| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Tyrie: Before the Minister concludes, can he give some comfort for the future and confirm that the proportionate cuts in West Sussex county council's budget will be reversed, so that we can tell our constituents this weekend that there is some hope that the Government will reconsider the issue?
Mr. Hutton: As the hon. Gentleman knows, the ink is not yet dry on the local government financial settlement. Further announcements are due on the subject and he may draw some satisfaction from them.
Unfortunately, we are running out of time for this debate. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham raised other points that I would have liked to address, and I shall correspond with him about them. We want first-class services for the people who use the NHS and we want the best possible social services that we can provide for people in Britain. That is the whole purpose of our modernisation agenda for the NHS and social services and that applies just as much to the hon. Gentleman's constituents in West Sussex as it does to anyone else in the country.
Mr. Peter Bottomley:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I did not raise the point during the Minister's speech because he was being conciliatory and we wanted to hear what he had to say, but the voices he heard did not come from here. If the problem recurs, you have the ability to refer the matter to the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Chemical Engineering Education
1.29 pm
Dr. Ashok Kumar (Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East): I declare an interest in that I am by qualification and profession a chemical engineer. I was a practising engineer before entering the House. I want to highlight the point that the Government's goal of a modern, competitive industrial nation must be underpinned by competent, well-educated chemical engineers. This week's headline in The Engineer says, "UK students reject Engineering"; they are rejecting it in masses.
I am not alone in recognising the importance of chemical engineering and chemical engineers to our standards of life. The Prime Minister recognised the vital role of chemical engineers in developing and implementing United Kingdom technology in his personal foreward to the recent Institution of Chemical Engineers report "Future Life".
In the global market, the UK has to compete on many fronts. The old certainties and practices that sustained us in the past cannot be called on in the global context of constant technological innovation and emerging markets. However, the UK still possesses poles of industrial strength and expertise inherited from the days when we were dominant. Nowhere is that more true than in the chemical industry. It was the last of the great staple industries to be developed, with names such as ICI and British Petroleum known across the globe. It is still a powerhouse of innovation, applied science and the development of new products.
Chemical engineers work not only in the traditional chemical industry, but wherever chemical reactions and processes are part of the manufacturing chain. That includes the water and energy industries, pharmaceuticals, and food and drink. That roll call shows the need for chemical engineers, whose work affects us all. They clothe us, their drugs heal us, they help to feed us and they furnish our homes and offices. They intimately affect all aspects of our living environment. From fertilisers to plastics, the chemical engineering industry has been a leading producer and developer of new materials for daily life. That is reflected in the markets.
In the UK, the basic chemical engineering industry has a yearly turnover of some £20 billion, making up 1.7 per cent. of our total gross domestic product. If we assess the added value of finished products, that figure can be quintupled. There are also links to process engineering and contracting, which is one of the UK's less-well-known strengths. That is why major multinational contractors such as Kvaerner, Foster Wheeler, Kellogg, Brown and Root and AMEC have UK headquarters, helping the UK and our balance of payments.
The strategic importance of the UK chemical industry must not be underestimated. The key issue is developing our human potential. Unlike other, older industries, our chemical industry is not a technological cul-de-sac. The constant search for new products, the growth of biosciences, the constant drive to harness natural processes to human benefit, and pioneering work, such as molecular technology, at the frontiers of knowledge, need a flow of dedicated, imaginative, young people who can think laterally, if we are to compete on equal terms with other nations.
The jobs are there. A recent Department of Trade and Industry study showed that there will be continuing demand for high-quality engineering graduates over the coming decade. Chemical engineering students and graduates are often the people who enter higher education with the best A-level scores. While that is a source of pride, it hides the fact that, for many young people, chemical engineering is culturally unattractive. I believe that that stems from environmental concerns that equate the chemical industry with environmental degradation and pollution, and, mentally, with Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory. Nothing could be more wrong.
We live with the environmental consequences of our industrial past. As a Teesside Member, I see that every day, but chemical engineers will be at the cutting edge in the fight to clean up our planet. They are the people who will have to devise and apply environmental techniques. That point should be hammered home at an early age. The chemical industry has long fostered good relationships with schools and colleges. It is important that this is built into the national curriculum for science by demonstrating the links between the things that we all want from society, the market and the work of chemical engineers. New courses dealing with food and drink, agriculture, biosciences and advanced manufacturing must be developed. The courses must set practical, rather than rhetorical, questions about the environment, and demand responses that encourage and develop recycling and reprocessing techniques.
We must also tackle the gender gap in the science classroom. Anecdotally, I am told that the number of young women expressing interest in science courses and allied GCSE paths is very low. Interestingly, the highest proportion of young women graduate engineers are chemical engineers. Gender imbalances are not healthy for our society wherever they occur. We must ensure that broad-based science teaching is as women-friendly as possible.
The key is to get more youngsters involved in science early. The basic problem is revealed by one simple fact. For every 100 five-year-olds who enter a classroom for the first time, only 20 go on to do an A-level. Of them, only 10 go on to study science and technology in higher or advanced education. The percentage of those going on to study chemical engineering is smaller still.
