, that the universities offered a total of 4,859 places in medicine and that 259 were unfilled because there were not enough applicants—and the suggestion is that we should supply more places immediately. In engineering and technology, there were 10,357 places, of which 455 were unfilled, and that in pure science there were 15,946 places, of which 738 were unfilled. That does not make a very good case for saying that the universities should strain every effort to increase the number of places. They have made the effort to provide more places, but the whole point is that the students are not coming forward.

I would submit that that is the real point, which is being completely, or largely, overlooked in this Report. It is the supply of students capable of studying medicine, science and engineering in the universities which is so desperately short and which is getting worse. The figures, which we can find easily in the Statistics of Science and Technology for 1968, show us that in the year 1963 there were 73.7 thousand pupils in schools studying for G.C.E. "A" levels in science and mathematics. In 1965, that figure had risen to 81.4 thousand and, in 1967, it had dropped to 76.7 thousand. We have passed the maximum and we are getting fewer students in schools taking science and mathematics—and this at the very period when the total numbers have increased considerably. For instance, the number of pupils taking other subjects were 83.4 thousand in 1963; 109.6 thousand in 1965 and 118.3 thousand in 1967.

This is the real crisis with which we are faced. It is not a crisis of supplying places for scientists, engineers and medical students in the university but primarily one of supplying the students for existing places. Until we do this, we have no hope at all of getting a proper-expansion of our technology in this country. We shall find that it will grind to a halt. The principal of one technical college has recently stated that in his opinion, at the present rate of development within ten years there will be no teaching of science done in the schools at all because there will be no science teachers to teach it. The position is as bad as that.

The real problem we have to face is not one of minor tinkering, of improvement, of trying to do this a little better, of providing a few extra places; it is one of looking hard at our whole educational system in order to find out what has gone wrong. Why is it that we are not training enough people who are able to profit by the facilities that are available now in universities, polytechnics and other places? I think that one of the reasons—obviously there is a complex of reasons—is that for many years we have ignored the necessity of having school teachers who are educated in science. I believe it is true that not more than 10 per cent. of all those who take training courses in training colleges take science at all. This does not mean that only 10 per cent. are specialists in science but that there are only 10 per cent. who know anything about science, who have ever been exposed to it. In these circumstances, it is almost inevitable that in primary schools there is practically nothing being done. The whole basis which has to be laid in order to get people interested in and excited about science just fails. So we ought to consider going right back to fundamentals and making certain that we get this right.

My main criticisms of the Swann Report is that it does not call attention to this vital factor in our educational system. Of course, this may be due to the fact that Professor Swann is principal of a Scottish university and that in Scotland they have a different system of education. But we have to consider what is happening over the whole of the United Kingdom, and certainly so far as England and Wales are concerned we are woefully deficient. In fact, I would say that we are far more deficient in science training to-day than we ever have been since the national system of education was introduced. That position has been steadily deteriorating. What we have done is to create something good at the top end but failed to produce anything effective far lower down.

LORD JACKSON OF BURNLEY

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is not forgetting or ignoring the fact that at Camberwell, with the Swann Working Party, there was another Working Party under the Chairmanship of Dr. Dainton, the Vice-Chancellor of Nottingham University, which was concerned with the science situation within the schools and which reported on precisely the questions the noble Lord is raising only a few months before the Swann Report was published? Therefore, it would not be reasonable to expect the Swann Committee to reproduce what was already available in the Dainton Report.

LORD WYNNE-JONES

My Lords, of course I accept my noble friend's comment on this matter. He is perfectly right. But the Swann Report refers specifically to the desirability of getting teachers into the schools, and it is because they have gone so far as to make this reference that I feel they ought to have gone farther. I think their reference, so far as it goes, misses the point.

LORD BYERS

My Lords, is riot the noble Lord being rather unfair? It is not right that the Swann Report refers, as I shall refer in my speech, to the Dainton Report with a good deal of approval?

LORD WYNNE-JONES

My Lords, again I naturally accept the noble Lord's comment. Unfortunately, we are not discussing the Dainton Report, otherwise I might make somewhat similar remarks about that Report. All I am saying is that the Swann Report specifically refers in more than one paragraph to this question of teaching, and I would suggest that they have not made very sensible suggestions. However, since this is obviously a sideline, I will leave that point at the moment.

