House of Commons Hansard Debates for 6 Feb 1991

Mr. Straw : It was not "or something". It was the central conclusion of the Cabinet Office's own survey. It

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decided that surveying United States patents was one of the fairest ways of comparing the scientific endeavour of various countries. It concluded that Britain was losing out.

Mr. Clarke : That was one of the conclusions of a document from which the hon. Gentleman quoted highly selectively. I quote the number of papers on basic and applied research published in the main scientific journals, which the hon. Member for Motherwell, South (Dr. Bray) will concede is a perfectly good measure of scientific achievement. I do not believe that the hon. Member for Motherwell, South will denounce the level of science practised in Britain or the level of our achievements.

Between 1981 and 1986--the years on which the figures are based--the United Kingdom percentage of the total world output production remained constant at 8.3 per cent. Germany's percentage has fallen from less than ours when it started--6.3 per cent.--to 5.9 per cent. France's percentage has fallen from 5.1 to 4.8 per cent. We have a strong science base in Britain and we should pay tribute to it and discuss, in a somewhat more dispassionate and sensible way than the hon. Gentleman is prepared to do, how we can support it and develop it in future.

Mr. Tony Lloyd (Stretford) : Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. Clarke : I should like to make a little progress before I start giving way.

In response to the last part of the hon. Member for Blackburn's speech, I agree with him that any serious long-term policy for science must start by securing an adequate supply of new, highly qualified scientists and engineers. The hon. Gentleman went in for a light and quick attack on the position of science in our schools and the way in which we are producing the next generation of scientists, engineers and technologists.

The background against which we are debating the subject is that science has been given an important new emphasis in our schools. For the first time, we have introduced science, technology and mathematics into the national curriculum. The national curriculum will ensure that every pupil from primary school to the age of 16 does maths, science and technology as part of a developing curriculum. That is a matter for debate in more detail on another occasion, but we are putting more science into our schools. Let us consider what is already being achieved. The output from our schools feeds on to our higher education institutions. We all acknowledge that our universities, polytechnics and colleges must also turn out increased numbers of scientists and technologists.

Sir Timothy Raison (Aylesbury) : I do not quarrel with what my right hon. and learned Friend says, but there is a special problem in girls' schools such as Aylesbury high school in my constituency. Such schools have a great deal of catching up to do to provide the same level of scientific provision as corresponding boys' schools. Will my right hon. and learned Friend consider carefully the case for providing more in the way of scientific facilities to enable girls' schools to catch up with their boy counterparts?

Mr. Clarke : The introduction of primary school science for the first time and identical science teaching for girls and boys, covering the same fields, will make a difference. It has always been a curious pattern of the British education that very few girls study physics. It was an overwhelmingly

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male study. When girls continued with science, overwhelmingly they studied biology. In future, both boys and girls will cover either the same general science curriculum to the age of 16 or separate sciences, if they opt for that. That is an important change. I accept that some girls' schools where girls have not been accustomed to scientific education will have to adjust over a period of time and invest in kit and facilities.

Higher education needs to turn out more scientists and engineers of the same high quality that we have always achieved in Britain. They are doing that on a spectacular scale which the public do not seem to follow and certainly do not always acknowledge. I am glad to say that a dramatic change is taking place in the proportion of young people going on to higher education. Ten years ago, only one in eight young people in Britain entered higher education. This year the rate is one in five. We are well on course to make it one in four by the year 2000.

Numbers of students on science-related courses have made a more or less constant proportion of the rising total. We expect the higher proportion of pupils studying science in schools, to which I have just referred, to increase the proportion of young people who opt in future for science and engineering.

Let us consider the overall figures for science and engineering graduates. The total number of graduates leaving university in Britain has risen from 778,000 in 1979 to 1,061,000 in 1989. That is a 36 per cent. increase in the number of graduates coming out of British higher education during the Government's period of office, and the number is still rising. As the science and engineering proportion has risen slightly, a greatly increased number of scientists of both sexes and of high quality are coming into our community.

Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow) : Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. Clarke : With apologies to the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) who tried to intervene earlier, I give way.

