House of Commons Hansard Debates for 20 Oct 1995

Dr. Jeremy Bray (Motherwell, South): This debate is timely, as are all science and technology debates, and I welcome the ready interest of the new President of the Board of Trade in coming to speak to the House so soon.

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We must firmly establish the ground rules within which science policy will be conducted, and it was useful to have the right hon. Gentleman's outline.

My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) gave a powerful critique of our misgivings about the Government's level and direction of science policy. My hon. Friend is a diligent visitor to every kind of scientific establishment in the private and public sectors and is well respected by the research community as an observer of the field of science. He speaks with real authority of feeling in the science community, and that was reflected in his speech.

I welcome the appointment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) as the shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. She is a metallurgist with a strong scientific background and a lifelong interest in science policy. I have worked with her for many years in that area. While the Office of Science and Technology remains within the DTI, she will be a powerful advocate for science and a vigorous defender of the science base.

The fault that we perceive in the transfer of the OST to the DTI is not the wish for a more effective application of technology in industry, but the narrowness and naivety of the Government's view of the innovation process that lies behind the move. The science base must be safeguarded and the science budget ring-fenced to protect it against the mismanagement of the DTI's research resources that we have seen over the past 10 years.

It is about the narrower issue of increasing the competitiveness of industry in Britain that I am most concerned. In a way, the science base can look after itself. Scientists will be robust street fighters in the defence of the science base during the short time before the next election. However, industry cannot wait. I have sufficient confidence that scientists will fight their corner, but our manufacturing industry is not sufficiently competitive to be able to afford any delay. We are not able simultaneously to achieve sustainable balances of payments and public borrowing with low levels of inflation and unemployment. Britain is not unique in that among European countries.

We must be realistic about what we face. I want to refer to my constituency which, as the President of the Board of Trade knows, is an important part of industrial Scotland--for which, as Secretary of State for Scotland, he was responsible for many years. Scotland's steel industry wrapped up during his tenure of office, but 20 years ago it was the mainstay of employment in my constituency. Steelmaking finally ceased with the closure of Ravenscraig. Today, the best orders coming to our one remaining steel plate mill in Dalzell works have come from the shipyards not of the Clyde, but of Korea. The first major manufacturer to come into Lanarkshire after the rundown of steel promises to be Chung Hwa Tubes from Taiwan, which makes television picture tubes.

Electronics manufacturers in Scotland's central belt compete with the south -east Asian tigers--Taiwan, Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong--in the manufacture of components and they assemble their components in competition with the lower-cost assemblers in Malaysia, Indonesia, India and China. Those are only straws in the wind, but my constituents do not talk about putting up barriers against trade with low-cost labour areas. They are

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ready to recognise our common global interests in development and in rising standards across the world. However, they have little grounds for confidence in the innovative capacity of British industry and its research and development.

We face a highly dynamic situation. Hong Kong is running down its manufacturing even faster than Britain as its factories move into China, and those within China move further inland from the coastal provinces. The universities in the tiger countries of south-east Asia turn out a higher proportion of the age group as graduates than Britain does. Also, their postgraduate research is building up faster than anyone expected five years ago. I accept that Britain excels in some areas such as pharmaceuticals and molecular biology, which the President of the Board of Trade mentioned. There is no major pharmaceutical industry research laboratory in south-east Asia, not even in Japan.

A very important research paper was published in Nature this week by Dr. Craig Venter. He is the chairman and chief executive of the Institute for Genomic Research in Maryland. The Select Committee recently paid an interesting visit to that institute in the course of producing its report on human genetics. We had a most informative discussion with Craig Venter and his colleagues in Human Genome Sciences and with SmithKline Beecham about the patenting topics, among others, that were mentioned earlier.

When walking around that research institute, it was interesting to observe the number of Asians working on the bench. When the research paper was published, I checked on its authors and found that 15 of the 85 authors listed in this first human genome directory have Chinese names. The large and capable body of western-trained Chinese researchers who have contributed so much to the development of electronics now exists in most areas of science, ready to transfer their scientific and technological skills to applications in south-east Asia. Furthermore, it creates an attractive and exciting environment for western scientists. At the City university in Hong Kong, which I visited last week, I was fascinated to meet an old friend, an American mathematician called Steve Smale. He is a Fields medal winner, which is equivalent to being a Nobel prize winner, and one of the dozen leading mathematicians in the world. He now occupies a distinguished professor's chair in this former polytechnic in Hong Kong. Which British ex-polytechnic has the resources to attract a leading world scientist of that calibre?

There is an immense global task in building up the physical and institutional infrastructure in the developing world. We used to think of that as a humanitarian concern--and so it is. That task is now being tackled with immense vigour and success, with participation by western firms--but with the main effort and resources coming from within the developing regions. I find it an exhilarating and challenging prospect. We share a common humanity, common skills and common potential. There is no reason to believe that in the not-so-long term we have any greater advantages or disadvantages than people in any other country. Likewise, we know that if we put less effort into education, research and other forms of investment, we will suffer the consequent disadvantages.

We also know that if we think that we can hang on to positions and privileges that we enjoyed in the past, but do not earn today, we will suffer great frustrations. While an economy is catching up it can learn new technologies from others, but in due course it will have to develop its

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share of new technologies and contribute its share of basic research if its industry is to comprehend and use the facilities of a highly technological world.

We can take pride in the past achievements of British science, but we would be foolish to abandon what has provided the strengths of that tradition just as other countries are learning to use them. "Japan opens new era in university funding" was the headline for an article in Nature only last week. It described a pattern of university research funding very similar to that which existed in this country before the Conservative Government took office. I urge hon. Members to visit the science and engineering laboratories of the six universities in Hong Kong--as I have done--to see how, under the leadership of a former Conservative Minister, Chris Patten, now Hong Kong's Governor, that laggard among the tigers is catching up in its research and development expenditure. Hong Kong has the greatest potential of them all, as a gateway to China.

As a clue to tracking down the root of our own particular problems, it is instructive to compare the reports of the Bank of England and the Singapore authorities on the collapse of Barings and to ask which report was the more competent and more honest. When it comes to the sophistication, say, of the financial derivatives market, ask why the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, which draws on and reports to the world mathematical community, was able recently to mount so very much more powerful a workshop than could be mounted by any British bank or financial institution on the technical structure of the derivatives market.

As for human genetics and its impact on insurance markets, the dialogue that was opened up by the Select Committee on Science and Technology is being pursued by the Royal Society and Institute of Actuaries, with one of the organisers of their dialogue being Roy Anderson, the research collaborator of Bob May, who is now the Government's chief scientific adviser. That collaboration between the Royal Society and the Institute of Actuaries preceded the appointment of Bob May as chief scientific adviser and therefore does not reflect any element of Government initiative in this very important field. We have an industry, an economy, running at half cock, with the clutch slipping between the intellectual powerhouse and the practical conduct of business. It is not a linear process, from research through application to production, but rather a network of processes, in business, education, research, each of which needs to be intellectually informed and linked to others.

Market mechanisms have a role to play, and all credit to the Government in bringing that to the fore during their period of office, but market mechanisms are not the intellectual network that is needed. They may be the letters of the alphabet, but they are not the language. We have to learn again the language of innovation and discovery. Somewhere in this language, a coherent science policy needs to be presented, and the lines of it are fairly

straightforward. There is a high rate of return from research and development, but wherever it is carried out, there is great difficulty for the researchers--whether it be in a firm, university, research institute or Government laboratory--in appropriating sufficient benefits from that research to cover its cost. There are big spillovers in the benefits of research to other people in other institutions, firms and industries, indeed other

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economies. In the United Kingdom, there is a disproportionately low level of industry-funded research and development.

To address the problem of spillovers and the difficulty of appropriation, the obvious device in a market situation is to institute research and development tax credits. We accepted that argument before the previous election. I shall be interested to see whether it becomes Labour party policy for the next. I hope that it does. Evidence is accumulating in every other industrial country--we analysed it in our report in the Select Committee last year--on the route through which the science base is applied in industry. We established that there is a high cost in lost revenues, but the increase in research and development from recent work appears to be greater than the cost in lost resources, so in fact it is a more efficient way of supporting research than direct grants.

The correct measure is not the cost of tax revenues forgone but the increase in net output from the economy that results from the increase in research which is stimulated. This proper measure can be looked at by putting together the evidence from different areas of research, as we did in that report. It does, of course, need a supporting framework such as that put forward in the Faraday Institute proposals, which were adopted by both parties before the previous election, but which have disappeared from the scene since. It needs a supply of well-trained researchers coming from the science base to industry.

That has broadly been the framework of Labour policies that we have argued over the past decade. The evidence is there. We ask the Government to re- examine it. Indeed, it will be examined in a fortnight's time at a conference that the Minister for Science and Technology will attend in Cambridge and at which he will speak. I hope that he will also be there to listen, because some of the leading researchers in this field will attend. I hope that the Government will learn from what they hear.