Innovations in the classroom and school laboratory must be matched by innovation in the university seminar room. The steady stream of bright new engineers from our universities finds well-paid jobs. Chemical engineers can command average earnings comparable with or better than those of solicitors, chartered accountants and architects. That is countered by lower salaries and expectations among the academic staff who train these high fliers. The recent Bett committee report painted a gloomy picture of the state of chemical engineering in higher education and the salaries enjoyed there. It found that many university staff were underpaid and overworked. Comparable jobs in the private sector were better paid and often more attractive in research terms. The ever-increasing strain of handling routine administration was also taking a toll.
The logical answer is to ensure that greater esteem is granted to chemical engineering in the university environment. One simple way to do that would be to
review the salary structure. The holy cow of all staff being paid on a single national scale for lecturers and senior lecturers irrespective of discipline must be queried. It does not stand to up to the presence of a competitive market outside the walls of the college or university. A precedent was set by the fact that the medical professions have accepted special pay scales in teaching institutions for clinical specialisms.
The growing shortage of chemical engineering lecturers is demonstrated by a study by the Institution of Chemical Engineers, which showed that of a cohort of 1,500 graduates with firsts or upper seconds over the past 13 years from the five leading UK universities with chemical engineering departments, only seven had gone on to take tenured teaching positions in the UK. Bluntly, we must develop better links between the industry and the universities, and, within universities, between chemistry and chemical engineering departments, as advocated by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
There are good examples of companies such as ICI, Zeneca and Esso sponsoring lecturing positions where salaries are supplemented financially, but the links need to be made at research level. Industry needs more research facilities and should be prepared to pay for them through direct cash sponsorship and by setting up joint research ventures. What research needs to be done, how it is to be conducted and who will pay for it are questions with which both universities and industry must grapple.
While the quality of chemical engineering research and the people engaged in it have been assessed by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council as being fully competitive when compared with other major engineering disciplines, there are signs that that competitiveness is beginning to flag. The official data prepared by the Government's chief scientist Sir Robert May show that the citations in chemical engineering of United Kingdom research workers are falling behind those of researchers in competitor countries.
In recent years, a mismatch has begun to emerge between the strength of the current UK chemical engineering research base, and multidisciplinary and inter-disciplinary areas of interest as exemplified by the foresight programme and the "Future Life" document produced by the Institution of Chemical Engineers. That mismatch needs to be rectified if we are to meet the new challenges and changes in our industrial structure, as the chemical industry restructures around high value-added speciality products and increasingly deserts its old heavy petrochemical base.
Alarmingly, the changes come when the latest Universities and Colleges Admission Service figures show that applications for chemical engineering places are still in decline, with a 10 per cent. drop in the current year. That decline affects all engineering disciplines, but it is a special problem for the chemical engineering profession, as structural changes are occurring in the industries which will require a stream of new graduates.
We have to make chemical engineering more relevant to young people who are considering their careers. In the House, we debate issues of great importance. Often, they are issues that can be resolved and informed only by the work of engineers: how best to bring degraded land back into beneficial use; what are the real issues and the real levels of risk in the genetic modification of foods, which we discussed earlier; what is the best route for effective
recycling of wastes and materials; and how to produce the materials of the 21st century. All those are matters that, if properly studied in our universities, would help both to inform policy makers and to train a new generation of scientists and engineers in problem-solving techniques. Also, the industries that participated in those programmes would receive a real boost.
However, industry also has to realise that participation entails recognising that universities are autonomous bodies with a prime mission to turn out fully rounded and dedicated graduates. That should not deter industry. The needs of industry and the work of higher education are, in the final analysis, totally synergic.
If the UK chemical industry genuinely wants to increase efficiency and productivity, put clear blue water between themselves and their competitors, and make the quantum leap into the development of the technologies of the coming millennium, it must be prepared to contribute to research, and to constant career enhancement and retraining.
I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to study closely the decline in the public funds available for biochemical engineering, which is one of the key forward areas of chemical engineering. I recognise that there is no such thing as a free meal. Society and the House must recognise that we need to consider how best to resource the work of higher education in that area of expertise. Industry, too, must recognise that long-term growth cannot come merely from leeching off research work that is financed and conducted by others. It must recognise its obligations to help that process.
As a Teesside Member of Parliament representing perhaps the one area of the UK where the chemical industry is the cornerstone of the local economy, and as a chemical engineer, I am aware of the absolute dependence of modern society on chemical engineering. It is time to recognise that dependence and to plan for its proper development. Attracting more of the brightest and best from our schools into science and engineering courses is imperative for all of us. While the national curriculum delivers science for every youngster until the age of 16, it has not led to greater participation in science A-levels or higher entry figures to our universities. That is something which the Department for Education and Employment and the Department of Trade and Industry must tackle, directly and quickly.
My hon. Friend the Minister must recognise that we need to tackle the imbalance of courses in our universities. Some subjects are over-subscribed--some people may feel that they contribute to national renewal--while in others, standards have to be dropped merely to fill the places.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |