Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160
- 179)
WEDNESDAY 7 MAY 2008
KEITH READ,
PHILIP GREENISH,
ANDREW RAMSAY
AND SIR
ANTHONY CLEAVER
Q160 Chairman: Can I ask whether
Sir Anthony and Philip agree with Des' point here and the one
that Andrew and Keith raised? Just very briefly, do you support
that?
Mr Greenish: I do, and I add another
aspect too, if I may. In terms of recognition of what engineers
actually are as professionals, there is a huge education task
that needs to be done, and it is an education task at every level
and at every age, and the perceptions audit which Tony referred
to showed that, although the level of ignorance is enormous in
terms of people understanding what engineering actually is, it
does not take very much to raise that level of understanding substantially
and the penny drops in people's minds, young people's minds, after
not very much explanation about what engineers actually do in
the world. So that actually focuses most of our minds here on
the importance of getting into schools, of getting careers advice.
Q161 Chairman: Just on this title,
I want to stick to the title: do you support government actually
intervening here to make the title "engineer" protected
in law?
Mr Greenish: Yes.
Mr Ramsay: I think it is worth
recognising that government lawyers would probably advise that
reserving the title "engineer" would be very difficult,
because throughout the economy people are calling themselves engineers.
It is a word that goes back to the fourteenth century at least.
It would have to be a qualified title. So something like "chartered
engineer", which at the moment is protected by civil law,
just like any trade mark, being protected by statutory law would
be a big difference; it would indicate government was serious.
Mr Greenish: That is my view too.
Q162 Dr Harris: Can I follow this
up? Have you made any progress with government in pursuing this?
The osteopaths managed it, and one can have a view about osteopathy,
but any progress with government in the last 100 years on this
topic?
Mr Ramsay: We have had many discussions
with government, mainly DTI, and, as far as regulation of the
profession is concerned, the response has always been: "Fine
yes, if industry are prepared to support it." I think regulating
just the title is quite a new idea that we are discussing within
the profession.
Q163 Dr Harris: Let us go further
into that. You have asked for some sort of regulation you have
just described. Let us take the example of "chartered engineer"
being protected, and the Government has said, yes, if industry
says yes, and what have they done?
Mr Ramsay: There is a hidden rider
there, which is that, of course, governments are generally not
in favour of increasing red tape for industry. Anything that constrained
industry from choosing who they might employ in an engineering
function would be seen as anti-competitive. So we have shifted
subtly from that position of looking for regulation of function
to simply regulation of title, which appears to be lightweight
but at least indicates that this Government is interested.
Q164 Dr Turner: There is a point
there. Regulation of titles is relatively easy, we can deal with
that with an administrative stroke, but most other professional
titles, like doctors registered by the GMC and so on, have more
significance than that because they cannot legally practise their
profession unless they hold those titles; they would be breaking
the law. Can you see any mechanism by which you can actually underpin
the title of "world chartered engineer", or whatever,
with some statutory requirement for them to have that title to
undertake certain work?
Mr Ramsay: No, if you look closely
at the professions where regulation is an entitlement to practise,
you find that you have got monopoly purchasers like the National
Health Service. It is, in fact, possible to practise as a surgeon,
providing you have the permission of your patient, outside of
the Health Service, if anyone is silly enough to do that. There
is no regulation that I am aware of that prevents that. Similarly
with lawyers, the access to the courts of the UK is the principal
issue here. People can call themselves lawyers and can practise
in big commercial firms as lawyers without having any membership
of the Law Society or the Bar Council. The problem about engineering
is that it is entirely ubiquitous. Engineers are used throughout
the economy at every level and for every purpose and it is absolutely
impossible to draw a line round engineering and say that is it.