Against this background, one can see why Labour Members feel profoundly uneasy about sticking the Office of Science and Technology into the Department of Trade and Industry, because it appears to be a spokesman with a vested interest in manufacturing industry, whereas in fact the Office of Science and Technology needs to enter into the mainstream economic policy debate and to be in a position in government where it can do so. The DTI, particularly as it has been run down to such a state over the past 15 years, is simply not able to carry that weight in the discussion of economic policy in government. That is apart from the health and environmental issues, which are of such great importance.

Of the work that has been done by the Office of Science and Technology, the foresight exercise is fine. It has been well received. I hope that it will continue. Good luck to the foresight challenge. It needs to be genuinely additional new money. The evidence that we have been given by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals justifiably questions that. As for the scrutiny report, that is well buried. I hope that the letter that the President of the Board of Trade sent to the Chairman of the Select Committee really does represent that burial. In that letter, one sentence read:

"The Research Councils will be opening up their research grants when they are seeking to achieve specific research aims."

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That is a very important qualification. Does that mean that the research councils are to seek, to invite, under the prior options process, other bodies to do the research only where the research councils are not acting in responsive mode to grant applications or where, according to the practice of the Medical Research Council, the MRC is not backing the individual scientist in building a research unit around him? It is a crazy idea to pick a leading scientist who is the authority in his field, who puts up a good programme of research, which only he is able to do, and then to go out to open tender for somebody else to do it. That is a lunatic undertaking. Does that sentence in the President of the Board of Trade's letter reveal that response mode research and backing the individual researcher will not be subjected to the prior options process? On the prior options process, it has often been said that Government, and the research councils in particular, will consider proposals for the carrying out of research from organisations other than academic and academically related bodies. However, for the research councils it has always been a dead letter because it has not been carried out in the awarding of grants. I know of examples in which I would argue that research council money should go outside academia, but people have not been able to make their case because, in the machinery of the research council, there is not sufficiently high-powered peer group judgment to establish that that is the right way to do it. Therefore, the problem is not in stating the principle of opening up different ways of doing research; it is in organising the process of peer review and administration so that genuinely the best person able to do the research is invited and enabled to do it. From one point of view, modern industrial society and the democratic processes of politics that sustain it have been astonishingly successful. If we look at the world today, we see that there are more people, better fed and enjoying greater liberties than ever before in the history of mankind. A great deal of that success is due to the combination of science and technology and our political systems.

Anyone who has tried to build actual systems that really work, be it a robotic arm, a chemical plant, a global positioning satellite system or even a pay-as-you-earn income tax-raising system, knows how difficult it is to get systems to work. The fact is that the new systems that we build are built out of bits of systems that more or less work already, so the task of new system building is even more complex. Modern society achieves astonishing success which goes far beyond the capacity of any scientist in any laboratory to get systems to work.

Yet from another point of view, politics appears grossly incompetent in its handling of the world. Unemployment, the waste of resources, social frustrations, urban squalor, decay of communities, social injustices and fears for the environment are all very real and all have to be taken seriously. They are properly laid as failures at the door of politics and as challenges to science and technology. The greatest failure of the Government's science policy is that it fails to see the contribution that science and technology have to make at the systemic level and their ability to give new vision and hope to the political process and the community at large. My advice to scientists is to

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get on with the tasks that they see need to be done. They should try to educate the Government, but meanwhile get on with the tasks. 11.32 am

Mr. Peter Brooke (City of London and Westminster, South): It is a privilege to follow the characteristically thoughtful speech of the hon. Member for Motherwell, South (Dr. Bray). He paid a tribute to the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle), who opened the debate for the Opposition. The hon. Member for Leeds, West had a testing task in filling in today for the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett), whose absence we of course comprehend. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand if I say that we look forward to her presence in a future debate.

In welcoming the decision of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade to open the debate as an index of the importance that he attaches to the subject, I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister for Science and Technology will forgive me for churlishness--for I am much admiring of the qualities and personal experience that he brings to the job --if I say that the Government would have taken a further trick if a Minister from the Department for Education and Employment had also taken part in the debate. I shall not dwell on the move of the Office of Science and Technology into the Department of Trade and Industry, for by their fruits shall ye know them, and the fruit jury is still out, but perceptions are important and scepticism could have been mildly disarmed if the Government had extended their response to the debate to more than one Department.

Of course, I know the internal argument against such

multi-facetedness, but we have no hesitation in telling scientists that they must mount multi-disciplinary teams when, at least in the ancient universities, the undergraduate-based discrete nature of disciplines is working as usual. Business as usual is a poor guide in science.