Mr. Dalyell : Will the Secretary of State comment on a point that bothers the Royal Society of Chemistry? Relatively expensive substances such as silver nitrate, without which one cannot do analytical chemistry, are beyond the pockets of some universities. Does the Secretary of State have any thoughts on the provision of equipment, particularly for chemists?

Mr. Clarke : We have increased funding for universities by 10 per cent. for next year, which is ahead of inflation. Within that, science tends to take an ever-rising proportion. Not only silver nitrate but other equipment continually becomes more expensive. I shall consider the point at leisure after the debate.

Our projections of student numbers show that we shall have a further spectacular increase. The number of engineering graduates is projected to rise by some 15 per cent. from the 1988-89 figure to 15, 000 by 1993-94. Science and mathematics graduates are projected to increase by one third to 28,000 over the same period. The background is a spectacular increase in the proportion of our young people going through our universities and the proportion who come out as scientists and engineers.

Before we denigrate the education system too much--I agree with everyone else that it should be improved

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--we must not get carried away by the foolish notion that our system is being left behind by our rivals and that we are not producing the right work force. Our education system is not all that bad--certainly not at the higher education level. We compare very well with all our most important competitors when it comes to young people with higher education qualifications in science. The figures for 1986--I believe that they are OECD figures, and they are the most up to date that I have-- show that 15 per cent. of the relevant age group of young people had higher education qualifications in science. In France and in West Germany, only 12 per cent. had them. The figure for Italy is 5 per cent. We are up with the United States, at 11 to 15 per cent., depending on how the comparison is made, and with Japan at 10 to 15 per cent. So we are producing the numbers- - [Interruption.] The percentage of the age group is a fair and constant comparison. I can think of no better way of comparing the output of our higher education institutions. Of course, the United States and Japan have larger populations, but we are producing as good a proportion of quality scientists.

Dr. Jeremy Bray (Motherwell, South) : The fallacy in the well-known figures that the Secretary of State has quoted is that they omit engineers. If they were included, we would fall far behind.

Mr. Clarke : I have just given the projections for an increase in the number of engineers. I look forward to the hon. Member for Motherwell, South producing a better form of comparison. We have already heard some foolish comparisons on scientific funding, with which I now want to deal.

The hon. Member for Blackburn said that he was not going to bandy figures, but he threw out the percentage of GDP that we spend on science. I know from my experience in health and in other Departments that comparisons based on percentages of GDP are pretty damned silly. People throw the figures at us at the moment because we had a record rate of growth in our gross domestic product throughout the 1980s. Other countries may increase the percentage of GDP spent on science by going into recession and a period of decline. The hon. Member for Blackburn said that we spend less as a proportion of GDP on civil research than Germany and France. However, using OECD figures again, it is clear that we spend more on civil R and D than do Japan, the United States, Belgium, Canada, Australia, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Greece--half the countries of the OECD. So it is foolish to suggest that we do not bear comparison with our competitors. What matters is what we are doing now and where we go next.

The hon. Member for Blackburn made a great deal of today's press release by the Science and Engineering Research Council. I assume that it was because he spotted that the council was to hold a meeting today that this debate is being held. On the strength of that, he built up a ludicrous case in which he maintained that the excellent British scientific base is somehow crumbling. Let us examine what the current year holds.

Mr. Alan W. Williams (Carmarthen) : May I remind the Secretary of State of the Select Committee report published in December 1990, paragraph 63 of which points out that

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"the UK is the only OECD country where growth in spending on research was less than growth in GDP"?

That is why we are at the bottom of the international league.

Mr. Clarke : When a country's GDP rises quickly, funding may sometimes fall behind. When a country goes into steep economic decline, spending on science as a proportion of GDP may rise spectacularly. I have listed some formidable countries, most notably Japan and the United States, which still spend less than we do as a percentage of GDP on civil R and D. It is a daft comparison, but if we are to make it, the example of the United States and Japan is relevant.

Sir Peter Emery (Honiton) : May I recruit my right hon. and learned Friend to the following idea? Will he bear in mind that the Procedure Committee has said that science and technology is too important a matter to be absent from the agenda of the House of Commons? It recommends that a Select Committee should deal with the matter jointly with the House of Lords, or that it should be dealt with as part of the work of the Select Committee on Education, Science and Arts. In that way some of these matters might be better understood in the House and I hope that I can count on my right hon. and learned Friend's support, with the Leader of the House, in moving in that direction.