I should like to refer briefly to one further matter. In the Motion which is before your Lordships I have referred to the allocation of national resources for research and developments". This I think follows on from the Swann Report, and I think it is most important for this and every other country. We allocate resources, but no one seems to have worked out what resources we should allocate. It seems to be left very often to pressure groups, to people who agitate, let us say, for a 300 GeV accelerator to see whether thew can get the money, or it is left to EMBO to see whether it can get the money, and so on. I believe it is far to important to be left undiscussed.

I want to call attention to the position in this country, in America and in the Soviet Union. The reason why I am particularly concerned with this problem is that I was delighted with the speech which the Prime Minister made—the famous Scarborough speech—in October, 1963. The Prime Minister then (he was not Prime Minister at the time, but the Leader of the Opposition) put forward a general programme for highly advanced technology and research in this country. Some people say that this has not been done. Actually, it may surprise your Lordships to hear that it has been carried out at least as well as one could have expected. What I would plead for from the Government is that this should continue in the same way.

In this country, between 1961 and 1964, Government expenditure on civilian research and development—leaving out the military—increased at the rate of 10½ per cent. per annum; but during 1964 to 1967—which is the available period—it increased by 12.2 per cent. per annum. The total national expenditure—that is, including all industrial expenditure, and the military expenditure—from 1961 to 1964 was increasing by 4.3 per cent. per annum, which shows that the Government field was increasing much more rapidly; and from 1964 to 1966, the last available figures, it went up by 4.8 per cent. per annum. So that in this country we have been devoting an increasing amount at an increasing rate to research and development. This is a highly desirable thing provided that we can still get the scientists, engineers and technologists.

In the United States, the position has changed rather dramatically. Last summer it became clear that not only were they not getting any rapid increase, but were actually getting a cut-back in expenditure. The National Science Foundation, NASA and many other research organisations in America have had a drastic cut-back. The Americans are very worried about this. It is interesting when you consider the figure that I have just given—that is, a 12.2 per cent. increase in Government expenditure in this country at the present time—that Donald Hornig, who was the Presidential Adviser for Science in America, was pleading last summer that they might get an increase as high as 10 per cent. So I think it is clear that we have done something in this country.

But do not let us be too satisfied or complacent about it. because I want to call attention to the fact that the country (whether or not we like its mode of Government and its organisation) which for over 38 years has made the most rapid increase in its economy of any country in the world, including the United States and Japan, is the Soviet Union. I am not using Russian figures; I am using figures which have been carefully analysed by an American economist. This American economist states that in the 38 years from 1928 to 1965 in the United States the economy improved by 3.3 per cent. per annum—that is, at a constant value of the dollar—and in the U.S.S.R. it improved by between 5.4 and 6.7 per cent. per annum over the same period. And he says that 5.4 per cent. is the minimum figure he can make fit the statistics. This is a remarkable thing. and I think there is little doubt that it is largely due to the fact that the Soviet Union is the one country that set out from the start to make science the basis of its whole economy. I suggest that we shall he running into grave danger in this country if we fail to give priority to research and development, and the means of supplying the manpower for research and development. I beg to move for Papers.

3.17 p.m.

LORD ABERDARE

My Lords, I am sure all your Lordships will he grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, for having given us the opportunity to debate the Swann Report and allied subjects and also for his wide-ranging and penetrating opening speech. He had one or two critical things to say about the Swann Report and he echoed some of the criticisms that your Lordships will have heard and read from university circles, based, it seems to me soundly and rightly, on his deep concern to maintain standards of scholarship. I hope that we all have that same concern, because I believe it is vital to maintain our output of top-level research workers. However, I think it is equally important to ensure that those who are not capable of reaching the top level should receive a university education which is suitable to their talents and appropriate to their future employment.