My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade and my hon. Friend on the Treasury Bench should take any emphasis in my remarks on universities not as misunderstanding what Her Majesty's Government are trying to do in their new emphases, but as a deliberate counter-balance to help ensure that we do not throw away our historic strengths in a fit of modernism, which is a proper philosophy for anyone speaking from the Conservative Benches. I declare an interest as a member of the council of the university of London and a presentation fellow of King's college London. Present trends constitute two threats--in no particular order, but unfortunately reinforcing each other. The first is the retreat by the research councils from responsive mode work as a concomitant of the emphasis on relevance. The scale of the retreat over years is by a factor of five. I shall return shortly to its impact.

The second trend is the delegation by Her Majesty's Government of higher education funding decisions to the Higher Education Funding Council, which has an understandable enthusiasm for the formulaic. It is a commonplace that the latter is likely to raise average quality, but at a spectacular price in international salience. It is international salience that should be the keystone of the DTI's preoccupation with competitiveness.

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As a quick index, only perhaps one university in 10 has the quality of reputation to attract scientists from abroad. It is ironic that the present research assessment process and the HEFC funding methodology which arises therefrom are prone to encourage a transfer market in major research figures which will reduce critical mass. However, more serious is the weakening of infrastructure in the key institutions by the spreading of jam more thinly. The infrastructure is already vulnerable because neither Government Departments nor charities are prepared to contribute to overheads at a time when the cost of facilities has risen exponentially, despite the HEFC's financial memorandum, which says that the universities must secure full cost recovery.

I acknowledge that the cost of equipment can go both ways, but the imperative of multi-disciplinary work is profoundly expensive in facility terms. To take a simple example in the biomedical field, the health and safety implications of maintaining in large numbers in animal houses mice with characteristics which make it essential to keep them out of the community have a substantial cost consequence. Those obligations are necessarily not shared by what I will neutrally call the very new universities; yet the spreading of the jam more thinly does not of itself yield what the DTI seeks. One has only to look at where in particular industry puts its money in the universities for research purposes to see why it is important that we sustain our ability to achieve international salience.

There is a hazard that a university which raises a quarter of a million pounds from industrial sources will earn brownie points in today's climate, but if that consists of 125 projects at £2,000 each, that way does not lie our international salvation. Present trends threaten grade drift across the nation and a reduction of the unit of resource in those internationally competitive institutions which have larger obligations and on which we nationally depend.

An example of the potential opportunity costs might be taken from the work of I. C. Park at Imperial college in my constituency. Its extraordinary work on scheduling, in which British Airways is a partner, has reduced the time for examining scenarios when a plane is unexpectedly taken out of service from a couple of hours to a minute and a half, with a dramatic shift from the admirable but impracticable to the immensely relevant. That would not have been possible but for the depth of prior academic work and the scale of the infrastructure needed.

Why does responsive mode work matter? Just as one cannot know which scientific disciplines are going to be considered critical and necessary in 10 years' time in terms of their relevance then, so one cannot predict what curiosity-driven science will throw up in wholly new products and industries.

We Back-Bench Members are no use to our colleagues in government if we do not produce examples, and especially examples with a DTI resonance. I encourage any hon. Member who has not yet done so to visit the Alexander Fleming museum in my constituency, and to see the tiny room in Paddington in which, in 1928, he was conducting work, driven by academic curiosity over a long period of patient and painstakingly acute observation, on the ability of one micro-organism to inhibit the growth of another.

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The impact of the room is numinous. What happened later is history and owed much to others, but no one would have predicted in 1928 what would follow, either in terms of wealth creation or the effect on quality of life, and to do so would have been treated as irresponsible.

The university of Dundee falls some way outside my constituency, but the richness of the harvest that the Japanese have reaped in liquid crystals goes back to original work on amorphous properties in the electronic field at that university. I am, however, one of the Members of Parliament who represents IBM, and I remind the House of the first laser diode demonstrated in the early 1960s as the result of basic work at IBM laboratories on semiconductor junctions. Once upon a time, lasers were solutions in search of a problem--I must quietly note that that is the opposite of today's credo. Today, laser-generated communications through optical fibres are superseding electronic communication. Modern versions of diode lasers are the light sources driving a multi-billion dollar activity on the international super-highway, yet they derive from some rather fundamental physics.

To tell a similar story the other way round, the polymer industry, including my constituents at BP, is rushing to commercialise polypropylene made using a new chemical process involving metallocene catalysts. The original work to discover the structure of the catalysts was done by my constituent and Nobel laureate Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson as pure curiosity- driven research in the 1950s. I shall not take the House through the subsequent 40 years of developments, except to remark that the time scale is longer than that of a Department where the absence of a chief scientist has already been remarked on.

