Lords Sitting of 25 March 1985

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Liverpool.

Civil Defence Film
Viscount Mersey: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when they hope to have their Civil Defence film completed.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, we anticipate that the film will be completed by the autumn.
Viscount Mersey: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. Perhaps I should declare an interest in that I make documentary films: however, my supplementary question relates not to the making, but to the distribution. Is there not a danger that a film such as this will be realistic and prudent and therefore, by definition, rather boring in contrast to the CND films, such as "Threads" and "The Day After", which are rather unrealistic, imprudent and dramatic? Will my noble friend not agree that television thrives on drama and disaster? To that end, can my noble friend tell me how she proposes to reach the widest possible audience with this film?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Mersey knows far better than I that in the media on the whole bad news is news and good news is no news. It will be up to the film maker to produce a film of the highest professional standard. We intend that it should be as widely available as possible both to those actually engaged in Civil Defence planning and to the general public through, for example, film libraries. We hope that the television companies will take up the film, though that is a matter for them.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that a number of important organisations, including the British Medical Association, have expressed the view that it is doubtful whether it is possible to provide an effective civil defence against nuclear war? Will the film take that into consideration?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, in the unlikely event that the tragedy of war, of any kind, occurs, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, survives and lives to bless the activities of Civil Defence.
Lord Renton: My Lords, can my noble friend assure us that the film will embrace the all-hazards approach, including the possible use of chemical weapons and the need to provide protection against them?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, for presentational purposes the scope of the film must be limited, but in the absence of a ban on chemical weapons we acknowledge the increased importance of these matters and we shall look very carefully at my noble friend's suggestion.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that we hope that, in the event of a thermonuclear war, not only my noble friend Lord Jenkins of Putney, but also the noble Baroness will survive? Is she also aware that they would probably suffer more than the 50—odd million human beings on this island who would be destroyed? The experts tell us that those who survive are likely to be those who suffer most.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the Question on the Order Paper deals with a film about Civil Defence.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, perhaps I may ask a question which I hope will be more concise and less controversial than those already asked. Will the film endeavour to tell the truth?
Baroness Trumpington: Yes, my Lords.

Transport Bill: Consultation
2.40 p.m.
Lord Davies of Leek: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they consulted the Women's Institute on the effects of the Transport Bill before it was introduced, in particular on rural bus services.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport met representatives of the National Federation of Women's Institutes in December to discuss the federation's response to the White Paper on buses. The effects of the policy on rural areas was one of the main issues discussed. There were also a number of letters exchanged between Ministers and the federation on various aspects of the policy before the publication of the Transport Bill at the end of January.
Lord Davies of Leek: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for that comprehensive Answer. However, are the 920,000 branches throughout the country still subsidised a little by the Government, because in peacetime and in wartime this organisation deserves the praise of all of us in Parliament?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I am afraid that I do not have the answer to the noble Lord's supplementary question as to whether or not we still subsidise the Women's Institutes. I shall endeavour to find out and write to the noble Lord.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether the work of post buses—that is, those involving carrying of passengers by people delivering

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the mail—which has been pioneered in Scotland, is now making good progress and has some prospect of being expanded throughout the country?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I understand, as the noble Lord says, that post buses have been most successful in Scotland, in certain remote areas. If it were possible to expand the work of post buses to the rest of the country, I am sure that it would be done.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, can the noble Lord go a little further and tell the House what was the Women's Institute's reaction to the Government's policy on rural buses?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: Indeed, my Lords; they were very concerned about the impact on rural services. However, it should be borne in mind that rural services have been declining dramatically for many years, and the aim of our policy is to ensure that that decline stops.

Luncheon Voucher Allowance
2.42 p.m.
The Earl of Kinnoull: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the allowance on luncheon vouchers will be upgraded in line with the present cost of a ham sandwich.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, I note my noble friend's suggestion.
The Earl of Kinnoull: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that indigestible Answer. Is my noble friend aware that the present miserable allowance of 15p a day for the luncheon voucher purchases either one-third of a cup of black coffee without sugar or half a ham sandwich without the ham? Is he further aware that this unreviewed allowance is wholly unfair to the smaller firms, which cannot provide canteens as larger firms do and thus benefit those who work for them? Finally, is my noble friend alert to the fact that because any increase in the allowance for the one million users of luncheon vouchers would come within the existing allowance of benefits in kind, the cost to the Treasury would be very small?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, that may be so, but the fact is that there are three main arguments for not increasing the allowance. One is that there is some evidence of abuse, of which my noble friend may or may not be aware; the second is that an increase would discriminate even further against those employees who have no works canteen and who receive no vouchers; and the third is that our aim is to reduce the rate of taxation for everybody.
Lord Kinnaird: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that if you give an employee only the price of half a ham sandwich for his lunch there is bound to be abuse?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, one of the problems with this question, which has cropped up on numerous occasions over the last few years, is that it always relates to ham sandwiches, which are not always strictly relevant.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that his answer is thoroughly unsatisfactory? It was well known at the time luncheon vouchers were originally introduced that obviously they would benefit certain employees who had the facilities, whereas it would not benefit everybody. That has been so from the beginning. Is he aware that the 15p to which his noble friend referred was intended to cover the whole cost of a reasonable luncheon, not merely that of a ham sandwich? Will the noble Lord come off his high horse on this matter and do something constructive about it?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I note the noble Lord's remarks, but I note also that in 1977, when his party were in power, they were asked a similar question and they did nothing about it, either. The concession was originally justified on the grounds that the provision of luncheon vouchers did no more than put employees who have no canteen facilities in the same position as workers who have a subsidised canteen.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that his answer should give every incentive to the present Government to do far better than their predecessors? They have very often boasted about that in the past: why do they not boast about it now?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I think we are doing better than our predecessors. The fact is that the situation on this particular issue has not changed since the noble Lord's party was in power.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend the Minister whether the recipients and users of luncheon vouchers have to pay income tax on them?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, they do not have to pay income tax on the first 15p, and that is what I think this Question relates to.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, can the Minister say whether it is true that the Prime Minister's reaction to this question was, "Let them eat cake"?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I do not think I have anything to add to what has been said or not said by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister.

Guy's Hospital: Heart Surgery Unit
2.46 p.m.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will take the necessary steps to ensure the continued existence of the heart surgery unit at Guy's Hospital.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the continued existence of the cardiothoracic surgery unit at Guy's Hospital has never been in doubt. Lewisham and North Southwark Health Authority had been considering ways of reducing overspending, including the possibility of temporary closure of the unit, before a generous private donation made immediate measures of this kind unnecessary.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the men and women and specialists who work in the heart surgery unit are of the ppinion that were it not for the £270,000 donated by this benefactor the unit would have been closed? Is he further aware that there are threats still extant in regard to premature babies with heart trouble requiring heart surgery, and also in regard to dialysis patients?
Can the noble Lord comment on the fact that the heart surgery unit at Guy's is not financed in the same way as other departments? Despite the fact that they do important work, they do not attract money. What is needed is a complete reorganisation at the hospital level, along with other hospitals, so that heart surgery units are treated in exactly the same way and can attract just as much money as other units, and so that this great unit at Guy's Hospital, particularly, may be saved.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the fact is that the unit has not been closed, as the noble Lord is aware. Any suggestion that patients might be turned away and die is totally alarmist. So far as funding is concerned, this is primarily a matter for the district and regional health authorities to deal with.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, would the Minister confirm that there are many other heart units in London and that the Government recently gave a major grant for the rebuilding of the National Heart and the Brompton Heart and Chest hospitals? Would he also confirm that as between hospitals in London and those throughout the country, there are big differences in the cost of heart operations and the cost-effectiveness of these units?
Lord Glenarthur: Yes, my Lords; I am grateful to my noble friend. There are in fact four cardiac surgery units within the South-East Thames region alone. That is a fairly generous provision in comparison with other parts of the country.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, can the noble Lord tell the House how long this "temporary" closure would have had to be had this windfall not appeared out of heaven, and is it not the case that some people would have died as a result?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I cannot see the point in answering such a hypothetical question.
Lord Renton: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the National Health Service is now costing £17½ billion a year gross, not very much of which comes back in charges on patients and so on, and that that gross sum amounts to about £3,000 a year for every man, woman and child in this country? Is it not therefore a question of deciding how best these very large sums can be spent?
Lord Glenarthur: Yes, my Lords; my noble friend puts his finger on a number of important points. The fact is that expenditure on the Health Service has risen considerably. It is absolutely right that decisions on measures of this sort should be taken by the district and regional health authorities concerned.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, is the Minister aware that expenditure on defence has risen considerably as well?
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, is the Minister aware that, quite apart from Guy's, many cardiac units in this country are under-employed because of the cuts in the funding of the units? Is he aware that only this month a distinguished heart surgeon in London, outside Guy's, told me that he and his colleagues were under-employed? This is not because of their own wishes, but because the money is simply not available to pay for the care that they wish to accord to potential patients.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the problem at Guy's has to some extent arisen because of its success. In fact, it has substantially exceeded its annual quota for cardiac operations. I think the most important thing that we can do in this case is to ensure that the workload and the resources will be matched in future years, and that is what my right honourable friend the Minister of Health is arranging with the health authorities at the moment.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether the position at Guy's could not mean that some of the surgeons work so efficiently and quickly that they operate more swiftly and therefore use up their allocation? Could not some of the patients on waiting lists in other districts be sent to that most excellent unit?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, they already come from other districts to that unit. The fact that this takes place is something which the regional health authority should take account of in conjunction with the capacity of each unit when they set targets and priorities.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that, if it had not been for the generous charitable contribution from the United States, there would have been upwards of 150 high-risk patients who were waiting for surgery who would not have had that surgery? Will he also recognise that the Westminster Hospital cardiac unit is now threatened with closure? We therefore have two major cardiac units of absolute

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excellence in our central London hospitals which are in this situation. Could he not do something to ensure that these valuable services are retained?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the fact is that this unit will not be closed. We are grateful for the very generous donation which Mr. John James has made. Other units are matters for their own districts to look into. The most important thing in this case is that, first, it will not be closed, and there is no point in speculating what might have happened if it had had to be closed—I dare say that was one of the options, but there are others as well—and that in future health authorities must match resources with what is to be put forward.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, will the Minister not agree that the surgeons at Guy's and their predecessors have done magnificent work in the past, and that their pioneering work is renowned worldwide? Does he not agree that in one of his answers he threatened anyone involved in medicine with some form of punishment if they are successful, and that that must be distressing for all those involved in the National Health Service? Finally, will he comment on whether or not it is true that the health authority concerned with Guy's is also considering, for financial reasons, the elimination of pacemakers?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the last part of the noble Lord's supplementary question has nothing whatsoever to do with the Question on the Order Paper. All units concerned with heart work in London are successful. The four cardiac surgery units I referred to in the South-East Thames region are excellent in every respect, and we have every confidence that if there were a problem in one the others could help.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I appreciate the contribution made by Mr. James, but will the Minister accept that it is, after all, only a one-off contribution? Will he leave open the question of the department giving assistance when the time that has been bought by this generous donor has been used up?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, as I said in answer to an earlier supplementary question, my right honourable friend the Minister of Health is in touch with the regional health authority. It is a matter for them and the district to sort out.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to correct the figure given by Lord Renton? It should be £300 per head of the population, and not £3,000 per head.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I do not think I should get into a dispute now about mathematics. I am very bad at doing calculations in my head; but I note the remarks of the noble Countess.

Business
2.54 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend Lady Young
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will, with the leave of the House, repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer to be given in another place to a Private Notice Question on the response that has been made and the further steps which are proposed following the massacre of blacks in South Africa.
My noble friend will then, again with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement on the Foreign Affairs Council from 17th to 21st March.

Essex Bill [H.L.]
2.55 p.m.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time—(Lord Aberdare.)
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, before the Bill is read a second time I should like to speak on one of the clauses and I trust that this is in order at this time. The Essex Bill is one of a number of Bills going through Parliament, many of which have similar provisions. I refer to the Leicestershire Bill and the Berkshire Bill. In the Essex Bill there are a number of matters which, in my view, are worthy of the time of the House. I am concerned particularly with Clause 10. The clause is entitled "Closure of insanitary food premises and stalls". My interest in this matter is prompted by my long association with the cooperative movement. I declare an interest here.
The co-operative movement is prominent in the provision of food and is affected by provisions comparable to those in the Bill. I also wish to refer to comments that I have received from the British Retailers Association and also from the CBI. I do not intend to impede the passage of the Bill. The interests in the Bill and in Clause 10 are well understood. It would be helpful if I quoted from Section 10 (1). It reads:
"In this section—'equipmene', 'food business'. 'open food' and 'stall' have the respective meanings assigned to them by the regulations having effect under section 13 of the Food Act 1984".
The Food Act 1984 was substantially a consolidation measure, and of prime concern within that are the Food and Drug (Amendments) Acts. In Schedule 11 to the Food Act 1984, on page 109, is a complete repeal for the Food and Drug (Control of Food Premises) Act 1976 and the Food and Drugs (Amendment) Act 1982. Section 22 (2) of the Food Act 1984 reads, in relation to the granting of an emergency order:
"The court shall not consider an application under this section unless it is satisfied that at least three clear days' notice in writing of intention to make that application"—
has been given. This is significant. As recently as 1984, the law of the land in relation to the closure under emergency provisions stressed "three clear days' notice". In the Essex Bill we read, in Clause 10 (3)(a):
"Where a complaint has been made under subsection (2) above the court may on application by the district council…".
Then there are further matters alluded to, and subsection (3)(c) continues:
"Before making application under this subsection the district council shall give not less than 24 hours' notice to the person who is carrying on a food business…".

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The position, as I understand it, is that there are national provisions which govern these matters which relate to the offending premises and the owner being entitled to receive three days' notice. What is being sought in the Essex Bill—and I make no quibble about it except in regard to the procedure—is that so far as Essex is concerned the notice shall only be 24 hours. What is also intriguing is that this is being put forward at a time when the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are seeking the views of commercial interests as to whether it would be proper to change three days to 24 hours. In a letter dated 19th December. the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food said:
"In November 1983 the Minister announced the Government's plans for a review of officials of food legislation in the United Kingdom."
It then goes on:
"Amongst the issues covered in the document is whether three separate Acts should be retained or whether there should be only one Act for Great Britain and another for Northern Ireland. The document discusses most, but certainly not all of the main provisions in primary food legislation and makes numerous recommendations."
One of the recommendations is as follows:
"The second change concerns the requirement in Section 22(2) of the 1984 Act that three clear days must elapse between a local authority's giving notice of an intention to apply for an emergency closure order and the hearing of the application itself. In exceptional circumstances, such a delay could endanger public health. It is proposed that 24 hours be substituted for three clear days."
I repeat that co-operative commercial interests have always been anxious to satisfy the legislation of this country in respect of provisions of this kind. They have no objection to three days, and if the law was changed they would have no objection to 24 hours. But the puzzlement which I have is that while the national legislation is being reviewed—and I simply raise the question in a questioning manner—is it not something that ought to be looked at very seriously by the committees which consider these matters in order to allow clauses such as Clause 10 to be proceeding at the same time as national legislation is being considered? For instance, retailers and businesses which straddle Hertfordshire and Essex or Essex and any adjoining county will find that some of their premises are subject to three-day procedures and some are subject to 24-hour procedures.
The other point that I wish to raise concerns the procedure for Private Bills at this time. I have a submission from the CBI which they tell me has been sent to the Private Bill Office and is currently being considered by the Society of Parliamentary Agents. This is what the CBI tell me is their point of aggravation in respect of procedure:
"Private Bills are often deposited in Parliament without any prior consultation with or explanation to bodies or persons likely to be affected. The only explanatory material provided is the press advertisement and the long title. The long title sets out the objective of the Bill in extremely general terms. For example, the recent Leicestershire Bill cotained 140 clauses but was described in the long title simply as 'A Bill to re-enact and to extend certain local enactments in force within the County of Leicestershire; to confer further powers on the Leicestershire County Council and local authorities in the County; to make further provision with regard to environment, local government, improvement, health and finances of the county; and for other purposes."'
It goes on:
"Private Bills do not distinguish between provisions which are re-enactments of previous provisions and provisions which amend
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previous provisions and provisions which are new; no reasons are given for seeking special local additions to or variations of national legislation, on such matters as highways, public health"—
and so on.
I raise these matters because this is the prime opportunity for someone who does not wish to impede the passage of the Bill but nevertheless wishes to take the opportunity which Members of this House have of drawing attention to some unease outside the House in respect of both the procedure and also the worthwhileness of including provisions like Clause 10 in the Essex Bill. In Essex there are some co-operative societies: the Ipswich Society, the Colchester Society and the Chelmsford Society, and they certainly have no wish to do other than comply fully with the law in all respects. Yet apparently, until the law in general is changed, those societies and others that may be affected by the Bill—and, let me add. other traders—are expressing their anxiety that these provisions are unable to make progress while the national legislation is being considered. I very much hope that the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees will be able to say something helpful in regard to the interests that I have sought to represent.
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, for raising one or two matters on this Bill. On his first point, referring to Clause 10, the closure of insanitary food premises, this is an unopposed clause in the sense that there is no petition against it. It will therefore be referred to the Select Committee that considers these unopposed clauses, and I can assure him that we shall give very careful attention to what he has said. I shall make sure that my colleagues on that committee have a copy from the Hansard report of what he has said about the Bill, and in particular whether the notice should be 24 hours or three days.
On the more general point that he raised about procedures in connection with Private Bills. I do not think that the CBI have anything to grumble about. They are an extremely efficient organisation. These large county council Bills result from the 1972 Local Government Act and it is very well appreciated by all major bodies concerned, including the CBI, that these are large, omnibus Bills—they have come to be called "jumbo Bills". They cover a mass of different parts of the private statute book where local authorities are required to renew any of the powers that they had prior to 1986, when all these powers will be no longer effective. So I do think that any body like the CBI will be perfectly able to go through a large Bill of this sort and pick out any particular points that are relevant to their interests. If the noble Lord wishes to take this matter up further with me, I shall be delighted to have a chat with him at any time.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I am most grateful for the assurance of the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees that the point I raised in respect of Clause 10 will be considered. In respect of large organisations who ought to be competent to perceive at the time a Private Bill is produced that an interest is affected, the noble Lord, I think, ought to take on board that the Greater Manchester Bill of 1981 carried a clause in precisely the terms of Clause 10 in the Essex Bill.

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Because in fact that went through, and I understand from outside interests that it went through almost accidentally, that precedent in 1981 strengthens the likelihood of Clause 10 in Essex going through. What we are concerned with, quite frankly, is the establishment of precedents, and although large organisations are entitled to be looked upon as being able to look after themselves, I do not think that what the CBI is requesting—that is, better and clearer consultation—is asking too much.
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I do not agree with the noble Lord. I think that the provisions are perfectly satisfactory. There are very, very strict Standing Orders which the promoter of a Private Bill has to comply with in the way of advertisement; and again they are all in the Private Bill Standing Orders, if the noble Lord would like to have a look at them. We find no difficulty in dealing with these Bills. Of course, it is in the very nature of private legislation that they differ from one area to another. That is the whole reason for there being Private Bills as opposed to Public Bills. There is a nice distinction that has to be made. Where powers are asked for on any one particular point, we try to make sure that they are the same in one area as in another; but each particular promoter has to justify the local need for any particular provision in the clause. I think that that is as far as I can go this afternoon.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Select Committee on Opposed Provisions.
3.11 p.m.
Earl De La Warr Earl De La Warr rose to move, That it be an Instruction to the Committee to whom Clause 16 (Screening of land used by scrap metal dealers) is committed that they give particular attention to the unprecedented nature of the clause.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I beg to move the Instruction standing in my name. I shall try to do so as quickly as I possibly can. Very briefly, the clause gives new powers to district councils in Essex over the screening of scrap metal heaps. No one would pretend that scrap metal heaps are anything but extremely ugly, but I think that we must be careful not to denigrate too much the scrap metal industry. First of all, it creates centres where scrap metal which otherwise would be littering the countryside can be placed. Secondly, the scrap is recycled to foundries and thus helps the balance of payments by reducing the requirement for new raw materials. Thirdly—and this possibly is not very widely known—the scrap metal industry earns over £300 million a year in foreign exchange by the exporting of scrap.
This Motion refers to the "unprecedented nature" of Clause 16. By that is meant that there is no clause of this type to be found in any other local authority Bill. It is my belief—and I shall explain why to your Lordships in a few moments—that if such a clause appears in one county Act, it will be liable to become a precedent (and the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, dealt with this) for other counties and gradually may become the law of the land by what I would call a back-door method.
Clause 16 provides that where a district council thinks that a scrap heap is damaging the visual amenities, it can require the user to screen it in any way it thinks fit. Bringing in the Public Health Act 1936 means that non-compliance will become a criminal act which brings with it a very substantial fine. In that way the scrap metal industry is singled out from all other industries that despoil the countryside—and there are many.
What your Lordships' House needs to take on board is the fact that the local planning authority already has all the powers that it needs under Section 51 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971. It can revoke altogether a planning permission or it can insist on suitable screening. Why then, we must ask, is there this effort to by-pass the planning Acts by turning to these powers? I think that one reason, although there may be others, will suffice. Under the planning Acts compensation is payable to the user if he can show that as a result of a planning decision he has suffered damage either by the depreciation of the value of his land or by what in legal parlance is known as being "disturbed in his enjoyment" of the land.
Your Lordships are not being asked to make any judgment of Solomon about this attempt—dare I say this ingenious attempt—to avoid the danger of paying compensation by making a new local law. Neither are your Lordships asked to make a judgment about whether I am right, though I suspect that I am, in suggesting that it might become a precedent. All that this Motion asks for is agreement by this House that this clause deserves investigation by the appropriate Select Committee and that the committee should be instructed to give it their special attention.
Moved, That it be an Instruction to the Committee to whom Clause 16 (Screening of land used by scrap metal dealers) is committed that they give particular attention to the unprecedented nature of the clause.—(Earl De La Warr.)
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, the noble Earl has put his case across very fairly and in no way do I wish to oppose this Instruction. He emphasised the word "unprecedented" which, I think, is the word which is creating a lot of difficulties. As he mentioned, so I, too, should like to mention the importance of scrap dealers in this country. In this year and age if the number of motor-cars that go off the road, and the number of wireless sets and television sets and so on which pile up in the countryside were spread all over the place and not collected by scrap dealers, we should have quite a mess. I know this because we, as farmers, seem to accumulate an enormous amount of scrap in a very short time, and so we are very much obliged to the scrap dealers who come to collect it and keep our places tidy. Sometimes they do not pay us what we think is enough; nevertheless they do a useful job.
If anybody wants to see what is the situation in a part of the countryside where there are not enough scrap dealers, he should go to the Western Isles. It is really appalling there, with scrap cars lying by the roadside all over those beautiful islands. It just goes to show that we certainly must have scrap dealers. At present, the question of the care of the environment is very much to the fore. As a farmer, farming in Essex, in a very sensitive area right next door to Epping

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Forest, I know of the pressures to keep the environment as best as we can. The county council and the district councils under them have to protect the environment and that is the real reason for this clause in this Bill.
I am no lawyer and I do not want to go into the details of the clause, but I think that on the question of the word "unprecedented" the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees made the very real point that this is the whole idea of a Private Bill; that it is concerned with something different in a particular area. One may ask, "What is different in Essex from anywhere else?" Well, we are right on the border of what is perhaps one of the biggest conurbations in the world, with the result that, in that respect, the environment is very much hurt. I do not think that there is anything unprecedented about Essex trying to do something extra about this. In any case, if other councils take note of what Essex has done, well and good. What is good for Essex is good for the rest of the country, for that matter.
Mention was made of the retrospective side of this matter. A scrap merchant who has had planning permission for a particular site and has cars stacked up five or six high—and I have seen photographs of such places—would now be forced to screen that site. The problem regarding the retrospective aspect arises because no one, including, I am sure, anyone in this Chamber, could have visualised 20, 30 or 40 years ago, after the war, the number of scrapped cars that there would be in this country, the amount of scrap that there would be and the way in which it would be piled up. I have some photographs here, which I may put in the Library, which show in the Dedham Valley in Essex, of all places, almost half-a-mile of scrap cars, two or three deep. They can be seen from the A 12 road going north, and the Essex County Council definitely have a right to do something about the dreadful blight there. I do not think there were many scrap yards before planning permission was required, but there are some and something must be done about them.
There is the question of cost, which I do not think the noble Earl mentioned. Scrap dealers are worried about the cost. A few years ago I wanted to screen my tennis court and I bought Leyland Cypress conifers and planted them about four feet apart. They grow at the rate of three or four feet a year and they are not very expensive; they cost about £1 each. It will not be very difficult in rural areas to hide these appalling sights, which my photographs show, by that method. I know that in urban areas it is more expensive to put up walls, screens and so on, but it is necessary.
I do not want to say anything more, except that the council do not wish this Instruction to be opposed. But they have made it clear—and they have already made an amendment to their Bill at the behest of the scrap dealers—that they are perfectly prepared to look into the whole question, because they admit that it is a tricky proposition to put forward a clause to deal with this very difficult situation where people have planning permission. A situation has arisen where they must do something about it, and it is absolutely necessary that this should be looked at very carefully indeed.
3.22 p.m.
Lord Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon: My Lords, I rise very briefly to support my noble friend's Motion. There is really a question of principle here. Apart from the element of retrospection in this clause—an element at which Parliament has always looked with suspicion—there is a very important question of compensation, as my noble friend said. The noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, spoke about the low cost of screening his tennis court. It may not have occurred to him that there are some scrap firms in this country whose premises extend over dozens, if not hundreds, of acres and the cost is a very considerable element in their budget.
Surely, the point is that the time for imposing planning conditions is when planning consent is granted. There has never been any question of that and, if an attempt is made to vary the planning conditions afterwards, where substantial costs or losses may be involved, then compensation ought to be paid. Nobody doubts that the county council, or any local authority, has a right to say that anyone setting up a scrap yard in future must screen it. That is a perfectly reasonable condition to put on a planning permission. But when it comes to saying that a scrap yard which has been in operation for many years, and which may be a very large one, must incur the very considerable cost of screening, then there is no doubt in my mind that compensation is, and should be, payable and that an attempt to get round what has always been understood to be the planning procedure in law by deliberate legislation is wrong, and in my view the committee ought to deal with it.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, if scrap dealers had planning permission and were asked to put a 10 ft. screen around their premises, which they agreed to do, and then piled cars 20 ft. high, would the noble Lord give compensation to build a higher screen to cover them?
Lord Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon: My Lords, I did not understand the noble Lord's point. Will he repeat it?
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, if a scrap dealer gets planning permission which says that he must have a screen 10 ft. high, and then behind that screen he piles cars 20 ft. high, what will the noble Lord do?
Lord Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon: My Lords, I think that any sensible scrap dealer gets through his stock pretty quickly and we are talking about a fairly competitive and cost-effective industry. Obviously, if a dealer is told to screen a scrap heap and he puts up a fence 10 ft. high and then piles cars 20 ft. high, there is no question that, in order to carry out the original condition on the planning permission, he must make the fence 20 ft. high. But that is totally irrelevant to the present situation.
Lord Seebohm: My Lords, I hope that I may be allowed to make a very brief comment. I must say that I have an interest, because I live in Dedham, which is the centre of Constable country, and within a mile or so of my house is an old-established scrap merchant's

