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Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield): As I was in Committee, I missed a couple of minutes of the hon. Gentleman's opening remarks. While he is thanking various parties for their contributions, I am sure that he will mention the role of universities in innovation in engineering. Many fascinating and exciting best practices are to be found at universities such as Warwick, Huddersfield and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, but there is concern among
the heads of innovating institutions about the tremendous pressure on their departments following the most recent round of budget cuts.
Mr. Rathbone: The hon. Gentleman entirely correctly anticipates comments that I shall make later.
All the endeavours that I described have the one aim of building a better future for British engineering as a wealth creator. Concern about the future of engineering equates with concern about the future of the United Kingdom. Wealth creation starts with engineers. Innovative British engineering solutions are world beaters. One good example is an ultrasonic gas meter just the size of a brick, which won the 1995 Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert award for its revolutionary design, and orders for it are coming in from all over the world. We must encourage and develop more success stories.
Improving the quality of life is as important as wealth creation. Solutions to pollution and environmental degradation continue to come from scientists and engineers. Leanburn engines, battery-powered cars and fuel cells will help to control vehicle emissions, and all our lives will benefit. The technology foresight exercise identified key areas of research that are critical to wealth creation. The Government must continue to support and expand support through research councils, the UK engineering base and the key technologies that technology foresight identified. Let us be clear that technology foresight will fail if industry does nothing. The Royal Academy of Engineering is actively encouraging industry to take a long-term view of markets and technological opportunities, and to spend more on research and development to take advantage of them.
Returning to the crucial requirements for success,we must improve the teaching of basic mathematics in schools. Worrying statistics from a recent Exeter university study of mathematics abilities in Great Britain and other countries were presented at a conference in Birmingham yesterday. Young people in Germany, Poland or Singapore--to pick just three examples--are far ahead of their British counterparts at the age of 13,and they are even further ahead at 14. It seems that teachers in Britain are unwilling to correct mistakes or to demand precise and exact work; that children are allowed to resort to calculators at too early an age, before they have achieved a proper understanding of numbers; that there is too little streaming to speed comprehension and improvement, especially of high achievers and low achievers; and that, too often, the qualifications of primary school teachers of mathematics are too low.
National wealth creation depends on the training of young people to levels at least as high as those in other industrialised countries, and it must start with a good foundation in basic mathematics. Teaching standards need improvement, whatever other changes may be made to our school systems. To achieve that--here I touch on the point made by the hon. Member for Huddersfield(Mr. Sheerman)--we must continue to put new technology into our schools and adapt teaching and learning procedures to give all students the necessary knowledge and skills that they and our country need. That leads me to engineering education in universities.
There is a desperate need for more of our most able young people to go into engineering, which is a fascinating, broad, challenging and rewarding area of study and work. There is a shortage of top-quality chartered engineers and incorporated engineers, in part because too many students, even those who may be more naturally practical, are tempted into more theoretical areas of study. The universities have a role to play in that. Engineering should be used more widely as a general education leading to a variety of careers.
In that context, I must mention engineering at the University of Sussex, in my constituency. Since the university's initiation in 1965, engineering has functioned there as a closely integrated school of studies. By avoiding a conventional departmental approach to engineering, which can create barriers between civil, mechanical and electrical engineering, the Sussex school has been able to establish a range of highly successful interdisciplinary degree programmes and well-funded industrially relevant research activities, the quality of which is recognised both nationally and internationally.
Because of its unified nature and relatively small size,the school can respond more rapidly to developments in the engineering profession--most of which occur at the interface between traditional disciplines--than most of its competitors. In that way, engineering, in all its parts, is made more interesting and relevant. Even in Sussex there is room for more women applicants to take advantage of that.
Young men and young women should know that graduates from engineering and science-based courses are finding it easier to get satisfactory jobs than are many other graduates. What is more, they are attractive to a range of employers and are involved at the cutting edge of industry and business. It is also quite clear that graduates are now entering a well-paid profession. The Engineering Council's recent survey of salaries shows that the median annual salary for a chartered engineer is in the region of £35,000. It is also clear from recent studies that engineering is the best route to promotion to the very top of UK business.
There are some concerns, however, and I come to the point raised by the hon. Member for Huddersfield. The recent cuts in capital funding for universities announced in last November's Budget will have a particularly bad effect on departments of engineering and science, where investment in technological and research facilities needs to be increased. Retraining and re-education are of growing importance. It has been estimated by the Institution of Electrical Engineers that the half life of a technical degree is now only four years. Professional engineers need to keep their skills and knowledge up to date. Universities have increasingly to cater to that need.
There is a need for better research and for better funding of it. If Britain is to increase its productivity and competitiveness in Europe and the world, policies that attract innovative graduates into research are essential.It is relevant that the Science and Technology Committee in another place made the point that the absence of career opportunities for researchers is one factor in the lack of attractiveness of science to school children.
As I reach my conclusion, I must make a few wider comments on aspects of wealth creation that affect engineers, engineering companies and everybody else.We have a hard-won low level of inflation. Whatever else we do, we must maintain it; it influences all the costs of
manufacture. A properly maintained value for sterling is important to raw material costs and the costs of outsourcing, and a competitive exchange rate is an important base for export sales. The national business overhead is being better contained in Britain than in many other countries, and more successfully than in previous years--but more effort is always needed to keep down business rates, the cost of national insurance, the hidden costs of less than good transport systems, the costs of meeting legislative requirements and much more. All are real costs for business and can be to the real detriment of engineering success.
We must see what more can be done to encourage and to help small firms. More than 95 per cent. of engineering firms have fewer than 200 employees, and more than three quarters have fewer than 20 employees. Many of the engineering industry's suppliers and customers are also small companies. I realise that this is close to the Minister's heart, as he was responsible for the Department of Trade and Industry's small firms in Britain initiative last year. I urge him to seek out better methods of equity finance for small firms; more help for small firms in managing their finances and their businesses; opportunities to reduce regulation on their operations, as outlined by the Prime Minister only last week; and better and more continuous Government strategy for house building, construction, infrastructure inputs and export development, in which all small firms, particularly small engineering firms, have a vital interest.
Every engineer knows how important it is to know how the various parts of any system interrelate and to have a vision of the purpose of all endeavour. That is a good approach for government as well.
The quality of our education output--to put it in manufacturing terms--is not good enough, particularly considering the considerable sums that are spent on it. The fact that many technology and science courses are undersubscribed demonstrates either that pupils are not made aware of the interesting careers available in engineering and similar professions, and the importance to the future prosperity of our country, or that they consider the discipline of study in those subjects too hard compared with the softer options of the humanities, business studies or media studies, which are so popular. That problem arises particularly if they have not had the necessary basic training in mathematics and sciences early in their school career.
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