Mr. Dalyell: The right hon. Gentleman was a member of the Cabinet and, indeed, a helpful Minister with responsibility for higher education. Has he any personal view on the absence of a chief scientist, which has already been mentioned this morning?

Mr. Brooke: I think that the way in which I phrased my remark might be interpreted as expressing a view.

The first engineer to win a Nobel prize, Dennis Gabor of Imperial college, won it for highly academic work on optics, which led to the discovery of holograms. Their ability to project a three-dimensional image from a flat surface has a host of recreational and industrial applications, but they are most familiarly found as a security device on credit cards that are household names.

Finally, I cite magnetic resonance imaging. Nuclear magnetic resonance is a piece of fundamental physics that has long been a research tool of physicists and chemists. Mansfield in the United Kingdom and Purcell in the United States of America pointed out that it could be used to generate an internal map of a solid object. Many refinements later, we have, in the magnetic resonance scanner, a multi-million pound industry and a sine qua non in any major hospital.

None of those examples arose as a result of a specific problem being set. I do not for a moment decry the work of the foresight panels, and I join in the admiration for the quality of the scientists who participated, although their effectiveness may be being blunted in the implementation, as administrators take over from scientists. I simply want to point out that outsiders and foreigners might take the view that the pendulum has swung too far against the responsive mode.

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The literature that the Conservative research department thoughtfully provided to Conservative Members draws attention to the number of British Nobel prize winners in the 50 years between 1940 and 1990. It might have been more intellectually honest, however, if it had broken the half century into two periods of 25 years. To remain momentarily abroad, we should be grateful for the fact that European Union research projects enable British scientists to remain involved in fields that we might not perhaps be centrally maintaining in this country. It would be a matter of profound reassurance, however, if my hon. Friend the Minister could confirm in his reply that the Treasury's practice of docking Departments for money contributed to such research in EU programmes will not apply to the OST under the principle of attribution.

I have apologised to my hon. Friend the Minister, as a long-standing constituency engagement may cause me to miss his reply. I close on the subject of technology with one apprehension that is central to his Department's activities.

In the current world, I do not fear for large companies, which have both the size and the exposure to international competition that are likely to ensure that they attend to the opportunities of science and technology. I do not fear for the small companies. Not only are a large number of our brightest young people going into the smallest companies, but such companies have had a reputation in the past 20 years for generating employment, which will itself ensure that they receive the Government's continuing scrutiny.

My concern is the middle-sized company that may employ about 1,000 people, but often does not employ one single person who is wholly literate in science and/or technology. Scientists may be entitled to take a Darwinian view of that condition. I suspect that Ministers and we Members of Parliament who represent the employees of those companies might not be able to take so sanguine a perspective. I have no obvious solution, and Darwin might well play a part in the outcome.

I salute the Government for making this debate possible. For a non- scientist, it has been a privilege to participate.

11.46 am

Mr. Nigel Jones (Cheltenham): We have heard some thoughtful speeches, and the last two have been a credit to the occasion. First, I welcome the President of the Board of Trade and the Minister to their relatively new responsibilities, and wish them well in their task of persuading their colleagues that investment in science, engineering and technological research is fundamental to the well-being of our country. I hope that they do not have too much of an uphill task. Incidentally, I see that the right hon. Gentleman has taken the advice of the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle), and beetled off to Dorneywood to protect the science budget from the Chancellor's axe.

I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Wirral, West (Mr. Hunt) no longer has responsibility in the Cabinet for science. The former Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster

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tried to support the science base. In his introduction to the 1995 "forward look", which was published earlier this year, he wrote: "I see it as my overriding function as Cabinet Minister for Science to seek to ensure that the United Kingdom sustains and enhances its SET base. I have the highest admiration for UK scientists, engineers and technologists, in both the public and private sectors, and for the excellent work they carry out. I want to work with them."

We all agree with that.

What a pity that, in the summer reshuffle, the science community certainly saw itself as relegated from Cabinet status and subsumed in the Department of Trade and Industry, although I welcome the commitment of the President of the Board of Trade today to speak up for science in the Cabinet--perhaps in tandem with the Deputy Prime Minister. We will judge them by their actions.

It is also a pity that this debate has been tucked away on a Friday morning, when most hon. Members have returned to their constituencies or are about to do so. I suspect, however, that by putting it on a Friday we have been allowed more time than we would on another day. The scientific community is rightly furious at what it sees as a demotion. The community is also none too pleased by the cuts in funding, which it sees as accompanied by a Government illusion that there is increasing funding of the science base.