What we are after is the right balance, and perhaps I may quote a sentence from the Report of the Central Advisory Council for Science and Technology on Technological Innovation in Britain, which says: What we have to achieve is a new balance, both overall and in particular cases, of the deployment of our technological resources. It is to this problem that Swann has drawn our attention. I must say that when I first looked at the Swann Report I was delighted to see that it was reasonably short, succinct and most interesting; but when one starts to delve into it it becomes apparent that it is inseparable from other Reports—from the Dainton Report, the Jones Report, the Bosworth Report, the Annual Reports of the University Grants Committee, the Triennial Manpower Survey and the Report that I have just mentioned on technological innovation in Britain.

I must confess that, in view of the complexity of material and the presence of so many distinguished experts in the House, I feel considerable modesty. I approach this subject as a humble, independent observer, and the only interest I have to declare is that I am on the Court of the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff, and I have drawn for my information on that college to illustrate some of my remarks.

On one point all these Reports agree: the economic growth and competitiveness of British industry is involved in the correct solution of our scientific and technological manpower problems. But, having agreed that, they are unable to put forward any definite target figures. What proportion of our students should be reading scientific or technological subjects? What is the right proportion of our effort to put into research? How many Ph.D.s do we require and how many of them should be in the universities, in industry or in the schools? These are all questions so far unanswered, although the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, made some interesting observations on them in his excellent opening speech.

I should like to confine myself to two main aspects of the Swann Report: first, the need for more teachers of science, engineering and mathematics in the schools, and secondly, the need for a better supply of graduates in science and technology to industry. First, the schools. The noble Lord has drawn our attention to the position. The Swann Report finds that in 1965 only 6 per cent. of first-class honours graduates in science entered the schools or teacher-training, and of technologists only 1 per cent. The school situation looks even more serious if we take into account the conclusions of some of the other Reports. Dainton shows that the proportion of "A" level pupils doing science in their first year in the sixth form declined from 41.5 per cent. in 1962 to 31.4 per cent. in 1967. The 1965 Triennial Manpower Survey revealed an overall shortage of supply of qualified scientists and engineers. The Jones Report showed that the net annual loss of scientists and technologists due to emigration rose from nil in 1961 to 2,700 in 1966. As the noble Lord has already told us, the position in the schools is fundamental to the whole problem, and it is here that a swing away from science is causing us the most difficulty with our technological manpower.

Why should this be so in a scientific age? Perhaps it is that young people who enjoy science fiction find science facts tedious and dull. How much more exciting to speculate on the great figures of history than to memorise a mass of scientific facts and formulae! Perhaps it could even be described as a healthy reaction against too early a specialisation in a narrow field. Perhaps science is badly taught in our schools; I think it often is. It may well be within the memory of some of your Lordships that it was usually the "stinks" master who was least able to maintain order. Here there is certainly a legacy from the past. So many of our more able scholars studied arts subjects; many of them ended by teaching these subjects in schools, and it was therefore the arts subjects that were best taught and represented the greatest intellectual challenge to the students. Or perhaps it is the seemingly poor career prospects. So often the scientist ends up in the backroom doing research work, and so rarely finds his way into the front office jobs in management. Or, most likely of all, it is perhaps a combination of all these factors. The effect in any case is a vicious circle. Relatively fewer pupils studying science in the schools means relatively fewer undergraduates reading scientific subjects, and eventually fewer graduates available as teachers in the schools. And so the circle goes on.

More significant too, many teachers in science subjects in the schools are in the older age groups. Over one-third of all graduate mathematicians in maintained schools, and over a quarter of science graduates, were aged fifty or over in March, 1966. See this, my Lords, in the light of the Dainton Report recommendation, that normally all pupils should study mathematics until they leave school, and that breadth, humanity and up-to-dateness must be infused into science teaching.

The Swann Report answer to the problem—or one of its answers—is to propose additional financial inducements to lure graduates into schools, and it suggests that they should be paid preferential salaries. I must say that I very much doubt the practicability of paying teachers of science more than is paid to teachers of other subjects. It runs counter to the whole system of settling teachers' pay at present, and I think it would cause intense bitterness among teachers themselves. Already outside the normal scales of pay for teachers there exist additional awards for graduates, for good honours graduates, for posts of special responsibility and for work in educational priority areas. To go further than this and make distinctions according to the subject taught would involve immense complication. After all, the teacher's skill lies in teaching and it is according to the skill in his teaching that he should be paid. One can well imagine the resentment of an experienced and skilled teacher of, say, French at finding a young and inexperienced and perhaps even inefficient mathematics master paid more than he is.

Another suggestion made by the Swann Committee found no favour with the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones. This was the suggestion they made that some knowledge and practical experience of school teaching might be introduced into a first degree course. I am not sure that I entirely agree with the noble Lord. I think there might well be some possibility of this being worked out, and certainly a scheme on these lines is already in contemplation at the University College of South Wales and awaits only final approval from the Department of Education and Science. The way the scheme would work is that the science departments, in collaboration with the Department and the Institute of Education, have devised courses which involve a significant part of the post-graduate certificate in education.

Thus, a student doing, say, chemistry and physics in the third year of a general course could opt to do chemistry, with education in chemistry, and physics, with education in physics. The idea is that the educational component of this final year should count as a significant fraction of the course leading to a postgraduate certificate in education, which could then be completed by attendance at in-service courses, rather than by a further year's study at the university. Such in-service courses for teachers have been successfully running for some time in Cardiff; for example, the department of chemistry has been taking ten teachers for one day a week for a term, followed by refresher evenings from time to time for all the teachers who have been through those courses. This year they start a more ambitious scheme: a six-week in-service course for teachers of chemistry, which it is hoped also will attract chemists from industry.

I thought the noble Lord was a little unjust to the Swarm Report in his criticism about the consideration of scientists teaching in the schools. To my mind, the Swann Report was dealing entirely with graduates, scientists, engineers and technologists in the sense of graduate scientists, engineers and technologists. But I would go all the way with him in supporting what he said about the need to run better courses in science for those who are going to teach at the colleges of education. After all, of all teachers in maintained schools only 20 per cent. are graduates and the remainder have been trained at the colleges of education. In the colleges, too, the picture is not very encouraging. The proportion of men and women with "O" level mathematics is declining, and of the women only just over half have "O" level mathematics, although "O" level mathematics is not very demanding. Of "A" level subjects passed, there was a fall in the numbers of chemistry, mathematics and physics over the years 1967-68, coupled with a significant rise in arts, British Constitution and Government, economics and sociology.

I cannot help having some sympathy with the proposal of Sir William Alexander, that all students entering colleges of education should have a minimum qualification in mathematics as well as in English, for a very high proportion of them will be called upon to teach the subject in primary schools and much will depend on their imaginative approach. Too often a child is bored by mathematics by the time he enters a secondary school. Therefore I am sure, as was the noble Lord, that we should make a much greater effort to improve the training of teachers in scientific subjects at the colleges of education, and in doing so we should particularly make use of the full range of modern teaching aids.

I should like now to consider a second aspect of the Swann Report, the need for greater co-operation and co-ordination between industry and the universities, to ensure that what is taught at the university is relevant to the demands of industry, and that industry makes the best use of the skilled manpower available. My impression is that a great deal has gone on, and is going on, in that field at the present moment. It seems to have started in December, 1965, when a most important conference convened by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the universities, and the C.B.I., led to the establishment of the Universities and Industries Joint Committee, consisting of seven vice-chancellors or principals and seven leading industrialists.

Already this Committee have produced two useful reports, one on the training and experience appropriate for graduates entering industry, and the other on postgraduate studies, refresher and retraining courses at the universities and the exchange of staff. A third report will follow shortly on the relation between research in industry and the universities. Then a new and most important working party has just been set up, under the chairmanship of Mr. Mumford, of I.C.I., to recommend what action should be taken, more particularly by industry, arising from the recommendations of the Dainton, Swann, Jones and Bosworth Reports. So important has the link with the universities become to the C.B.I. that they have recently appointed a liaison officer whose responsibilities lie entirely in this field.

Equally, the University Grants Committee have wasted no time in giving momentum to the move for collaboration, and they have included in their memorandum of general guidance accompanying the grant allocation for 1967-72 a paragraph on collaboration with industry in which they announced a special finan- cial reserve for pump-priming appropriate schemes. A sub-committee of six, with advisers from the Science Research Council and the Ministry of Technology, has already allocated over £250,000 for this purpose.

1 would also mention an initiative from the students themselves. The National Union of Students is to hold a conference next October, in conjunction with the C.B.I., on graduate recruitment to industry, and it is hoped that the conference will be attended by university appointment officers. In this field, too, liaison can he only of benefit. One fruitful field of inquiry might well be the question of vacation jobs for undergraduates in industry. So often these jobs, when they are available at all, are purely menial and totally uninteresting, and tend only to give industry a bad name among the undergraduate population.

It is essential that this growing collaboration at the top should find its way down to collaboration between faculty and factory, and once again my inquiries at Cardiff surprised me with the amount of work that is going on. I found that all the science, applied science and social science departments at University College are deeply and widely engaged with local industry. I appreciate that it is easier where a university is sited in an industrial area, and perhaps it is better that such areas should act as growth points for this type of collaboration.

One important criticism that has been made of the Swann Report is that its paragraphs dealing with the universities and industry, both in the recommendations and in the statistics, bracket together scientists, engineers and technologists. The figures available seem to show that the requirements of industry are three times as great for engineers as for scientists, while the university output is twice as many scientists as engineers. While it may have been true in the past that many engineers qualified through National Certificates and Institute examinations, this is no longer so, since the great expansion of the universities, and many of them now go to the university. I would stress that it is most important to increase the flow of graduate engineers from the university to industry.

On this point I find myself deeply impressed by the views of Mr. F. L. Bragg, the Chief Research Engineer of the Aero-Engine Division of Rolls-Royce. Speaking with the practical voice of one who has high responsibility in one of our great industries, he points out that industry needs only a few deep specialists—and here, of course, we are back again speculating as to what percentage of university output this should be. Apart from these specialists, the needs of industry are for a large number of graduates who have an appreciation of a wide range of disciplines. That is some answer to Lord Wynne-Jones's point, that industry has not made known its needs. Mr, Bragg gives three reasons. First, the problems are always inter-disciplinary. Second, research, though a vital initial step, is only a small fraction of the later efforts and resources required to apply, produce and sell an idea; and, third, there is a tremendous pressure for change.

His arguments are for a more general type of university course, and certainly they have found an echo in some of the universities. The best known, perhaps, is the Science/Greats course run by Professor Jevons at the University of Manchester. I also found at Cardiff broadly based general degree courses being run in both the arts and science faculties, and an interesting new experiment was begun this year in which a dozen students with arts "A" levels are taking an introductory course to convert to science subjects. I hope that will please the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones. Of course, the logical prelude to such broadly based university courses would be wider studies in the sixth form, which in turn depend on university entrance examinations. But that is another and far too long a subject to enter into now.

I conclude, therefore, that the Swann Report is right in laying the greatest emphasis on the essential need for cooperation between the universities, industry and the schools. From what I have been able to discover, it is my impression, first, that a great deal is going on in the closer relationship between the universities and industry. Industry generally, led by the C.B.I., is anxious to play a more constructive part within the universities. The universities generally are responding to the encouragement of the University Grants Committee to cooperate with industry, and in that close collaboration I believe that the more particular problems of the Ph.D. and broad-based courses and similar issues will solve themselves.

Secondly, it is my impression that the problem of attracting more and better graduates of science and engineering into the schools is far from solution. It is not easy to see great progress being made in this field, even if the problems of pay and pensions can be worked out; and I would urge in the meantime that a closer study is made of the contribution which the colleges of education may be able to offer.

3.39 p.m.

LORD BYERS

My Lords. since the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has apparently not yet returned from Anguilla, I hope your Lordships will not mind if I continue with this particular debate. I should like to start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, for raising this important subject. I hope he will not mind if I do not agree with a great deal of what he said, and I hope your Lordships will not mind if I follow fairly closely the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, because I think it is inevitable in a debate of this sort that we shall have to cover very much the same ground.

I would begin with an acknowledgment of the debt which the country owes to all the people who have been involved in the recent studies of the various aspects of the use of scientific and technological manpower. In my own Party we have recognised the importance of this problem for some considerable time, and under the auspices of the Chief Whip in another place, Mr. Lubbock, we have for some months been preparing a weekend seminar or conference which is to be held in Nottingham on March 28 to 30. We have been fortunate to secure the presence at that conference not only of Professor Swann, whose Report we are now considering, but also Dr. Jones of Mullards and Dr. Dainton, the Vice-Chancellor of Nottingham University.

I mention this because not only would I have been better informed if this debate had taken place a fortnight hence, but because I want to emphasise, as other speakers have, that these Reports must be taken and studied together. Jones deals with the brain-drain; Dainton inquires into the flow of candidates in science and technology into higher education, and Swann examines the flow into employment of scientists, engineers and technologists. If the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, will look at page 50 of the Swann Report, he will see the references they make to Dainton with a good deal of approval. I will not quote it. I do not think it is fair to say that Swann did not deal with this problem of advance through the educational field so far as the schools were concerned.

Although some of the recommendations are bound to be regarded as controversial, I find myself very broadly in agreement with the findings of these various Reports. In particular, on the brain-drain, I am quite sure that we have to resist all the negative approaches, such as physical control of emigration, reimbursement of educational costs borne by the State, restricting university places in certain disciplines or curbing the foreign recruiting agencies. I am quite sure there is no future in this type of approach. Instead we have to create more challenging opportunities in this country, particularly in industry, for talented people. Dainton deals with the various methods to be adopted to encourage more candidates to become scientifically and technologically orientated at school before they enter university, and lie draws attention in this matter to the responsibilities of the education authorities, of Government and of industry. Swann really brings these ideas together and develops them in a most stimulating way. I think the Report is a very valuable one indeed.

I want to deal with only a few major aspects of the problems to which the Swann Report draws attention. The first is that the policy for post-graduate studies should be guided by the need to match these more closely to the requirements of employment, especially in industry. Although I agree with this idea, I think the weakness of it probably is that too few companies in industry know either their own future requirements or how properly to handle people with graduate and post-graduate experience in the scientific and technological field. I regret to say that this is because in many companies there is no proper man-power planning, no adequate career planning, and no attempt to deal with the problems of management suc- cession so that people can see where they are going.

There has also been the tendency to far too high a degree of specialisation coupled with the absence of a broadly based experience. I think it is right to say, and it is brought out in some of these Reports, that scientists generally at university have tended to live rather like a train instead of a hovercraft. I do not mean to say that one should hover so much that one does not pick up any education at all. But a university is a place where, apart from maintaining high academic and intellectual standards—and they must do that; they must not be lowered—they can provide a wealth of interest and of experience if there is an inclination to enjoy it and provision is made for them to enjoy it.

One of the criticisms that one can make of the pure research side of science in a university is that there tends to be so much work to be done that the scientist does not get full value out of the university as a whole. That, coupled with the fact that industry tends to be looked clown on in many university circles, has led to the first-class graduates often seeking university research posts rather than going into industry. I was going to quote, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, did, the speech of Mr. Bragg, the chief research engineer of the aero division of Rolls Royce, made at the Academic Consultative Conference in November, 1968. That was the voice of industrial experience speaking with great authority, and I think it would be well worth while for anyone interested in this to read the whole of that very short address.

I go further and say that if we could get more generalists, that is, people with broader backgrounds coupled with scientific skills, industry could offer them a better chance of reaching the higher branches of line management. Scientists and technologists can be used in industry —in fact must be used in industry—on research and they must be used on specialist technical functions. They may well be used in other fields, such as marketing. My own experience is that very often the best marketeer to-day is the man who can talk on equal terms to other technologists in industry. He is the one who brings back the order which is beyond the capability of the normal sales force, because he is talking the same language and understands the problems involved. But each one of these categories will at some stage want to be considered for line management and so long as they have kept on broadening their horizons, so long as they are gifted with common sense and so long as they have good judgment, they are well placed to go very high indeed, probably to the top, in management.

This is not to say that we do not need specialist post-graduate researchers; of course we do, but as Lord Aberdare said, it is a question of the right balance, and at the present moment the country is out of balance so far as requirement is concerned. Nor do we want to abandon the present post-graduate training system, but I think there is a case for several innovations at the university level. First, the arrangements for some post-graduate courses could be reviewed. I believe this is in fact being done, but rather slowly. And provision might be made for postgraduate theses to be considered from people working in industry without an onerous attendance qualification attached to the degree. Provision, too, could be made for more post-graduate work to be done after a spell in industry.