Mr. Clarke : The composition of Select Committees is a matter for the House, not the Government. I know that there has been pressure for a Select Committee on Science for some time, and no doubt my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will deal with the matter.

Dr. Bray : The Secretary of State is a little confused about GDP. Science is not measured in tonnes, like steel. If scientists' pay goes up by no more than the national average, the so-called real measure of R and D expenditure increases proportionately to GDP, by definition. So-called level funding means a decline in research done and a decline in the number of scientists at the same rate at which GDP is growing. I shall back up that assertion with detailed figures later.

Mr. Clarke : The hon. Gentleman will find on reflection that in most countries, and certainly in ours, the increase in incomes exceeds the growth of GDP. I cannot recall when the pay of any group of workers in this country, except possibly in the midst of the fiercest pay policies of the late 1970s, did not rise faster than GDP. It is no good trying to invent a special measure of inflation for a particular public service. If the hon. Member for Motherwell, South ever finds himself in the public service arguing a case against the Treasury, he will learn that every Department can produce special rates of inflation which it says apply only to itself. But the fact is that all pay and other pressures apply to the whole economy. The percentage of GDP is not very useful because GDP varies rather more than spending usually does. Trying to qualify the argument with talk of pay increases for scientists will not do.

This year, the Government's overall expenditure on research and development is more than £5.1 billion, of which £2.8 billion goes on civil research. That puts in proportion the tremendous fuss made by the hon. Member for Blackburn about £1 million or £2 million for the laboratory at Daresbury. Among the aspects for which I

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am responsible, research undertaken at universities, polytechnics and higher education institutions will be funded at about £1.8 billion, of which expenditure through the research councils--the so-called science budget--forms just over half.

I have made it as clear as I can that the Government are committed to maintaining a healthy science base. We have demonstrated that commitment by keeping the science budget at a level that has enabled research councils to carry out leading-edge research at their own establishments and to fund high-quality research initiatives. As my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State correctly said on the radio this morning, the so- called science budget part of our overall spending has increased by 23 per cent. in real terms under this Government. Just two years ago it rose by 8 per cent. in real terms at one go ; since then the figure has remained level. Nevertheless, funding has increased by almost a quarter in real terms since 1979. We cannot sustain that sort of increase every year and it is not possible to carry out in this or any other country every element of scientific research that people might want within such an expanding budget.

Seen against the background of a 23 per cent. increase in expenditure, the diatribes of the hon. Member for Blackburn can be seen in their true light. It is true that in 1991-92 the value of the underlying science budget will remain level in real terms. There is no fancy accounting in that. Lower figures could be produced by leaving out capital expenditure that has been completed. We have just finished an Antarctic survey ship which, I think, cost £36 million, and a new headquarters for the research councils in Swindon and have made some alteration in the timing of the payments of postgraduate fees. When those are left out and we get down to what matters, we find that the money that is available for scientific research willl be up by 6 per cent. next year in line with the forecast on inflation, and that is a level-terms year. There has been a substantial real terms uplift in the past, especially the big 8 per cent. uplift which took place two years ago.

Dr. Dafydd Elis Thomas (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy) : Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that of the total research council budget spending only 2 per cent. is spent in Wales? Will he say whether the atmospheric radar station at Aberystwyth, which was opened by his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales only two months ago, will continue to be funded by the research council?

Mr. Clarke : The distribution of funding is determined by scientific merit, not by geography. It should remain like that. As far as I am aware-- I shall take advice and write to the hon. Gentleman--I do not think that at the moment there is any threat to the establishment at Aberystwyth.

Mr. Tony Lloyd rose --

Mr. Clarke : The hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) has been very patient. I shall now give way to him.

Mr. Lloyd : I have not really been patient. I listened with keen interest to what the Secretary of State said about the maintenance of the budget. Obviously, and whether he likes it or not, he will be influenced by what is achieved in practice. When we see facilities that have been centres of scientific excellence for many years threatened with closure we will tell the Secretary of State that something is going wrong. Not only Opposition Members will say that ; it will

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be said by people outside. Jodrell Bank has been a world leader in its field for many years. It is under serious threat that could lead to its work being truncated and to its closure. How does the Secretary of State respond to that?