Dr. Eric Voice of the Royal Society of Chemistry points out the effect of funding shortages on chemistry departments, many of which were built in the 1960s and are reaching the end of their useful lives. They need growing sums of money for vital refurbishment to provide our scientists with a modern environment in which to work. Those needs range from providing enough fume cupboards, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Leeds, West, for routine daily use to a serious shortfall in the state-of-the-art equipment normally found elsewhere, such as nuclear magnetic resonance--NMR--imaging machines. Many British professors come back green with envy from visiting universities in the United States or Germany. We need to match the investment of those countries to give our scientists, engineers and technologists the chance to compete. All the evidence seems to confirm that Britain is falling behind.

The right hon. Member for City of London and Westminster, South (Mr. Brooke) mentioned Nobel prizes for science. Britain has a truly amazing record, but the trend is in the wrong direction. Between 1946 and 1955, British scientists won 10 Nobel prizes; in the next decade, 11; and in the following decade, 12. Between 1976 and 1985, they won only eight, and in the decade from 1986 to 1995, only one--although the peace prize award for a scientist may put the number up to two. The President of the Board of Trade said that we were top of the class; we may not be any more, but we ought to be.

Health and safety legislation for research establishments is greatly affecting research--the more so with chemistry departments. A large majority of 1960s chemistry department buildings are now unsatisfactory under current Health and Safety Executive rules, with which it costs money to comply. It is not unknown for the HSE to order the immediate closing down of an activity being run with the only equipment available to that department.

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Equipment spending levels in real terms per full-time academic have nose-dived over the past decade, especially in the past six years, from £1,850 per academic in 1987-88 to £1,193 in 1992-93--a drop of well over a third in six years.

The hon. Member for Leeds, West, to whom I always listen, spoke forcefully and clearly about cuts in Government support for science. I hope that the Minister will tell us what he intends to do to turn around Government's attitude to funding science and technology. I shall deal next with the effects of good scientific and technological developments on our quality of life. There is a problem in projecting science into the community so that the community understands the benefits that past scientific research brings to life today. It is the role of hon. Members, inside and outside the House, to make the public aware of what is going on and of the importance of scientific investment. The House will know of and appreciate the huge improvements that medical research has brought to mankind. We know of life- saving breakthroughs by our scientists and by those of other countries.

I have a personal reason to be grateful to recent medical science. My twin daughters were born 10 weeks prematurely in 1986; had they been born 20 years earlier, they would probably not have survived, because their lungs were not sufficiently developed. Today, thanks to past medical research, and to the skill of doctors and nurses, they are as healthy and, I have to admit, as noisy, as any other children.

There are huge developments in information technology, an industry in which I spent more than 20 years before entering the House. There is much comment --some of it exciting, much of it hype and plenty of it ill informed--about the coming information revolution which is being brought about in part by the British invention of fibre-optics and its use in the transmission of data. The so-called information super-highway has sparked interest in the most unusual places. My hon. and learned Friend--and office colleague--the Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell) describes a meeting between my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) and Al Gore, the Vice -President of the United States. For the first 20 minutes, they talked about defence and foreign affairs. My hon. and learned Friend described it as "straight bat stuff". Then my right hon. Friend mentioned the super- highway, and the Vice-President sprang to life. For the next hour, his brow furrowed with bewilderment, he was treated to

"Ashdown and Gore rising above us on a cloud of cyberspeak." To be fair, he now has a laptop of his own.

Like it or not, the information revolution is coming. Its impact will be as dramatic as the invention of the pencil. The merging of broadcasting and computing technologies in the digital age offers mankind opportunities--and dangers--to change the way we live. Its impact cannot be ignored. I know that the Minister is appearing at the European conference on cable communications on Monday, and I will be pleased to be there to listen to what he has to say.

Today, only a small, although growing, number of people use the Internet. The hon. Member for Leeds, West said that there were 30 million worldwide. They use it to communicate their message to individuals or to the wider public. At the last count, 99.5 per cent. of the population were not using it; the nearest they get to it is watching

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"Tomorrow's World" on television--an excellent programme--or seeing hieroglyphics on their television screens next to the telephone number or contact address for giving their views on the topic of the day.

The Government have washed their hands of part of the issue. They prefer to let market forces dictate the way forward, yet it is a curiously distorted market. The Government ban on British Telecom broadcasting live entertainment is equivalent to shooting Linford Christie in the foot at the start of the 100 metres. If we have a world beater, we should encourage it, not discourage it. Both the cable companies and BT are of key importance in installing the infrastructure for the information super-highway, which needs further development by our science community. There needs to be a national plan to ensure that anyone who wants access can have it.