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dump, which until recently was not very easy to see and was perfectly satisfactory. But the extent to which these yards would grow was unforeseen. This yard is now visible. The dump is piled several cars high and they are getting higher, so there is now a real element of pollution in the area. I do not know whether visible pollution is the right term, but it is likely to become more and more offensive as time goes on. It is all very well to say that these scrap merchants will clear their stock. They can clear some of their stock, but I am certain that they cannot clear all of it and these dumps will definitely grow and grow. So I simply believe that there must be some requirement to screen or limit the growth of these dumps.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, it may be appropriate if, at this point, I intervene to give a very brief indication of the Government's view on the Instruction. While the Government have no objection to the Bill in principle, the powers sought in Clause 16 are a matter of concern to my department. We have drawn our objections to the attention of the promoters. Briefly, in our opinion, the clause generally seeks unprecedented powers to control a planning matter through public health legislation when adequate powers already exist in Section 51(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971. That section gives a local planning authority the power to impose any condition on the continuance of a use of land. Moreover, Clause 16 makes no provision for compensation to be recoverable from the local planning authority, such as that which exists in Section 170(3) of the same 1971 Act. Depending on the outcome of negotiations with the promoters, my department will need to consider in due course whether or not to report to Parliament on the clause. I therefore support my noble friend's Instruction to the Select Committee.
3.27 p.m.
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, it would not be proper for me to comment about the merits of this clause, but perhaps I may say just a quick word again about the procedure. There are, in fact, three petitions against this Bill, but none of them relates to this particular clause. Therefore, this clause, Clause 16, will be referred to the same committee that I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Graham—the Select Committee set up to consider the unopposed clauses—and, if your Lordships accept this Instruction, which I have no reason to oppose, that committee will give very careful consideration to what has been said this afternoon in respect of that clause.
May I make one further point, which I have made before on these occasions, about Instructions. There is a well-understood procedure available to parties who feel aggrieved by provisions in a Private Bill to have their grievances considered by the House. This procedure enables parties to lodge petitions against the Bill, or against particular clauses, and the matter can then be fully examined in Committee with the help of counsel and with witnesses for and against the provisions in question. In this case, those who object to the clause to which the Instruction relates have chosen not to petition against it. The Instruction will therefore
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simply be considered, as I have mentioned, by the Committee on Unopposed Clauses. But I am bound to say that this is not, in my view, an altogether satisfactory way of dealing with a contentious matter, and I should have preferred to see those who object to this clause petition against it. But I have no reason to oppose the Instruction.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Education and Training for New Technologies
3.29 p.m.
Lord Gregson Lord Gregson rose to move, That this House takes note of the report of the Science and Technology Committee on Education and Training for New Technologies (2nd Report 1984–85, H.L. 48.).
The noble Lord said: My Lords, there is considerable public and institutional concern regarding all matters at this time relating to education, and there is a great deal of public debate in many forums. It was to be expected, therefore, that when your Lordships' Select Committee decided to inquire into this important subject concerning education and training there would be considerable interest from many quarters; and there was.
Evidence was received from nearly 200 organisations and individuals. On behalf of your Lordships' committee I must express our gratitude to those many people and organisations who helped with our inquiries, either by submitting written evidence or by coming along and giving oral evidence. I would also place on record the committee's gratitude to those many people in the USA and Japan who took so much trouble to help us with our inquiries. The committee is also grateful indeed to the special advisers for their wise counsel and assistance, and especially to the clerks for their valiant efforts.
I have no doubt that your Lordships are all aware that over the past two years this country had a negative balance in manufactured goods for the first time since what is known as the Industrial Revolution around the end of the 18th century; but I wonder how many of your Lordships are aware of the alarming rate of change from positive balance to negative balance. In 1981 we had a positive balance of £5 billion; in 1984 we had a negative balance of £4 billion. I would suggest that, for a trading nation that depends on its overseas trade to maintain the standard of living of its people, that must give rise to very considerable concern. In normal circumstances we would be in an extremely serious balance of payments crisis—more serious than anything we have experienced previously. The reason we are not in crisis is North Sea oil.
The decline in our manufacturing earnings abroad is almost exactly the reciprocal of the build-up of the sale abroad of the surplus of North Sea oil over and above our own needs. In other words, the total balance is slightly positive. It is generally accepted that the output of oil from the North Sea will reach its maximum over the next two years and will then start to decline. In the statement by the Treasury that accompanied last week's Budget, North Sea output is shown to peak this year and the decline to commence next year. It is certainly not going to disappear

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overnight, and there is good reason to believe that we shall be dragging the dregs out of the North Sea well into the 21st century.
But whatever the rate of decline, since we are only just in balance we shall be forced once again to rely more and more on our exported goods and services to earn our living in the world. That means that if the Treasury are right—and on this occasion unfortunately I think they are—we are not only in negative balance in goods and services but we are also in negative time. Since the United Kingdom is not rich in physical resources other than energy, our ability to compete with our goods and services is entirely dependent on adding value to the materials and resources which we import from abroad. This means that we must rely primarily on the quality of our human resources—their skill, their enterprise and their versatility; in other words, technical knowledge and the intellectual capability to apply it.
Science and technology lie at the very root of our endeavours. To remain competitive on the world markets we must be at the forefront of a good many of the developing technologies, if we cannot be at the forefront of them all. I regret to say that I believe that the rapid deterioration in our overseas trade owes a lot to the possibility that we are not keeping up at the forefront of technology. In the world of rapid communication, it is now quite impossible to sell yesterday's technology. We are dropping behind in the race, and to falter in this race at this time could not be worse with North Sea oil output soon to start to decline.
A feature of the 20th century is the rapid emergence of new technologies, and the pace is accelerating. This appears to be a factor which we in this country have failed to realise. It takes more and more effort to keep up with the front runners. You cannot rest on your laurels or assume that the provisions we made yesterday to compete are sufficient for today, and certainly not for tomorrow.
Another feature of new technology is that it is all-pervasive. There is hardly an area of man's endeavour that is not affected and that will not become more and more affected as we follow technology up the exponential scale. Your committee's report clearly spells out that the country's economic future and its ability to ensure gainful employment for its people is dependent on coming to terms with the new technologies as they emerge.
The ability to be in the forefront (or, in the modern idiom, at the cutting edge) of new knowledge must depend on the pursuit of excellence. Unfortunately, and for many years, this has not been a popular course to recommend in this country, but we must understand that we shall never ever stay with the competition by levelling down. We have got to find a way to encourage the very best of our schoolchildren to opt for science and technology if we are to compete in the world's markets—and here I believe we have as a country a very serious and major handicap: that science, technology and industry are not the occupations for which our schoolchildren aim. This is not the case among our competitors.
This situation must be improved. If it is not, within it lie the seeds of our own destruction. One can
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understand that spending wealth is much more pleasurable than earning it, but we must ensure that our schoolchildren understand that it is necessary to create wealth before we can spend it, or even shuffle it around.
All of this has been said before in many forums, and I realise we are not short of analysis or advice. We are short of action, and it will take a very considerable effort across the board—parents, teachers, industry, local and national government. We shall all have to do more. Changing the culture of a hundred years will not be easy, but it must be done. Special emphasis should be placed on developing and maintaining the interest of girls in science and technology. As long as scientists and technologists come, in effect, from only half the population, the manpower needs of new technologies will not be met.
The committee were particularly concerned that in the schools a more broadly based curriculum is needed. Pupils should be required to study mathematics, the sciences and the humanities up to the age of 16, and given some lessons in basic economics. Computers need to be integrated into the teaching of all subjects. Positive action is recommended designed to encourage the interest of girls in science and technology, especially at primary school and early in secondary school.
Good teaching is crucial at all levels, from primary to higher education:
"The overall performance of existing teachers has to be improved, the best must be retained in the service, and additional good teachers must be found".
In order to attract the best candidates into teaching, the committee recommend the introduction of differential payments to teachers and lecturers in science and technology. The committee are also unhappy at the unsuitable qualifications of many science teachers, and recommend that secondary school teachers should be graduates in the subject they teach, while primary school teachers should be taught some mathematics and basic science. Initial training for all teachers should include an introduction to industry. All steps possible must be taken to raise the unsatisfactory levels of in-service training.
If we succeed in changing the attitudes within the schools and the best opt for science and technology in their further education, then we must provide the excellent to create excellence. We must ensure that our best are taught by the excellent, supported by the research which is absolutely necessary to keep up with the forefront of science and technology, and make certain that our places of learning are capable of developing the people so essential to earn our living in the world of today and tomorrow. It has been the perceived wisdom in this country for more than 100 years that you can compress into three short years of a first degree of science and technology all the learning that is necessary for the next 40 years of commercial, industrial or academic activity. This is a nonsense. The quantum of knowledge that exists today is vastly greater than that 40 years ago when I was receiving my initial education in technology, and it is expanding at an exponential rate. The doubling time for knowledge in computer science has recently been estimated to be 2·7 years, that is to say, half the knowledge we have today was not available three short years ago.
The complexity of new technologies, and particularly their multidisciplinary nature, means that for technologists, traditional degree courses are no longer adequate. They will need to be supplemented by fourth and fifth years in higher education through taught masters' degrees, where students may start to develop the required specialisations. Our competitors have recognised this. In America and Japan a taught post-graduate degree of two years' duration has become the norm rather than the exception, and the requirement for research activity is a doctorate. In these countries, post-graduate education is the power house of their activities in technology. In this country, it appears to me to be almost fossilised, and in some technologies we are actually dismantling postgraduate degrees. I believe that for government and industry this is an area for urgent action.
One of the features of the educational scene in this country is that it is almost totally fragmented. There is no focus, and this makes it almost impossible to analyse problems, take the corrective actions and then monitor their fulfilment. Your committee believe that this is a major cause of the slow progress we in this country have made in keeping up with the rest of the world. Therefore, we have recommended that a group of people be brought together to provide that focus, to define the problem, to commission analyses, to recommend, to take action and to monitor results. We were strongly recommended to advise action on this basis by 14 of the leading high-tech companies in the United Kingdom.
While your committee was conducting the inquiry, the Government set up an inter-departmental committee under Mr. John Butcher, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, to consider the short-term serious shortage of technologists in the information technology area. Arising from the recommendation of that committee, the Confederation of British Industry have undertaken to set up a group to deal with the fire-fighting problem of the immediate shortage in this one area of technology. With this action under way, your committee considered it more appropriate to concentrate on the longer-term problem of making sure to the best of our ability that we avoid shooting ourselves in the foot again by having a drastic shortage of people with the right skills in the middle of 3½ million unemployed.
There was a good deal of debate in the committee regarding the form and organisational link-up for such a group. It did not make sense in the present circumstances to suggest an independent quango, so we looked for an organisation already involved in continually looking at new technologies. Such an organisation is the Science and Engineering Research Council. It sponsors research into the technologies of tomorrow, and sponsors post-graduate education for the technologies of today.
We have recommended therefore that an education and training board should be set up within the Science and Engineering Research Council to provide the focus that I have described previously. We have suggested the following provisions: It must have the right independently to report to Parliament; the subject is far too serious for it to report anywhere else. It should
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be composed of industrialists, scientists and government to provide a balanced view. It should commission research and studies from existing organisations who specialise in this field. It should be financed to provide post-graduate education to the highest possible standards. It should have the power to request reports from Government departments and local authorities.
Since our report was published, I have heard many suggestions where else such a board should be located, ranging from an independent quango via four different government departments to a Cabinet committee. I have not yet heard of any suggestions that stand up to the logic of locating it within the Science and Engineering Research Council. I hope and I stress in considering this recommendation that the Government will apply logic and not allow bureaucratic jealousies to determine their course of action.
The other myth relating to a stand-alone three-year first degree is that it provides the knowledge for the next 40 years. Of course, this is quite absurd—patently so—and yet to a large extent, unbelievable though it is, this is what many graduates have to do. Our competitors have realised that technology marches up the exponential curve, and that their livelihood depends on continuing education, since they have no North Sea oil to lull them into a false sense of security.
We must have expanding provision for re-education and continuing education. Here the essential problem lies with industry. As an industrialist, I am sorry to say that industry in this country spends far less on education and training than any of our competitors. For the good of us all, that must change. This is another area where there was a great deal of debate within the committee. The pattern which has emerged from the evidence is that there are many companies, particularly in the manufacturing sector, who take seriously their responsibility for education and training, but there are many other companies, particularly in the service sector, who obtain their skilled personnel by poaching from the responsible organisations that do the training. I hasten to add that of course there are those in the service sector who recognise their responsibilities and contribute and provide training in technology; equally there are many in the manufacturing sector who do not.
Looking around the world at our competitors, there is a dichotomy. On the one hand there are countries like Japan and Germany, where education and training by industry is built into the nature and culture of the country, and where it would be totally unacceptable for industry to shirk its responsibilities. There are other countries, like Sweden and France, which ensure the training requirement is fulfilled by applying a levy. As I have said, your committee had considerable discussion about this situation. We came to the conclusion that certainly in the short term the only way forward in this country was by levy, although in the long term your committee hopes that by compulsory reporting in company accounts of training activities the need for compulsory levy could be relieved.
Your committee stress the potential of distance learning techniques in the field of continuous learning. They encourage the adoption of tutored video

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instruction to provide updating to those employed in industry. They expect both the Open University and the Open Tech to be instrumental in providing such techniques. It is suggested that the Open University should broadcast material from other universities and polytechnics which could be combined to form a post graduate degree. I commend the efforts being made by Aston University to pioneer tutored video instruction in this country. They should be given every encouragement to continue in this work.
There are 63 conclusions and recommendations from the committee's report. I make no excuse for the length of the list because the subject is too complex and the problem too important not to deal with it in detail. I have highlighted only a few of the more important issues arising from the report. I have no doubt speakers, including my fellow members of the committee, will dwell on other matters contained in the report, but may I finish by saying to the Government and to industry there is a very urgent problem to be dealt with, which is outlined in this report. It is fundamental to the future economic wellbeing of all of us and the future standard of living of most of us. It is too important to be fudged, and neither Government nor industry will measure up to the solutions to the problem without spending money. Not to spend the money now could be the greatest error of omission committed this century.
I look forward to an interesting debate and in particular to a notable maiden speech by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. I look forward also to hearing the views of the Government and to further explanation of proposals in the Budget regarding education and training. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of the Report of the Science and Technology Committee on Education and Training for New Technologies (2nd Report 1984–85, H.L. 48).—(Lord Gregson.)

South Africa: Shootings at Uitenhage
3.50 p.m.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat the Answer to a Private Notice Question being given in another place by my honourable friend the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Mr. Rifkind:
"My right honourable and learned friend issued a statement on 22nd March strongly condemning the shootings at Uitenhage and calling for the fullest possible investigation. My honourable friend the Member for Shoreham summoned the South African ambassador. We view the latest events in South Africa with abhorrence. The deaths are particularly tragic not only because they occurred on the anniversary of Sharpeville, but because they fly in the face of certain more hopeful developments in recent months. We will continue to use all our influence to press the South African Government to introduce the fundamental reforms so clearly needed".
My Lords, that concludes the Answer.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Baroness for repeating the reply to the Private Notice Question asked in another place. We endorse and support the strong reaction of the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary.
The appalling actions of the South African Government have been properly condemned throughout the world. They can only be described as barbaric and they underline once again, in a tragic way, the inevitable consequences of the policy of apartheid. We also strongly support the words of the American Under-Secretary, Mr. Chester Crocker, that South Africa would have to make some constructive changes to accommodate the black majority and that the alternative would be chaos.
Can the noble Baroness now inform the House what actions the Government propose taking in addition to the protest they have made and their request for an investigation—unilaterally, through our Common Market partners, and through United Nations—to demonstrate our profound abhorrence of these events? Will the Government also use every diplomatic means possible to bring pressure to bear on the South African Government to abolish apartheid, for nothing else will suffice, and to introduce liberal policies? Finally, do Her Majesty's Government agree with the Commonwealth Secretary-General who has given his support to the idea of phased sanctions against South Africa?
Lord Avebury: My Lords, we, too, are most grateful to the noble Baroness for repeating this Answer. Did not Commonwealth leaders warn in October 1983 that the apartheid constitution (and I quote),
"would only lead to a rising tide of anger against the injustices of apartheid with further repression and brutality directed at the African majority and other racial groups acting in solidarity with them"?
With the benefit of hindsight, would the Government not admit now that in declining to associate themselves with that part of the communiqué they were wrong and the rest of the Commonwealth was right?
Were the Government not similarly misguided in the United Nations Security Council in August 1984 and in the General Assembly in September 1984 when they, alone with the United States, abstained on resolutions condemning those constitutional arrangements?
Do the Government now recognise that, as Mr. Chester Crocker of the American State Department has said, unless prompt and effective measures are introduced to enable the majority to share power, the result will be chaos and anarchy? Will the Government therefore recall our ambassador in South Africa for urgent consultations as a sign that they intend to do more than make ritual noises of condemnation at the frightful atrocities which have been committed?
Will the Government now consider using exchange controls to halt all new investment in South Africa and to stem the tide of bank loans to enterprises in that country? Will the Government now advise British companies and banks not to invest there?
Will they also renew the call to all cultural and sporting organisations not to have any contact with

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South African bodies? In particular, will they reaffirm our support for the Gleneagles agreement? Will they make a special appeal to the four home rugby unions to abandon any plans they may be preparing for a Lions tour of South Africa in 1986?
Finally, will the Government set an example to Mr. Botha, in furtherance of their advice that he open a dialogue with black leaders, by initiating consultations themselves with leaders of the ANC, PAC and UDF?
3.55 p.m.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lords, Lord Cledwyn and Lord Avebury, for what they have said about the Answer and the very serious events which have taken place in South Africa.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, asked, first, about what action has been taken by the European Community. We understand that the presidency is making a statement on behalf of the Community. He went on to ask what the Government's reaction is to these events. I should like to make it absolutely plain to the House that we intend to maintain the pressures for change. I hope that answers some of the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury.
We believe that we must remain engaged—politically, diplomatically and economically—with the Government of South Africa and that it is vital to use all our influence to try to obtain a peaceful change. I must make it absolutely plain that we condemn apartheid, and have said so on many occasions, but we believe that the violent collapse of the South African Government would not be in anybody's interest at all—except, possibly, the enemies of the West.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, asked also for our view on the proposal made by the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth for phased sanctions against South Africa. Our view of this, as it is of selective sanctions, is that it would be unlikely to influence South African policies. Indeed, we believe that such sanctions could hurt the blacks and that many blacks are in fact opposed to selective sanctions.
I hope that I have answered at the same time most of the questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury—but he asked specifically whether or not we would recall our ambassador from South Africa. It is not our intention to recall our ambassador there because we believe it is essential to keep open our channels of communication so that we can express our views at the highest level to the South African authorities.
On the question of a halt on new investment, I recognise this proposal and the suggestion that there should be a ban only after a period of time. Again, the Government do not feel that this would have much, if any, economic impact. Indeed, we have been opposed to controls on outward capital flow. The arguments against a ban on new investment apply as they do to the question of sanctions.
Finally, I confirm once again that the Government stand absolutely by the Gleneagles agreement on the question of sporting events. It is a matter for individual sporting clubs to note what the Government's clear view is and to make their own decisions.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, does not the Minister realise that the language she has just used is quite familiar in this House and in another place? To talk about maintaining the pressure is just idle and futile talk. The time is arriving when we really must do some business in this matter. Several years ago we were faced with a problem not altogether dissimilar in Abyssinia. Then we failed when we should have taken drastic action—draconian measures—such as economic sanctions, if necessary, even if they would have been counter-productive. The question that arises now is this: how long are we prepared to put up with this uncivilised existence?
At the same time, let us not forget that it is impossible for us to work alone and in isolation. We can only act in co-operation with other countries and with allies more powerful than ourselves—politically, economically and financially. What I want to know is this. Is the United States to be brought into this condemnation in order to maintain the pressure in a realistic fashion? Otherwise, what the noble Baroness has been saying—and I mean no offence, because I understand that she is stating the Government's position—is just idle and futile talk.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I have expressed in the strongest language that I can the Government's reaction to the appalling events in South Africa. Let me say to the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, that in the Statement made by my right honourable and learned friend on 22nd March he made plain that my honourable friend Mr. Luce, on summoning the South African Ambassador, asked for the fullest possible investigation into the events. We have subsequently heard that the South African Government have announced that they will set up a judicial inquiry.
I think I have answered the point about sanctions. As the noble Lord himself said, it would not be much use invoking sanctions because they are likely to be ineffective and, in fact, in times gone by have been counter-productive.
The noble Lord spoke of acting in concert. The United States Government have condemned the events. I am sure that the noble Lord will have read the remarks of Mr. Shultz, and we understand that the presidency of the Community is making a statement on behalf of the Community.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that the events of last week in Uitenhage are simply a continuation of similar events which have been occurring in that country for the past 60 or 70 years and which are always met by the British Government, of either party, with vapid, if eloquent, protests? Can she tell the House, and indeed people outside this House, what reason there is to suppose that her words this afternoon will have any greater effect in bringing to an end this cruelly oppressive regime than they have in the past?
Can the noble Baroness in particular answer the question which she has not yet answered, put by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, as to whether the British Government are prepared to talk with African leaders, particularly those in the African National Congress and the New Democratic Federation? As her honourable friend the Minister of State in the Foreign

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Office has already said that the British Government are not prepared to talk to leaders of the ANC until they renounce violence, while still showing that they are prepared to talk to leaders of UNITA, the Angolan guerrilla movement, can she tell the House whether the British Government are now prepared to talk to those leaders of the African majority who represent their people and with whom the Government should be working if they are going to bring the unreformable policy of apartheid to an end?
Baroness Young: My Lords, in answer to the first part of the noble Lord's question, the Statement makes plain that the events which have just occurred are particularly tragic because they fly in the face of certain more hopeful developments that have occurred in South Africa in past months. They are, therefore, all the more to be regretted.
As regards talking to parties in South Africa such as the ANC, the position remains as has been stated.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that no reasonable person can be anything other than appalled at the events which have brought about this Statement from the Government today? Does she not agree that it is perhaps a pity that in the Statement greater emphasis was not made of the fact that the official South African Government have set up a judicial inquiry with the intention of finding out the true facts in detail so that we can then form a judgment, not from an immediate reaction as given by all the media sources, but from the investigation itself?
Is it not a fact that the official Government in South Africa have also deplored the incident and there is every indication that on this occasion they may well want to try to find out what it is all about so as ultimately to form a reasoned opinion? Is my noble friend aware that the extreme reaction and the language used by some noble Lords opposite in querying this Statement and the way in which they have attached to the Statement their general arguments and feelings against South Africa and its system as a whole cannot help the incident on this occasion being examined objectively? Many people will feel that the Government's approach as outlined by my noble friend and the strong representations made in conjunction with European countries, and others, produce results. We have seen many advances from the extreme position that existed 10 years ago in Africa. South Africa may not have gone far enough, and they are not going fast enough, but many of us believe it is wrong that exaggerated criticisms should be made by noble Lords opposite and should be tied to this particular incident, for that may slow down further improvements.
Baroness Young: My Lords, the Government are appalled at the recent events in South Africa and entirely agree with what my noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls has just said. We are glad that the South African Government have announced that a judicial inquiry is to be set up. We have condemned the policy of apartheid. What we wish to see is a system of Government which has the support of all South Africans.

Foreign Affairs Council
4.8 p.m.
Baroness Young: My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall now repeat a Statement on the Foreign Affairs Council which is being made in another place by my honourable friend the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Mr. Rifkind. The Statement is as follows:
"I will, with permission Mr. Speaker, make a Statement on the meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council which was held in Brussels from 17th to 21st March and at which my right honourable and learned friend and I represented the United Kingdom. My right honourable friend the Minister for Trade was our representative at a meeting of trade Ministers which was held within the Council on 19th March.
"The Community made major progress in dealing with the outstanding problems in the enlargement negotiations with Spain and Portugal. On fisheries, the Community and Spain were able to agree on the general framework for integrating the Spanish fleet into the CFP on a basis which safeguards the balance of fishing opportunities for existing member states under the common fisheries policy. Good progress was also made with the Portuguese, though a number of specific issues remain outstanding on the fisheries chapter with both candidates.
"Considerable progress was also made in resolving the differences between the Community and Spain and Portugal on agriculture and social affairs. A special Foreign Affairs Council, with further ministerial meetings with Spain and Portugal, will be held on 28th March to seek to reach agreement on the outstanding issues before the European Council.
"Substantial progress was made on the text of the own resources decision, including provision for our 1,000 mecu abatement in respect of 1984 and implementation of the Fontainebleau mechanism for United Kingdom rebates in future years. The text is now agreed subject to a Greek waiting reserve. It provides that, immediately after notification that the new own resources decision has been adopted and ratified by national Parliaments, our 1,000 mecu abatement should be paid through an anticipation of the new own resources. Subject to ratification of the Accession Treaty, increased own resources for all other purposes would become available from 1st January 1986. Meanwhile, the Community's budgetary obligations in 1985 should be met through intergovernmental agreement.
"Trade Ministers meeting within the Council discussed the proposal for a new round of multilateral trade negotiations in the GATT. They declared the Community's readiness to participate in such a new round, subject to the establishment of an adequate consensus on objectives, participation and timing. The Community undertook to enlist the support of its trading partners, particularly among the developing countries, to this end. The full text of the Council declaration has been placed in the Library of the House.

