Memorandum 49
Supplementary submission from Unite the
Union
PUTTING SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING AT THE HEART
OF GOVERNMENT POLICY
This response is submitted by Unite the Union,
the UK's largest trade union with 2 million members across the
private and public sectors. The union's members work in a range
of sectors including financial services, print, media, construction,
local government, education, health, not for profit and manufacturing
which makes up a substantial component of our overall membership.
Unite is the main union representing Higher Education
scientific technicians and academic related staff in the UK and
Republic of Ireland. This, along with its considerable membership
in manufacturing, makes it a major stakeholder in all decisions
around science, technology and engineering related policy and
funding.
INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS
1.1 Unite welcomes the opportunity to provide
input into this debate and to provide additional oral evidence
if necessary.
1.2 Our response to the Governments, and more
particularly Lord Drayson's comments of 4 February 2009, "Has
the time come for the UK—as part of a clear economic strategy—to
make choices about the balance of investment in science and innovation
to favour those areas in which the UK has clear competitive advantage?",
is as follows.
1.3 Unite sees a danger in concentrating
on cutting edge innovation, as it perceives is implied by such
comments, as it may mean traditional areas of manufacturing in
which Unite operates would receive less Government R & D support.
This, during recessionary times when existing UK manufacturing
enterprises need all the support they can get to recapture their
competitive edge through the development of more efficient and
effective technologies. Technologies for which UK organisations
not only hold the intellectual property rights, but from which
they can in turn commission, utilising existing upgraded local
assets and trained staff to produce, green desirable products
for global markets.
1.4 Unite would like to see the Government
adopt an approach similar to that of the French where they greatly
value their existing manufacturing industries. An approach that
demonstrates the UK Government truly does put science and engineering
at the heart of government policy, ensuring not only the survival,
but healthy growth of existing UK endeavours. One that would ensure
announcements such as Reading University's closure of its physics
department in 2010, resulting from the trend towards marketisation
of education, are not only reversed but never repeated and are
replaced by announcements of the expansion of such facilities.
KEY ISSUES
WHICH THE
COMMITTEE SEEKS
TO ADDRESS
2.1 What form a debate or consultation about
the question should take and who should lead it?
The debate should be conducted along existing
lines and must continue to ensure input from key stakeholders
such as workers, from both from R & D and manufacturing organisations/firms,
along with their trade union representatives. However, research
councils and trade associations such as Institute of Electrical
Engineers (IEE), Institute of Chemical Engineers (IChemie) should
also be consulted.
2.2 Whether such a policy is desirable or
necessary?
Such a policy is not only desirable, but essential,
if the UK is to pull itself out of the recession and approach
the future in a strategic way so as to develop, through targeted
R & D, a sustainable balanced economy built around our existing/enhanced
infrastructure and skills base. However, it is where the policy
is aimed that is most important. Too much emphasis on blue sky
research opens up a potential rift with existing industrial sectors
that, if left out, will result in other international competitors
taking up those industrial and research opportunities with a threat
to UK Ltd jobs and industrial sectors.
2.3 What the potential implications of such
a policy are for UK science and engineering, higher education,
industry and the economy as a whole?
The potential implications of getting such a
policy right are massive as proper policy will ensure research
institutions are funded appropriately so as to focus on, not only
fundamental science, but also applied science which assists companies,
particularly in the labour intensive manufacturing sectors, to
grow and diversify in order to satisfy identified demand. An entire
focus on cutting edge innovation, at the expense of identifying
innovative technologies for existing enterprises, lessens our
ability to achieve a balanced economy and puts at risk existing
enterprises and the jobs and skills they provide which require
substantial R & D in order to maintain their competitive edge
and ability to diversify.
2.4 Were such a policy pursued, which research
sectors are most likely to benefit and which are most likely to
lose?
Policies which only seek to focus research resources
on so called priority fields, at the expense of enhancing existing
manufacturing resources through applied research to develop/refine
processes and products for existing and new markets, would not
only result in a decline in these research fields but would also
result in an even greater/corresponding decline in the often labour
intensive and important manufacturing sector. Whilst the beneficiaries
may well be research sectors like Medical Research, such an approach
would ultimately result in a less diversified, less stable economy.
CONCLUSION/RECOMMENDATIONS
3.1.1 Unite sees the real issue here as
not necessarily one of picking winners, although some element
of this may be necessary, but one which supports and enhances
existing enterprise, and the jobs it provides/creates, through
R & D that assists it to maintain a competitive advantage
to meet the demands of both existing and new global markets. Such
an all encompassing approach seeks to develop a balanced economy
which doesn't throw the old out for the new, but which embraces
science and engineering wholeheartedly in government policy to
ensure our progression out of recession and into sustainable economic
growth.
3.1.2 Unite sees this approach as not only adopting
the five key principles of science policy addressed by Lord Drayson
in his speech of 4 February 2009, along with his three criteria
for identifying those areas for greatest focus, but one which
adopts a fourth and critical criteria which seeks to utilise and
upgrade existing local assets and trained staff to produce green
desirable products for global markets. In the future every job
may be audited as to whether it is a "green" job. That
does not mean existing occupations are thrown away but rather
the investment in new greener technologies are also used to uplift
and enhance traditional skill mixes in a modern environment.
April 2009
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