Mr. Clarke : The hon. Gentleman is correct when he says that there is concern in all parts of the House when a facility has a cut in its budget. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Butler) is in his place and is no doubt following with interest the debate about Daresbury. I have been following the discussions about Jodrell Bank. It is not the case that the Universities Funding Council is reducing the funding of Jodrell Bank. There seems to be some dispute in Manchester university about whether that university can sustain it. I do not believe that Jodrell Bank is threatened.

We have had a large real-terms growth and a level funding base this year. I must now deal with decisions concerning the Science and Engineering Research Council.

The hon. Member for Blackburn completely failed to respond to a relevant comment which we are bound to make and which was put to him in an intervention. We have a 23 per cent. increase in real terms. No one can argue with that, unless he goes in for fancy accounting and says that there are special factors. When Labour was last in power, in 1974-75 and for 1979 -80 there was no real-terms increase in the science budget. It was an ice age for the science budget when Labour was in power.

Difficult choices have to be made. The hon. Member for Blackburn did not tell us about any that he would make. Such debates are a permanent feature of scientific study throughout the world and are not confined to this country. Not only are we not behind our competitors, but we are having the same discussion as science communities in every part of the world. In the New Scientist of 2 February, under the so-called "Talking Point", there was an article by Mr. Daniel Greenberg, who is the editor of Science and Government Reform, which is an American publication. In that article, which Mr. Greenberg describes as

"The phony crisis in American science",

he states :

"Is American science sinking because of financial neglect? Leading scientists created this impression by besieging Washington with cries for more money. By all means take note of their pleas, but understand that much of their distress is their own making in collaboration with their politician friends."

In another part of the article Mr. Greenberg states :

"The reality is that science in America has never been bigger, richer or more productive than it is today. What is suffers from is an unrestrained appetite for doing all things possible by neglecting to set priorities for research."

If we are not careful, we could wind up substituting the United Kingdom for the United States in that article, because the choice of priorities which the hon. Member for Blackburn is plainly not prepared to make has to be made to get the best out of expenditure on science.

Mr. Straw : The right hon. and learned Gentleman did not listen to what I said. It is acknowledged in all parts of the House that choices have to be made. The crucial question is about the manner and circumstances in which they are made. What is objectionable is the process by which the SERC has been forced to make decisions which otherwise would not have to be made. Was the Secretary of State aware that the budget decisions would lead to the possibility of closures without any review at all of whether this country should stay in basic nuclear physics?

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Mr. Clarke : The hon. Gentleman always says that hard choices have to be made, but makes it quite plain that he would not make them, because he did not mention one. He talked a lot of nonsense which slightly implied that a Labour Government might spend more so that no choices would be made. He latched on to the defence of a victim of a choice that has been made by scientists.

Mr. Straw : That is bluster.

Mr. Clarke : It is not bluster. One of the biggest weaknesses of Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen is that on all these matters they speak without conviction about facing up to difficult priorities. When they are challenged about where the money will come from to avoid the hard choices that they talk about, they either wander off into evasiveness or do not answer.

Sir Gerard Vaughan (Reading, East) : While accepting entirely that my right hon. and learned Friend is doing much good work, may I ask whether he agrees that there is something very odd when the procedure for funding CERN over which the research councils have no control means that we now have to consider shutting down an internationally well-known and important facility? Will he give an undertaking to have a look at that?

Mr. Clarke : It is an important point, but I shall not try to digress too long on it. We are making a major contribution to the CERN project. There are arguments about the wider impacts on investment in particle physics, at Daresbury, for example. In recent years the Government have looked at this several times. My hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Education and Science was at the Foreign Office and I was at the Department of Trade and Industry when we last looked at the matter in government. Tempting as it is from the point of view of scientific lobbyists--and I almost count myself among them because I am the Secretary of State for Education and Science--if we spend money on CERN at the behest of British scientists, that means public expenditure on nuclear physics. The idea that somehow it does not count if the money is spent in Switzerland and should not have any impact on what is left to spend in Cheshire is appealing but illogical.