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"The Council also discussed the Commission's latest proposals for integrated Mediterranean programmes (IMPs). The subject will be discussed by Heads of Government at the European Council of 29th and 30th March".
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, once again we are grateful to the noble Baroness for repeating this Statement. We hope that these protracted negotiations will be brought to a successful conclusion at the talks which are to take place in Brussels in a few days' time. We also welcome the advances which have been made in the recent negotiations and which will allow the drafting of a 1985 budget and the implementation of Community programmes.
Can the noble Baroness clarify one point? How much money will Britain have to pay to assist in the offsetting of the 1984 budget deficit? Was agreement reached on the size of that deficit? Further, what will the British contribution be towards the 1985 budget, and how does it compare with our contribution for last year?
Again, can the noble Baroness comment on the attitude of Greece, which, from what we understand, has threatened to block Britain's rebate subject to Community agreement on a multi-billion pound development programme for Mediterranean countries? Reports have suggested that the Greek veto will now be exercised against the British rebate and not against enlargement. Can the noble Baroness enlighten the House on that point? Enlargement, we understand, is scheduled to take place on 1st January next year. But, as she will agree, I feel sure, time is running short, and the Brussels summit must be the deadline for agreement on the accession of Spain and Portugal if the date is to be met.
Can the noble Baroness say a word about the French objections on wine and fisheries? Are these, in her view, surmountable? What proposals have been made for the transitional integration of the Spanish fleet into the Community fisheries policy, and what level of aid is being allocated to Spain to enable her to restructure her fishing fleet? The Statement refers to a number of outstanding issues on fisheries. Can the noble Baroness say what those issues are, and do the Government regard them as crucial to an agreement?
Furthermore, the Statement refers to other outstanding issues to be discussed with Spain and Portugal on 28th March. Are those other outstanding issues the fisheries issues to which the Statement refers, or are they additional to the fisheries issues? If so, what is their significance? Finally, is the noble Baroness confident, in the light of all these apparent obstacles still to be overcome, that the enlargement schedule will be met according to plan?
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, I think that we on these Benches certainly regard the report of the Foreign Secretary which the noble Baroness has been good enough to read out as satisfactory—and very satisfactory so far as it goes. Therefore, we should like to extend our congratulations to the Foreign Secretary
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on the progress made so far. I should like to ask one or two small questions.
First, on enlargement, I see that on fisheries the Community and Spain were able to agree the general framework for integrating the Spanish fleet into the CFP. Does that mean that every member of the Community, including the Danes and the Greeks, was agreed on the general framework referred to in the Statement? I hope that it does. In the second place, on the own resources point, how serious—I think the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, referred to this—is the Greek waiting reserve, and what exactly is meant by a waiting reserve? Also, is it thought that all national Parliaments will have to agree the new own resources decision? Is it likely that all the national Parliaments, including those of Greece and Denmark, are likely to agree?
Does the final statement that the Community's budgetary obligations should be met through intergovernmental agreement mean that the usual device will be resorted to—what is called the douxieme provisoire—and that the Commission will carry on by expending one-twelfth of what it spent last year? I think that that is the usual method, but it is not clear from the Statement whether that is the procedure which will be followed.
Finally, on the integrated Mediterranean programme, is it a fact, as I think we read in the press, that the Greeks are threatening to hold up their consent to the enlargement until such time as they may get considerably more money under the projects for the integrated Mediterranean programme?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I should like to thank both the noble Lords, Lord Cledwyn and Lord Gladwyn, for their reception of this Statement. I have been asked a number of detailed questions about it. The first one by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, was on the question of the 1985 overrun. I can confirm to him that the figures are still under discussion. The Council, in agreeing last October to meet the inescapable financial obligations in 1985, had in mind a shortfall of 1,315 mecu, or approximately £800 million. We have insisted on a full and detailed explanation and a search for savings on the new Commission figure, which is now estimated to be 2·1 becu; that is to say, £1,220 million. So far no detailed justification has been produced, but we are continuing to look at this.
Both noble Lords asked me about the attitude of Greece to our rebates, and whether there was some linkage with the integrated Mediterranean programmes. The text of the new own resources decision has now been agreed with a Greek reserve which it has said it will maintain until the European Council, but in fact there is a general desire in the Council to proceed quickly with the adoption and ratification of the new own resources. We believe, indeed, that there will be general agreement in council about our abatement, which is due in December 1985, because all member states will have an incentive to ratify the decision quickly so that the new own resources will be available as early as possible.
I was asked a specific question about the agreement on fishing. As I understand it, the questions that remain outstanding are technical issues on the allocation of quotas. Our objective has been to

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safeguard effective fishing opportunities for the United Kingdom fishing industry, and we believe that it is likely that the settlement will achieve that, subject to satisfactory agreement on these outstanding points, which, as I have said, are technical in nature. As I am sure the House will understand, I cannot give the details while negotiations continue, as that might prejudice a successful outcome at the special Foreign Affairs Council on 28th March.
Finally, I was asked whether we thought it was still feasible to keep to the date for enlargement. I should like to confirm that there is a clear determination by member states, and indeed the resolute Italian presidency at the Foreign Affairs Council, to conclude negotiations as fast as possible so that the target date can be met. We fully expect to reach agreement on outstanding points in the package on 28th March at the special Foreign Affairs Council.

Education and Training for New Technologies
4.19 p.m.
Debate resumed.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if we now return to the debate on education and training. I am sure that I speak for the whole House in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, for initiating this debate, and, indeed, for presiding over the committee which considered the problem of education and training, whose report we are now considering and of which I was privileged to be a member.
Let me say at once that I subscribe fully to the central finding of the report that in the United Kingdom technological progress and competitiveness are being impeded by our failure to educate and train enough people of the necessary quality; that educational provision should be more closely related to employment needs, and schools, colleges and universities given more guidance on the skills required by industry. To that end, as has been said, the committee proposed the establishment, not of an entirely new body—that way, in my experience, the solution of intractable problems is usually made harder—but of an education and training board which would be an adjunct to an existing body, namely, the Science and Engineering Research Council, having the functions of which, the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, has already told us.
I was party both to the aims of the committee in determining those functions and to the means proposed to achieve them. But now it has been reported that the Prime Minister herself has asked 30 leading industrialists to support the funding by Government of 4,000 extra student places in engineering and technology at a cost of £43 million over the next three years. The arrangement appears to have the support of all the relevant government departments, of the Engineering Council, and presumably of the University Grants Committee.
It seems to me that in this matter the end to be attained matters much more than the precise means to be used for its achievement. Therefore, for my part I
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am prepared to back the approach of the Government to the problem, subject to an assurance that I very much hope the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, may be able to give me when he comes to reply to the debate.
Along with other members of the Select Committee, I endorsed the intention of the Secretary of State for Education and Science to bring about a shift in the number of higher education places from the arts to science and engineering. However, the support of the committee for that shift was conditional not only on maintaining the quality of intake but on what for me was a crucial section of paragraph 6.27 of our report. I quote:
"Science and technology places cost more. It would be unacceptable to fund the switch wholly from within existing resources since this would involve disproportionate cuts in arts places. The morale and quality of those in the humanities must be maintainied in spite of reduced numbers. The Government must accept that the provision of more science and technology places will require new resources as well as the reallocation of existing ones".
In my view, it is not simply a matter of morale and of quality. It is also of vital importance that in educating more people in science and engineering those people should themselves be capable of articulating clearly what it is that they have learned. In a recent debate in this House I took leave to say that one of the most relevant aims for this country in the 1990s should be an experience of higher education which leads to comprehension and communication between the scientist and the non-scientist. I believe it is essential that in our enthusiasm for the sciences to prosper we do not allow the humanities to suffer unduly.
My straight question to the Minister is therefore this. Can we take it that the injection of these additional Government funds is an indication that the Secretary of State now accepts the advice given to him by the University Grants Committee last August, that a significant increase in the number of places in science and technology can only be provided if the necessary resources are made available and that it is neither desirable nor feasible to find them at the expense of the arts? Alternatively, are we to understand from the statement made last week by the chairman of the UGC, as reported today in The Times, that in his judgment Sir Keith has rejected the advice of the UGC that universities should receive level funding and that the best guess that can be made is that for the rest of this decade the increase in grant will be 2 per cent. below inflation? I should be grateful if that question can be answered by the noble Lord.
Now I turn to industrial training. In doing so, I should like first warmly to welcome the decision of the Government to expand the youth training scheme by offering, from April 1986, a second year's training to 16 year-old school-leavers and a one year's place to 17 year-old school-leavers, thus giving everyone aged under 18 a chance of a job, education or training. That is a policy which, along with an expanded community programme to help the long-term unemployed, we on these Benches have long advocated.
I welcome also—and this is highly relevant to today's debate—the review which the MSC have now been asked to undertake of vocational qualifications with the aim of ensuring that there is a system which

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young people can join at any stage, which is based on achieving recognised standards rather than time serving, and which provides adequate opportunities to progress to higher skills that are relevant to industrial and commercial needs.
More generally, in paragraphs 7.34 and 7.35 of the report of the Select Committee there is this key passage—again, I quote:
"In the UK the link between training and commercial profitability is not recognised sufficiently to encourage a widespread investment in training. Nor is there any effective national training policy. The Committee believe"—
and the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, has already referred to this—
"that such a policy is called for, together with a clearer allocation of responsibility for funding training.
"… They recommend the introduction of a national training levy—with remissions to those who carry out training, as in the levy-grant system—across all sectors of industry and commerce".
I should like strongly to support that recommendation.
Indeed, in keeping with the findings three years ago of your Lordships' Select Committee on Unemployment, chaired by my noble friend Lady Seear, on which I was privileged to serve, I should go further. That committee noted that, following the 1981 Employment and Training Act, the number of industrial training boards was being reduced from 24 to seven, and that in the sectors where boards were to be abolished training arrangements were to be organised on a voluntary basis. While the disappearance of some ITBs was regretted, it was recognised that their objectives might be achieved in other ways. As long as training was provided for each sector, we were not then concerned to press for a particular framework, but we were certain that some statutory framework was necessary, based on industrial sectors and geared to local needs, and that the achievement of the ITBs must be continued.
The unemployment committee also favoured a remissible training levy but in their proposals remission of the levy to employers was made subject to a significant qualification, namely, that training should meet certain specified standards. Ever since, under the Education and Training Act, so many industrial training boards have been abolished that I have been troubled by the absence of any adequate national standards for industrial training. Indeed, it was with that consideration in mind that in this House on behalf of my noble friends I moved an amendment, without success, to insert into the Act a provision under which, in all sectors of industry, irrespective of whether or not statutory boards continued to operate within them, there would have to be training arrangements which conformed to certain criteria. The introduction of such arrangements was to be preceded by wide consultation and the criteria were so framed as to encourage an approach to training of an organic problem-solving kind focusing on objectives and achievements.
The most important feature of the means proposed to achieve these aims was that they sought to ensure the maintenance of adequate local and cross-sectoral links and thus recognised that, in practice, training needs are related to local labour markets and apply
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across sectors rather than being identifiable only in respect of individual industries. I do not see how, without the kind of statutory arrangements then proposed, we can in this country guard against a return to the situation that obtained 20 years ago, when the state of our industrial training was generally regarded as unsatisfactory.
The report now before us does not go as far as that. It does not advocate statutory enforcement of such a policy. But it does recommend that, now the Government have asked the Manpower Services Commission to act as a national training authority, criteria of the kind to which I have referred should be introduced and monitored by the commission. I should therefore like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Young, when he replies, whether he accepts this finding of the report and if so, whether, with all his knowledge and experience of the operation of the MSC's area organisation, the commission is, in his view, adequately staffed and capable of delivering training and vocational education that are sufficiently responsive to employment needs at local level. More specifically, is he satisfied that the commission's field staff have the training and particularly the management experience required to determine with employers, and then to achieve, agreed objectives?
In that connection, there is indeed one positive suggestion which the noble Lord, Lord Young, may recall that I made at the time that he himself gave evidence to the Select Committee when he was still chairman of the MSC, and that I would now like to renew. It is that to assist area board chairmen a really first-class general manager or chief executive—it does not matter what he is called—should be appointed in each area, drawn perhaps from among those now retiring early from large companies and having training and, more important, management experience that would make it easier for the kind of things I have advocated actually to get done.
Understandably, the noble Lord did not respond to that suggestion when I made it a year ago. But, in the light of what has happened or, often, I am afraid, not happened since then, I should be grateful if he would make some comment on it now treating it perhaps as a small contribution to the views that I know that the MSC is now seeking on all aspects of area manpower boards before they are reconstituted at the beginning of next year. In the same constructive spirit, I should add that it was heartening to read the article by the present chairman of the commission, Mr. Bryan Nicholson, which appeared in the insert in The Times last Thursday. I welcome particularly the aim to set up local collaborative projects to be funded jointly by the MSC and the DES and bringing together local employers and training providers, mainly colleges of education, to identify what local employers' problems are and how education services can help. I was pleased to learn also that research has started into the link between business success and training and that results so far show a very positive connection between high performing companies and investment in adult training.
Lastly, on this point, I gladly concur with Mr. Nicholson that the onus in initiating adult training lies with employers and that unless managers—and line managers, at that—are willing to identify training

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needs, very little can be achieved by the commission or, for that matter, let me add, by the Government or any of the rest of us. In conclusion, may I say from these Benches that we are greatly looking forward to the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, which we are about to hear. I should also like to express the hope that the report that we are debating will play a significant part in improving education and training for new technologies and in meeting what in my view is the most basic need of all—to increase the esteem in which industry, particularly among students, is held in this country.
4.35 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Durham: My Lords, I feel sure, as has already been very graciously indicated, that I may rely on your Lordships' forbearance as I feel my way forward into sharing in the business of your Lordships' House. My very real nervousness is checked only by my conviction of being able to rely on your collective graciousness and also by a sense of the importance of the matter we are now considering. I should like to add my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, for giving us an opportunity to consider this very important matter.
My own approach to these things was, I think, first formulated when I was working for the World Council of Churches, based in Geneva, when I found myself to some extent in contact with various of the technical agencies of the United Nations and such organisations as the WHO. I found this very encouraging. Whereas, at the level of the official, shall we say, confrontations of the United Nations, one very often thought that the world would be almost certain to blow up tomorrow, the fact was that various persons who knew their subject well were getting together on common problems and possibilities of the human race and were working together, whatever their particular international, national and political commitments, because here were pressures put upon us by technological developments, by problems of human living and so on.
Therefore, much of the work, it seems to me, of sustaining the present and building a humane future lies with such groups, where there is common humanity addressed to common problems which are specific and set by the way things are developing. It seems to me that the steady development of working together on the problems and possibilities which are surveyed in this report on education and training for new technologies fits into this broad and hopeful human context. It is not simply a specialised interest although it must be pursued by specialists and it will need, as the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, says, specialist institutions and plans to promote it. But the report addresses matters which are of basic importance, surely, in our society. I am sure that its concerns and proposals should be given very high priority by way of education, by way of investment and by way of practical development.
I would even dare, my Lords, to venture a little further into an even deeper and broader reason for taking up this report and its proposals. In this country, we seem to me to be in some danger of a failure of nerve about what we can do and what we might do.
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Risks which arise because of innovations in science and technology seem constantly to be given more publicity and emphasis than the possibilities that are opening up. A possible example here, although this may be straying too far in a controversial direction, is that of nuclear fuel and the third world. There is much panic because people. for some reason or other, do not seem to trust experts. Yet the great hope of feeding people probably lies along these lines as well as others.
The changes that are forced upon us are seen so often to be more threatening than promising. With this there goes a great suspicion of experts and specialists. I am sure, my Lords, that we are all experts in something. We all know that apart from ourselves we have a normal suspicion of experts. This is very right and proper. However, at the moment I think that we are confronted with a positively abnormal suspicion of experts, because people have not become used to the way in which the possible developments are being worked out—they are mysterious, and so on.
I am sure that this fear of change and this loss of nerve about what we can do is both faithless and inhuman. There are problems; risks will sometimes exact costs; and dangers may sometimes be very grave. But surely if we think that a perpetual optimist is some sort of happy lunatic, equally we should be clear that a perpetual pessimist is some sort of unhappy lunatic. Those of us who believe in the reality of the God who is reflected in the Bible and worshipped in at least the Jewish and Christian traditions need to join with other realists and insist that we have the powers to do what we can do or shall find out how to do, for very good reasons and with very good hopes.
Therefore, it seems clear to me that the proper development of technology, of education for such a society, and the careful working out of the interaction between these technologies—industry and commerce and society at large—are a necessary part of building a humane future and, above all, it is a hopeful part. Therefore, we need to be very clear about the importance to society of the concerns and the proposals of this report. It is not a sideline; nor is it a mere technical matter.
It is against that background that I venture to draw attention to one or two questions which arise from a consideration of the report's proposals. First, it is clear that the concept of numeracy and literacy linked together is a very central one. For far too brief a period, while I was Dean of Arts at the University of Leeds. I was part of a small group drawn from the faculties of arts, social science, science and applied science, which had been convened at the instance of persons from the applied sciences and the pure sciences. It was clear to them, as it is surely clear to all of us, that, for example, engineers in business and in industry need to be clear and articulate about what they are doing and what they are contributing. Many of these new technologies will raise great questions of human values, and it is necessary to be able to think about these matters clearly. It is clear that if we are constantly to retrain, we must be able to think in an articulate manner about what we are basically doing and what we hope to do. Therefore, in order to develop from the numeracy a humane literacy is required.
However, it is equally clear surely that in order to have the necessary collaboration between the arts, the

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social sciences, the applied sciences and so on, we must be able to develop in the artist a sense of what it is to be numerate, so that there is sympathy for what is involved in these matters. I am delighted that the report suggests that this approach of mingling and interacting numeracy and literacy must be fed into education throughout. Surely it is right to welcome the suggestion in the report that early specialisation is bad, but that there should be a general insistence on literacy and numeracy as an essential part of what we can rightly call humane education.
It is clear that it will take a great deal of work to build this into our system in such a way that it is exciting, which I believe it is. Then there will have to be considerable shifts of priorities in universities and polytechnics. Speaking as an ex-Dean of Arts, I believe that this will unquestionably be painful. But I hope, as has already been suggested, that it will not be a war to the death and, if possible, not a war at all. There is a great possibility of collaboration here.
In this connection it is important to be quite clear that space must be bought for innovation and experiment. The small group of which I was a part began to build up a very interesting idea about a literacy-numeracy course which might be a component of all first-year courses. We could take the idea no further because we were all so busy, then we were moved on, and there was no time to buy the space for innovative experiment, When the issue is urgent you still have to buy time so that it can happen, and there must be no doubts about the demands of expense and investment.
Further, I would hope that the arts and social sciences will discover the immense growth area in working out, as did the early universities, how to meet society's need so that the whole broad range of interests can be maintained. I would also venture to suggest that, in working this further, we need to be careful about how we apply the very important concept of relevance. Perhaps those who will be following this up should pay attention to the tensions between what I might call immediate relevance and long-term relevance. It is possible to make courses so relevant that they become useless within five years. I believe that the report is aware of that.
I believe that the most important text here is that in paragraph 1.8 of Chapter 1 of the report which says:
"the all-important new technologies of the future, which are by definition unknown".
If we are to train for the unknown, we must be very careful about being over-relevant. Having been involved through being a CNAA chairman of a panel with at any rate the documentation of the national advisory body exercised in trying to impose some order of priorities on further and higher education in the public sector, as a philosopher as well as someone who wishes to practise, I was very alarmed at the way in which this exercise was carried out, because the criteria of "relevance" in the end seemed to be bureaucratic organisation and saving the necessary money. This caused a grouping of subjects which could well be quite disastrous for the very aims which were to be pursued. So I think that the business of relevance wants watching with care by all sides.
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Finally, I should like to suggest that all this needs to be taken into account in the setting up of any monitoring, promoting and reflecting body. Of course, it will need to be drawn mainly from the relevant areas—industry and commerce, technology and Government. But I would venture to suggest that, in view of the very problems we have, the excitement and the uncertainty of them, it would be extremely valuable to add to any such body what I might call two or three non-homogeneous but sympathetic disturbers—people who have sympathy with what is going on but who do not look at it quite from the point of view of those who are experts in it and committed to it; people who can stir matters up, so that others may notice one more fact and therefore become more efficient. The other day, when I was discussing with people who wanted to set up small businesses in what I may now dare to call my part of the world, I was presented with a fairly well researched figure: that 60 per cent. of businesses are small businesses (that is, if we define a small business as employing under 200 people).
Therefore, in setting up this body, I hope that not only people from large businesses will be members of it. It needs to be broadly based. I hope that these many other details will be worked out urgently and persistently, because if the proposals of this report are followed up on the broadest possible front, there is no doubt that they will contribute greatly to helping us develop the sort of society we need for a creative and imaginative future.
4.48 p.m.
Baroness Elles: My Lords, I have the most pleasant and enviable task of congratulating the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and, on behalf of all your Lordships, thanking him most warmly for a most constructive and valuable contribution to this debate and, perhaps above all, for giving hope to this country on a matter on which the future of our country and its prosperity depends. I know that noble Lords in this House will always look forward with great attention and interest to any speech that the right reverend Prelate may care to make in this Chamber.
Turning to the report, first, I should like to join with other noble Lords in most warmly congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, both on his speech today and on the content of his report. I should also like to congratulate all the members of the committee who have obviously served him so well in producing this excellent and valuable document. As the noble Lord has pointed out, it is of course impossible to go through its many recommendations. So in a few words I should like to concentrate on certain aspects of the report which are relevant to a part of the United Kingdom which I now have the honour to represent in the European Parliament, and that is Thames Valley, which is of course the silicon valley of the United Kingdom. All industries in that area, as was confirmed in the Butcher Report, recognise a shortage of skills not only in graduate engineers but also lower down at the level of technician and technologist.
This shortage is not only hindering the work of these larger firms but it is clearly hindering the expansion, or possible expansion, of small businesses, particularly those concerned in what one might call mono-

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products in the high technology field. They come to the end of one type of product and they do not have the facilities to send their people to retrain quickly to get on to the next generation of product. This is becoming a serious problem in this area.
To give one example, only the other day, in talking to a director of a firm, I asked him, "Do you sell these products now on the market?" He said, "No, unfortunately I have had to close down that sector because I cannot get the engineers to guarantee the repair, maintenance and service which I would expect to be able to give should I continue to market such a product". There is a specific example of failure of a business to be able to expand, and indeed to be able to employ people because there are simply not those people able to fulfil the job at the right level and quality required.
On reading the report—and many of us have our own pet theories—possibly paragraph 4.26 goes to the kernel of some of our problems: that is, possibly a failure of our educational system. It is not put in so many words, but this is one of the implications of that paragraph: the educational system today (and I do not just mean the subject matter, but the education system as a whole) is not providing children who are leaving school and who are able to take on even the vocational training which is available to them. If I may again refer to the area which I have the honour of representing, there are colleges of technology where there are perhaps 120 vacancies. So with 120 jobs, and with a spin-off of perhaps another five, there are 600 vacancies in the area, and the system is failing because there are not children coming out of the schools who feel themselves qualified or are qualified to take on these courses.
We need a fundamental reassessment of not only the teaching profession. I know that the noble Lord has identified certain problems where those who are teaching (and this is no disrespect to them) are being given jobs to do for which they are not qualified. When I was young I used to be a mathematician and I know how important it is that people should be qualified to teach mathematics. It is a difficult subject to teach to young children and young teenagers. This is a special qualification which is lacking in the educational system today.
I would also refer to the attitude of parents to their children. I was horrified recently to meet a young family who had a nice young girl, aged 16 or 17. I asked the parents, perhaps foolishly on my part, "What does your daughter do?" They said, "Oh, she is unemployed". I said, "What qualifications does your daughter have? Does she have any exam qualifications?" The reply was, "Oh, no, her teacher said it was not worth having a qualification because she would never get a job."
That to me is an indictment of the system which we are offering the young children of this country. I hope that it is only an isolated incident, but I fear that it is not. Here perhaps the message of hope which came from the right reverend Prelate will be passed on to parents to encourage their children to take exams, to work, and to believe that there is a hope and a prospect for them at the end of their school years.
I know that statistics are sometimes difficult to relate to each other, but the figures that I have from Japan
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are that 94 per cent. of children in school stay on to the baccalaureate level. That is basically 18. A corresponding figure—though I do not claim it is the corresponding figure—for the years 1982–83 is that school-leavers in this country with two or more A-levels, which would roughly equate, is something like 11.3 per cent. This is a staggering difference. It may not be the exact equation, but it gives a picture where in our country we are way behind the Japanese and even South Korea in having a higher standard for school-leavers.
I should like to draw attention to the programme which is not only being envisaged but is being introduced by the French Socialist Education Minister, M. Chevenement, who is now insisting that by the age of 11 children should be literate, numerate, have neat handwriting—on that I am afraid I would certainly fail!—and must also have some knowledge of geography and history. As he put it, he does not want any more to put questions to young pupils, such as: "and what do you think of the hundred years' war, and when was it?" and be answered: 1914 to 1918". These are the kind of answers which obviously a Minister of Education does not expect to get from his pupils.
Therefore, I think that we can take heart that this is not just a British problem, it is a European problem that over the past years there has been a decline in the standard of teaching in our schools, there has been no competitiveness, and there has also been a decline in the standard of exams. I would certainly agree with both the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, and the right reverend Prelate that early specialisation is undoubtedly a danger. There is no more danger than the fact that because of the rapid development of technology, as the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, pointed out, even if you do specialise, in 2.7 years you are out of date. Therefore what you need is a good grounding, and to be able to adapt quickly to new situations.
So far as education is concerned clearly this is a challenge. That is a commonly used word, but it is a challenge to the education authorities particularly, and to parents, to see that their children are being educated for the 21st century, and that attitudes and a sense of achievement will be given to them. One of the reasons why so many jobs have been created in the United States and in Japan is that during the 1970s at least—and it is now higher—35 per cent. of all young people up to the age of 20 were receiving some form of higher education. In Japan it was 25 per cent.; but in Europe—and I talk now roughly of the Western European democracies—it was something between 11 per cent. and 17 per cent. Surely we have a lesson to learn there.
Now may I turn to the matter of industry. Industries, so far as I can make out—and noble Lords may be able to confirm this—are themselves not aware of either their short-term needs or their long-term needs in the form of training, or quality, or quantity of young people that they need now let alone what they are going to need in five years' time. This failure to identify need also falls back on the small firms who must rely to some extent on the co-operation of major firms to give them a lead as well as for tuning-in to universities.
There is no doubt that the industrial expenditure on training is disgraceful. The recent survey produced by

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the Industrial Society showed that something like 0.3 per cent. of annual turnover was spent by industry as a whole. I know that it is dangerous to take averages, but that average is an absolute minimum compared with other European countries who average something between 3 per cent. to 5 per cent.
However, this is the only point on which I would beg to differ humbly with the conclusions of the report. I do not believe that a national levy is the answer to this problem. Recently discussing this with industrialists, they referred to the disaster of the Industrial Training Act 1964 where there was some payment in advance and then re-credit after training. My belief from observations throughout the country is that different regions have totally different needs. Different firms need to spend different amounts of money. I should like to see something like what one could call a voluntary imposition on industry. In their annual accounts companies should state the amount they spend on training every year. The objective should be something like 2 per cent. of turnover.
Of course this will not apply to all firms, and this is why a national levy is not the right way to go about it, because different firms, different industrial sectors, and different regions have different needs and we have to recognise this. It is for the industries to decide what they need and not to have a national plan in the way, as I understand was envisaged. For my part, I would not support the recommendation to have a national levy.
I now turn to research and development and Government funding. Over the last 20 years it has become a frequent habit of mine that whenever one needs anything one turns, first, to money and, secondly, to the Government. I am reminded of a famous statement of Lord Rutherford when he was setting out to split the atom and he was planning a laboratory. He sent the hat round and got no money. He said,"Well, gentlemen, we have no money, so now we must use our brains." It sometimes seems to me that we do not use our brains often enough however much we may have them.
I should recall to your Lordships that we are members of the European Community. A programme has been set up recently known as the ESPRIT programme for the development of information technology. There is £500 million sitting in Brussels waiting to be collected by those who wish to have it. Universities doing cross-studies with other universities in the Community can have some of these funds. I know of universities and businesses which have already applied and they are receiving some of this money. This is something at which we should be looking very much more closely because although in the member states of the Community we spend unilaterally much more on research and development than does Japan, we only have to look at the results to see that it is not economic. We fail to use what would be known as economies of scale throughout the Community, to put our brains together and not duplicate some of the very expensive experiments which are now being undertaken. I am not talking only about information technology, but about other new technologies which are coming on stream. We should not be too blinkered about being only 21 miles from
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the Continent, but try to see whether we cannot do rather better.
I should like to say a word about a seminar that the Member of the European Parliament for Oxford and Buckinghamshire and I, as MEP for the Thames Valley, held recently. We were both faced with shortages in the firms in our areas and we wanted to know how to deal with that. For the first time we invited chief education officers from the three counties, representatives or heads of three universities, local education authority representatives, the heads of some of the leading technological colleges of the area and senior representatives of industry, including the chairman of Ferranti, Racal, Beechams, ICL, Rank Xerox, and so on, as well as representatives of small businesses. It will not surprise your Lordships to know that this was the first time these people—who were all interconnected within an area in the United Kingdom—had met and sat down over a weekend to identify their problems and to discuss together what measures they should take. I am happy to report that immediately—this was their reaction, not ours—they set up a small regional grouping (I will not call it a committee) under the aegis of the local chambers of commerce, which also attended, to sort out the needs of our industries within our area for the next few months. We hope that by the end of six months we shall have some kind of interim report. I should like to inform your Lordships that this was entirely supported by the European Commission, which funded the seminar and hopefully will fund the investigation that we shall be carrying out.
It is at regional level, where there is a tendency for firms to be of a similar type, that one can isolate and identify some of the problems on the ground. That is not to decry or denigrate any of the other what might be called macro-policies, but there is a need at regional level to get people together. The result has been that already within 10 days the head of one of the colleges of technology has spent three hours with the training manager of one of our leading high technology firms. They discovered that they were only 500 yards away from each other in Slough, which was apparently a new discovery. We have also had people recognise that industry must be in direct touch with schools. We have had reports that already local firms are in touch with local schools to see what they can do together to inform headmasters of the kind of people they want and to see whether they can fit them into their future training programmes.
This is a small local initiative, but I am sure that this might be a way in which to proceed to encourage young people to come into industry. It is no good having many television films and much propaganda unless they can see what opportunities are open for them so that they can understand what the real world of modern industry is. So far, we have failed to make that possible.
There are one or two points in conclusion. Let us not forget the peripheral problems in training and educating young people. Let us realise that throughout the country the opportunities are not the same. One of the serious problems in the Thames Valley, for example, is the lack of suitable accommodation for young trainees to benefit from the opportunities of training in the bigger, more highly developed firms, or