Mr. Ian Taylor: The hon. Gentleman makes a specific point with which I may not have time to deal in my winding-up speech. If he read my letter in the Financial Times on Tuesday of last week, he would see a succinct description of Government policy.

The hon. Gentleman must remember that it would not be possible to invest in the cable industry if there had not been asymmetrical regulation in favour of market entry. That is the key point. The ultimate beneficiary is the consumer. That must be never be forgotten. The quality of services being introduced is due to the fact that BT is subject to competition, and its reputation abroad exists partly because it has a competitive home market from which to develop its services.

Mr. Jones: I thank the Minister for clarifying that. I do not agree with him, because, in my discussions with BT, I was told that it believes that the ban has affected its export opportunities that it could have gained had it been able to demonstrate a home market. It was able to demonstrate that it had the technology for installation. The case mentioned to me involved east Germany. The Minister and I will continue to debate that issue.

There needs to be a national plan to ensure that everyone who wants it can have access to the information super-highway. It is not enough to cherry- pick areas of high population density--the towns and cities--where the costs of cable installation are lower. We must ensure that the fruits of this scientific breakthrough are available to all our people, including those who live in rural areas such as rural Gloucestershire, Cornwall, Devon and Warwickshire. Those areas are all what I call Charles Kennedy territory. Those people are as much part of the future as anyone else.

We have heard already that fibre-optic technology was invented in Britain. How fitting it would be if Britain became the first complete super-highway nation.

Some scientists will go into detail and claim that microwave technology should fit into the overall plan, and I do not argue with that. What I want is a plan rather than no plan at all; otherwise, I fear that we shall create a new category of poverty--the information have-nots, who are excluded from the services that businesses, local and central Government, and health authorities will provide in the future.

At the moment, the human race is scratching at the surface of what could be achieved using the information super-highway. There is far more to it than delivering 37 entertainment channels, although I know people who sit all day flicking through them until they find repeats of

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"Neighbours", "Dallas" or "I love Lucy". The super-highway--the result of a British invention--will have a profound effect on how we work and live. With the digital age, computing and broadcasting technologies are merging into one.

This is a great opportunity for Britain, because British software scientists are among the best, if not the best, in the world, and our broadcasters have a reputation for excellence worldwide. Putting the two together in the new information revolution places Britain in a unique position to create wealth and influence events in the exciting new age of multi-media services, reaching across national boundaries and around the world.

Let us be clear--the Internet of today is not the super-highway of tomorrow. The super-highway as envisaged by Al Gore and my right hon. Friend the leader of the Liberal Democrat party is a broad-band system that allows high-definition pictures as well as text to travel from any point on the super-highway to any other point.

Businesses will use the technology to promote their products; holiday companies will offer a "See before you fly" service; and estate agents will give a multi-media conducted tour of your home of tomorrow from the comfort of the armchair in your home of today. Inevitably, a colleague will call and download the document or the three-dimensional image of the building design on which one is working, or the inevitable press release, so that one can make those last-minute adjustments.

There is also evidence that companies will locate and create jobs where they have access to the best information, as well as transport infrastructure. Soon, access to local and central Government services will be available in the home. One will be able to fill in a tax return on a Sunday afternoon when the football is a bit boring, find one's way through the benefits maze--if any benefits remain by then--or even send a stroppy letter to one's local Member of Parliament who voted the wrong way on an issue about which one feels strongly. The Government have a responsibility to enable everyone who wants the skills to use the new technology. If a 10- year-old child of today does not have the skills to use the information super-highway by the time he or she is looking for a job, he or she will probably not be able to get a worthwhile job. So the Government have a responsibility to ensure that the infrastructure extends nationwide, which means ensuring that there is no financial barrier to gaining those skills. That means that people in schools, colleges, universities, libraries, and village halls and people at home must be able to gain access. By upgrading the skills level of everyone in Britain, we can become a decent, tolerant and prosperous nation once again. If we do not do it, I guarantee that some other country will.

I welcome the Government's continuing recognition that we need to attract more women, not just into science but to stay in science once they have completed their PhD, because women have just as much to offer as men and our nation should make use of all our academic talent. Women are a vital part of our future.

I hope that, when the Minister and the President of the Board of Trade get together before next month's Budget, they will press the Chancellor to ensure that the science

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community is properly funded in future. If we do not invest heavily in our science base, the future will not be much to look forward to. 12.3 pm

Sir Giles Shaw (Pudsey): May I join in the welcome to my right hon. Friend the Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Lang), the new President of the Board of Trade, on his first appearance at the Dispatch Box in his new capacity? I also welcome my hon. Friend the Minister for Science and Technology, whom we have already recognised as someone with a considerable grasp of the issues involved in science and technology. He has been extremely active throughout the country in support of those central themes in our economic development.

