§ Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what she is doing to widen education in software skills to ensure that Great Britain has sufficient skilled people to maintain its lead in this field.
§ Mr. OakesMy right hon. Friend is encouraging the education service to cooperate with the Manpower Services Commission and the industrial training boards to increase the number of places available for training in programming and40W systems analysis. In addition my Department, in its consideration of the long term implications of microelectronics, is assessing the contribution which the education service can make to providing sufficient people with the requisite software skills to enable the country to exploit fully the potential of microelectronics.