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going on as part-time trainees in other firms. Therefore I suggest that when we are looking at this problem, your Lordships should kindly look at the question of accommodation, which should be produced by the industries themselves. This happened in Turin, as some noble Lords will remember, with Fiat, which wanted to bring people from the south of Italy. The company went to the mayor of Turin and said, "Can you build us some houses for these young people?" The mayor said, "No, you need the people. You are going to put them to work: you provide the accommodation". Fiat did, the scheme worked well, the young people were well housed and well looked after. One cannot expect young people at the age of 17 in today's climate to move across the country to what to them is sometimes an entirely alien environment without coming into some place where they are received and looked after. I mention this as one of the factors affecting movement of labour which is relevant to the results of any training scheme.
The other point, and something which rather horrifies me, concerns the standards of courses. Each technological course seems to have different qualifications for entry. We are all in favour of flexibility, but when it results in rigidity of admission, flexibility defeats its own objective. If colleges, universities and higher education establishments set their own courses and standards they deny entry to these courses to a large number of young people who would otherwise wish to attend such courses. The same is true at the European level. One of the problems that we want resolved as a result of our recent seminar is the need for some kind of guidelines if we want students to exchange and have the benefit of working in other countries, perhaps in France or Germany, in some of the high technology institutions which are well prepared and well organised. There must be some norm by which these young people can be allowed to attend courses without many bureaucratic difficulties.
In conclusion, I should like once again to thank the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, for this report. We all recognise its importance to the future prosperity of our country and, above all, it will give hope to the young people who will benefit from the educational and vocational training systems arising from it.
5.8 p.m.
Lord Kearton: My Lords, may I offer my congratulations to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham on his eloquent and very thoughtful speech. I was also most impressed by the deep understanding he showed of the aims of science and technology and of his sympathy with those aims. The optimism he brought in his conclusions was most welcome and, like the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, I trust that we shall have the pleasure of hearing from him many times on a variety of subjects in this House.
The thanks of the House are due to Lord Gregson and his colleagues on the Select Committee. In their inquiry they received evidence from nearly 200 sources and made many visits at home and abroad. They have produced a report on education and training for new technologies which is comprehensive and thorough. It is a masterly report which will long stand as the definitive investigation of the subject
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which comes up with the right analyses and the right answers.
One of the witnesses from whom the committee took evidence was Mr. Butcher, Under-Secretary of State for Industry. He commented that on the subject of the report Britain had been in danger of becoming a nation of discussion groups as opposed to a nation of activists. He went on to claim that his department, together with the Department of Education and Science, the Manpower Services Commission and the Department of Employment, were getting their act together and moving strongly in the direction of removing past weaknesses.
The claim has considerable foundation. I think that the report is very fair in acknowledging the improvements that have taken place. Nevertheless, the report ends with a chapter of conclusions and recommendations which has 63 paragraphs. Their adoption would be to put the whole effort into a considerably higher gear. Strengthening of recent initiatives are called for and there are numerous important and very specific extra proposals. One does not have to agree with each and every one of them to conclude that the cumulative impact is both striking and convincing.
Much more needs to be done. Some reaction seems already to be taking place. There are, for example, the academea/industry developments in information technology courses sponsored by Salford University and the proposed new offshoot of the Cranfield Institute of Technology, financed by industry. And in the recent Budget there was provision for £43 million over three years to pay for more students in higher education to study engineering and technology, on a basis, rightly, that industry will be expected to offer concrete support. But it seems that the £43 million will not be new money. It is stated that the costs will be contained within existing expenditure programmes. The parsimony is to be deplored.
In his own evidence to the Select Committee, the Secretary of State for Education and Science showed, as one would expect, an acute grasp of needs and indicated, I thought, his determination to change the thrust of the education system in the direction that the committee would like to see. And constructive plans have come, and are coming, from his office. My view is that his task is the harder because he has to operate within the limits and constraints of a departmental budget which is virtually frozen. He is in a financial straitjacket.
It is difficult to agree that the Treasury and the Government have got the balance of their priorities right. To achieve what the Select Committee recommends at the speed that the country needs is not a matter of vast increases in what is currently made available. Could one venture to suggest that £100 million a year would go a long way? The report itself does not quantify; although it does state firmly, in Chapter 6, paragraph 34, that if either Government or industry think that the nation's economic problems can be solved without spending extra money—and they mean extra money in the area of education and training for new technologies—then they are deluding themselves.

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Your Lordships have heard before the reasons why some of us—and none more so than Lord Gregson himself—think that the need for action is urgent. But the issue is so crucial that I hope the House will bear with me as I repeat them. The country is running a substantial deficit on trade in manufactured goods. The deficit is largely made up by a surplus on oil trading—a £7 billion surplus last year. The Financial Statement issued with the Budget last week assumes that the deficit in manufactures will increase further in the current year. An overall trade surplus is still predicted because of an even larger balance on our oil trade than last year. But the oil bounty is not everlasting. We have already used up about one-third of the known and probable reserves. The Financial Statement concedes that oil output will be at or near its maximum in 1985.
Tax revenues for instance, are forecast to increase to £13·5 billion against £12 billion for 1984. By 1988–89, three years on, this tax revenue is expected to be down to £8·5 billion. And the export surplus in oil trading will also fall. In not so many years it will disappear altogether. It is salutary to note that oil will be responsible for some 25 per cent. of our visible exports this year. As the oil falls away, we shall need manufacturing to return to its positive trade balance, its historic, positive trade balance. It is clear that an outstanding priority for this country is to restore the vitality of our manufacturing industry and to increase its output.
We need to get to the forefront of the new technological industries and to apply their products and their techniques to that complex matrix of older industries which we need in a rounded and balanced economy. We shall not do it by wishing. The Government's recent actions are all positive steps in the right direction. But they do not seem to be sufficiently seized that the indispensable base for faster progress includes more expenditure on commercially orientated research at our universities and polytechnics. Moreover, these institutions need to have their equipment updated and additional courses need to be established to provide a greater number of highly qualified new graduates and considerably more facilities are needed for re-training of mature graduates. We need trained people both to work at the frontiers of the new technologies and to be capable of applying the more and more sophisticated products which will emerge. These are points which the committee's report argues for so powerfully.
Let me recall that Mr. Butcher in his evidence said that the trade gap in electronic products was heading for £2.5 billion. Trade sources see the gap increasing. It is an indication of our slippage that this section of the trade account was in surplus not so many years ago. I referred earlier to the Treasury's priorities. It seems extraordinary that we can provide hundreds of millions of pounds per annum to support agricultural production in excess of our needs, an excess which has to be dumped on world markets, and yet jib at a relatively modest increase in the budgets for higher education, especially in high technology areas, areas on which our longer-term economic health will be critically dependent. It would seem common sense to re-order our priorities. There are areas other than
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agriculture where the level of Government spending is difficult to justify rationally or economically. Transfers to the budget for education and science are called for.
Like a number of the Members of your Lordships' House, I one of the elderly elderly. Our age group have increased four-fold in my own lifetime. And yet, compared with any previous time in our history, arrangements for the elderly, state provisions for the elderly, are very generous. As a group we are wealth consumers and not now wealth creators. Unlike the Queen in Alice in Wonderland we can say that it is jam today, even if it was not jam yesterday. But will there be jam tomorrow for those who come after us? I doubt it, if the economic growth is to limp along at the rate of 2½ per cent. to 3 per cent. per annum.
I repeat and maintain that the hope for extra growth and extra wealth depends primarily on the future output of our manufacturing industry. Such output would also provide the wherewithal for extra jobs in the service industries. A rejuvenation of our manufacturing industry depends upon the success we achieve in grasping and using the opportunities of the new technologies. We have no time to lose. I should like to see the Government accept in toto the thrust—not every detail but the thrust—of the Select Committee's report.
Results from the changes that they advocate will not come overnight. It will be a long haul, requiring determination and dedication and additional resources. These resources, our basis for the future, will require extra money. This is why it is necessary, my Lords, so necessary, that action is taken now to release Sir Keith Joseph, the most dynamic and reforming Secretary for Education and Science that we have had for years, from his Treasury-imposed financial straitjacket, so that he can wholeheartedly embrace and act upon, as I sure that he will want to, the recommendations of the Select Committee's report.
5.20 p.m.
Lord Nelson of Stafford: My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, for introducing this report this afternoon. I have been privileged to serve on his committee and I found it extremely rewarding. I would mention to your Lordships that the weight and substance of the evidence that has been submitted to us has indeed been most impressive and the interest shown in the subject has itself been very heartening. Perhaps I may add my congratulations also to the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Durham, on his maiden speech this afternoon. I hope we shall hear him on many occasions and I am sure he will always be saying something of great interest to us.
I am sure noble Lords will agree as to the seriousness of the position that this report reveals. Clearly, there is an urgent requirement for adjustment—I call it "adjustment" and not "change"—in both our education and our training arrangements. If any emphasis is needed on this problem, may I draw your Lordships' attention (in case you did not see it) to the recent report of the University Central Council on Admissions. The report stated:
"Admissions for degree courses in electrical and electronic engineering were 10 per cent. lower than they were in 1981".

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Also, in the last week or so an important engineering industrialist—no less than the Managing Director of BL Technologies—spoke of:
"the growing dearth of engineers and an educational system which fails to inject new blood into the system".
He speaks with the experience of one who works in one of our most important and competitive industries. It is not all gloom, however, because I was very glad to hear on the "Today" programme the other morning the present chairman of the Manpower Services Commission stressing that he and his colleagues recognise the seriousness of the problem.
As an industrialist involved in the new technologies, I must endorse the seriousness of the position with which we are faced in meeting world competitive trading circumstances. It is clear to me, and, I think, to most people that the highest priority must be given to the proper management and development of our human resources—our greatest national asset. This must be the key to our ability to compete in high-tech products, and these are essential to the economic prosperity of our country, as has been pointed out by numerous speakers this afternoon. I may add to that that the emphasis must be on providing more employment for our people; and that can come only from such competitiveness.
I think it is clear from an analysis of the evidence which has been put before us, and from the report, that there is no single solution to this problem. For that reason, a large number of different recommendations has been made to make various adjustments throughout our education and training system. Some of these are long-term and some are short-term. The long-term solution starts in the primary schools and goes through into the secondary schools and finally into higher education. I do not propose to speak on these matters, however, because there are others in this House who are more knowledgeable about our education system than I am.
However, I should like to emphasise three things. First, there is a need in industry for a higher proportion of able people, young people, competent in maths and science, to come forward and to be attracted into the wealth-producing industries. Secondly, the process of change is a long-term one. We are not going to see the effect of the long-term steps for—what?—10 years ahead, so we must start now. Thirdly, I draw attention to the fact that we are attracting so few of our girls into the technological industries. What a waste, and what an opportunity! Here I may say that I hope the adjustments which we are going to make will enable many more of them to be properly equipped so that they can have the choice of coming into our technological industries.
Let us look now at the short term: this is what I want to concentrate on in my own contribution to this debate. There is a great need to update our existing stock of engineers and technologists, to update now those who qualified many years ago and also to retrain those with skills which are no longer required in areas where more people are needed and where trained people are in short supply. I believe that this updating and retraining is particularly urgent because it can have immediate effects on the serious position which has been outlined to us.
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The Alvey programme, which the Government have introduced and which has been widely welcomed, is a step in the right direction. It concentrates on the important information technology area. However, that is not the whole of it, and more needs to be done. Here I would draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that the Engineering Council, which is the body recently created, as a result of the Finniston Report, has welcomed this report. In a discussion document which it has just issued—and it is the body just set up by the Government to create the improvement in our engineering industry which is required—it welcomes the recommendations which we have before us.
Many speakers have already emphasised that we live in a period of change. I think we all recognise the days have gone when an initial education and training will last for a lifetime. We are now lucky if it lasts for 10 years: so there is a need for constant updating and retraining to maintain competitive standards in design, technology and methods of manufacture. This retraining in regard to existing technologies is also important from the point of view of ensuring that a technological gulf does not develop between those already in post and young people coming into industry. There is a danger of a lack of understanding and communication, of fear and uncertainty, suspicion or frustration developing if we do not have a rapport between those already in post and those coming in equipped with the new technologies.
During the course of our deliberations, we have heard many comments on the inadequacies of the present situation for training and retraining. Industry does not know what it wants: higher educational institutions are not in touch with industry: industry does not do enough to help itself. Higher education courses are not supported by industry or are too long or do not meet the need, or industry does less training than it did formerly. There is substance in all those, but to my mind it only emphasises the need for action and adjustment.
Reference has been made to the fact that members of the Committee visited the United States and Japan, and I was privileged to be one of those. Our visits were extremely valuable and informative. I think it would be of interest to your Lordships to know that in the United States they have the same worries as we have about their education system, about training enough people in maths and the sciences. about getting enough girls into the technological fields, and the standards of teaching in these fields. So they are faced with the same problems and I do not know that they are making any better progress than we are, although they are aware of the problems. On the other hand, they are doing a lot more than we are on the short-term side, as regards the retraining of existing staff in new technologies. Here I would say how impressed we were with the in-house company training courses being established by many of the major companies, by the relationship between the companies and the local higher educational establishments, and finally, by the use that is now being made of tutored video instruction techniques. This is a system whereby lectures given in the universities by experienced university teachers are video-recorded and lent out to individuals and companies for showing on an organised basis in

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companies' time and being tutored by selected people from within the organisations concerned, so spreading the knowledge quickly over a wide area. In my opinion, these tutored video techniques are very impressive indeed.
Equally, in Japan we were impressed by the fact that there is a tradition that industry accepts that education will be essentially on formal lines. Industry has always accepted that it has itself to train people coming out of the education system. Here I can only emphasise how impressive in-house training is in Japan. It starts from the time when the people come from the higher education establishments and it goes on continuously throughout their career in the company, up to the age of at least 45 years. It goes on regularly all the time updating management, technological and other skills. This is backed up by great enthusiasm on the part of both the companies and the individual staffs, both of whom recognise that it is in their mutual interests. So we have a lot to do and in my opinion we are some five years behind in these areas.
I accept the view of the committee that industry in this country must do more to help itself. When I say "industry" I mean all industry. I do not just mean manufacturing industry. I mean manufacturing industry, commercial houses and all users of high-tech. They must all contribute to solving this problem. I also accept the need for industry to get closer to the higher education institutions. This is very important. Movements have been made and there is a different atmosphere today, but a lot more still has to be done. In this respect, the committee is right to urge the Government to act as a catalyst to get the parties together. So many parties have been referred to and so many are involved—national authorities, local authorities, local universities, polytechnics, firms in different industries and commerce as well. They must be brought together and a catalyst has to be provided.
Therefore I, too, hope that the Government will act on the recommendation in the report for the establishment of an education training board. I believe that this will act as a focus, as was said by the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, in his opening remarks. It will also help the Manpower Services Commission to do its task. After all, it is the Government's authority for training and it can be of great help in what is to be done. The committee also recommended that the Government should give some financial support to these updating and retraining programmes. I would add, "at least in the initial phases". In the main, they should stand on their own feet once they get established, but to start with they need some initial support and I hope that the Government will agree to do this.
I also believe that the cost of training should be shared equally between those who do the training and those who profit by it. I do not think one can ignore the fact that the short-term advantage of engaging a trained person is very attractive, compared with the long-term commitment of entering into a progressive and sound in-house training programme. It has to be seen that those who do the latter are protected against raiding by those who take a short-term view. Therefore, I strongly recommend that we should look again at the levy grant system.
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I do not entirely agree with my noble friend Lady Elles, who is not in her place and who said that this has not worked and is not satisfactory. I think that it certainly worked pretty well in the narrow section of the engineering industry. We want something now which spreads the burden over the broad aspect of all who are involved in the use of high-tech personnel. I do not think my noble friend Lady Elles has put forward an alternative. If she has an alternative, it should certainly be looked at. But there should be some way of sharing the load fairly between those who do the training and those who profit by it.
I have one final point on the tutored video instruction section. Here is a new medium—high-tech to the rescue of high-tech. Why do we not use it more? Why are we being so slow in adopting something which is already proving itself to be of great value? It can do a great job for industry. It can do a great job in the educational field in updating teachers in their own schools and in their own time. They do not have to go away or to be away from the job. They can do it in their place of work. It has a great potential and there is experience in this country.
Reference has already been made to the work that is being done at Aston University. They have their own lecture theatres equipped with video recording equipment. Other universities have similar experience and, of course, the Open University has a lot of experience in producing material of this type. I commend to the Minister that high priority should be given to maximising the exploitation of this medium to help us with the short-term problem. Anything he has to say about that, I shall very much welcome.
We have the Secretary of State's assurance that he recognises the need for continuous education and retraining and that is much to be welcomed. We look forward to the Government's reply to our report in due course. In the meantime, a number of us are rather puzzled by the announcement which was made last week in conjunction with the Budget, that over £40 million is to be spent over the next three years to increase places of higher education for engineering and other technologies. This is much to be welcomed. But what is not at all clear—and I hope that my noble friend the Minister who is to reply may be able to clarify the position—is whether this is new money. If not, where will it come from? That is not clear in any of the reports. I should also like to say that there is considerable concern in a number of places that it will be limited to the universities and that the polytechnics will not get a share of this. This would be a pity because many local firms are working with their local polytechnics on this problem. So I hope that the Minister can clarify that point, too.
In conclusion on these recommendations which are contained in the report of continuous learning, I hope that the Minister can give us some assurance today that the Government will get together at an early date with industry and the higher education establishments to have a look at this problem and to consider these recommendations. Maybe the Information Technology Skills Agency, which is already set up, could be asked to have a look at this and to recommend to the Government what it thinks of the recommendations that we have put forward, so that an early decision can be made. It is clear that the need for

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short-term action is urgent—long-term, yes, but short-term even more so, because unless we modernise and update our existing stock of engineers and technicians we shall not compete, and if we do not compete the long-term future is indeed gloomy for us all.
5.39 p.m.
Baroness Lockwood: My Lords, I, too, should like to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, both for his chairmanship of this committee and for initiating the debate this afternoon. It was a most valuable experience to sit on the committee under his chairmanship and to hear and to read the tremendous volume of evidence that was brought before us, both orally and in written form, because it raised a number of very important and essential factors of which we hope the Government will take note.
I want to say, as did the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, that I support the main thrust of this report and its recommendations, and also the sense of urgency which it contains. I hope, too, that the Government will take account of that sense of urgency. I should like to say something about Chapter 7 which deals with technological literacy. But before doing so I should say that it cannot be emphasised too much that the overwhelming body of evidence pointed to two needs; the first was the need for industry and education at all levels to come even closer together; and the second was the need to shift the emphasis of education towards an understanding of and a preparation for technological change. Again, this was at all levels and it was seen as an economic imperative.
The acceptance of this latter fact was quite clearly seen as requiring, first of all, more resources—a new attitude to training, and a new attitude on the part of both government and industry itself, as well as individuals who would benefit from that training. As the report says at recommendation 9.21:
"If either the Government or industry thinks that the nation's economic problems can be solved without spending money they are deluding themselves".
That is a very important conclusion which must be taken into account by the Government.
But the second factor which flowed from the acceptance that we need this shift towards technical education is that we also need a mechanism for continually and continuously identifying the needs of industry, a mechanism which provides an ability to adjust and to respond quickly. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, who was not in her place when the noble Lord, Lord Nelson, referred to this, that like the noble Lord I do not quite accept her disagreement with and criticism of the committee's recommendation that a levy be imposed across the whole of industry, although of course everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion and to disagree.
Certainly the committee did not have it in mind to put training into a straitjacket, and it took on board and accepted the fact that individual industries, companies and areas have their own problems which should be looked at within the context of the national programme. I would also say to the noble Baroness that the committee is at one with her in suggesting that companies should include in their annual report an indication of how much they spend on training,
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because this should be part of the whole assessment of the efficiency of the company.
Perhaps I may also say how glad I am that there appears to have been some immediate response from the Government to the report of the Butcher Committee, to this report and to the other reports that have addressed themselves to this very essential question. Again, like the noble Lord, Lord Nelson, I am somewhat puzzled about the £43 million which is to provide additional places in engineering and technology within the universities. I hope that the noble Lord, the Minister, can assure us that this is new money. I hope too that he can assure us that this is just the beginning, because in the evidence that was brought before the committee we were reminded by the director of the Alvey programme, Mr. Oakley, that he had estimated a shortfall of about 5,000 engineers in the whole area of information technology. When Sir Keith Joseph and Mr. Brooke appeared before the Committee they thought that perhaps Mr. Oakley had rather over-estimated the problem, whereas some of the witnesses who appeared before the committee thought that a shortfall of 5,000 was a too optimistic figure. So there is a very essential problem here which must be addressed quickly.
Secondly, I would welcome the extra £20 million in resources for in-service teacher-training for curricula development in the whole area of the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative. Again, I would hope that this is new money and not money that has been transferred from other sources. I should like to say to the Minister that I think this is an important move because there have been some very valuable lessons in curricula development from the whole of the TVEI scheme. But the amount of money mentioned is very small indeed when it is compared with the amount that was envisaged by the advisory committee on the supply of education and training of teachers. Noble Lords will recall that in their advice to the Secretary of State they suggested that all local education authorities should earmark about 5 per cent. of the salary bill of teachers for in-service training. This would amount to about £200 million, which again is indicative of the size of the problem.
I should like to raise another caveat in relation to this matter. In the oral evidence before the committee the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Young, then chairman of the Manpower Services Commission, said that he saw himself as having some responsibility to the DES, particularly in relation to TVEI. The Select Committee saw education and training as a continuous process. Many witnesses found it exceedingly difficult to identify a dividing line between education and training, and increasingly I think the training function of the MSC is being identified with both the DES and the DTI.
We must look to the Government for some clarification about the place of the MSC in the whole of government structure in particular in its relationship with education. In the meantime, however, I welcome this contribution to in-service training because I believe it is absolutely essential that teachers have a closer understanding of industrial needs and of technological changes if they are to give the right steer to children.