The activities within the Office of Science and Technology have been considerable over an incredibly short time. I listened with declining attention to the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) as he approached his 47th minute, but I heard him conclude with what I can only regard as a remarkably backward-looking commitment to old Labour when he said that Labour would establish an advisory council at national level, local science shops and a co-ordinated strategy. Shades of good old George Brown were entering into the discussion at a most relevant point and I am glad to see that the great mark that he will make on the future starts in the past.

I contrast that with the fact that, in 1992, the Government took what were probably the three most fundamental steps in shifting the way in which science was handled, not just in previous

Administrations of this party but in Administrations previous to that. The fact that the OST came into being; the fact that it was located in the Cabinet Office; the fact that it had a Minister at Cabinet rank to promote policies that might co-ordinate the Government's activity in science; and the fact that within its remit it quickly published in "Realising our Potential" a blueprint for scientific effort, both through research councils given new mandates and competition, and through the way in which industrial development could be fashioned through "foresight" and "forward look", were all considerable initiatives. We are not yet three years down the road since the establishment of that "new template" for British science and technology.

It is, at least in part, a shockwave reaction to the fact that that relatively new but hugely promising plant should be transplanted that has caused a ruction among the scientific establishment and hon. Members, which we have witnessed this afternoon. The meaning behind that seems to be that, despite initial anxieties, the OST in its original form and location had already gained considerable commitment and had started to provide evidence that it would take a grip on the future for science and technology in a way that had not been seen in a decade or two. From that point of view, it is a reaction based on success.

Although I have not felt great anxiety about that, I understand why others have such anxiety and feel that I should make some observations to my hon. Friend the Minister, to which he may care to respond. It is odd that, despite the technique of ring-fencing a budget--whether "ring" is the "Colgate ring of confidence" or merely a form of garotte, I do not know--it is insufficient to make it clear that the science budget will have a separate and determined level of expenditure committed on a

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one-to-one basis between the OST and the Treasury. I am happy with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy being the protagonist, as he has admirable clout to deal with that matter, but I am a little anxious that ring-fencing is not enough.

Let me make two suggestions that might help. First, it seems odd that there is no chief scientific adviser within the DTI. Without such a post, it seems likely that the role of the splendid "chief scientific adviser (total Government)" is at risk of being diluted or involved in a special pleading relationship between the CSA, who is physically located elsewhere but whose responsibility within the OST would inevitably involve him with the Department of Trade and Industry, including officials, and the President of the Board of Trade and Industry himself. I am a little concerned that such influence may not be beneficial to the doctrine of separateness which I believe to be an important, if not crucial, aspect of the OST's credibility.

I am not encouraging a U-turn when I invite my hon. Friend the Minister or the President of the Board of Trade to consider reviewing whether the Department of Trade and Industry should not have its own scientific adviser and thus be complete. Such a person would be part of a team working under the CSA to co-ordinate the Government's science policies and would be a separate voice for the DTI. The CSA would not be a surrogate for the DTI. I hope that that is a constructive suggestion.

The next stage of development has to prove itself on the back of the first. I give enormous credit to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave) who, in his previous incarnation as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, inaugurated a very productive period for science and technology. The Science and Technology Select Committee owes its existence to the OST. When the OST was transplanted to the Department of Trade and Industry, there was considerable doubt as to whether it would continue. I am delighted that the President of the Board of Trade made it clear beyond doubt today, and in public for the first time, that the current position is to be maintained and that the Committee will continue to monitor the Department and operate researches of its own choosing. I look forward to a future, reassured on behalf of the Committee.

Today's debate may be due to the Committee. It was, after all, in our response to "forward look" that we advised the Government that there should be an annual debate on science and technology shortly after the publication of the yearly appraisal. In parliamentary terms, it is broadly within two months that we are having it, if one puts the recess on one side. I welcome that as a response to our initiative.

The Government's response to our little report on the efficiency of our research institutions was a little unorthodox. I accept that the two-month period was not quite up. It was generously extended a little and we then received a letter from my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade. I covet a letter from him at any time, and the fact that he put a stamp on it was of immense importance. It was signed by him, I enjoyed reading it and I am deeply grateful to him. I understand, of course, that Pauline epistles are rare--not many responses did St. Paul receive in his day. In any event, I am delighted that we had one from the President of the Board of Trade.

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