The nearest that any country has got to this is Canada, where
to practise as a professional, indeed to call yourself a professional
engineer, you are required to be registered with one of the provincial
licensers. Canada is experiencing big problems because its huge
mineral resources are requiring an awful lot more engineers than
they can train themselves, and those engineers who wish to work
in Canada, or are brought to work in Canada, are finding difficulty
being recognised and calling themselves engineers, and this is
a real problem there.
Q165 Dr Harris: On the more limited
scope, the more limited ambition of protection of title of chartered
engineer, which you explained was not one that would be seen as
anti-competitive, what progress have you made with the Government
agreeing to provide that, as they have for osteopaths?
Mr Ramsay: We have not asked the
Government. I am hoping this may be something this committee might
see as worthwhile.
Q166 Dr Gibson: Why have you not
asked the Government yourselves? Why do you expect us to do it
for you?
Mr Ramsay: Because it takes time
for the profession itself to agree on seeking something like this
and it is a consensus profession.
Q167 Dr Gibson: I thought you all
agreed with each other that you should do this; so what is holding
you up? You are frightened to go to the Government there.
Mr Ramsay: I think you will find
that within some of the professional institutions there would
be a reluctance to go for this because it might be seen as undermining
the standing of their own titles.
Sir Anthony Cleaver: My concern,
in a sense, is a slightly different one, I have to say. This is
focusing at the top end of chartered engineers and so on, and
that is very important and critical to us in the same way that
having the right number of really good engineering graduates is
critical, but we actually have a much bigger problem in this country
at the moment that really demands our attention, and that is at
the engineering technician level. If I can give you one or two
statistics there, one in five engineering employees say they have
serious skills gaps. That amounts to some 70,000 people that they
are short. Only five per cent of those are at the professional
level, it is the technician level, and there we have got a serious
issue in terms of the numbers of people who go into FE. Over the
last, I think, ten years the number of people in FE studying engineering
and technology has declined by 25 per cent.
Chairman: I am going to come on to some
of those issues, so can I pass on that, Sir Anthony.
Q168 Dr Harris: I have got one more
question to try and stagger through, if you could bear with me.
I am interested to hear that on the limited ambition of getting
"chartered engineer" protected the Government has not
formally been approached yet because of divisions or the need
to get agreement?
Mr Ramsay: Consensus; there is
not a particular division.
Q169 Dr Harris: A lack of consensus
is another way of calling it a difference of opinion, at least
in my family. If you were to approach the Government, do you have
an easy way in or is it through the business focused DTI? Is there
a portal into government that is sensitive to engineering as engineering
rather than just as an industry issue? In other words, should
there be a government chief engineer or chief engineering adviser?
Mr Ramsay: We would support that.
Mr Greenish: We would support
that. If it is not an individual who is called the Chief Engineering
Adviser, then it should be formally enshrined in the Chief Scientific
Adviser, but we firmly believe there should be a very specific
focus at that senior level on engineering in government.
Q170 Dr Harris: Is the Chief Scientific
Adviser engineering enough for you over the last few appointments,
or have you felt that they have concentrated on non engineering
types of science?
Mr Greenish: I think we have felt
that there has not been sufficient focus on engineering, given
its importance.
Q171 Chairman: Do you all agree with
that?
Mr Read: I would agree with that.
I think Philip is speaking certainly for the institutions in that
respect. Yes, I think we would all agree with that.
Q172 Chairman: Andrew and Sir Anthony,
do you agree?
Mr Ramsay: I agree.
Sir Anthony Cleaver: Yes, I think
so. I think, again, of course a number of the Chief Scientific
Advisers have actually been engineers themselves. John Fairclough
is one who springs to mind in my case. I think it has varied enormously
on the individual who has been appointed into that role. I think
the decision really is whether you have a chief engineer as such
or whether you have it enshrined within the Chief Scientist's
role very specifically that that must be accounted for.
Ian Stewart: Good morning. Can any of
you identify for me where the severe engineering skill shortages
are in the UK and internationally?
Q173 Chairman: I will come back to
you, Sir Anthony.