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I turn now to Chapter 7 of the report, Technological Literacy. Here I would say that the committee did not see a move towards technological literacy as requiring more early specialisation in schools. On the contrary, all the evidence we received pointed to the need for a more integrated curriculum, but because of the speed of technology, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham said in his admirable maiden speech, it is important to give children a broad education and to postpone specialisation as long as possible. This the committee applied also to university—certainly at first degree level.
In fact, I think the committee was saying to industry that it must not expect to have ready-trained personnel from the education system, whether from schools or from universities, but must expect a broadly educated person who is able to apply to industry's needs what he had learnt in the education system, and that industry must top up those skills to meet its own particular requirements. In this respect, the recommendation that instruction in mathematics, sciences and the humanities should be compulsory for all children up to the age of 16 is particularly important.
I think the recommendation in paragraph 9.22 is also important because it refers to the need for the curriculum to include some lessons in basic economics, and the significance of technological and industrial development. It says that the industrial problems should be integrated into the teaching of science and technology. Again, what the committee is saying is that science and technology should be taught not just as an academic or as a practical subject, but in the context of the real world in which we live and in which the children will have to cope when they move into adulthood and employment.
It might be appropriate here if I refer your Lordships to paragraph 7.2 of the committee's report, which gives a very graphic impression gained by the committee of the image of industry held by schoolchildren. This paragraph says:
"The image of industry is created early within the educational system; the Committee's experience of talking to sixth-form pupils suggested that few yet recognise the importance to society of wealth creation and fewer still regard manufacturing industry as a field in which to make a satisfying career. Many had an image of industry racked by disputes and struggling for a share of the market. Those who were considering taking up electronics options in higher education, with a view to working in the IT sector, did not associate electronics with 'industry'. Among girls the masculine image of industry and technology is still so strong that some thought they would suffer discrimination if they applied for posts in industry".
There is a message there for industry as well as for the schools. The message for industry is that they must seek to get closer to the education system. The message for the schools is that they must know more about industry. This also contains a message in relation to the position of girls. Again, I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Nelson of Stafford, as an industrialist himself, referred to this question, because it was mentioned by all the witnesses, almost without exception, who appeared before the committee. They drew attention to the neglect of the resource residing in girls and women in this country. They said we cannot hope to solve this problem unless we develop the potential for girls and women.
I am glad to be able to draw to the attention of the
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House a section of the report from the Select Committee headed "Girls". This section contains a number of very important conclusions and recommendations. Not least is one in relation to initial and in-service training, which the report suggests should concentrate on helping teachers to encourage girls into science and technology. A second recommendation is directed at local education authorities. It asks them to draw up programmes to develop the interests of girls in science and technology. Then the report goes on to say that this will require positive action in favour of girls in the science teaching in schools.
Thirdly, there is praise for the work that the Equal Opportunities Corn mission, the Engineering Council and the Engineering Industrial Training Board have done in encouraging "Insight" courses, the WISE course, about which no doubt the noble Baroness opposite will have something to say, and other initiatives. Yet again they place the emphasis on the need for schools to interest girls in
"the excitements of science and technology at an early age".
Finally, on this question of wasting the potential of girls and women, the committee had something to say about the place of women in continuous education, when they refer to the need for retraining and conversion courses to take account of the needs of women who are returning to employment after a period in which they have been bringing up their children. This is a source of trained personnel which it is extremely important we should not neglect—and I am afraid that in the past it has been very much neglected. But I am glad that it is being taken seriously. For example, the Open University has a special course in engineering and technology to update women seeking to return to their profession. The Engineering Council has a working party looking at this whole problem. So I hope that note will be taken of what is said in the report of the Select Committee about this very essential element, if we are to close the gap that exists in the new technological area.
5.56 p.m.
Lord Sherfield: My Lords, it was a privilege to serve under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, during this inquiry. It was one of particular difficulty, first, because it inevitably involved consideration of our whole system of education from primary level; secondly, because it drew forth a voluminous and diverse corpus of evidence, and, thirdly, since the subject has been the cause of such great concern and so many reports, it was hard to draw the threads together into some sort of coherence and then to say anything in the way of comment and recommendation which had not already been said by others.
Furthermore, my Lords, there have been a number of Government-sponsored initiatives directed to dealing with various aspects of the problems. Some of these were started in the course of our inquiry. Without under-estimating what the Government are trying to do—and as the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, pointed out, they are doing quite a lot—the number and variety of these initiatives by different departments and organisations, which are outlined in Section 2 of our report, betray an ad hoc and

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piecemeal approach and are somewhat confusing. As the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, said, the Committee tried to stand back and look at the problem from a longer-term point of view. They recognised that the urgency and critical nature of some shortages called for fire brigade action, but there was evidently a requirement for much greater attention to be given to longer-term needs and for an organised body to give this attention.
My Lords, as the report says,
"A response which deals only with short-term needs apparent now is likely to remain one step behind technological change and to become increasingly unsuccessful in the face of foreign competition."
Foreign competition being of overriding importance, the committee paid particular attention to it, especially in relation to the United States of America and Japan, not only by obtaining evidence and reports, but by visiting the two countries. Necessarily short and condensed though these visits were, they were immensely valuable as much in removing some misconceptions as in discovering how the two countries put up a much better industrial performance than we do.
Most of the salient points in the report have already been covered in previous speeches by my colleagues on the committee. I agree with almost everything they have said and do not propose to enlarge on those matters myself. Instead it might be of some interest if I were to give a rather subjective view of our overseas impressions, enlarging on the two points which the noble Lord, Lord Nelson of Stafford, has already made.
Let me say at the outset that I do not suggest we should set out to copy or even adapt our educational and training systems to those which have developed in quite different cultures. The question is whether there are practices or specific measures which could be picked up and introduced in this country without upsetting our own traditional system—which in any case, as our report shows passim, is in need of rapid transformation.
The United States have experienced some of the same problems as ourselves and they are already losing out, or have lost out, to the Japanese—for example, in certain manufacturing processes in the field of information technology and in optical fibres—although not, I think, in their application. They are addressing these problems with characteristic energy and determination.
Your Lordships will know that in the United States the educational system is even further devolved than it is in the United Kingdom and is essentially a state matter. It is noteworthy that while the Federal budget for education has been sharply cut, Federal expenditure on research has been sharply expanded and two specific steps have been taken at Federal level to meet deficiencies in the volume and quality of teaching, particularly in engineering, which your committee recommend could be adapted and introduced in the United Kingdom.
These are the Presidential Young Investigator Awards scheme and the scheme for Engineering Research Centres, which are fully described in Appendices 3 and 4 to our report. It is noteworthy
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that, in agreement with at least one of the teachers' unions, differential salaries are being paid in some parts of the United States to teachers of mathematics and subjects of technological importance.
We were also much impressed by the emphasis on and development of distance learning techniques in the United States. We recommend that more intensive efforts should be made in this area in the United Kingdom. Finally, I am once more struck by the close collaboration of American universities with their local industries, which has long exerted such a strong influence on American performance in high technology. We saw it, on this visit, at Stanford University but of course it is something that is widespread throughout the country. We are, I think, improving in this respect in this country but we still have a lot to learn from the American experience.
Perhaps a word should be said here about scales of expenditure. In the US Federal Budget for 1985–86 it is anticipated that the allocations for civil science—about one-third of the total—will remain about level in real terms, with some marginal increases and decreases in different areas, while expenditure on defence research and development will be further increased. As an example of the scale of expenditure relative to our own, the United States is currently spending 1 billion dollars on civil marine science and technology, including meteorology and oceanography —that is, excluding defence research and development in this area, on which the spending is at least half as much again.
By comparison, the 1983–84 budget for the Natural Environment Research Council allocates about £30 million for comparable research and development expenditure, and that is forecast to decline at a rate of 3 per cent. per annum based on a proposed erosion of the science budget of 25 per cent. over 10 years, with a similar decrease in commissioned research. I am not suggesting that we could match the scale of the American effort in this field but we should certainly sit up and take notice.
In Japan we expected to find the key to their industrial success in their rather centralised educational system. We were soon disillusioned. The Japanese themselves are so dissatisfied with it that they have recently set up the equivalent of a Royal Commission to report on it. The curriculum is thought to be too general in character and the Japanese do not consider that the system as a whole produces enough original thought. They envy us our success with Nobel Prizes.
On a specific point, Japan's programme for the introduction of computers in schools seems to be some way behind our own. Nor, at a higher level, did collaboration between the universities and industry seem to be particularly good—and two or more technological universities are now being developed to fill a perceived gap. Where, then, was the clue to the Japanese miracle?
One clue obviously lies in the enormous effort which Japanese companies take to educate, train and retrain their staff. They take graduates or high school leavers who have had a rather general education and themselves bring those students to the level of technical and managerial achievement which the

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companies require—including further study and training in their own institutes of higher education. We only had time to look at two of these educational programmes, of which one—that of Hitachi—is outlined in Appendix 5 to our report, but we understood that these programmes are not exceptional.
The real clue to the superior performance of the United States and Japan (and one can bring in Germany here, as well) lies, in the words of the report, in the,
"social attitudes which affect the quality of recruits available to education and training institutions",
in the United Kingdom and,
"the continuing social bias against careers in industry and technology".
We go on to say that competing countries in Europe, the US and Japan benefit from a greater awareness of the value of wealth creation in society, as well as of technology.
One does not hear in those countries the moaning about the social status of engineers which has, from my personal experience, been endemic here for the past 25 years. These social attitudes differ within as well as towards industry. It is unusual in the United Kingdom to find bodies of workers willing to accept reductions in wages or other sacrifices in order to help a company through a difficult period.
In our report we call for a large-scale increase in employers' updating and retraining programmes. But we say that this will call for a change of attitude on the part of many individuals, who will need to follow the example of the Americans and Japanese,
"among whom self-help and self-improvement are basic to the retraining process".
In the United States there has been a strong response to the President's call for greater national efforts to improve industrial performance. The response to similar calls from the Prime Minister has been lukewarm, to put it at its highest. In Japan, one has the impression that every Japanese manager and worker is not only working for the company (with which, in most cases, he or she is associated for life) but also a little bit for Japan as well. We do not need to copy Japanese industrial management or structure; all we need is some of the motivation which energises their system. I believe that our report deals frankly and fairly with this problem of social attitudes and how they might gradually be changed. This lies at the heart of the matter. No doubt the Government are as well aware of this problem as we were.
6.10 p.m.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, broadly speaking, I think the report is excellent, as are most of its recommendations. Unfortunately, our problems in this field have their roots in the distant past and have only recently become so acute that they are obvious to all.
In the 19th century engineers had great status, but if they, and the entrepreneurs who used them, became well-off, they endeavoured to become country gentlemen and their children seldom joined the profession. Gradually, the status of the engineer, on
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whom the prosperity of this nation depended, declined and it has never recovered. The scientist has taken over much of the glamour which used to surround the engineer. Scientists have served us very well and we remain a highly inventive nation. But—and it cannot be said too often—we fail to convert our bright ideas into hardwear and to market them. Some of this failure is due to management but, as the report emphasises, there are insufficient technologists, technicians and managers of high calibre. Too many of our really able people prefer to make their careers outside our all-important industry, and even less in the engineering profession.
I believe that implementing the Robbins report was one of the biggest mistakes we ever made. Many of our technical colleges which were meeting a real need, and doing it well, converted themselves into universities. They followed, regardless and without thought, the traditions of the old-established universities. In making this change they then established many third-rate arts courses with third-rate teachers and defended the results by thinking and saying that whatever was taught at a university, and however badly it was taught, because it was taught at a university it was self-justifying. Since then there have been many changes and a greater sense of realism, but there is still some way to go. I would not decry scholarship for scholarship's sake in obscure disciplines, were it not that this nation can no longer afford so many of the things which we consider desirable and which the proponents consider essential. I am afraid that with a desperate need for funds—for example, in this area—we must concentrate more on those disciplines which are directly useful to earning our national keep. Engineering and management training are two vitally important subjects.
We should always remember that we cannot now remain leaders in all scientific disciplines and in basic research. It may be that we have to accept that in some, at least, of such disciplines it is sufficient to retain a small team which can exploit the work done by other nations in the same way as the Japanese have done. Yes, I know that they are now concentrating more on their own theoretical research but, nevertheless, it is still directed to practical ends. I remain unconvinced by the arguments of, for example, the nuclear physicists and astronomers that a cut in their funds would have a disastrous effect on this nation.
I should like to emphasise again some of what I said in the debate on 14th March last year. I am sure that the methods and approach to teaching receive too little consideration in our universities. Some teaching training courses for lecturers are long overdue. Furthermore, in all disciplines with relevance to industry, lecturers should not move directly into their posts without first having some experience of the outside world and of industry. In industry, and often elsewhere, judgment is of paramount importance. In some university work there is too much emphasis on simply examining the views of eminent persons for and against some proposition without the student personally considering the practical and commonsense validity of the argument. I was at Cambridge, but in my view the Army Staff College provided far and away the best training of the mind that I ever received.

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Finally, returning to the engineering theme, I should like to quote what the Professor of Mechanical Engineering at one of our universities has to say. I paraphrase and take some of his remarks out of their context. For the first time in our history we are importing more manufactured goods than we export and our service industries are increasing at an alarming rate without producing many goods for sale. The time has come when priorities, particularly between science and more down-to-earth technology, must be reassessed. He points out that until recently, and possibly even now, astronomy received more finance for research from the Science and Engineering Council than did all the combined divisions of aeronautical, chemical, civil, electronic, nuclear and other engineering divisions. Moreover, there has been little recognition of the work in these fields by awarding Fellowships of the Royal Society, and never a Nobel Prize.
The professor points out that Japan, Korea and Taiwan are producing, respectively, 10, eight and five times as many engineers as we do in the United Kingdom. He recommends, first, that schools should give at least one-third of the time in their syllabi for physics, chemistry and mathematics to underline and to explain their relevance to engineering. Secondly, the majority of our firms, often employing fewer than 200 people, should be encouraged to have an interface with schools and universities. At present, such firms do not do so. Thirdly, the University Grants Committee should set up a sub-committee of academics and industrialists to review, in practical terms, what are the immediate needs for the training of engineers. He mentions poor staff ratios, obsolete equipment and laboratory facilities, overcrowded space and insufficient funding. I agree with all that he says.
6.19 p.m.
The Earl of Bessborough: My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, for his admirably comprehensive report. I think I agree with virtually all of its 63 conclusions and recommendations, although, like my noble friend Lady Elles, not with the recommendation about a national training levy. No doubt my noble friend Lord Young, on the Front Bench, will explain the reasons for not supporting this recommendation.
However, the whole report is very well drawn up. Although I was not a member of the noble Lord's sub-committee, I have worked with him before on other committees in your Lordships' House and know what a satisfactorily pragmatic and practical turn of mind he has.
Apart from that, what I should like to say this afternoon is that, as some of your Lordships know, Sub-Committee F of the EEC Select Committee, which is presided over by the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, and of which the noble Lord, Lord Kearton, and I are also members, has been looking into the subject of the European Strategic Programme for Research and Development in Information Technology, better known as ESPRIT, to which my noble friend Lady Elles has also referred. I am glad that she did so.
The European committee's report on this EEC initiative, which also refers to member states' national
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programmes in advanced information technology, including that of our own Alvey directorate, should go to press shortly and will, I hope, also form the subject of an interesting debate in your Lordships' House in due course. I would not wish to go deeply into the findings of that inquiry. Indeed, most of them may not be relevant to the debate this afternoon. But in the course of the inquiry, the European sub-committee found itself pursuing the subject of manpower availability for the information technology industries, and the evidence received is undoubtedly relevant to this afternoon's debate.
It seems to me that the main point of the report of the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, is that United Kingdom development of new technologies is going to be impaired by a shortage of trained staff, and therefore that certain actions are called for. I feel sure that the European committee's report will say that the same is true of the ESPRIT and the Alvey programmes. We were, for example, told in Sub-Committee F that Europe as a whole was lagging significantly behind the United States and Japan in producing electronics engineering graduates and computer scientists. Companies, so we were told, were forced to hire, as one witness said:
"anyone who could actually spell 'microprocessor', let alone write 'software'."
The explosion in information technology, described in The Times today as a main artery of any efficient commercial body, has apparently led the demand for software engineers to expand at 20 per cent. per annum, and the material to fill that demand is simply not emerging from our universities.
One can speculate endlessly on the reasons for that, including perhaps a failure to assess needs accurately in the early 1970s. But there are other reasons. In Germany, for example, it is not uncommon to see engineers at the helm of large corporations. I have said many times over the past quarter of a century in your Lordships' House that in Britain, by contrast, engineers have not achieved the same social or business standing—the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, referred to this. too—and engineering has not attracted a sufficient number of ambitious university entrants.
It has also been said that teachers do not have the necessary industrial and commercial experience to direct—or shall I say orientate?—their teaching towards producing the product that the market wants. Indeed, this is often a valid criticism of British industry—the development of products with inadequate market research. Some witnesses on Sub-Committee F went on to cite the failure of the educational system, evidenced by falling educational standards which no longer place emphasis on the pursuit of excellence.
Like perhaps other noble Lords, on Friday night I watched and listened very attentively to the Dimbleby television lecture given by the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock. I was surprised in considering that otherwise wholly admirable address that the noble Baroness did not refer more specifically to the need for many more good teachers in science and engineering. Perhaps she thought that it would not have been wholly relevant in the Royal Society of Arts and in her context. But I think that it would have been desirable had she done so, especially in regard to the training of girls, which

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was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Nelson. A large television audience of that kind would have been the best possible platform to slip in, if only briefly, the kind of messages that the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, and other noble Lords this afternoon have been seeking to put across.
But to refer again to information technology engineering in both its disciplines, hardware and software, I would emphasise that they are exact sciences. The internal circuitry of a microchip has to be exactly right—not more or less right—or it will not work. A single incorrect line in a 10,000-line software program can totally invalidate the whole program. Hence inefficiency is unacceptable.
On the bright side, we have heard that this country now has the highest density of personal computer ownership in the world, even if there has recently been a drop in sales. I fear—and I have seen it myself—that some home computers are recently tending to get forgotten in the cupboard. But, while the vast majority of such computers are used mainly for game playing, it must be hoped that this will lead to a much greater awareness among the young of the implications of information technology.
I would therefore also hope that our seats of learning will be able to provide the facilities to foster that awareness and to provide the adequate production lines for graduates to fill what Mr. Brian Oakley, the director of the Alvey programme, told us he foresaw as a tenfold increase in demand for good quality IT scientists. In that connection, noble Lords should also read page 27 of Lord Gregson's report. Having initiated over a year ago a debate on the Alvey programme, I should like to stress the great importance of the recommendations of this report.
My noble friend Lord Torrington (who would like to have taken part in this debate) tells me that he was recently in the Republic of Kenya and was interested to learn from its vice-president that what Kenya needed most was not ideology but competence. Young people should concentrate on becoming effective administrators and scientists, and Marx and Adam Smith should take second place to Einstein and Pythagoras. If that is recognised in many developing nations, how much more important that we should recognise it here, where only technological excellence will keep us up with, or ahead of, other nations in a very tough and constantly evolving market place.
In her major speech to the United States Congress on 20th February, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said she firmly supported President Reagan's decision to pursue research into defence against ballistic nuclear missiles, the strategic defence initiative commonly, but in my view not appropriately, referred to as Star Wars. My right honourable friend added that she hoped that our scientists in Britain would share in this research, which is of course mainly concerned with the new technologies.
The Government have certainly done much to fund advanced information technology—and noble Lords may care to see page 18 of The Times today which refers to this—but let the Government continue to do so if we, through our scientists and engineers, are to make our own effective contributions in both the civil
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and defence fields in new technologies. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, for his report and also all the members of his Committee who have worked so hard on on it.
6.31 p.m.
Lord Hunter of Newington: My Lords, may I also add my tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Gregson? In recent years there have been a number of Gregson reports. I should be surprised if he does not as many of us do, consider this report to be among the best and the most important. May I also add my congratulations to the right reverend Prelate on his maiden speech?
In many ways this debate compliments the science research debate of the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield. Then we learnt of the disturbing effects of cut-hacks in resources on programmes organised by the research councils. The budget was distributed by the Department of Education and Science on the advice of the Advisory Board for Research Councils. It seems that in the last two years the ABRC has developed for itself a new role and, with a different membership including industrially based scientists, it is making a vigorous attempt to tackle the problems which confront it. Somewhere in the interdepartmental spectrum and reporting directly to the Prime Minister is the Advisory Council for Research and Development chaired by Sir Henry Chilver.
One of the most impressive actions of the rejuvenated ABRC is the joint proposals of the research councils on microbial physiology and plant molecular biology and biochemistry. The reason is manifest from reading the report, Scientific Opportunities and the Science Budget 1984. From this report to the Secretary of State for Education and Science, it is clear that the fundamental work in those fields affects the research and development territories of almost all the established research councils.
The research councils themselves keep changing. For example, the Science Research Council became the Science and Engineering Research Council and the Agricultural Research Council became the Agricultural and Food Research Council. Therefore, the research councils concerned with fundamental research and strategic research find a degree of close collaboration necessary to tackle fundamental and strategic problems.
There is an important lesson in all this for those in the Government responsible for research in government departments. But who is responsible? I understand that recently the status of chief scientists has been reduced and it is very evident from the evidence taken by the Science and Technology Committee, in more than one of its inquiries, that the idea of strategic research being planned and commissioned by departments is a failure. The one exception perhaps might be in the procurement division of the Ministry of Defence where incredibly high standards of strategic research have been achieved in the past, and I believe continue to be achieved.
The reasons why this concept of the promotion of strategic research does not work are several. First, the departments and their responsibilities are defined for quite different reasons in different ways. They are

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concerned with government in a particular field. Those reasons are quite different from research reasons. The prime responsibilities of the departments are towards their Ministers and the Government, and inevitably topics that are of marginal interest to departments receive low priority in the departments' research and development programme. They perhaps hope that some other department will undertake the venture.
The Natural Environment Research Council has suffered most from this. The amount of commissioned work that it has received from government departments has fallen off very badly. All this is arising from constraints in public expenditure as well as changes in policy in commissioning departments, policy which is increasingly concerned with the immediate problems. The result is that strategic research is suffering.
I know of no situation, except the Alvey programme, where Government departments have combined as research councils have done, encouraged by the ABRC. Shortage of funds is the final straw in the departmental support for strategic research. But it is in this area of strategic research for which the universities' MSc graduates are being trained. It is this area in which they want to work. The good graduate is up to date with new technology. He is keen to see the application of this in industry and elsewhere and he looks for the challenge of a stimulating programme. That is what he, or she, wants.
One is gratified to hear that more funds will be provided for this key purpose so strongly recommended in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Gregson. It seems paradoxical that at the very time when strategic research by industry and Government is so vital the opportunities to do it by commissioned research from departments is very substantially less. It will be five to ten years before the neglect of this kind shows, and therefore, two or three years after the restraints have been introduced, nothing very much seems to have gone wrong, whereas the lack of funds in development work is almost immediately evident. The situation so ably examined by the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, is the product of neglect by governments of both parties and it cannot be put right overnight. For example, would it be appropriate to have an urgent inquiry by ACARD?
The resources required to train MSc students in modern technology are not very large. That is assuming that the staff and the facilities are present in the universities and adequate to provide for undergraduate and research programmes. We are told that additional funds are now becoming available. There need be no problem about student grants. Surely, this is the first and obvious place to give student loans. The undergraduate course has been provided free and students have been given personal subsistence, but when they are trained in modern technology they should be on their own and, with any luck, should be earning a reasonable salary within a year or two and would be able to repay the loans. Some of the proposals of the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, such as the education and training board, will require careful consideration and substantial resources. The provision of student loans to MSc students in specified categories could be done next week and at minimal cost.
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Lastly, at the same time as we are hearing about more resources for training in universities and polytechnics, the chairman of the University Grants Committee, as has been mentioned, tells us the depressing news about future funding at universities. If this is true, the closing of departments or universities, as he said, may have to happen. That is because it is proposed that the future budgets in the next decade should be 2 per cent. less than the inflation rate. I am sure the Minister will tell us about this.
An important recommendation of the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, was:
"University research should be strengthened and new opportunities for research in polytechnics created".
Which way does the University Grants Committee go in the light of Sir Keith's depressing news? Should they go the way of the ABRC and the research councils and combine voluntarily to create centres and to share knowledge? I think this would inevitably be combined or associated with the closure of some departments.
My Lords, I feel that the need for the injection of new resources into universities is so urgent and vital that some universities should be closed simply to make resources available, so that the moneys saved could be used to refurbish the research base foundation in universities. We have heard a great deal of research bases elsewhere. It is the research base in universities that is doing fundamental research, looking for problems which have not even been defined. The universities, as we have heard from noble Lords and others, have perhaps many faults, like all institutions, but they wish passionately to lay the foundations of the future and are concerned to tackle problems as yet undefined.
6.40 p.m.
Baroness Platt of Writtle: My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I speak in support of this important report presented by the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, our effective and excellent chairman. It is, I submit to your Lordships, a report crucial to the future prosperity of our nation. In any difficult situation—today's situation in our country, in both financial and employment terms, continues to be difficult—the most important resources to help solve that problem will be human. Our technology is only as good as the people who control it. Companies and Government in this country have provided training over a period of years. Greater emphasis was placed on training following the setting-up of the training boards after the 1964 Act. That was especially true of the larger companies, some of which invested considerable resources in putting it into action.
Members of our committee visited Japan for five days. That is a short time in which to gather information. However, our embassy staff planned our visit very well. We had the privilege of frank discussions with influential people in Japan, in particular with Kei-Dan-Ren, the equivalent of our CBI, who said that when they installed new technological equipment, they retrained the workforce to operate it. The employees might have to retrain partly in their own time and might then have to move, but that avoided redundancy, improved industrial relations and ensured that the equipment's use was developed to the full because the workforce at various levels understood

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its potential. While we were there, we visited Hitachi, as mentioned in the report, and other institutes of higher education. However, my most vivid recollection was of the Fujitsu training school. Its logo was a triangle whose three sides represented research, development, and education and training.
Those of your Lordships who remember the sub-committee's last report on research and development in engineering will realise how close the concept of this triangle is to the hearts of our sub-committee. If the results of pure research only gather dust in a laboratory, they are useless. If pure research at which this country is very good, and at which the Japanese admitted they were less good, is to be valuable to our country, it must be taken into the market place fully developed by designers, production engineers and marketing staff if it is to satisfy and sell to customers. When I was up at Cambridge, a fashionable catch phrase was, "The trouble with Hardy is he's too pure". Hardy's pure mathematics was almost our Bible as young engineers, the source of our knowledge of differential calculus. We admired him tremendously, but we had to go to our engineering lecturer in mathematics for its application to problems in our various engineering disciplines that were besetting us. He was not pure. He was unashamedly applied. We were fortunate to be influenced by him.
As a country we must be far more entrepreneurial at applying our knowledge, as our first report said. We must not be afraid of getting our hands dirty either at the bench or on the production line. We must be positively proud of what that would do for the people of our country in employment and financial terms and many other ways if we can sell our newly developed high-tech products in the markets of the world. Development is the second side of the Fujitsu triangle.
If we are to do that, as I have already said, our most important resources are people. This is where the third side of the Fujitsu triangle comes in. That company was spending billions of yen every year on regular updating and retraining of their workforce at all levels to be competent and efficient in handling their fast developing technological equipment. The triangle that they regarded as of crucial importance to their own development also motivated them to sell their training to satellite and sub-contractor companies for their employees and even to individuals. That was good business, as they naturally trained on their own equipment which was bound to have subsequent commercial spin-off as the recipients of the training wished to continue to use the equipment with which they were familiar. I believe that the large companies of this country could take a leaf out of Fujitsu's book with great benefit to themselves and a ripple effect for smaller companies, but on a sound commercial footing. Training is of fundamental value in commercial terms and can therefore be sold. I believe that it is a principle that we need to develop with far more energy than heretofore.
Returning to this country and to the recommendations of this report, your Lordships will detect the influence of the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, the former chairman of the EOC and myself in the major reference to women and girls in the sub-committee's report. It is with great pleasure that I pay tribute to
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noble Lords who were members of the committee. They were equally determined to see the other half of the population play a far more prominent part in the development of technology in the future, as our chairman emphasised just now.
As the result of a Government initiative to help the war effort in those far off days, I went up to Cambridge to read mechanical sciences in 1941, together with four other girls. There had been only nine other women in that faculty before us. So we were regarded as somewhat of a strange phenomenon. Nevertheless, we were welcomed and helped to get our degrees and all went out to use our new found technological knowledge in war industry or the services. Speaking for myself, I still had a great deal to learn. In those days, there was no induction training. My work had to be very accurate as I was dealing with the flight testing of fast, highly secret, prototype fighter aircraft. I had to persuade other people to help me to learn the relevant facts that I needed. Highly skilled men in the experimental flight test department helped me a great deal and I coped. I do not recommend it as the most efficient method of training.
Today, technology develops even faster. Evidence at all levels in companies demonstrated to the committee the widespread ignorance of the new technologies from board level through all levels of management down to the shop floor. Ignorance breeds fear. Fear results in stagnation. We need the life blood of technological familiarity to permeate our nation, both men and women, so that people are comfortable with technology at all levels. May I encourage your Lordships to re-read paragraphs 5.10 and 5.11 of our report where we call for a sea change in attitudes so that the technological literacy of the whole nation is raised—a move perhaps towards helping to solve the anxieties of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, expressed in his thoughtful maiden speech. To achieve that, as we recommend, is going to mean all children, girls as well as boys, being introduced to science and technology, to be fully numerate and literate and able to describe technology throughout the primary and secondary system. That is going to mean initial and in-service training of teachers at all levels to enable them to do this, as our report recommends.
With our history of the non-involvement of women in these subjects in the past, that is going to mean particular concentration and effort to interest, enthuse and inform women teachers so that they pass on the excitement of the new technology. The children at school at present will spend most of their lives in the 21st century, a century essentially dominated by the development of technology. The prosperity of the country—their future—demands that those children, girls as well as boys, can understand and control that technology. There are few years left in this century; time is running out. We have talked about these developments in this country for years. Some pioneering people are working very hard on them, to whom our report rightly pays tribute. We need a national crusade to translate those words into action in our schools and throughout our education system.
We also need our children to see careers in the future allied to science and technology. Whether they will work in the hotel trade, tourism, the banks, the retail trade—everywhere they will need a knowledge of the

