Examination of Witnesses (Questions 644
- 659)
WEDNESDAY 28 APRIL 2004
PROFESSOR K ALAN
SHORE AND
MR CLIVE
THOMAS
Q644 Chairman: Welcome to the Committee.
I saw that you were sitting in the back so you know what the form
is.
Professor Shore: We were looking
for the right answers before we started!
Q645 Chairman: Well, hopefully you
found some. If you could just introduce yourselves for the record.
Perhaps we could start with Professor Shore.
Professor Shore: My name is Alan
Shore. I am the head of the School of Informatics at the University
of Wales at Bangor.
Mr Thomas: I am Clive Thomas.
I am director of CEPE, the Centre for Electronic Product Engineering
at the University of Glamorgan. That is loosely termed the technology
transfer centre in England supporting small businesses in Wales.
Q646 Chairman: Thank you both for
coming. We have heard much evidence about the twin pressures of
routine manufacturing processes moving out of Wales to obviously
cheaper manufacturing countries and the need to replace these
processes with high added value and high-tech (for want of a better
phrase) manufacturing. How well is Wales doing in that change
process?
Professor Shore: Let me make it
clear, I know only the photonics industry reasonably well. I have
only a passing interest in the other aspects. My basic point is
that I think there is no choice but to go in that direction. I
think that you cannot compete at the bottom end in a sustainable
way and perhaps later on we will be talking about the mechanisms
that I see, but certainly I think that the photonics industry
is one where there are opportunities for getting to that. It is
some way from reaching those objectives but I think it is the
only way to go.
Q647 Chairman: How well are we doing
it?
Professor Shore: Well, as I say,
I can say in the photonics industry not so well yet, but I can
identify means—there are things in place, which perhaps
we will touch on later on, things like the OpTIC technium and
so on, which I think will give us an opportunity, if it is grasped.
The things that are needed are actually echoing some of the things
I heard in the previous session. A key requirement there is in
training across a wide spectrum and we will probably come back
to that, but that is a key aspect. I think it can be done but
it needs special measures and they need to be made very fast.
If I could just interject one small thing relating to something
else. Prior to this meeting, I have been at the annual meeting
of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, which
is the main body for funding university research. A key worry
now is that the future development of engineering in the UK is
essentially being determined by the choice of 18 year-olds going
into universities. We can talk about that later, but it is a very
stark reality that the causal link between that choice and the
future of industry is being recognised at the highest level and
is a great cause for concern. So it is not only Wales, it is a
UK-wide problem.
Mr Thomas: If I could speak for
the electronics centre and smaller companies. I do not have too
much experience with larger companies. I think there is a willingness
amongst the smaller companies who recognise the value to go to
higher valued products and higher valued services, but there is
a difficulty in doing that in that these are mostly based on new
technologies and there is a fundamental kind of problem that they
have. They do not know what the new technologies are and the opportunities
for these technologies. Where we have been active, as an example,
in the area called embedded Internet, where companies put Internet
technology into products, companies have grasped that opportunity
and we have seen good developments. But as to how effective the
whole sector is, I think it is patchy. It depends on what resources
to information skills they have what support they have. Where
those companies see the opportunity I think they are willing to
go that way, but there is a knowledge barrier.
Q648 Julie Morgan: I want to ask
Professor Shore this question. You mention the importance of seeing
intellectual property as a manufactured good in a high value context.
Could you summarise Wales' position in the UK and in the World
in this respect, if that is not a leading question?
Professor Shore: Okay. Again,
I can talk about the photonics industry because I am deputy chair
of the Welsh Optoelectronics Forum and certainly that has undertaken
the survey of IP protection, so we have some idea of that. The
basis point, I think, is that, for example, in the universities
we generate a lot of IP but we cannot protect it. We do not have
the resource to protect it and so it is lost. I think that that
is a very serious issue. There have been indications from time
to time that there are things like KEF and so on and we should
support this, but we have not seen any tangible outcomes of that
and until there is some real mechanism whereby this large amount
of IP which has been generated—and probably used in generating
companies as well—you can make the initial protection very
cheaply but it is sustaining the protection worldwide that is
extremely expensive and you cannot do it. So my guess is that
we are doing very badly.
Q649 Julie Morgan: Are there any
statistics?
Professor Shore: There is a survey
which was undertaken about four or five years ago. I cannot remember
whether it was actually commissioned by the Welsh Optoelectronics
Forum or the WDA but there is a certain amount there. That needs
to be followed up and updated because there have been significant
changes in the industry in that period, but certainly some work
has been done. It is a very complicated process actually, to identify
IP.
Q650 Julie Morgan: It is very difficult
to do, presumably?
Professor Shore: Yes.
Q651 Julie Morgan: So there is nothing
really up to date that we can look at for Wales or at a worldwide
level?
Professor Shore: I do not think
so. Well, there are statistics. It would be easy to find out how
many patents have been filed and so on worldwide. I have worked
in Japanese companies who routinely patent large numbers of devices
and in fact spend their time deciding which ones not to sustain.
So the activity is there.
Julie Morgan: Thank you.
Q652 Mr Caton: As you predicted,
Professor Shore, we are on to education and training now. For
research and development to thrive in Wales it needs to attract
suitably qualified people. In fact as you have said, Professor
Shore, in your submission, the three requirements for that development
are people, people, people. How can Welsh universities and companies
attract these people, people, people? Where should the incentives
be directed, to financial reward, commercial opportunities or
an improved lifestyle in Wales, or a combination of all?
Professor Shore: Well, if I knew
the answer to that question I think we would really solve it very
easily. In my view, there are financial incentives already. I
think, again, the previous indication maybe at a slightly different
level in one sense but there are opportunities within industry,
but there is definitely a communication gap within schools and
the key age as far as we believe is at 14 years of age. This is
the kind of age when students start to basically being interested
in physical sciences and they start to move away at that age and
they are lost. Now, again without leaping ahead too far, it is
certainly one of my hopes that institutions such as the technia
which are coming on-stream, certainly in the Bangor area, will
be places where we can show to young people that there are exciting
futures in these kind of technologies and maybe include some into
taking up the studies that get them there. There is no question
that to study physical sciences, mathematical sciences, is harder
than doing some other courses. I will not insult anyone by suggesting
other courses, but there is a question in my mind, certainly at
university level, that if the free market, so to speak, is allowed
to continue you will not find the need for employing, let us say,
a thousand psychologists. What are you going to do with them all?
I think that there is a serious question there and this is the
point that the EPSRC was making this morning, that if you allow
that free choice you are endangering the basis of the industrial
economy, in our view, and that is a very serious thing. It is
because of this free market. Somehow, and I do not know how you
do it—it is a question of communication. Unfortunately,
and again it was said in the previous evidence, engineering has
a very poor image. There is no question about that. People think
it is to do with oil cans and all these kinds of things, which
it is not, and somehow the engineering profession has a very strong
responsibility to try and get that changed. That is one part,
but also I think there is a need for schools to understand that
and communicate it, and then probably the parents. I do not know
where parents come in. I studiously avoided trying to advise my
children on anything they should do because I expect them to do
the opposite, but obviously there is an input there. Those tripartite
aspects somehow need to be covered.
Mr Thomas: Could I add something?
I think that with the skills in engineering we have a problem
of retention as well. It is not only a question of recruiting
students on to engineering courses, it is retaining these students
from maths, science and engineering courses to go into industry.
They well understand the commercial gains which can be made if
they go into the financial sector, where they can use their numeracy
skills and analysis skills, and I am aware of certain situations
personally, including my son, who is going to study at university,
where these economic factors are clear. You have also the image
side of industry. The press is always full of closures of manufacturing
organisations and you do not see the same thing happening about
the loss of a solicitor's job. So there is a whole image issue
and it has been there for 25 years. This same argument was talked
about when I was in industry. From our perspective at the Centre
it is interesting that three of the engineers who work with me
are all from abroad—Germany, France and Ireland—and
the skills base that they have is higher when they come to us.
They have a different form of education. In France, for example,
there are technical colleges which they can go to at 13 and it
is not a decision which is based on academic potential, it is
just that they have an aptitude, which means they could become
very good technologists. When they come out they understand engineering,
they interrelate better with companies throughout that process
and they have proven to be some of our best graduates. I think
it is a fundamental issue which is not limited to Wales, it is
UK-wide, and our basic culture and I think it needs to be fundamentally
addressed. I think if we have a skills shortage, supply and demand
applies. If we want more doctors or more teachers then with the
fee systems we should look to maybe giving some incentives if
people with these skills go into industry, maybe some kind of
rebate through a training scheme to get them into engineering,
just to help them go into that profession and not to make the
retention decision to go into alternative, maybe better paid,
longer term career prospect jobs. I think this needs a fundamental
assessment of the whole economic picture for these students.
Q653 Mr Caton: Thank you. I think
you have actually answered a much better question than the one
I asked, because the one I asked was about how Wales competes
for these sort of skilled personnel. But I think you have dealt
with it far more fundamentally as to how we create these skills
within Wales and I think it is very valuable what you have both
said.
Mr Thomas: I think also if we
are going to compete within Wales, we mentioned briefly in passing
the technium concept and we need to have high concentration centres
of excellence where we see high-tech companies associated with
high-tech research in large blocks. For example, I was abroad
and, three or four different people mentioned, the Scottish Enterprise
funding of the Alba microelectronics centre in Scotland and it
is world renowned. They have high-skilled people coming to study
there from large organisations. Once you have them there—you
talk about lifestyle and everything else—if we can capture
those people and spin out companies, sort of start up companies
around that site then we may be able to retain research students
and graduates in this country as well, because it is a retention
problem for Wales competitively within the UK.
Professor Shore: I think there
is also an interesting parallel in Ireland because they have Science
Foundation Ireland, which is putting tremendous amounts of money
into targeted sectors. It happens to be information technology
and bio-sciences but they have identified those areas and they
have gone all out to pull people from across the world into Ireland
and really finance them. Already Ireland has done very, very well
in bringing in electronics companies prior to that and I would
predict that in about 10 years' time you will start seeing the
feed-through from that fundamental research into an expanded industrial
base in that key technology which they have really fired up.
Mr Caton: Thank you very much.
Q654 Albert Owen: How can the smaller,
and you mentioned rural universities, keep their important scientific
functions in the drive to create these large world-class higher
education institutes?
Professor Shore: The first point
that I would challenge in that is the supposition that world-class
universities are large. If you look at the California Institute
of Technology it is about the same size as Bangor. The CalTech
is known worldwide for its work. So I certainly do not buy into
the idea that it is required to be a large institution. But there
is a very key problem and it goes back to the one we were talking
about earlier on, that the finances of universities are very directly
determined by the numbers of students which they attract and because
it is harder to get students into the engineering and physical
sciences it is always going to be difficult to sustain those activities.
If you look at the role of Bangor, and I think Aberystwyth, they
punch above their weight in terms of the money for the local area.
In my department we have very strong activity in software engineering.
There are something like 600 SME software companies around the
area and we probably interacted with at least 50 of those. If
we were not there, those companies would have real problems, as
mentioned earlier on, in terms of updating their products and
getting new techniques to work. So it is vital but the dilemma
facing universities is that because the funding is so directly
related to students, unless that causal link is broken—you
have already seen it. You will be aware that Swansea is just shedding
its chemistry department and now there are only two chemistry
departments in Wales and I think we are not seeing the end of
that. There are major changes going on in the research funding
of universities whose impact is not known because the mechanisms
are not known and it will be extremely difficult and extremely
challenging in those contexts for smaller universities to survive.
It is partially because, without going too far off the beaten
track, the costs to individual students of attending university
courses is causing more and more students to stay close to home,
and of course the Bangor and Aberystwyth areas are not large population
centres so that exacerbates the problem. So there must be a recognition
of the very important contribution that these universities are
making to their local areas. There must be some means for recognising
that to enable some support to be decoupled from the undergraduate
population in order that we maintain these kind of activities.
For example, there are two technia, a software technium and an
OpTIC technium, which are very, very dependent upon the expertise
in the School of Informatics and School of Chemistry at Bangor
and both those departments need to be sustained in that sense.
Q655 Hywel Williams: I am interested
in this point about the funding being per head. I used to work
at Bangor myself, so I should declare an interest. There seemed
to be two abiding philosophies of technia on the cheap or technia
as expensive as you can manage, and I worry about that and I worry
about—perhaps it is straying off the point—fee structures
in the future. However, what I want to ask you about is, is this
not compensated to some extent by funding for research in following
proven excellence? I am not alleging that that is the case, but
is that a compensation at all?
Professor Shore: No, because the
basic point—and again this is one of the changes I alluded
to earlier on—at this time there is no system of so-called
full economic costs of funding research. That is being introduced
by research councils next September. At present they do not know
what system they will use. At the moment it is believed that most
research is done at a loss to institutions. One of the many bureaucratic
processes we are subjected to is a thing called a transparency
review where we have to account for the hours that we work, and
by the way I know of very few academics who can work within the
European Directive! I cannot remember any week that I have worked
for less than 48 hours. But that aside, the answers from that
transparency review very clearly show that the research is subsidised,
if you like, by other activities. So although my school definitely
relies on our research income (we bring in about £1.5 million
a year of Research Council income), the overheads on that essentially
run my department in basic terms. So we rely on that in that sense,
but that is a self cost of the time it takes to do that work.
There have been attempts in other universities to run departments
solely on the basis of research and they cannot do it.
Q656 Hywel Williams: I suppose this
is a complicated sum, but if say a psychology department has four
stars, or however it is rated, presumably there is a spin-off
factor in terms of the numbers which are attracted to that institution
by its good name?
Professor Shore: Oh, sure. Yes,
there are effects like that, but there is a limit because there
are other factors which come in. Certainly all those things help.
For example, my department happens to be at the top of The
Guardian league table for electronic engineering departments,
but that does not of itself bring in thousands of students because
a large number of them come locally and there is a limit to that
number of people. We certainly get people from further afield
but there is a growing tendency for people not to travel so far
to university.
Hywel Williams: Thank you.
Q657 Mr Caton: You mentioned Swansea
and what you called the closure of the chemistry department. In
fact it is not closing.
Professor Shore: Okay, it is not
accepting undergraduates, that is the point I made.
Q658 Mr Caton: Exactly, which leads
me to ask you about the point you made just now, when you said
you cannot run a department just as a research department. Could
you expand on that?
Professor Shore: Okay. Actually,
my PhD supervisor was the head of the physics department at the
University of Essex and a couple of years ago they had a similar
problem and they were given the job to try and run the research
only department not admitting undergraduate students and they
failed. By the way, if you want to study physics in East Anglia
at the present day you have to go to Cambridge.
Q659 Mr Caton: Right. Although I
personally made the case to the vice-chancellor that they should
keep the department open as an undergraduate department, of the
five departments being closed the only one that even got a semi
reprieve was chemistry and I thought the positive thing in the
sort of discussions that we are having now was that it really
was on the basis of that that these are the skills that we need
for the future.
Professor Shore: Yes, I quite
agree. I hope I am wrong, but I would be extremely surprised if
they could sustain it for a long time on that basis. I hope I
am wrong.
Mr Caton: Thank you very much.
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