Secondly, I can safely say that at one time the Government looked seriously at the question of withdrawing from CERN and discussed it with the scientific community. On the strength of much scientific advice to remain in CERN, we decided to do so. The discussions about CERN have been going on for years. It was at the British behest that we seriously addressed the question of the management, financial control and the scale of the investment in CERN. I was astonished to find when I came to this Department, having, as it were, passed through science when I was in the Department of Trade and Industry, that our present subscription to CERN is lower than it was some years ago because other countries, at the behest of Britain, have acted to improve the management of CERN.

Sir Gerard Vaughan : Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

Mr. Clarke : This must be the last intervention because other hon. Members wish to speak in the debate.

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Sir Gerard Vaughan : The increasing subscription, which is totally outside British hands, has thrown the CERN budget into total disarray.

Mr. Clarke : As I have just explained, matters have improved. It is still true that the CERN subscription which British scientists want us to continue has an impact on the money that we have available for other matters. I shall put that in context and try to deal with the immediate issues that have arisen at Daresbury and elsewhere. The key question is how to distribute the money and how to make the difficult choices that the hon. Member for Blackburn would not be prepared to make. The advice from the research councils is channelled to me through the Advisory Board for the Research Councils. I rely on that advice about scientific and research priorities within our resources. In terms of the scientific merits, I keep an arm's-length relationship and the Secretary of State in any Government would be well advised to do the same. I am predisposed to accept that advice, and usually do. I have just accepted the ABRC's advice about the distribution of funds to the councils.

I think that the hon. Member for Blackburn would agree that in the end the difficult choices about priorities within the science budget should essentially be scientific decisions and not primarily political ones. That means that their difficult role is to give me advice, within the resources made available to them--

Mr. Straw : Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. Clarke : No.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker) : Order. This is a short debate and many right hon. and hon. Members wish to take part. Some of these interventions might be saved either for the winding-up speech or the speeches that hon. Members make themselves.

Mr. Clarke : I will take your advice Mr. Deputy Speaker, particularly as the same point is being made in intervention after intervention.

It is important to realise that when a project is turned down the research councils are saying that there are better ways to spend money within the allocation made to them, and those better ways are based on scientific grounds. The overriding political responsibility is mine and I get advice on the scientific priorities. I feel that I should receive that advice in confidence. My predecessor, now the Leader of the House, made the wise decision not to publish this year's advice on the public spending round. I have decided not to publish the ABRC's full advice on the distribution of funds and, as has been said, we have followed the financial division between the councils that the advisory board recommended. When one has advisers of this kind, carrying out this role, the relationship is best one of confidential close advice, not one of public debate.

Mr. Straw : Why not?

Mr. Clarke : I do not have public debates with my civil servants. I am notorious for frequently not taking their advice. If a body has the key role of giving advice in confidence, but that advice is given in a public document to which I have to respond publicly, it becomes just another part of the public debate.

Mr. Straw : Will the Secretary of State give way?

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Mr. Clarke : No, I am not giving way. The hon. Gentleman has harped on all day, both on the radio and here, about this point, and he is wrong. He accuses me of making what he calls a

characteristically autocratic decision, but, as with many other parts of my portfolio, I am following the wise precedent set by my predecessor. I feel that the relationships with the research councils will be greatly improved when we stop having this megaphone debate and replace it with a close confidential relationship on scientific priorities.

The Government suffer a similar problem in arts with the Arts Council and in sport with the Sports Council. We allocate money, the research councils distribute it and the public debate concentrates on those projects that the research council will not be funding. The only scientific projects about which the public ever hears are the ones that have been refused priority or have suddenly lost priority vis-a -vis the rest of the scientific budget. They suddenly become centres of excellence--some of those affected today are centres of excellence. The radio schedule fills up with descriptions of, for example, a chap with a project who was on the point of breaking through on the method of transportation of some disease. All the projects that have been given higher scientific priority and have got the money do not see the light of day in the media. That is how it has gone this year.

All this gives me no chance to talk about the projects that the research councils are funding and that are producing excellent work. For example, there is the work by the Medical Research Council on autism, the breakthrough achieved by the Agriculture and Food Research Council in the Institute of Animal Health in sorting out the seal virus, the earthquake predictions method developed in this country, the tremendous work done on monoclonal antibodies by the MRC's laboratory of molecular biology. We never hear anything about those, although they are financed. We hear only about the ones that have lost out in this afternoon's agenda of the Science and Engineering Research Council because it decided to spend the money on something else that it judged to have higher scientific priority. There is a difficulty for the SERC that is not of the making of the chairman and the people who assembled this afternoon. Sir Mark Richardson became the chairman in October 1990 and immediately made it clear that he wished to carry out a review of the excessive commitments, particularly to large projects, into which the SERC has entered. He initiated a moratorium on all new commitments on 21 November, which I am glad to say the SERC is now lifting. It made some announcements on 19 December. What has since happened is what is wrongly described as the £40 million shortfall. It is simply that the SERC had embarked on a series of commitments to a number of big projects and they were outrunning the resources given to the SERC, which was therefore not following its remit.

I congratulate the council not on individual decisions, although I can do that, but on its scientific expertise, which is better than mine. It knows what is to be cut out in the review. I am not able to compare the study of particle physics at Daresbury or at Strasbourg with the nuclear structure at Mainz, or nuclear physics as against some other part of the science and engineering budget. The SERC has cut back on commitments and it has had to be selective in doing so. Some of the other projects on which it has made cuts have not been mentioned. For example,

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it has said that it cannot comtemplate for at least two years the gravitational wave detector project. That is an Anglo-German project which the Germans also want to postpone because they cannot afford it.

One can spend a fortune on space astronomy. I once faced a similar problem in getting us out of what I regarded as an extraordinary manned space project in which the European Space Agency and the French wanted us to invest, and did so with the full support of the research councils, although I was attacked by enthusiasts in the House of Commons for trying to save us millions of pounds on a mad international project that would have impacted on our domestic science. I also had a good run with the HOTOL project, and I got us out of spending a few billions on that--money that would have come out of the science budget. The councils are looking carefully at some of the space astronomy projects. The Americans have deferred similar projects for 12 months. Once one gets into this sort of research, the noughts on the end of the bill have an impact on the science budget. Daresbury--on which we have just had the announcement--presented a difficult choice. It is our only accelerator devoted to basic research in nuclear physics. Irrespective of today's announcement, the SERC has already made it clear that it will continue support of nuclear structure physics and continue funding of individual experiments, and that the NFC agreement on Eurogam with the University of Strasbourg will not be terminated before there is an opportunity to exploit the project. Furthermore, United Kingdom nuclear physicists will have access to the Eurogam machine and be eligible for certain research grants. There will be collaboration between Daresbury and Strasbourg for the next year or two. I could read, but I shall not, a list of projects that are going ahead under the patronage of the SERC. One of the first things that I did when I came to the Department was to open the new 32 m telescope at Cambridge which had been financed by the SERC. The council faces difficult decisions in astronomy which is an expensive big international science. I am glad that it has been able to lift the moratorium on the smaller grants. If it does not have the courage to carry out this fundamental review, the danger will be that commitment to big projects will roll on while key small grants to people operating in universities, where the future often lies, are put under a moratorium or cut.

We recognise the need for well-judged policies. I have explained to the House what they are. We are committed to a strong scientific base. We have an excellent record of scientific achievement and this is one of the most attractive places in the world to invest for anybody looking for high- quality science. The Government will support research councils in the difficult choices that they have to make when distributing the resources available to them. We shall commit to science those resources that the country can afford and hope to build on our excellent record.

At the behest of my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Sir I. Lloyd) I recently had a meeting, chaired by the Prime Minister, with my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and many distinguished scientists who came to discuss this matter. The Prime Minister emphasised his personal interest in science and his determination to continue to chair, from time to time, meetings of the Advisory Committee on Science and Technology and to

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continue the practice of his predecessor of chairing all meetings of the Cabinet committee that was set up specifically to deal with science matters across the Government. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Havant will agree that the Prime Minister listened with considerable interest to pleas from distinguished scientists for continuity of funding, and for a strategic look at where we are going on science. With the research councils, we shall try to take that look.