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new technologies. The cashless society is almost upon us, with all that that implies. As the managing director of a retail store said at the CBI conference at Centre Point in response to the first Butcher Committee report on shortage of IT skills:
"We are all the customers now".
Those whose careers are not primarily technological will need sufficient understanding to be able to imagine how the new technologies could be applied to the benefit of their particular activity, whether it be manufacturing or service industry.
With these needs for technological skills developing in the future we start with shortages already at both technologist and technician level, as the two Butcher Committee reports most vividly demonstrate. We were fortunate as a committee in having Sir James Hamilton, former Permanent Secretary at the Department of Education and Science as our adviser, and his encyclopaedic knowledge of our complex education system, especially seen through the eyes of an engineer, shines through our report. A great many of our recommendations are most forcefully directed to the need for change in our schools, colleges and universities. Some of them re-emphasise what we said two years ago in our earlier report, especially the crucial need to attract able young people, girls as well as boys, into careers in industry and especially technological industry, as described in Chapter 7.
Two quotations from the Engineering Council make these recommendations particularly urgent:
"In 1983 for the first time since before the Industrial Revolution, this country imported more manufactured goods than we exported".
The second quotation is as follows:
"In 1981 there were 900,000 18 year olds; in 1995 there will only be 600,000 18 year olds".
In the latter part of this century our oil revenues will fall. Our only way of remaining a prosperous nation is to sell our manufactured goods, and especially those relying on the new technologies for their production. We shall have to do this with dramatically fewer 18-year olds entering industry—our precious human resources. That is why our committee emphasised so strongly the need to encourage girls and women into science and engineering—the aim of the WISE campaign started last year, (Women Into Science and Engineering), which was backed by both the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Engineering Council, and wholeheartedly supported by the Prime Minister, Sir Keith Joseph and by many national organisations: Science and Technology Regional Organisations, the Women's Engineering Society, the National Electronics Council, the Association for Science Education, the Institute of Physics, and many more. Enlightened industry, and especially sunrise industry, also back it. Half the population has so far virtually not taken part and they must be wooed to see an attractive future career in these fields. Many of our recommendations refer to this most strongly. They are the only remaining pool of talent if standards of excellence and ability among technologists are to remain high in the future. It is those technologists' ingenuity on which we shall depend in future.
WISE must continue over the coming decade to be supported by industry, education and Government as
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they have so generously supported it in its initial year. What happens in schools is important, but updating the existing workforce will be more influential in the shorter term and will have more rapid effect. As we recommend in our report, far more needs to be done in terms of continuing education and training, as they are doing in Japan—the third side of the Fujitsu triangle.
Today the Engineering Council has issued a discussion document on continuing education and training. It is no accident, as they refer to our House of Lords Select Committee report and endorse the view of our report that much more effort in continuing education and training needs to be made by industry, trade unions, Government and others if we are to succeed as an advanced industrial nation. I hope that noble Lords will read this report and comment on it to the Engineering Council. It is literally a blueprint for the future and will formulate an important part of our national strategy. Again, enlightened institutions in our country are pioneering in these fields—the Open University, Aston University and South Tech at Brighton Polytechnic and many others, including many technical colleges and ITEC's in conjunction with BTEC and the Open Tech. It needs to become a habit of life throughout further and higher education.
That also needs to be the case in industry. I quote paragraph 7.34 of the report:
"In the UK the link between training and commercial profitability is not recognised sufficiently to encourage a widespread investment in training."
We must have national, local, educational and industrial commitment to continuing education and training: the Engineering Council also endorses this. Successive witnesses emphasised its importance and especially the need for it to be available outside working hours so that management and key workers can update their knowledge without interrupting their involvement in their companies.
This is necessary for both men and women. However, allowance will need to be made more and more for the involvement of women. Later we shall discuss the need for parental leave throughout Europe to allow parents to reconcile their careers with the bringing up of their families. The Engineering Council, in encouraging WISE, recognises that as the young women encouraged into the engineering profession now become more numerous and are employed there longer, they too will be faced with the often conflicting demands of their families and their careers. The Engineering Council has set up a career break working party chaired by a senior industrialist to formulate policy in this matter, and this is referred to in our document. Young women trained and educated at considerable expense and with the necessary in-house expertise and technological experience must not be left unsupported in keeping up to date with their technologies. Various suggestions are made in Chapter 8 of our report and its ensuing recommendations.
One of the greatest pleasures of my present job is to meet some of these highly efficient, technologically competent, and charming young women. They are highly valued too by their employers, and make excellent ambassadors for their companies. You can see, and video tape, a film going out on the venture programme of Central Television, with the full co-

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operation of the EOC, at 10.30 p.m. tonight—if we are not still here!—showing young women in one company with the intention of encouraging other girls still at school to follow in their footsteps—an excellent initiative for them and backed by His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent. Those young girls, who are pioneers in their ways, do not want to lose touch with their careers when they have families, and we and their employers must make sure that they keep in touch with their technologies to our mutual benefit.
Industry itself will have a crucial part to play in keeping its workforce up to date with the new technologies, training motivated women without early qualifications in these fields to play their part too. There is no doubt that if the recommendations of our report are rapidly followed up and put into action, it is not yet too late for Britain to develop its prosperity in the coming years in the new technologies. However, deeds are demanded, not just words.
As we left Tokyo airport we saw an advertisement in English:
"Technology can form the footprints of a dream".
If the future prosperity of our country is to be more than a dream for our children, if it is to be a reality, our report must be translated into action by Government, by the education system, by industry and by all the men and women of our nation.
7 p.m.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, I too should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, and his colleagues on the committee for bringing this most excellent report before us. I hope I shall take only a few moments of your Lordships' time to stress a few of the recommendations that they make from my point of view as someone who works, if I can put it like this, in the guts of British engineering; in the guts of a firm in British engineering.
The particular recommendations I refer to are: Recommendation 9.5, specialisation should be deferred as late as possible; Recommendation 9.21, current levels of funding technological education and training are insufficient; Recommendation 9.40, the need for a national training levy; and Recommendations 9.49 and 9.53, which refer to the need for management and other employees to receive training and retraining.
I had the privilege of receiving a good Scots education until I reached the age of 16, which, compared with the English system, is rather broader than that applying in England. But even that I found to my cost was not broad enough. We need to go even further than the Scottish system, which is better than the English system.
That the current levels of funding in technological education and training are insufficient is self-evident. Here we must recognise that the resources at the disposal of our education and training establishments across the country have received their share of the cuts in public expenditure which have been the hallmark of governments for quite a few years now.
Reference has been made to the need to recognise that one of our basic resources in this country is our human resources. Here I would suggest that we need to
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identify the problems which exist within the education sphere. Today we are in the midst of a dispute with our teachers as a result of the erosion of their remuneration over the years. They have seen the resources at their disposal to help to educate the young people of this country eroded. They have seen their standards of living eroded. They have taken action to try to stem that erosion. We must recognise that there is a need for more resources in this area.
I now turn to the recommendation in the report for a national training levy. The difference between this proposal and the situation which existed in 1964 is that, if I read the recommendations aright, we are looking for a national training levy which goes right across industry and commerce. We are not looking for a specific industry training levy, which applied before. In that respect it is different, and I would hope that the Government would take that point on board.
Some reference has been made to the need for extra funding. We have seen the noble Lord, Lord Young, look to the heavens for this extra funding. There are possibly two specific sources of this extra funding. One is the national training levy which, if it were applied nationally across all industry and commerce, would not be a burden to industry because it would be common to each firm and industry. The other source of finance, I would suggest, is in the contingency reserve which I believe has been increased this year as a result of the Budget and no doubt could do with raiding for this particular subject in front of us today. I am sure that noble Lords gathered here today would join with me in thinking that it would be suitable for the contingency reserve to be used in this way.
I now turn to the need for training and retraining for management and other employees. As I said earlier, I work in the guts of a firm. When I said that I meant that I work neither at the bottom nor at the top but in the middle. I can see around me able young men and women who have, to a large degree, the skills and the expertise in new technology but unfortunately to a large degree they are subordinate to managers who have grown up, shall we say, in a different level of technology.
One of the key things we need is to ensure that our senior managers and—dare I say it?—the directors of firms have retraining in the knowledge of new technologies so that they can harness the resources they have already at their disposal in terms of the young men and women who are coming out of our universities, our technical colleges, and our schools at a level of technology which is not now being harnessed.
In conclusion, I should like to make a couple of points about women in science and engineering. They need to be made because of some concern I have heard expressed in my work in industry—that is, that this will be used as a source of cheap labour driving down the wages and salaries of those currently working in industry. I should like to make the point, both to those people who are concerned about that and to the people who might seek to take advantage of women coming into science and engineering, that there is no future for that supposition. I would hope that enlightened employers will not permit it, and I know that the unions involved in that sphere of activity will not permit it. In conclusion, I would say, yes, we welcome

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women and girls into science and technology on the basis that they can help us as equal partners, with equal remuneration, to build a better future for all of us.
7.8 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, like every other speaker, I should like to welcome this important, timely and powerful report and the opportunity my noble friend Lord Gregson has given us to debate it and to hear the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. His speech I found extremely thoughtful, encouraging, and it brought a real message of hope. I should like to thank him for it.
The picture the report paints is neither pretty nor comfortable. The accounts by speakers today—the noble Lords, Lord Gregson, Lord Kearton, and Lord Nelson of Stafford, particularly—of the state of the nation should shake this shortsighted Government out of their complacency, and let us hope stir them into action. The report is a strong attack on Government. In fact, it hits hard, if politely, in every direction, but it is the Government which come in for the fiercest blows. Of government departments which have responsibility for education and training, it is the DES which comes in for the harshest criticism. The noble Baroness, Lady Elles, referred in her speech to the failure of the education system. It is chiefly on the DES that I wish to concentrate today, but I will say a few words on industry first, which is not let off lightly either.
Industry has its obligations to train and re-train and it has not been fulfilling them. Invidious comparisons are made with our competitors, particularly with Japan.
"Low levels of initial training, and especially the inadequacy of continuing training, are causes of concern and must be corrected. Correction of skill shortages lies mainly in industry's own hands"—
says Recommendation 9.39. A national training levy is the committee's solution. I should like to know from the Government whether much research has been done upon the effectiveness of the old levy. What were the administrative costs? If, say, they were 20 per cent., were the companies 20 per cent. more efficient? It seems that the abolition of 16 of the ITBs has certainly not led to companies training voluntarily, as was optimistically prophesied by Mr. Tebbit. On 16th November 1981, at column 30 of the Official Report, he said:
"the training requirements of the sector concerned can be met effectively on a voluntary basis with less cost and bureaucracy".—[Official Report, Commons, 16/11/81 col. 30.]
He got it wrong.
We go along with the recommendations made in the industrial training section of the report. I was staying with an industrialist on Saturday and gave him the report to read. He said he would think of the adoption of technical audits in his own company, so let us hope that that bears fruit elsewhere.
I should like to draw attention to the last two recommendations which deal with management education. Sir Kenneth Corfield said in his evidence:
"I have to say that the gulf between the technological understanding of the management and its engineers is huge and apparently insurmountable".
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So these last two recommendations are of very great importance, and particularly the suggestion that the use of distance learning for managers be extended. It has to be remembered that industry cannot spare its top managers and key personnel for lengthy courses. Their time is very precious to the company.
Dr. Nicholson, chief scientific adviser to the Cabinet, stressed this in his evidence. I quote:
"Industry just does not want to lose its best people for a whole year".
The Open University, of which I shall speak later, and distance learning which can be used at weekends, in the evenings and early mornings, makes new ideas and processes available and attainable. If even that does not work for senior people in industry, individual methods must be tried. Tax credits could well provide further incentives for industry to train more vigorously. So much for industry and its obligations. As I said, I believe the main thrust of the report is against the DES. I quote Dr. Nicholson again:
"I think that generally within Whitehall the DES is regarded as being in the lead on most of the matters which you have under consideration—indeed, if not all of them".
There seems agreement that there is, and will continue to be for some time, a shortage of trained people for the new technologies. There is not always agreement on the reason, but I think it goes right back to the schools. I was amused in reading Sir Peter Swinnerton Dyer's evidence when he was asked why the potential of women was not used and at what stage one has to start to win their minds. He said:
"In the kindergarten, I think; but you have to complete the process of persuasion by 13, 14, 15".
That is certainly true for girls, almost certainly for all children. It is attitudes that have to be changed, in every connection and at every level and the start should be made at school.
HMIs in a discussion document on the curriculum from 5 years to 16, produced only last Wednesday, say that all children, even in primary schools, should learn about technology. The document reads:
"They should learn how to handle materials such as steel and glass, they should learn about energy through torch batteries, inflated balloons, rubber bands, plants, falling objects and human muscle".
So perhaps change is on its way. Clearly the narrowness of our school curriculum is a basic fault. We would support the report's recommendation for a broad grounding and a good general training at both the school level and the higher education level with specialisation not coming too early. The inflexibility and rigour of the examination system have a lot to answer for. I am afraid I have no very great confidence that the introduction of A S-levels will be a cure for the ill at sixth form level.
At the school level the problem is an insufficiency of teachers in physics, mathematics, craft and design. I am wary of differential salaries as a way to attract and encourage them, although the possibility of using the discretionary allocation of points on the Burnham scale to provide more Scale 3 and 4 posts and more senior and principal lecturers may be a feasible idea. But I must make the point that teachers' salaries are too low, full stop. We have the present dispute to remind us of that. If, after a four-year training, a teacher earns about £2,000 a year less than someone

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starting in industry, or a police constable, it is not surprising that market forces make themselves felt. The Government who accept and approve those market forces, ought to take action to improve the pay and status of teachers if we are to give credence to Sir Keith Joseph's protestations that his priorities are the improving of standards in schools and of teacher quality.
I can hardly endorse Recommendation 9.37 which aims to raise the level of in-service training. I am aware of the new offer of £20 million, but as my noble friend Lady Lockwood said, that is really a very small percentage of the £200 million which was suggested earlier. I understand that the £20 million is to go to the MSC. I should he glad if the Minister could explain that when he winds up.
With an older and static workforce, resulting partly from falling rolls, the need to re-train teachers so that they can cope with new technology subjects is very great indeed. That means resources. The success of some of the TVEI programmes—I was much impressed when recently I visited Stevenage schools, where there is a very successful programme—shows that when there is the money, the environment, the equipment and the teachers can be produced and one can get results.
But it is in discussion of higher education that the criticism of the Committee is strongest. The report concentrates on the shortage of graduates who can provide the manpower resources for new industries—or indeed for reviving old ones—and it really damns what has been happening in and to our higher education institutions. I quote:
"The erosion of funding for technological research should cease. University research should be strengthened, and new opportunities for research in polytechnics created".
That is Recommendation 9.11.
The provision last week of £2½ million for research in 21 polytechnics seems chickenfeed—a totally inadequate response. The Engineering Council was asking for £200 million of Government funds to he redirected to help finance engineering training in industry. There have been repeated warnings in report after report debated in your Lordships' House that research can only be neglected at our peril. Are the Government going to heed this time? I hope that in this context Ministers at the DES and the DTI will take note of a book, The Cambridge Phenomenon, published last month. The Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University in his introduction to it says:
"What makes this book so important is that at a time when long-term research is under increasing financial pressure, it is an empirical study of the processes of research-based invention and innovation and their commercial exploitation".
Twenty-five years ago there were 30 high technology firms in the Cambridge area; 10 years ago there were 100; by the end of 1984 there were 322. And there is the example of the micro-electronics lab on the Cambridge Science Park, a part of the University Department of Engineering, jointly financed by British Telecom, GEC and the University, in the charge of a university reader. In this laboratory research students and people from industry work in collaboration. These developments are a striking demonstration that university research, even when it does not actually
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generate it, certainly encourages scientific and technological enterprise, a spin-off that is likely to be of the highest value to the nation, economically and socially. The Government should learn that lesson; and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, was also preaching that.
The reduction in numbers at the universities is absurd. The Secretary of State took panic decisions on both the numbers of students and the numbers of teaching staff. He then very soon had to change course. The "new blood" scheme has been only partially successful and it came in for a good deal of criticism from a number of witnesses. Some 5,000 extra places, we know, in IT-related subjects were announced in 1982, and only last Tuesday Sir Keith launched a new plan making £43 million available over the next three years—I understand 470 places for 1985–86. Like many other noble Lords, I should like to know where this money is coming from. Is it new money or is it just money collected from various other sources? We hope that we will have an answer about that.
Let us also hope that there will be the staff there to teach them; I understand that even now there is a shortage of trained people in IT to train others. Any influx of students over the next three years will not prevent the decline in the number of students graduating in electrical/electronic engineering in the next two years to which the Engineering Council has drawn attention. Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer's evidence as chairman of the UGC was very revealing. He said that the cuts in 1981 were a mistake. He did not want the places for science and engineering students to be at the expense of students in the humanities; and I would agree with him very much on that.
Now, just last week, on 21st March, we have had a further speech from Sir Peter outlining the worsening financial position of the universities. Mr. Maurice Shock, chairman of the CVCP, speaking after the meeting, said:
"Sir Peter has painted a very bleak picture for the universities. Compared with the sudden and traumatic cuts of 1981–84, our future funding prospects are more like a lingering and painful terminal illness".
I had thought that perhaps the Government had begun to see the light and that there was going to be a change of heart; but, from this latest information, it appears that it is not so. We had hoped that now that the universities had done some rationalisation and had taken a hard look at themselves, there would have been a let-up and sensible policies would have followed, with a proper injection of resources, so that proper planning could be done over the next few years. That, it seems, is not to be so.
The committee devotes a section of its recommendations to continuing education, saying that there should be a large-scale increase in its provision and in employers' updating and retraining programmes. The pressing, short-term needs of industry can be met only by increasing further the amount of retraining and conversion courses, particularly for women reentering employment. The noble Baroness, Lady Platt, has spoken so eloquently about the position of women and girls that I shall not repeat what she said; but I should like to say that I endorse everything she said.

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Industry should contribute substantially to continuing education, but we have the ideal method of delivering it in the Open University. The short-sighted, even suspicious, treatment by the DES of the Open University leaves one gasping. The OU provides a very cheap and economical way of retraining and updating; and the more inventions there are to aid distance learning—videos and cassettes—and the cheaper they become, the more it will be able to do and the more people it can help. It has been inventive and quick to respond to needs. Sir Keith set up a committee to look at it, the Visiting Committee, which reported a few weeks ago. The report was very supportive of the Open University and its financial needs. But, at the same time as the report was published, the department announced the grants for the next two years. They continue the downward trend. This is gross folly.
The Government, too, should relax their insistence that all courses should be self-financing. It is ridiculous that the OU should be the only educational institution that is borrowing money from the DES, paying interest on it and having to repay it over five or six years. The arrangements with the DTI, whereby money is put up for a course and the OU pays a levy from the fees of the courses that they sell seems both fairer and more sensible. The DES is putting obstacles in the way of improving a trained and up-to-date workforce when it ought to be facilitating the process. One further thought: the DES could ease the difficulties that some people have because of courses being interrupted for whatever reason—perhaps moving from one part of the country to another, child hearing, and so on—by making credit transfers possible between institutions and also by enabling transfers to be made between the OU and other higher education institutions.
The conclusion that one is forced to come to after reading the evidence put before the committee is that there is no coherent education and training system in this country. What can be done to co-ordinate, control and finance one? The committee proposes an Education and Training Board from industry, the academic world, and Government, a national body which can review the country's needs over both the long term and the short term. This has been described by other noble Lords. We would support the proposal. I admire the way that the committee has avoided being accused of creating a new quango by making it a part of the SERC. That has been criticised in some circles as taking away from their prime function of research. But, on reading the evidence that SERC gave to the committee, it is clear that they already take on a number of things that, in their words, are "on the edge of our remit".
Professor Kingman suggested that some of these things could perhaps have been done by the DES itself—but they were not. He acknowledged:
"The need for a channel of communication which gets the signals of the shortages back into the educational system".
He added that, of course, nobody can work effectively unless there are adequate funds. He appeared willing to take on the board if it were funded properly and did not interfere with the council's main role of providing funds for basic research. Where the board should belong perhaps requires further discussion, but anyone reading the report cannot remain in doubt about the need for a co-ordinating and all-embracing body of
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some sort to control and forecast the production of a trained workforce adequate in numbers and the right skills. Considering the remit that the noble Lord, Lord Young. has at the moment, he would seem to be the person to applaud this suggestion and we wait his response with great interest.
What is going to happen? Are we to remain a nation which is better at spending wealth than creating it? I should like here to dispel some misapprehensions about the attitude of the Labour Party. We believe in the creation of wealth and we do not think that "profit" is a dirty word. It is only by using our brains and skills and innovatory powers that we can provide the prosperity that will generate the jobs, new jobs, that are so desperately needed. If the recommendations in this report are followed, we might make a start on capitalising on the talents that are undoubtedly there and that often have not shown themselves before introduction to the new technology. Experience at the ITECs has shown this. If the recommendations are implemented, it would mean a U-turn in what has been Government educational policy over the last five years, and that would be no bad thing. Dr. Miller of the Engineering Council said:
"The Government needs to take the issue by the scruff of the neck. The Government also has to put money in, but this will take some political courage".
I ask: Have the Government got it?
7.29 p.m.
The Minister Without Portfolio (Lord Young of Graffham): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, for enabling us to have this most interesting and important debate this afternoon. If I say that the debate today was up to the standard of the report, I am sure that your Lordships will take it that we found this a most interesting and thought-provoking report. I should like to congratulate the noble Lord both on his speech and on the speed with which he produced the report itself. The Government would wholeheartedly endorse much that the noble Lord has said this afternoon and just as much as is contained in the report itself.
The fact that we as a nation have to create the wealth first has come through as a theme during this afternoon's debate. But, leaving such matters aside, I think that the House would agree in particular with the noble Lord's statement that science and technology lie at the very root of our endeavours. As he reminded the House, the pace of technological change is staggering, and our job, whether we be in Government, or whether we are employers, educators or trade unionists, is to ensure that collectively we respond to that challenge.
If I may, I shall deal with some of the noble Lord's more detailed points a little later in my speech, but perhaps I might take this opportunity of welcoming the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Durham, who made his maiden speech this afternoon. I feel peculiarly qualified to welcome him, being one of the newest of new boys in your Lordships' House. May I say that I appreciated greatly his remarks on literacy and numeracy and particularly his warning about relevance, because in many ways in the world we are discussing this afternoon we are embarked upon a

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journey without maps. He did, very sagely, point out the difficulty of indulging in too detailed training at too early a stage when the pace of technology is changing as it is. He also drew attention to the difficulties which small firms must experience if they are to accommodate training for the future.
The Government will respond to the report by the summer recess. Indeed, they would not be giving sufficient attention or weight to the report if they did so before then. It crosses many departmental boundaries; but the debate, apart from being a learning opportunity for me, will help my colleagues in formulating our views. The one thing I should like to assure all your Lordships this evening is that we recognise the immense economic importance of these technologies. It is in training and, in particular, training for tomorrow's world, that we must concern ourselves. It affects the quality of our workforce and the ability of our nation to compete in world markets, and ultimately of course it affects our employment prospects.
I have just returned from a journey in China, where the standard of our current technology was admired and all encouragement was given to us to enter into joint ventures with the Chinese. But the quality of that technology will not last if we do not ourselves indulge and continue to indulge in what I see today as our own cultural revolution, for anyone who goes regularly into schools and colleges as I do will have recognised the remarkable changes that are now taking place. It is not so much the new programmes and courses: I must tell your Lordships that with TVEI and CPVE and all the other new initials, the changes are formidable and so is the very attitude to change itself.
It was not always so. It is now well over 100 years since a Royal Commission warned us of the dangers of ignoring the vocational and the technical in our school system. We would, they said, run the risk of losing our dominant position in the industrial world. We did, my Lords. As little as three years ago few secondary school pupils followed any form of vocational curriculum; yet in only two more years about one in 10 of all pupils between the ages of 14 and 18 will be pursuing technical or vocational studies. And I believe that this is just the beginning.
For those who choose to leave school at 16, the world has changed even faster. At the beginning of this decade only 30 per cent. of young people leaving to start work received any kind of proper training, and by the end of this decade I expect the proportion to be nearer 80 or 90 per cent. Nor are we just concerned with those under 18, because in the universities and polytechnics the same process continues. In this decade alone the number of students taking first degrees in science and technology will have increased by over 40 per cent. I believe that we have seen an historic and, I very much hope, an irreversible shift. Our educational system has begun to realise the needs of industry and commerce and to appreciate that we need to inculcate enthusiasm and enterprise, that we must prepare young people for a life that includes work, even one that includes self-employment, and that attitudes and behaviour in the world of education have begun to recognise that we must prosper as a
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trading nation, for our most lasting resource is the skill, energy and the sheer enterprise of our people.
But all this did not happen by chance. The process has been gathering pace throughout this decade, and the Chancellor's Budget last week, in signalling three important changes, marked a further stage forward. These changes affected people both under and over 18 and together they represent a major packet of reform. First, we are going to expand the youth training scheme so that it can be a two-year scheme. It will be available to all who leave school at 16 and it will, I hope, lead to recognised vocational qualifications. The Manpower Services Commission begin to discuss the scheme this week and the precise shape will depend upon them. The Government will make available an extra £125 million in 1986–87, and an extra £300 million in 1987–88. By that year the whole scheme will cost some £1,100 million.
Then we can truly say that unemployment need no longer be an option for anyone under 18; and that is a claim that few if any, other nations can make. However, that is not its purpose. Rather, I hope that we shall be creating a kind of national apprenticeship based on qualifications rather than on time serving. It will go well beyond the limited range of occupations covered by the traditional apprenticeships, and although we might be heading towards the philosophies practised by Germany and Japan, I hope that the very basis of the youth training scheme will encourage flexibility and allow for the changing circumstances of the world to come.
Next, the Chancellor found extra funds, amounting to some £20 million, to increase in-service training for teachers; and I can assure the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, that this is indeed new money. The TVEI programme has been very popular with pupils; it has been very popular with parents and also with teachers. But there is a shortage of trained teachers and we must have the right skills available in the schools. We must take good teachers and give them the skills to teach the subjects of tomorrow.
Finally, we are giving an extra £43 million over the next three years to provide extra places in higher education for the science and technology students which industry so badly needs. In this connection, I can certainly assure the noble Lords, Lord Rochester and Lord Kearton, and also the noble Baroness, Lady David, that the greater part of the £43 million (some £31 million) represents additional expenditure in the higher education sector. Some £12 million is redeployed from the UGC grant.
But this is not new for in other ways in the past few years there has been a significant shift in higher education away from the arts. The output of engineers and technologists is already planned to increase by 2,000, or some 12 per cent., from now until the end of this decade. The new programme will add a further 4,000 or so places on engineering and computer science courses.
However, if we are to meet the challenge of our competitors more urgent and vigorous action is needed. Our policies, and particularly those which the Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for Employment are pioneering, are essential ingredients. However, we cannot do it alone: we need

835
the active support of employers, both to meet their own immediate training needs and to take an interest in what is going on in schools and colleges. I welcome the increasingly close links that are being forged between schools and industry. Both have much to gain. We must look to employers to exert an even greater influence in the future. We must further develop the links between technology and training; and I agree wholeheartedly with the importance attached to this by the noble Lord, Lord Gregson. I sometimes think that we have more young people today who understand BASIC than French. It was the Micros in Schools programme that gave them their start and we must build on it. We have over 170 information technology centres—ITECs—in the youth training scheme alone. We have an Open Tech programme which will shortly be providing training for some 50,000 people a year, both at home and at work. We have the PICKUP programme in the colleges, offering a selection of courses tailored to individual manufacturer's needs, and we have the MSC's adult training strategy. I promise your Lordships that the next century will not be like the last.
The noble Lord, Lord Gregson, and all the members of the Select Committee, will know that it does not fall to me today to reply to detailed recommendations in the report, and the Government will in due course and before the Recess do that. However, there are some matters upon which I should like to comment. I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lords, Lord Gregson and Lord Sherfield, about the need for a broadly-based curriculum. Our policy is to ensure that young people are not forced into far-reaching choices too early and we must maintain and keep that flexibility. One of the difficulties, which I suspect we are now facing as a nation in accelerating the production of electronic engineers, can be seen when we look back through our educational system and realise that choices have to be made at 14 years of age which ultimately affect the output from the universities nine years later.
If I may comment on what the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, said, and on the statements made this afternoon about the differences in the educational sector between Japan and this country and even the United States, it was noticeable to me during my visit to Japan how few individuals change their employers, and how Japan has evolved an educational system which reflected this. It was an intensive general education until the age of 18 and then a detailed training and retraining programme throughout the working life within the great companies. But employers trained with confidence because individuals never changed jobs, while I suspect—and perhaps this over-simplifies the position slightly—that in the United States individuals train because they always change jobs. Till now we have possibly suffered from the worst of both worlds.
I agree very much with what the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, and the noble Baroness, Lady Platt, said about the need to get more girls to study science and technology. I believe that the achievement of a broader-based curriculum and TVEI will go far to secure this. I think I should remind your Lordships that of all adults of employable age in the United Kingdom today, 66 per cent. are in employment. The
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comparable figure for Germany is 61 per cent.; for France it is 60 per cent., and for Italy it is 54 per cent. The explanation is that many more women work in our society than in our continental neighbours. What we must be concerned about is that their work within our society covers all grades and all occupations. I believe we shall now see that as the education system evolves. Certainly, in the TVEI programmes that I have seen, there has been little difference between the activities of young boys and girls.
I agree very much with your Lordships about the importance of continuing education and of updating. Education is no longer a rocket which you fire off at the beginning of your career and on which you coast through the rest of your working life. It changes, and will continue to change, and a three year degree cannot be the beginning or the end. To coin a phrase, it might be the end of the beginning, but it must be clearly seen and recognised that there is no limit to the amount of training and retraining which individuals will need.
Finally, I have noted what was said about an education and training board. I assure your Lordships that this recommendation will be carefully considered by the Government, which only last year asked the Manpower Services Commission to adopt the functions of a national training authority. We have to look very carefully at the interface between training and education and at where education and training merge.
I also listened very carefully to what the noble Lords, Lord Gregson and Lord Rochester, as well as many other noble Lords, said about the training levy. Of course, the Government will look carefully at this, as they will at all the recommendations. But if I may express a personal view, I very much doubt the value of a compulsory training levy. It was tried before, and it was felt by the vast body of employers and many training boards at that time, that a levy did not serve a useful purpose. It would reverse the direction of Government policy which is aimed at putting responsibility for training where it lies, with individuals and with individual employers. The training levy would, I suspect, mean more bureaucracy and perhaps would take away the sense of individual responsibility. On that matter, I agree most strongly with my noble friend Lord Bessborough.
Noble Lords asked about the level of university grants between now and the end of the decade. Provisional indications of this up to 1987 were given by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education in November 1983. They represent an increase in cash terms of about 2 per cent. a year. That reflects my right honourable friend's view of the scope for economies and the better use of existing resources. I regret that I can say nothing today about the position beyond 1987, save that proposals will be made in a Green Paper on higher education which my right honourable friend will publish later this year.
However, I feel that I should remind your Lordships that we are currently investing somewhat more than £3.8 billion a year in higher education and research, which is scarcely a starvation diet or parsimony, as the noble Lord, Lord Kearton, reminded us. Indeed, rather than limping along at 2½ per cent. the United Kingdom this year shares the highest growth rate in Europe and is forecast to do so next year.

