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Mr. Rathbone: It is kind of the right hon. Gentleman to let me interrupt. A number of engineers are honoured in the honours list, but, unfortunately, when they are listed, they are never identified as "FEng", in the way that someone is identified as "FRS". I hope that that might be changed.
Mr. Oakes: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. He is right.
Having been a Minister with responsibility for education, I know that, only too often, we get crazes in education. During those crazes, we are apt to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Over the past 20 years, there has been a craze against apprenticeships and for people to remain in full-time education until they graduate. With that, we threw out the baby with the bathwater.
Some of our finest engineers, not only those on the ground, but those becoming distinguished heads of engineering, worked in a factory and went to night school to do their degree. They maintained themselves doing a useful job for the community, with money in their pockets while they were working. Before they became a BEng or a BSc, they had work experience and learned that they needed to know, not just about engineering, but about human resources and how to persuade fellow workers to do something in the way in which they wanted them to do it. We must reconsider that route. We threw away the old apprenticeship route, and we should bring it back, probably on a wider basis.
I have spoken for long enough. I address my remarks as much to Labour Front-Bench Members as to the Government, because we are moving closer and closer towards a general election. This subject is not for party
political battle, as it involves this country's survival.I hope that, if we are in government, which I hope we shall be--although I shall not be here--we shall have a dramatic policy for science and engineering.
I do not necessarily want to bring back the old Ministry of Technology. Although that was a much-maligned idea, it had brilliant potential. It seized the country's imagination, but it was destroyed by the jealousy of other Departments and, being a new Department, it made many mistakes. We could learn by those mistakes, but one thing is certain: we must have in the Cabinet a Minister who is directly responsible for science, engineering and technology. In that way, we could be great again.
Mr. David Ashby (North-West Leicestershire):
How much I agree with what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone). I only hope that he is successful in persuading those on the Government Front Bench of the merits of what he has had to say to the House today. So often in some of the best debates, such as this, the press is noticeably absent, which may be one reason why we can be so frank and honest in what we have to say.
We say that this is not and should not be a political issue. But I do not see why we should not have innumerate engineers because, after all, there are many illiterate teachers. There lies the rub. I often ask myself why we do not have cross-party support on our efforts to raise standards in education. We need cross-party support, but virtually everything that the Government have done has been criticised. Real efforts have been made to try to debunk them, to make them look ridiculous and to persuade people not to improve our standards. Britain will never improve until we improve our standards.
I am looking at the time and I realise that there are others who want to speak. They will be able to have a real go at me for bringing politics into this. We have had a high-flown and interesting debate, but I want to talk about the ordinary people, the small jobbing engineers, the majority of engineers up and down the country employing fewer than 100 people.
I must declare an interest. I am chairman of such a company. I want to give the House some of the benefits--if they are benefits--of my experience in that area in the hope that somehow we can obtain some vital improvements in those small companies. We hear about all the big companies, but it is the small jobbing engineers who support them, making small parts so that the big companies can get on with what they are trying to do.
I am the chairman of a family company. I have a small, probably non-declarable--I have never tried to work it out--equity interest in the company. But in all fairness to the House, I should say that close members of my family have larger interests, indeed controlling interests.
Such companies produce goods and services for so many companies and are involved in many manufacturing processes. It was hard for companies such as mine during the recession. We had nil, even negative, growth, and it
was a matter of battening down the hatches as far as we could. Even now, such companies have many difficulties. Profits are extremely tight. We are talking about extremely small margins. Many are producing not long runs, but small runs of high-quality products.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes said, being in engineering is exciting and innovative. It requires a high degree of skill and an even higher degree of perfection. The achievement that is possible in engineering can lead to high self-esteem.
I echo what has been said. How I wish that in our society we praised and lauded the ability of engineers, as happens on the continent. I can think of many times when I have been on the beach in Italy where being a dottore, an avvocato or even an onorevole, an Italian Member of Parliament, is nothing. What Italians want to hear is someone calling himself ingigniere. If we could only give such esteem to engineers, we would have people queuing up to become engineers and to achieve as engineers, as happens in other countries.
As has been said--I look at the time again and I do not want to go on repeating it--training is important to companies such as mine. The problem is not only the training of people, but the keeping of young qualified people. We train people and give them all the opportunities, only to lose them to the larger companies that can afford higher wages. Companies such as mine with small profits cannot afford to pay some of the wages that are paid by the larger companies, even though we recognise that we must provide the training because we need the skills. We want to be able to make larger profits so that we can pass them on to our work force, so keeping them, and thus keep our engineering alive. It follows, therefore, that companies such as mine have real continuing problems. If we are to survive, those are the matters that we must address.
As my hon. Friend said, engineering is time, technology and people. If we are to make bigger profits, we must acquire ever better technology and we must be ahead all the time. Coming out of the recession, if we are to survive so much competition and such tight profit margins, it is essential that we keep ahead in research and development. That is vital. If we are to have any success, we must put our profits back into research and development in order to ensure that we are ahead. That is not sufficiently recognised by those in government, especially the Treasury, which could do so much to help small engineering companies--or any company--to keep ahead of the competition in Europe and in the world in research and development.
In this age, it is also essential that we keep up with the ever-changing and more efficient technology, and that means machines. Machines not only wear out, but they change and become more and more efficient. There are new technologies in machining and tooling that provide that efficiency.
We have a work force whom we need to pay more, we need money for research and development and we need new machinery, if we are to increase our competitiveness and pay for the people whom we so much require. For a small business such as mine, a new machine may represent a year's profits, yet it is essential that we buy it. In such a situation, what will happen to research and
development and to our ability to keep our work force in this age of competitive wages? There is nothing left for increased wages; nothing left to ensure that the life-blood is there for the continuity of the company.
Small companies prosper in the present climate, but they could prosper more. We must reduce overheads and costs. Reducing bureaucracy frees up management and reduces overheads. That is an essential point. We need less bureaucracy. Less time should be consumed in filling out forms and other unnecessary things, so that business is free to get going. To employ people on such unnecessary work cuts severely into the resources available for all the other things that are so necessary for small companies.
But most of all, small companies would be helped by an improvement in the taxation climate--by the ability to write off capital machinery costs more quickly. I cannot understand why the Government cannot target businesses such as mine, so that we could write off such costs more quickly. Why cannot we target real producing machinery, which will improve our competitiveness and the way in which we operate, giving us a real chance? Why cannot such capital be targeted, even for one year, at a time when such a boost is needed? It would make an enormous difference to companies such as mine, if they were targeted at the next Budget, for example. I know that my company needs new machinery urgently, but it cannot afford it.
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