In the undergraduate field, I believe the most helpful development is along the lines of this Science Greats course such as Professor Jevons has introduced at Manchester and is being considered by other universities at the present moment. In practice, there are considerable difficulties in achieving a more broadly based scientific education. One of the reasons is, as other speakers have pointed out, that we have an unhealthy specialisation at too early an age at school. In England and Wales we are largely split between science and non-science at the age of 15 to 16, but in fact the decisions tend to be taken even earlier than that and young people start being channelled at 13 to 14.

I wonder whether in fact this has not a great deal to do with the decline in the number of people electing to take scientific and engineering courses at the university, because they do not want to get into the narrow specialist field at too early an age. I believe that if we could offer a more general education, certainly much further up the line, before getting to the university, and preferably at the first or second year in the university, more people would opt for that type of faculty and course than do now, when you are forced if you are bright at mathematics to opt for a scientific career for the rest of your life at the age of 13 or 14. It would put me off straight away. This rather blunt division tends, I think, to steer the person with a science bent into the narrow science channel, and the all-rounder then finds himself going into the arts. The all-rounder with an interest in science is not generally catered for. Professor Jevons rightly says that university scientists and technologists must recognise that more broadly based studies do not necessarily entail a lowering of the standards, but only an acceptance of a different kind of standard. This is where I think a lot of people in academic circles are worried, that the standards will be lowered, but in fact it is a different kind of standard. The Science Greats course recognises that it is a fallacy to think that breadth of study is only for people who are incapable of specialisation. There is the level of ability and the type of ability, and there are different types of ability at all levels or different levels of ability in different types. I am quite sure that this approach to teaching is the key to solving many of our future problems of the relationship between science and industry.

I think the American system has particular relevance, too, although it has certain disadvantages. American education is much more general up to a later age than it is in Britain. In universities between 65 and 75 per cent. of the degrees awarded in any one year in America will be generalist rather than specialist. In Britain I think it is right to say that in science and technology something like 85 to 90 per cent. Are specialist degrees. What is more, the demand by industry in Britain for specialists is nothing like this. It has been calculated that the industrial requirement for specialists is as low as 30 per cent., and in respect of the remaining 70 per cent. the demand is for graduates who could have studied one of a variety of disciplines, because what is wanted essentially is a trained mind which is versatile and able to tackle problems in a logical way. If this shows nothing else, it underlines the real need to match university production with industrial demand.

Then there is the question of industry itself. To my mind, industry is not yet closely enough identified with the work and life of the universities to be able to get across to the undergraduates the thrill and the scope which can exist in a well-run organisation. Part of the trouble is that too few of our organisations in business can offer the challenge or the rewards which the graduate needs to attract him. Above all, the graduate wants to know that once he has joined a firm or company his mind will continue to go on being stretched. This, in my experience, is the first demand from the really intelligent graduate. He wants to know that he is not going to be left to contemplate his navel in the maximum security wing of a semi-monopoly. To leave them so is the way to lose graduates from industry.

I think businesses have been generous to the universities; but that is not enough. They must be able to show that they understand the present generation in the university, and that they can use this manpower intelligently in their own interests and in the interests of the employer. Above all, industry must be able to predict their requirements more accurately and to discuss them with the university faculties. I think a great deal is being done in this field through the conference of Vice-Chancellors and the C.B.I.

The final point, which I want to make quite briefly but which I believe is fundamental to the proper use of manpower and not just scientific manpower, is the encouragement of the movement of individuals between the main sectors of employment: universities, schools, industry and government. We must break down the administrative barrier to mobility, and in particular we must find means of achieving a rational and equitable transferability of pensions. I hope that this is something that this Government can do. Could we not get an independent body to examine and to prepare a report on a model pensions scheme which has full transferability in it? Could we not perhaps get the Prices and Incomes Board to do this? It is not a difficult thing. I am told that it could be done possibly in under six months if there were really the authority to get on with the job. This would not commit anybody, but it would show us what could be put into action, if we could get the principle agreed. My Lords, I have said how indebted we are to the authors of these Reports and to their Committee members, not only for what they have said but because they have started a movement in the universities and in industry; and I hope that this debate will improve the impetus.