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The noble Lord, Lord Nelson, asked for the Government's view on the use of technologies such as videos to enhance the learning process. In my previous incarnation within the Manpower Services Commission, we pioneered the use of distance learning techniques through the Open Tech. Even in my present job I have had many meetings with the Open University and have seen much that they have done. I hope and believe and anticipate that there is a great future for distance learning techniques within the Open University and within the methods pioneered by the Open Tech. Indeed, may I remind the noble Baroness, Lady David, that the Department of Education and Science did what the visiting committee recommended with the Open University, including postponing the loan to which the noble Baroness referred—
Baroness David: My Lords, will the Minister give way? When he talked about postponing the loan, did he mean that the Open University does not have to pay it back, or just that it is getting a little longer time to pay it back?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I believe that it is going more on the practice of the Department of Trade and Industry, which is postponing the time for paying it back. I agree very much with the noble Baroness, Lady David, about the shortage of university teachers in engineering and technology. This is a problem which the Government have to solve and they are asking industry in the short-term to loan qualified staff in order to help with this very real problem.
Finally, last Friday the Government issued an important statement on the teaching of science in schools. This set it as an objective for all our primary schools to introduce all their pupils to the elements of scientific methods, and for all our secondary schools to provide a broad education in science, physics, chemistry and biology for all children up to the age of 16. I regard that as a very great step forward.
We have had a very interesting debate this afternoon. This is a very real problem. I do not have to remind anyone in your Lordships' House that the young people leaving school this year will retire in the second third of the next century to a world which is unimaginable today. However, what is imaginable today to the Government is the need and the desire to do what is necessary to ensure that we will hold our rightful place in the world. Technology changes and the Government will ensure that we can provide the tools.
Lord Gregson: My Lords, I do not intend to delay the House this evening, as another debate has yet to come on. Perhaps I may first of all say "thank you" to everybody who has taken part in the debate tonight. I believe that this is the House of Lords at its very best, a demonstration of the real value of your Lordships' House. I wish to congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham on a most interesting and apposite speech. I look forward to many more contributions from him in the future. I thank the Minister for his reply this evening and I look forward
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with great interest to the eventual reply that we shall receive before the recess. I hope that in that reply the Government address this problem of the provision of excellence, because I believe that it is absolutely fundamental to our staying in any part of the forefront of technology. It is a problem which has not been addressed in this country for many, many years, and the sooner it is addressed, the better.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Parental Leave and Leave for Family Reasons: ECC Report
7.51 p.m.
Lord Seebohm Lord Seebohm rose to move, That this House takes note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on Parental Leave and Leave for Family Reasons (3rd Report, 1984–85, H.L. 84.)
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the television lights have gone out, but I hope to illuminate the meaning of parental leave and leave for family reasons, which I should think is a mystery to most Members of your Lordships' House. It derives from strong pressure from the equal opportunities lobby in the EEC. The report by the Select Committee refers to a draft EEC directive on parental leave and leave for family reasons. This directive was strongly supported by our own Equal Opportunities Commission and it follows on from the now well established provisions for maternity leave and has two quite distinct but related proposals. The concept of parental leave is to enable an employed parent, either the father or the mother, to stay at home to take sole or principal care of a child after the expiry of maternity leave during the first two years of a child's life; or in the case of an adopted child, during the first two years of the adoption if the child is under five years of age.
An employed parent could take parental leave only provided both parents were working, and they could not take leave together. Little research has been done on this subject and so the number of people eligible for this leave at any one time is not known; but it must be small. The committee's attempt at quantifying this suggests that 1 per cent. of male employees and possibly 2 per cent. of female employees might take up the option in any one year. This occurs in Appendix 3 to the report.
The draft directive provides for a minimum leave period of three months per child for each parent in the two-year period; that is to say, six months divided equally between them. There is also a part-time option if parent and employer can agree, which would extend the leave period proportionately. Other provisions are that leave could be taken at any time during the two years and that an allowance paid by the state may be made while on leave; but if any payment is made, it must be borne by the state and not by the employer.
The second type of leave is leave for family reasons. This would entitle a worker with family responsibilities to short periods of leave for pressing family reasons at any time. The directive gives a few examples of what would be covered, such as a spouse's or child's illness, death of a near relative, or a child's wedding. The directive does not give any indication of

839
the time factor; whether it refers to five years, five weeks or five months is just left vague. Other provisions are that the leave is open equally to men and women and that it would be paid by the employer in the same way as annual holidays.
It also provides that there should be more generous leave to one-parent families and families with three or more children under an age limit to be determined—all pretty vague. There was an amendment to the directive which appeared later during our investigations that this leave should be for limited rather than short periods—I am not quite clear what that meant—and that it should cover important as well as pressing family reasons. It also provided that leave should be extended where the worker is responsible for a disabled person living in the same household.
The draft directive aroused a great deal of interest, and evidence both oral and written was received from the CBI, the Department of Employment, the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Maternity Alliance, the National Council for One-Parent Families, Dame Shelagh Roberts, Member of the European Parliament, and the TUC. The committee also received from 23 other bodies written evidence for which we were most grateful.
I shall deal first with the latter proposal—that is, leave for family reasons—as we do not recommend its adoption. As I have said, the definition is vague, and after consulting our legal adviser we believe that it would be very difficult to state in legal terms what constitutes an important or pressing reason; and when there is disagreement between an employer and employee, who is to decide? If it involves a tribunal, it would be costly, and it would probably have an impossible task, frequently acting post facto as family crises often, if not usually, occur without warning. While it is clear that women tend to stay away from work more frequently than men to cope with such crises and may therefore be at a disadvantage from the equal opportunities point of view, the committee do not believe that legislation could or should provide a satisfactory framework for leave for family reasons and consider that the directive should be amended accordingly.
Parental leave is quite another matter. The Department of Employment and the CBI, while accepting the fundamental role of the family in society and that the original objectives of the directive may be desirable, say that the draft is unacceptable for three main reasons: first, cost; secondly, that this is not an appropriate area for legislation; and thirdly, that legislation might actually be counter-productive to achieving equal opportunities.
There is no evidence as to what might be the cost. The CBI believed that it would be considerable for firms, even though the payment was borne by the state, owing to the disruption it might cause, and that temporary replacements would take time to adjust and to acquire specialist skills. This would inevitably mean reduced efficiency and performance. Those arguments were supported by the British Bankers Association and by the Local Authority Conditions of Service Advisory Board.
The CBI also argued that the disruptive costs would be particularly hard on small firms. It also pointed out that many large firms operated on a branch basis where some units had only a handful of employees, and that the burden would be particularly hard if the absentee was in a supervisory position. On the second objection, both the department and the CBI argued that the proposed directive should not be the subject of legislation. The department went so far as to say that this is,
"an extremely appropriate area for voluntary negotiations",
but nevertheless admitted that the Government recognise that there is a problem. The CBI further stated:
"The proposals relate to matters that are primarily the responsibility of parents themselves and society as a whole, but not of employers".
To me that is a strange way of expressing these objections and it reminds me of the rather similar objections that were made in 1975 to the principle of maternal leave.
The third objection—that legislation would be counter-productive—was also made by the Federation of Business and Professional Women, since they consider that it would be equated by employers as an extension of maternity leave and therefore would prejudice their employment of women. The same objection was made to maternity leave and was proved to be completely untrue.
Having considered these objections, the committee examined the attitude of the member states. Apart from Ireland and Holland, they all have legislation already or, as in the case of Greece, are intending to do so, though naturally not on lines identical to the draft directive. It is therefore not something new in the Community.
Having children undoubtedly and inevitably disrupts women's working lives. Raising a family is a decision taken willingly, with full acceptance that it may result in returning to part-time and less highly paid jobs. Many women, however, after their 40 weeks of maternity leave, do return to full-time work. Some are able to continue significant careers. However, there is no legislation whatever to facilitate the assistance by men when family problems arise. I myself would rather like to have seen some legislation about paternal leave because I believe that the time when the wife has a child is probably the time when the father's presence is most needed, but that is not part of the suggestions from the EEC. Perhaps it would not matter so much if there were adequate arrangements for child care, but there are not. In 1983, there were under 30,000 places in local authority day nurseries—fewer than one place in 100 for all children under five years. These places are not available for families where both parents work.
In Sweden, where parental leave has been a right for some years, evidence shows that men are increasingly taking advantage of parental leave. The Equal Opportunities Commission, in giving oral evidence, said:
"What we have come to recognise is the direction in which social change has occurred as a result of individual choice by men and women".
They continue:
"We seek to provide support for the directive because it seems to us a sensible and practical way of assisting family life as it actually

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is in our society today. We have undertaken research which shows that fathers are more involved in family life and they have a growing desire for involvement. We are pressing for arrangements which do not penalise mothers who have chosen to work, or fathers who have chosen to take a greater if not equal share of domestic responsibilities".
The committee recognised the force of these arguments, and also considered the effect of these principles on the well-being of the children, particularly in the first two years of their lives. The committee feel that the time has come to take a positive step to establish the principle that what happens in the first two years of a child's life can have a vital influence on his or her entire life, and that both parents should be more closely involved than they have been during this period.
The committee have gone a long way to meet the objections of the Confederation of British Industry and the Department of Employment. We do not recommend proposals for legislation for leave for family reasons. We do not believe it would be wise to grant three months leave for parental leave, so we recommend reducing this to one month for a start. We consider that firms with fewer than 20 employees should be exempt. On this basis disruption would be reduced to something quite insignificant, cost would be minimised, and the engagement of temporary staff normally quite unnecessary. Some may argue that this advance is too slow. However, the view of the committee is that the principle needs to be established, and further extensions could take place later if the demand is there and employers find their worries misplaced, as they did over maternity leave.
The basic recommendations, therefore, are as follows: there should be EEC legislation for parental leave, but the minimum period should be for one month for each parent when the child is under two years of age: businesses with fewer than 20 employees should be exempt; parental leave should be paid. The method should be left to member states, but the best way would be from public funds as in the case of maternity leave.
This is a very shorthand description of the report and its findings. Subsequent speakers will no doubt take up points I have missed, or have under-stressed. The reasons I have been brief are, first of all, the lateness of the evening; secondly, the suggestions we put forward are very modest indeed and I do not think they need stressing very greatly; and, finally, I realise it is quite important that the noble Baroness, Lady Platt of Writtle, should be allowed to get to her TV set by 10.30 this evening.
May I end with a somewhat philosophical comment? Of course, the main thrust of the United Kingdom effort must be to restore and improve the economic wealth of the country. But it is a mistake not to make some modest advance on the social front at the same time. Material progress alone will not improve the quality of life. Money cannot buy everything, nor, incidentally, is misery the prerogative of the poor. To improve the condition of the family, and to encourage the participation of both parents when the children are very young, must have a high priority. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on Parental Leave and Leave for Family Reasons (3rd Report, 1984–85, H.L. 84.}—(Lord Seebohm.)
8.5 p.m.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I was a member of the sub-committee which produced this report. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, for his chairmanship of that sub-committee and for the very clear exposition of the report which he has just given to your Lordships. I hope I may be forgiven by him and by the other members of the Committee if I take issue—as I did in the Committee—with some of the conclusions in our report.
Perhaps I may say first that this is indeed a most useful document, full of facts and of arguments. I go along with the underlying theme that parental leave and leave for family reasons is very important indeed for modern parents, men and women, who want to share equally in the upbringing of their children, and in family responsibility generally. It is also good for the children, good for the marriage, good for family life; it is good for tapping the pool of talent which resides among the women of the nation, and it is good for job satisfaction among the work force. Increasingly it should become the norm where it is not so already.
The question is whether the EEC is right in wanting to require member states to legislate for this. I go along with the rest of the committee in saying that leave for family reasons is not a runner for legislation, if only because "pressing reasons" are not capable of being defined in legal terms, as the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, has said. It is right, and I believe courageous of the committee, to say what we do on that, that it is best left to voluntary agreement and mutual trust.
My Lords, I do take issue. however, with the conclusions on parental leave whereby, as the noble Lord has made clear, we are agreeing with the directive that every state should legislate so that every employee, man or woman with a young child, other than those in small businesses, could have paid leave for a month or longer to look after that child, and again for the next child and so on, the payment—as we say in the report—best made from public funds. This seems to me simply to be encouraging us Europeans in our amazing capacity to be our own worst enemy. Our most acute problems in the Community are lack of competitiveness worldwide and the difficulty of enabling new employment opportunities to open up fast enough to match the growing number of people wanting work.
Part of the European solution has to be a much more flexible labour market, freedom for employers and for the aspiring workforce to develop new work patterns to meet new needs in all sorts of ways. It is happening already. For example, in this country there is a massive increase in part-time employment, which we all know about. There is an increase of enormous proportions in self-employment. At present, one in 10 of the work force is self-employed. During the last two years, there has been an increase of 24 per cent. in the number of self-employed women. All over Europe,

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Governments are looking—as our Government are—for ways to reduce out-of-date constraints on the labour market, out-of-date fiscal arrangements, out-of-date employment legislation; for ways to combine increased competitiveness with room for more people to find employment. Surely it is going completely against the grain to suggest that, instead of encouraging more flexible and up-to-date voluntary arrangements, we should add to blanket employment protection, add to the cost and hassle of employing people, and add to the cost to the taxpayer of paying people.
In our summary of conclusions we say, as the noble Lord has explained, that there is no convincing evidence that parental leave would add to industry's costs. It is true that the costs could not be quantified; they have not been quantified by the Commission, either. The CBI and the Department of Employment agreed that the cost would be substantial—through payment via taxation or national insurance, through dislocation and disruption, and through the need to employ temporary replacements. That view was endorsed by the British Bankers Association and by the head of personnel of Boots.
A number of witnesses compared the arguments with the arguments against maternity leave in 1976 when that leave was introduced. They maintained that fears about maternity leave have proved groundless. It is true that for some employers the direct costs of maternity leave are small. One employer I asked who has 1,300 employees told me that last year only six took maternity leave. The costs were minimal because what costs there were could be recovered from the Government.
But for Tayside Regional Council's education authority, with a population in its area of 400,000 people, 54 teachers took maternity leave last year and nearly all of them had to be temporarily replaced. At current salaries that cost the ratepayers of Tayside £259,000, or 64 pence for every man, child and woman living in the region.
The firmest evidence given to the committee came from Sweden. The CBI put the cost in Sweden at 1.5 per cent. of the total salary bill, and 85 per cent. of that sum is paid by employers through their national insurance contributions. That leave includes leave for family reasons. It seems to me that that is no mean sum. In 1978–81, 22 per cent. of fathers took leave and all mothers—13 per cent. of the whole working population.
It is not easy to assess within the Community what the cost would be. Only Denmark and Italy have paid parental leave for all, and Denmark's scheme is new. As the noble Lord has said, there is no statutory parental leave in Ireland, the Netherlands or this country, neither is there any in Spain. What leave there is, is mainly unpaid, at the moment, in France, Germany, Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg and Portugal, except that in France mothers with three or more children receive payment; in Germany there is extended maternity leave for the private sector only; and in Belgium a person on parental leave can receive unemployment benefit if he or she has been replaced by an unemployed person.
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Thus the extent of the cost involved is hard to ascertain, but surely it is considerable. Surely that cost must to some extent be a disincentive rather than an incentive to employing young parents—men and woman. The cost to taxpayers would of course depend on the levels of payment and on the uptake. The committee says that that would be decided by the member state—but would the cost be 90 per cent. of the salary as in Denmark, 30 per cent. as in Italy, or what? That makes a big difference.
What about the self-employed? They are not mentioned in our report. Are all the 2,304,000 self-employed in the United Kingdom expected to finance employed people's leave out of their self-employed income tax? Or would they grant themselves leave at the state's expense? If so, at what rate?
I suggest that this report is courageous but not courageous enough. The previous EEC Commission which designed this directive had a penchant for social legislation that was not always very close to what the electorates of Europe really wanted or needed. Dame Sheila Roberts told the committee that the last European Parliament was in a hurry to get draft directives into place before their election, and that perhaps they did not look ahead carefully enough at the possible effects of the directive.
I believe it would have been more realistic and helpful if the committee had endorsed with enthusiasm the whole notion of parental leave as a helpful part of admirable new attitudes of caring parents who wish to share their responsibilities equally, and if we had said that legislation or guidelines should be left entirely to member states so that they can take account of what the people in their own states really want in the emerging labour market and with the urgent need for greater flexibility. With these reservations, I commend the report.
8.17 p.m.
Lord McGregor of Durris: My Lords, this report, though having the title, Parental Leave and Leave for Family Reasons, bears most importantly on the situation of women in the labour market. They have always constituted a significant part of the workforce. From early Victorian days until 1951, one quarter of all workers outside the home were women. That percentage is now more than 40 per cent. and is expected to rise until the end of this century. Fifty years ago, only 10 per cent. of women at work were married. Today they amount to some two-thirds.
In the past, motherhood was woman's whole existence. It is now a phase, which for most ceases before the age of 40 and is followed by more than one quarter of a century of active life. Economically active women are usually part-time workers and are therefore still primarily domestic workers and secondary wage earners in their families—except when they are living singly or being a lone parent.
Knowledge of the relationship between motherhood and employment, and between home and the labour market, and knowledge of the sexual division of labour within the family and of women's expectations generally in respect of all these life-regulating considerations, has been greatly extended by the survey Women and Employment: A Lifetime

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Perspective, by Jean Martin and Ceridwen Roberts. This admirable large-scale survey, undertaken jointly by the Office of Population Census and Surveys and the Department of Employment, is, in one respect, a most depressing document. Its findings reinforce many of the conclusions reached in 1982 in the report of your committee on voluntary part-time work. I will quote a passage from that survey:
"Many women in our survey experienced the labour market as highly segregated on the basis of sex, with men doing both different jobs and more having more of the supervisory and managerial jobs … women working part-time are more likely to be in lower level occupations; over half of the part-timers are in social classes IV and V … compared with just under a quarter of women working full-time … Overall, part-time workers are less likely to have access to or to have good provision of conditions of employment like paid holidays, sick pay or an occupational pension scheme. They are also less likely to have promotion and training facilities in their jobs and less likely to be a member of, or to have the opportunity to belong to, a union".
It is much harder to be a woman than to be a man. Women have to play two major roles in a society which expects them to be mothers and workers and which has done very little, and that half-heartedly, to adapt to the changes that have flowed from the increased share of work outside the home now carried by married women.
In the setting which I have just sketched the subject matter of the report now under discussion is significant because it will make employers come directly to grips with the family responsibilities and commitments of their employees—male as well as female. The employers' evidence to the committee, like that of the Department of Employment, was extremely disappointing. To the proposals of the draft directive to give both parents enforceable rights of leave to look after very young children (I shall restrict what I say wholly to parental leave because the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, explained why the committee had rejected the proposals for leave for family reasons), employers emphasised, among other considerations, the costs and their effects both on Britain's competitive position and on small businesses and the inappropriateness of legislation for purposes better achieved by voluntary negotiation.
Your Lordships' committee could not test the views of the Government and the CBI on costs because no data were brought forward. It was indeed surprising that the Government made confident assertions about costs and competitiveness without having inquired into, or assembled, empirical evidence. One is, therefore, left with a historical comment which, I think, bears upon the criticisms of the committee's report made by the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour. From the 18th century Quaker ironmasters, through the policies of people like Robert Owen and Titus Salt, or Joe Chamberlain in Birmingham, the Cadbury's at Bourneville, Lever at Port Sunlight, and all their 20th century successors, welfare capitalism always had its critics who prophesied that the time was not ripe and that the costs would lead to bankruptcy through inability to compete. That has not been the substance of the story, in my view, then or later.
The likelihood is that when workers enjoy better conditions and greater psychological security there will be higher productivities and such economic advantages as the flexibility in the labour market
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which the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, seeks. We are talking now, let us not forget, of a statistically large portion of the labour force—women part-time workers. I shall not find arguments on costs persuasive until they are quantified.
The other main argument against the proposal was that it should be left to negotiation between employers and workers. But all the evidence is that this cannot happen. We are dealing mainly with women part-time workers who, of all workers, are the worst represented and least able to negotiate voluntarily. The inescapable conclusion from many recent studies of women's experience in trying to reconcile the claims of marriage, motherhood and work is the existence of a firmly rooted double standard of occupational morality. This proposal would be a small step in the direction of that equality which society promises to women but denies to them in the labour market. It would bring fathers actively into the task of organising work and child care in partnership with their wives.
For the 750,000 lone parents and their 1,500,000 dependent children, parental leave will be a great benefit. I should like to quote a short passage from the evidence which the director of the National Council for One Parent Families gave orally to the committee. Dr. Smart said of the proposal for parental leave:
"One might wonder how that would help lone parents. Lone parents have not got that possibility of bringing in another partner to share in that care. But it does have a value precisely because it can help parents remain in that employment which is so important to the lone parent who has made the choice to go out to work. That lone parent does not have another wage on which she can depend. Giving up work because it is difficult to combine child care and work can lead to a serious decline in the standard of living, and any decline means a decline in the standard of living of the child in that family. I think what is more the Parental Leave proposal allows for a staggered period for a lone parent to go back to work. In other words, the work can be part-time for a given period. This we regard as absolutely vital in that transitional stage".
This really applies to all women. The crucial factor is bridging the transition from child-bearing back into the labour market and this proposal represents a very small step to that end.
The Government seek to make citizens independent and to stand on their own feet. That is why half the female lone parents in the country are at work. The alternative for them is long-term supplementary benefit; and those who can do so, work in order to avoid that stigma. Hence the imperative need for assistance in bridging the transition from motherhood to work.
The committee's recommendations are very modest. That is the word that its chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, used. They would entail the establishment of a principle and not the development of major policy; they accept the difficulties that might be faced by small businesses with fewer than 20 employees, which are excluded; and they set the period of parental leave at one month.
The foundations of economic change are social as well as economic. It would be unrealistic of the Government to espouse technological and economic innovation but at the same time to demur over new social recommendations. The one promotes the other.
I cannot conclude without expressing how much the committee owed to its chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, who has now retired from the chair. He led

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the committee from a wide knowledge of the social results of economic enterprise and a shrewd assessment of the strength and weaknesses of arguments. His urbanity and intellectual penetration are reflected in the reports written under his chairmanship, and his capacities were admired greatly by his colleagues.
8.31 p.m.
Baroness Platt of Writtle: My Lords, it is a matter of great pleasure to me and to the Equal Opportunities Commission that the Select Committee has come out positively in favour of the directive for parental leave. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, for his lucid and highly supportive exposition of the report. That for us is a matter of great importance, and we hope that it will influence the Government also to support such a directive.
Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, talked of, "One small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind". If this directive becomes law in the form that the committee suggests, that, too, will be one small step of great significance and a leap for man and womankind, too. It is a very necessary step towards achieving full equality of opportunity at work for men and women.
The European Community right from its inception has been very sympathetic towards equal opportunities for men and women and has through the use of its treaties and directives ensured progress which would otherwise not have been made. Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome and its ensuing effects have helped the cause of equal opportunities considerably.
Our own country took the lead with all-party support for the Sex Discrimination Act, the Equal Pay Act and the resultant setting-up of the Equal Opportunities Commission almost a decade ago. In those days much of the Act and its effects were novel and many people did not take it seriously. Only a decade later people take it far more seriously and see the matter of equal opportunities in employment and other fields in a more balanced light. By the end of the century I venture to prophesy that the whole question of equal opportunities will be taken very much more for granted.
I have been chairman of the EOC now for nearly two years and I have had a great deal to learn on the matter of equal opportunities for men and women generally which it is the duty of the commission to promote. It is important to give young people equal opportunities in education, to encourage them to acquire precious skills and qualifications, to enter worthwhile careers and to contribute to the life and prosperity of our nation. In following that course, women as well as men acquire knowledge and experience of great value in a time of crucial shortage of skills, especially in the new technologies. Last year was Women Into Science and Engineering Year. More women and girls are already entering those fields of work with great success, and their employers are very grateful for their contribution.
As I mentioned in the earlier debate, in 1981 there were 900,000 18 year-olds. In 1995 there will be only 600,000. We are already desperately short of technological skills, as the other report brought to your
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Lordships' House this afternoon states categorically. As a result, that committee emphasises the need to continue the campaign to encourage girls to acquire qualifications and experience in these fields.
I have already referred tonight to a film that will go out on Central Television encouraging just that action among girls. I do not actually think that I shall see it, but I have met the girls taking part, who at around 20 years of age already have BTec National Certificates and are working for Higher National Certificates in electronic engineering. The anxiety that they express to me is how they are to retain their hard-won skills and knowledge if they marry and have a family. I venture to suggest that their employers will be anxious, too.
The Engineering Council has set up a career break working party to study that subject, of which I am a member, so as to issue a policy document later this year to provide a variety of options to employers to help young married women to care for their families and to continue to contribute their scarce skills to the prosperity of our engineering industry. As several Ministers have stated categorically, that is a vital need as our oil reserves decrease in the coming decade. The House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology also emphasises that that matter is of great importance.
Naturally, with the dramatic drop in the number of 18 year-olds by 1995 to which I have referred, there will be increased competition among employers in all fields to recruit able young people, girls as well as boys. Whether it be in the professions or in such fields as banking, commerce in general, the service industries or the public sector, there will be a greater need for able young people capable of applying the new technologies, coupled with their own specialist knowledge. Young women will have to be educated and trained and attracted into these skilled fields of work far more in the future than in the past. If they and the country have invested resources in that way, their precious skills and knowledge must not be lost. I believe that that will engender a fundamental change of attitude to the employment of women before the turn of the century, leading to far greater real equality of opportunity in their work-place.
I have highlighted a special case, but this directive would make a positive step towards solving these problems for other employers and employees and their families. After maternity leave, parental leave could assist either parent, whether on a full-time or part-time basis. The importance of such a period of leave is that it would ensure continuity of employment for those parents who wish or need to care for their baby themselves for a period of time during the first two years of infancy. We know for a number of mothers and some fathers this is their choice. They should not be penalised for making it.
I was delighted by the emphasis that the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, laid on the importance of the involvement of fathers during the birth of the child and afterwards. I am sure that that is true, and it is a very encouraging sign in our society that fathers wish for it too. On a slightly sentimental note, last week I became a granny and I have a little granddaughter. One of the most charming and delightful things is how much my son wants to be involved in her upbringing.