I urge the House to accept that this sudden explosion of rage about the consequences of one research council meeting this afternoon and the bandying of selective figures do not accurately give a picture of British science. We have some of the best scientists in the world. Some of the greatest achievements in the world of science are made in the United Kingdom and the Government have demonstrated their support in the most practical way by putting resources into science and by developing schools and higher education systems in such a way that we shall produce further generations of equally good scientists and technologists in ever-greater numbers.

8.29 pm

Mr. Adam Ingram (East Kilbride) : I do not enter the debate as a scientist, an engineer, or even a technologist, and I suspect that the same is true of the Secretary of State, having listened to him read from a close script about the various scientific--

Mr. Kenneth Clarke : Written by me.

Mr. Ingram : That may be, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman appeared to be reading closely some of the technological details. I have worked in industry, spending a long period in the electricity supply industry as a computer systems analyst, and I have always taken a close interest in science, whether pure science or technological development.

For many years--irrespective of what the Secretary of State has said, I tend to support the arguments advanced from the Opposition Front Bench in terms of statistics--there has been a steady decline in research and development and in pure science in Britain. Much of that has clearly been the result of lack of foresight on the part of industry. It has not been investing in the way in which our international competitors have. We can see that in the way in which we lose out in international markets and the way in which our trade in those areas has been declining.

What was happening in science and research and development was brought home to me when I entered the House in 1987. I do not wish to go into all the details associated with my point, but I am referring to the Government's attempt, in effect, to disable the National Engineering Laboratory in my constituency, which was and still is a world-renowned research establishment undertaking engineering research projects, some of which are not carried out anywhere else in the United Kingdom and possibly even the world. American universities send people to that establishment to use its facilities.

On 27 May 1988, Dr. Donald Bell, then director of the laboratory, said :

"The range of services provided by NEL in the mechanical engineering field is unique. Not only do we have facilities that would be difficult to match- -for example, the strong floor

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used for structural testing and the flow measurement laboratory--but the collective expertise of our staff and the number and variety of testing rigs here are unrivalled."

In 1988 Lord Young, then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, announced that the NEL was to be privatised on the incredibly short-sighted basis that it had to become profit making. A laboratory which had established itself in the forefront of research and development for 40 years all of a sudden had to become profit making. Industry was not asking for that ; the Government made the decision. The decision was made in the face of major opposition from industry, some of which was never heard about in the public forum but which we knew took place. The industry made representations to the Government that it needed the research facility. To privatise it in the way proposed would have been detrimental to some of the key industries in the Scottish economy and throughout the United Kingdom.

The noble Lord Young, in his ideological zeal and determination to get rid of the establishment, was prepared to give it away at a knock-down price to a French-owned company. Sell it off to the foreigners, we no longer want it, was the philosophy of the then Secretary of State.

The work force, the trade unions and the wider industry reacted strongly against that dogmatic proposal. As a result of that campaign the Government were forced into a U-turn. Since Lord Young left office there have been many other failed Secretaries of State in the Department of Trade and Industry, but all have continued to look for ways to dispose of that valuable asset regardless of the impact that that would have on the local economy in Scotland and on British engineering.

In the past two years, more than 200 members of staff at the laboratory have been disposed of and the question whether it can be commercially viable now arises. Some of those who are no longer with the laboratory were the brightest and best among engineering research scientists in Britain today. They were disposed of because it was decided that there had to be a cut in that area. The laboratory is now fighting for its survival against a hostile Government who want it to achieve 70 per cent. to 80 per cent. funding from commercial contracts by 1995, compared with 20 per cent. funding from that source now.

The Secretary of State says that the Government have a great commitment towards research and development, but that example alone tells me otherwise. They have put a major resource at risk on the basis of the Secretary of State's dogmatic approach, resulting in the disposal of some key scientists. What happened and is continuing to happen at that establishment is indicative of the Government-created malaise which now afflicts the majority of manufacturing research and development and broader scientific research in Britain.

I know of no British scientist, eminent or otherwise, who is not outraged by the rapid decline in state support in this area. The weight of opinion is against the Secretary of State. It is not a case of bandying around statistics ; this is what the practitioners in the field are saying is happening to their area of research. It is not just our domestic scientists who are saying that ; scientists from countries with whom we collaborate and against whom we compete in international markets are amazed at the way in which the first-class reputation of British science has been steadily eroded.

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