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We would hope that enlightened employers would honour the original three months of the directive, but one month is a step on the road. If the part-time option is taken by the mother or the father, both parents can keep in touch with what is happening at work while retaining their desirable close bonds with their baby. I know how sorry my noble friend Lady Faithfull is that she is not here today. She also was a member of the committee and feels deeply the necessity for those close bonds. For a Government which believe sincerely in family life, as I do also, that is a very practical option. The Equal Opportunities Commission subordinated the issue of paid leave to the achievement of the principle of parental leave. However, if the Government adopt the recommendation of the committee that the parental leave should be paid out of public funds, that is an extra bonus.
We also supported the provision of family leave to be available for all the multifarious needs of families where both parents are working, to cope with the crises of children or old people who are dependent on working people, for assistance in attending hospital or doctors' surgeries. It is increasingly available in other member states of the EEC and we hope that it will go through. We laid considerable emphasis on the needs of handicapped children, adopted children, elderly or disabled dependants, of whom women are the major carers. We believe deeply in the justice of our cause.
The European Committee put in hours of careful work listening to and studying evidence on costs, European practice, possible take-up and the effect on women's employment if this directive on parental leave were enacted. They found that from experience it is likely to be used sparingly at first before its use becomes more commonplace, as in Sweden, although even there it is still applicable to only a small proportion of people. I believe that would be true here, too.
No one has assessed the cost accurately, but the committee did not feel that it would be great and, with the exception of small industries, might be exaggerated. Can we afford not to do this? In the 1981 census in a 10 per cent. sample there were 5,770 economically inactive women with higher degrees—not just first degrees—compared with 360 men in the same category. This is a waste we cannot afford as a nation. If the loss of an employee for three months is "very, very disruptive", what if the employee is lost for a very much longer time because he or she cannot leave a small baby? If arrangements like these are made to help parents for the very short time of dependent babyhood—and I refer to the graph by C. Roberts and J. Martin, on page 64 of the report, to see how the trend back to work is developing—they can attend to their families in the way that they and we, too, would desire and yet continue to use their skills and knowledge to the benefit and prosperity of our country.
I hope that this House and the Government will take note of the support given by the Select Committee, so that a directive on parental leave is approved by the Council of Europe.
8.43 p.m.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, I feel some diffidence about speaking in this debate having joined only towards the end of its inquiry the committee which, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, considered the draft directive on parental leave and leave for family reasons. It seems right that in support of my noble friend Lord McGregor of Durris I should contribute very briefly to the discussion.
During the passage of the Employment Protection Act 1975 through this House my noble friends and I supported the provisions relating to maternity leave. The principles that we then favoured apply equally, in my view, to legislation on parental leave. I think, moreover, that on the balance of the evidence which the committee heard they have rightly concluded that statutory provision for such leave should he made for a limited period following the termination of maternity leave.
A major argument against introducing legislation in this field was that of cost, as a number of noble Lords have said. I think it is unfortunate that no authoritative estimate of costs was made available to the committee by the Government or anybody else. However, it appears that the likely take-up of parental leave, as the noble Baroness, Lady Platt, has just reminded us—that is, compared with other causes of absence—would be small, that it would be mainly among women, and in practice would be an extension of maternity leave.
It is true that concern has been expressed about the possible effect of legislation on small businesses, but the committee have taken this into account in recommending that initially firms employing fewer than 20 people should be exempt from the provisions of the directive. Given the discretionary arrangements for parental leave that are already made by larger firms, and that the committee concluded that subject to a community minimum of one month it should be left to member states to decide how long the period of leave should be, I do not think it can reasonably be claimed that implementation of the findings of the report before us would have any substantial impact on the industrial competitiveness of this country even outside Europe.
On the other hand, it has been argued by the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, that the method of payment for parental leave should be left to member states, or rather that the committee in recommending that method are wrong in principle to advocate that in the United Kingdom payment should be made from public funds. But already, as I understand it, in this country in the case of maternity leave the 12 weeks flat rate allowance is paid from and funded as part of the national insurance system and up to six weeks maternity pay can be reclaimed by employers from the Maternity Pay Fund. In those circumstances it seems to me reasonable that the same principle should also apply to payment for parental leave.
In the absence of any decisive evidence on costs one way or the other I am content to support the conclusion of the committee that the potential benefits of parental leave for child care and for equal opportunities at work are great enough to outweigh

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any possible disadvantages of limited legislation in this field.
On the question of legislating for leave for family reasons I have very little to add to what the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, has already said. It seems to me that there is some force in the argument that difficulties might arise in defining with sufficient precision what should be regarded as important or pressing reasons for this purpose and in implementing the legislation once it had been drafted. For that reason, therefore, I am content to support also the recommendation of the committee regarding leave for family reasons.
There may of course be those who will say that the report now before us amounts to only a shabby compromise and that the committee should have either accepted the minimum period of three months parental leave provided for in the directive, along with leave for family reasons, or thrown out the proposals altogether. I do not agree. I am a firm believer in making progress wherever possible through consensus. I know that sometimes such an approach evokes feelings of impatience, on occasion, even among some of my noble friends. But in my experience the options of inaction or confrontation are often worse.
In the case of this particular inquiry I was impressed by what was said by Dame Shelagh Roberts. Mention of her has already been made on two occasions this evening. I was impressed by what she had to say in the only evidence I joined the committee in time to hear; namely, that to go for a period of three months minimum leave could be an example of where the best might be the enemy of the good. As it is, I believe that acceptance of the principle involved represents a modest, inexpensive first step which could later be built on in company with our European partners if it proved beneficial in practice. If it did not—which I find very hard to credit—then, at worst, experience would have demonstrated that nothing further should be done in the matter. Therefore, on all those grounds I am glad to support the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm in commending this report to the House.
8.50 p.m.
Lord McCarthy: My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, says he feels diffident as a latecomer to the committee, I feel positively humble as someone who was not on the committee at all and who did not even give evidence to it, as the noble Baroness, Lady Platt of Writtle, did. Nevertheless, I want to say something about this excellent report. First, I should like to congratulate, as everyone who has spoken has done, the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, on the oversight of such an excellent report which is quite unanswerable so far as it goes. Secondly, I should like to separate out, as I see them, the two different sorts of arguments put forward by those who oppose the directive and the recommendations in the report. Thirdly, I should like to say something about what I regard as the only significant argument that can really be put forward against this proposal, although, unfortunately for the Government. I do not think it is an argument that is available to them.
The first set of arguments—there are four in number—which I find all inconclusive and to some extent self-contradictory are the arguments that do not relate to cost. The arguments that relate to cost would
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be plausible and might even be coercive if the figures were available or if those figures that are available leant in the direction of suggesting that this is an extremely expensive exercise. Let us look briefly at the arguments that have nothing to do with cost. The first is that the proposal would discourage the employment of women because employers, in order to avoid the effect of the legislation, would prefer to employ men. According to my understanding, this was the argument put forward by the Federation of Business and Professional Women, and, if I understand what the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, was saying, it was part of her argument, too.
As has been stated, and as the report itself said, whereas there may have been a certain surface plausibility about this argument when it was advanced in order to argue against the introduction of maternity legislation, there is no surface plausibility about this argument because this legislation gives rights to men as well as to women—just as much as to women. Indeed, it might be argued that the only way in which employers could avoid the effect of this legislation would not be that they employed men rather than women but if they sought to employ single people rather than married people—except of course that in 1985 we cannot be sure that only married people are going to have families. So this is not a discriminatory form of legislation. It would not discriminate against women. Indeed, it would make it rather more easy for women to be employed and for women to remain in the labour market. To that extent, it would make the labour market more perfect and more flexible. Any laissez faire economist should be very much in favour of this legislation.
Secondly, it is argued that there is something about legislation in this area which is inappropriate because we must preserve flexibility and we must preserve discretion. If you examine this of course the discretion that you must preserve is the discretion of employers. There are two things that I would say about this argument. The first is that the evidence put before the Committee by the employers themselves—the evidence of the CBI—suggests that voluntarism has not solved the problem. You cannot solve this problem by voluntarism because you cannot volunteer to give yourself leave. Leave comes from the employer. That is why we have to legislate. The evidence of the CBI, for example, suggests that only one-third of the firms that it contacted had any formal policies in this area at all and that two-thirds of the firms it contacted left the provision of parental leave to the hazards of individual managers. There is no evidence for I would say the near slanderous assertion or, if they write it, the libellous assertion of some of those who gave evidence such as the British Bankers' Association that if we were to legislate in this field, if we were to introduce minimum standards in this field, those good employers who now give their employees as good standards as the legislation would propose—or in some cases better—would cancel their voluntary arrangements. Yet this is being suggested, and was suggested, as an argument against the appropriateness of legislation.
It is an unjustifiable slur upon such excellent firms as Marks and Spencer, IBM, and many of the banks themselves, that they would cancel their existing

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excellent provisions because the Government decided to legislate. That is not what they did in relation to unfair dismissal. It is not what they do in relation to health and safety legislation. It is not what they do in relation to sex discrimination or race discrimination legislation. Good firms do not cancel existing practices because we legislate minimum standards. Of course they do not. They operate their own system on top of the minimum standard.
A third fallacious argument put forward by several people before the committee—it has also been put forward on the Floor of the House tonight—is that there is no widespread demand for statutory provision and that we can take as evidence of the absence of widespread demand the fact that trade unions do not ask for it in collective bargaining. This argument was effectively deflated by the noble Lord, Lord McGregor of Durris, who said that the great majority of people about whom we are talking are part-time women who are not organised.
However, there is an even better, or as good, argument in addition to that. This legislation, the Committee tells us, would affect 1 per cent. of male workers and 2 per cent. of female workers. You do not find trade unions suggesting, in their annual claims for improvements in conditions of service, things which benefit 1 per cent. of male members and 2 per cent. of female members. That is not how collective bargaining works. What trade unions look for are common claims which run across the board and which benefit most if not all. That is why we have to have legislation. That is why we require legislation on unfair dismissal. That is why we require legislation in this field.
The final fallacy—which I must say I am surprised to find that even the committee accepts—is the argument that we should not have legislation for family leave, saying that there is something in words like "important" or "pressing"—words of this kind—which defy the wit of the British judiciary. That is slanderous or libellous. In fact, such phrases are interpreted by the courts every day. The industrial tribunals interpret words and phrases like "reasonability" or "some other substantial reason". This Government have recently passed such a delphic phrase in relation to membership of a union as "a deeply held personal conviction". If you interpret "deeply held personal conviction", you can say what is "important" and what is "pressing". After all, phrases of this kind are interpreted in the Swedish legislation and no one says it is unwelcome.
I come therefore to the argument, the possibly plausible argument, on grounds of costs. Here, we really have a most remarkable situation. Two particular sets of people who gave evidence to the Committee were pushed on the question of costs. The Department of Employment was pushed; and the CBI was pushed. The Department of Employment, or the Government, appeared to base their argument on costs on what I would call the Groucho Marx theory of social accounting:
"Whatever it is—I'm against it".
The only difference is that at least Groucho Marx sang it. The unfortunate Under-Secretary, Mr. Talintyre, was sent along to explain the cost argument and page 2 of the minutes of evidence of the Department of
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Employment said that these proposals would increase employers' costs and increase the administrative burden on them:
"thus damaging competitiveness and hindering the key task of reducing unemployment".
Because this is a professional committee, he was immediately asked by my noble friend Lord Chitnis:
"are you just guessing or have you any hard information based on experience in other countries or anything else that leads you to this conclusion?"
At that point Mr. Talintyre turned to his present Principal, Mr. Cranston, who said:
"we are not currently aware of any research or evaluation of legislation that has been introduced which gives any indication of the costs involved".
Nevertheless, before Mr. Talintyre left the Committee he felt that he had to make it clear that, despite this total lack of evidence and this absolute lack of figures, for all that it was still Government policy. His final words were:
"I think the Government's position on costs really is that whatever they are"—
in other words, even if they are infinitesimal—
"that is not a priority for expenditure at the present time".
As I say, that is the Groucho Marx view of social accounting—"Whatever it is—I'm against it". Of course, we know that the Government say this about other matters. We know that the Government frequently refuse to give us figures, but this is the first time we have had embodied, as it were, in a committee report of the House, this particular approach to facts.
To do them credit, the CBI put forward figures; they used facts. The trouble was that they did not add up. They used the example of Sweden. Mr. Edwards told the Committee that the direct cost of parental and family leave arrangements in Sweden—that is to say, the costs which the state or the social service system bears—are approximately 1.5 per cent. of the pay bill. He then said that if another 1.5 per cent. is added for dislocation to employers in training costs, replacements, and so on for the British pay roll you get a figure of roughly 3 per cent. As previous speakers have said, that is a rather frightening figure for something of this sort.
However, there are several things wrong with it. First, the Swedish provisions are roughly three times as generous as the directive proposes and, therefore, 0.5 per cent. of the pay bill would be a more realistic figure. Secondly, so far as direct costs are concerned, they assume a payment by Government of 90 per cent. of gross earnings as an allowance—a very generous figure. If, instead, we had a lower allowance, such as a flat rate allowance based on net average earnings, then the whole thing would be only half as expensive—say, 0.25 per cent. of the pay roll. In any case, why do we assume that the dislocation in training, replacement, and so on would cost another 1.5 per cent.? The fact is that we know from evidence from the PSI survey that the overwhelming majority of employed males and females would not be involved in this legislation at all. The 1980 survey showed that only 18 per cent. of firms surveyed on the question of maternity leave said that they had some problem adjusting to the legislation, and only 5 per cent. said that they had a particular difficulty.

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I am surprised that the Committee should listen to the arguments about the small firms and say that this is a particularly difficult problem for the small firms. The point about these small firms which comes out very clearly in the PSI survey is that, because of the turnover of labour in small firms, because of the fact that small firms tend to employ middle-aged, married women with high rates of turnover, they have very low rates of pregnancy among their staff. The PSI survey finds that firms of 10 or fewer employees have an employee with a baby once in eight years. A firm with 10 or fewer employees, with an employee who wants to return after pregnancy—and that is what you have to do to qualify under this legislation—has one such incident every 30 years. It is this against which we must protect small firms—an incident that happens once every 30 years. It is this from which we must exempt them under the legislation—something that happens once every 30 years. Poor, poor dears!
The fact is that if we take into account what is being suggested, we get. not 3 per cent. of the pay bill, which is what the CBI suggests, but something like one-tenth of the CBI figure, or 0.3 per cent. of the pay bill. As the committee whose report we are considering tonight suggests only one month's leave, its proposals are for 0.1 per cent. of the pay bill. As far as we can see, that is the size of the burden. I suggest that it is particularly implausible for this Government at this time to suggest that 0.1 per cent. of the pay bill could not be afforded. The only plausible argument—and this is my final point—would he that that, even at these prices, at this insignificant figure, the British economy is now in such a state that we cannot afford it.
An incoming Labour Government might argue in that way. They might say that to get private manufacturing back, to repair the ravages of the education system, to put something into repairing the essential infrastructure, and to get the welfare state back to where it was in 1979, they could not accept any new commitment in any area. However, I suggest that that is not an argument which is available to the Minister tonight. Therefore, it seems to me that in logic and in justice he has no alternative but to accept this report.
9.8 p.m.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead): My Lords, I should like first to thank the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, and members of the committee for this report. Its consideration of the issues involved has undoubtedly been careful and wide ranging. This has been reflected in the speeches which we have heard this evening and they have drawn on the considerable experience which all your Lordships, and not least the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, who spoke last, have on this subject. Of course, we have heard twice today on the subject of employment and training from my noble friend Lady Platt and the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, so I think they are particularly to be thanked.
However, while the Government agree with some of the committee's views we are not able to agree with the main conclusions. I do not believe that this detracts in any way from the usefulness of the committee's analysis. Indeed, I believe that the report highlights
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some of the inadequacies which the Government have always seen in these proposals. Before I go any further, may I make the point that the Government are committed (this was said in the department's explanatory memorandum to Parliament) to consult the CBI, the TUC, and other interested parties—and not least, of course, the Equal Opportunities Commission—in due course. Until recently discussions in Brussels had not begun in earnest, but now, especially with the publication of the committee's report, we shall shortly be writing to interested parties about these proposals in order to invite views, and we shall he drawing attention to the committee's report, and the Government will be reporting the outcome of these consultations to the committee and to your Lordships' House.
The Government have always had strong views about these proposals. In response to a criticism made in the final paragraph of the report may I just say clearly that the views I am giving are the Government's views and not the views of just one department. As I hope to show briefly, these views are consistent with research which the Government have undertaken, or sponsored, or of which they are otherwise aware.
Indeed, the committee has reached substantially the same conclusion on leave for family reasons; namely, that it is not a proper subject for legislation. But the committee have drawn a different conclusion so far as parental leave is concerned. I am bound to say that the Government are not convinced by the arguments for doing so which are set out in paragraphs 77 to 83 of the report.
The argument that voluntary negotiations would produce different results in different organisations is not a strong one: different employers—and employees—have different priorities, needs, and circumstances. The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, put forward the view that trade unions are not wont to bargain for 1 per cent. or 2 per cent. of employees, but I think I am right in saying that trade unions did negotiate very extensive maternity leave arrangements before the 1975 legislation went on to the statute book. It is, of course. 1 per cent. or 2 per cent. in any one year that we might be talking about—quite a large proportion of people over a longer period. Here, of course, we find a well-known trade union doing just this. NALGO, which has placed emphasis on parental issues, has been negotiating, I understand, an increasing number of local agreements on time off to care for sick dependents.
What this seems to suggest is not that employers are resisting a massive pent-up demand for parental leave, but that, if anything, demand is itself limited. The noble Lord opposite, and the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, will I think both say—and indeed others of your Lordships may say—that that is a surprising thing to assert; and to some extent I go along with your Lordships' surprise. After all, there is evidence to support the common-sense proposition that there are difficulties for employees in reconciling the demands of child care with the demands of employment.
Moreover, these difficulties undoubtedly have a particular impact on the employment opportunities of women. Perhaps the most substantial evidence on this, widely quoted in the Minutes of Evidence, is contained

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in the 1980 Women Employment Survey undertaken by the Department of Employment and the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, though there is other evidence besides. But this is a problem to which parental leave is only one of a number of possible solutions. It is in itself a temporary and partial solution.
Day nurseries, whether public, private or operated by the employer, child minders whether employed for the purpose, or the child's grandparents or other members of the family, part-time work, or shared child minding among friends and neighbours—all these have a role to play in helping working parents to bring up children, and indeed must have a role to play if one is talking about the 2 million and more self-employed about whom my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour reminded us.
Moreover, parental leave, as proposed in the draft directive, cannot easily be used to deal with temporary emergencies such as, for instance, the sickness of a child, for the proposal is for one continuous period of leave of which the employee must give adequate notice, and it is difficult to see how this condition could be dispensed with in a statutory scheme of parental leave, much as I think we might wish to do so.
I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, make a point about having part-time parental leave to stagger the return to work after childbirth, which is particularly valuable, the noble Lord said, for one-parent families. But one must remember that the proposal is of the kind that I have just reminded your Lordships and that negotiations have to end up with the agreement of the employer.
Lord McCarthy: My Lords, is it fair to say that the kind of problems that the noble Lord is talking about are intended to be dealt with in the provisions under the draft directive on leave for family reasons?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, very possibly, but "leave for family reasons", for reasons which were deployed effectively not only in the report but also by the chairman of the committee, is a proposal which has not found favour either with the committee or with the Government.
By contrast, there is another way out. That is to have voluntary arrangements. In case the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, may think that I am clutching at a straw in saying that, may I remind him that the women and employment survey suggests that the vast majority of husbands and wives have no difficulty in taking time off to deal with emergencies affecting their children. Indeed, I will quote from that report, which concluded:
"Only a tiny minority of either husbands or wives appear to have difficulty in taking time off in connection with their children".
Let me be clear about what it is I am saying. The Government believe that parental leave is one of a number of means of helping working parents to bring up children, but, like my noble friend Lady Carnegy, we are simply not convinced that there is a case for picking out this one means to that end and imposing it on employers regardless of what they can afford or of their employees' particular needs and priorities. It is simply not comparable with the situation that
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persuaded the previous Government in the past to legislate on maternity, where one has a situation where women simply cannot carry on working, for obvious physiological reasons, for a particular period each side of childbirth.
Regardless of the arguments for or against domestic legislation on this subject there is also the question whether Community legislation would be appropriate. The proposal which comes from the committee purports to harmonise working conditions to improve the functioning of the Common Market. But in fact, far from harmonising a range of conflicting national provisions, it would introduce more extreme prescriptive legislation than exists anywhere in the Community. The Government do not believe that the case for this type of Community legislation has been made out. The report does not appear to address this point, but, interestingly, it concludes that member states should be allowed much more discretion in fixing the period of parental leave than the Commission have proposed.
I should say a brief word about the costs of the proposals. The Commission, whose proposals these are, has not so far been able to produce any estimate of the possible takeup or impact on costs and employment. The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, made some fun of the evidence whch was given on this aspect of the problem. But, if he and the chairman of the committee will forgive me for saying so, the point is that we are surely not looking at the overall national cost. What we want to know is what would be the impact of this proposal on individual firms? This is very hard to estimate and, although the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, has given us some very interesting figures this evening, he addressed himself entirely to the overall scene. I am suggesting that for the individual firm there would be costs: costs of disruption, costs of employing and training temporary replacements, and—one has to say it—also there would be costs from time to time of tribunal cases. The overall balance of costs and benefits perceived by the committee is all very well in an aggregate sense, but I am saying that the balance is different for each firm depending upon its circumstances. Where benefits clearly exceed costs or where the net costs are not significant, of course there is no reason why a firm should not embrace such proposals voluntarily if its employees want them. On the other hand, thee proposals will have an adverse effect on many employers' costs, and this fact is somewhat lost by looking at the question from an aggregate and, I think, an artificial national perspective.
If I may say so, I think that the committee have acknowledged the force of these considerations by proposing to exempt firms with less than 20 employees from the proposal. But it is not just small firms which could find the costs considerable—and here I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, and with some of the evidence which has been quoted in the report in paragraph 52. At a time when we are arguing strongly within the European Community for debate to centre on unemployment and on ways to resolve it, really, implementation of this proposal would be a wrong signal to the labour market. Despite all that has been said this evening, we need flexibility and there would be an element of rigidity in what the

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Commission is proposing. I feel that this concern is all the stronger because, as I have said, there are other ways of finding solutions to the needs of child care and employment.
Finally, my Lords, may I say a word about the committee's conclusion that parental leave should be paid and that the cost should be met from public funds? There are many competing demands on public expenditure and, although the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, put forward a very robust case that the moneys which would be needed could be easily found, I am bound to say that in the Government's view other claims are much more pressing than this one. For example, my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer last week proposed to make available funds rising to £400 million in 1987–88 to expand the Community programme for the long-term unemployed, to extend the youth training scheme and to provide additional places in engineering and technology at selected higher education institutions. I am not quite sure whether the committee considered this question of priorities. Moreover, I think that it is necessary to refute the implication that simply transfering to taxpayers the burden of financing this proposal in any way resolves the question of costs: it is, in the Government's view, a mistaken option to assume, whatever the issue, that the solution is for the taxpayer to foot the bill.
I have tried briefly to outline where the Government cannot agree with the committee's conclusions but I think it is useful to look at where the report goes at least some way with the Government in its reactions to the draft directive. The report proposes that leave for family reasons should be dropped; that certain firms should be exempt from parental leave and that the period of parental leave should, at least initially, be one month and not three. I think that it is fair to say that, while the report endorses the principle of legislation on parental leave, it comes out in favour of a scaled-down version of what is on offer in Brussels at the moment.
The Government cannot just accept some parts of a directive and reject others. When the proposal is in its final form, the Government are going to be faced with adopting the directive as it stands or of refusing it. Even if we were to accept all the committee's conclusions without comment, we would not be able to accept the draft directive as it stands now. Also, other member states are concerned about a number of features of the proposal. Five member states, including the United Kingdom, have fundamental reservations either about the principle of binding Community legislation in this area or about the creation of an absolute right to parental leave or about the cost implications. There is less support still for the directive to cover leave for family reasons. A number of suggestions have been made to amend the proposal, including restricting parental leave to the period immediately following maternity leave; introducing some form of safeguards for employers or exempting small and medium sized firms. The Government will be inviting comments on these suggestions in the consultation exercise.
My Lords, I have tried to set out the Government's views on these proposals and have given some
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reactions to the committee's report. I emphasise that we are, of course, now going to consult. Perhaps I may again, quite genuinely, express my appreciation of the work that the committee have done.
Lord Seebohm: My Lords, first of all, I should like to thank everybody who has spoken in this debate. It has all been most helpful. I am very sorry that I cannot agree with the arguments put forward by the noble Lord the Minister. I am not convinced at all, and we all know that unless there is legislation it will not happen. I
beg to move.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned at twenty-five minutes past nine o'clock.