Sir Anthony Cleaver: This is exactly
the area that I was concerned with. The biggest shortage at the
moment is at the engineering technician level. These are the sort
of people who historically went to the Polys, they are the sort
of people who go through FE, typically, who may then go on in
some cases, but many do not, and the requirement there is enormous
and we have a real concern about that. As I said, over the last
few years in FE the number of people studying engineering and
technology has declined by 25 per cent. We know that the cohort
coming through in the population is smaller as we go forward over
the next few years, so there is a challenge there, and there are
a number of other issues. For example, the completion rate. Of
the people who go into it, the completion rate is getting down
towards only 50 per cent, so we have serious problems in that
area. That is an area that we believe we need to tackle. We are
about to launch a campaign later this year specifically aimed
at that area, but, again, that is an area that needs everybody
working together, as with apprenticeships, for example. We welcomed
the extra money in the last budget going into this area, the push
on the apprenticeship schemes and so on, but this only works if
you get industry, government and academia all working together,
and what we are trying to do with this campaign is to push in
that area working with some of the RDAs, working with the FE establishment,
working with the employers. We have a business and industry panel
as part of the ETB, so the leading employers send a representative
on to our business and industry panel and we use that and regularly
consult them to understand what employers are looking for in this
context, and that, again, is their bigger concern, which is why
they are very supportive of this campaign.
Q174 Chairman: Is that reflected
internationally?
Sir Anthony Cleaver: Yes, indeed.
Mr Ramsay: The point I would like
to make is that this is especially true as far as technology engineers,
level three in the economy are concerned. There is a much better
established market in professional engineers. We benchmark "chartered
engineer" against equivalents around the world and there
are well-established flows of engineers back and forward between
different countries depending on economic demand. The problem
for professional engineers is that it takes at least seven years
to create one from leaving school, and they do not respond terribly
well to changes in the demand of the economy. So the international
market is very important, and we have been quite successful in
the UK in selling our engineering expertise overseas. We have
a substantial trade balance in favour of engineering services.
Q175 Chairman: Is this in specific
sectors, both the shortages and the surplus? Can you say which
sectors of engineering have got surpluses which areas have got
deficits?
Mr Ramsay: You can divide down
into quite narrow branches of engineering and find enormous variations
in demand even from year to year. In broad terms, I can recall
that round about 1990 the construction industry in the UK fell
off a cliff—it was the when Canary Wharf was bankrupt, and
so on—and construction had died.
Q176 Chairman: What is it like now?
Mr Ramsay: Right now, there is
a tremendous demand for civil engineers, which is the point I
was going to make. In fact the response has been a 45 per cent
increase in the number of people studying civil engineering over
the last four years. So there is clearly some feedback.
Q177 Ian Stewart: How has that come
about? What have you done to make that increase happen?
Mr Ramsay: We as the engineering
councils are not directly involved in promoting specific branches
of engineering, and this is where the 36 institutions do have
a positive role to play. The Institution of Civil Engineers has
worked very hard to promote civil engineering in schools and through
the joint efforts of—
Mr Read: I was going to say, the
individual institutions will respond to the market. Of course,
their livelihood actually depends upon them recruiting members,
and so where there is a perceived deficit, trying to get people
to go through the university courses, recruiting the students,
the graduates, and so on, into the institutions is part of that
market mechanism. The other point I was going to make is the linkage
between the sector skills councils and what Tony was talking about
in relationship to the engineering technician. The competencies
that the engineering technicians have need to be reflected in
what the sector skills councils are looking for. I think in some
respects there is a mismatch between what the Government perceives
the sector skills councils should be doing and looking for and
what industry actually needs. What the Engineering Council in
its registration can do in actually helping bridge that gap—
Q178 Ian Stewart: Who has the strategic
role then? If you have this plethora of different bodies on the
delivery side and responding to the market, who has the strategic
role?
Mr Read: There is no single strategic
body, if you like.
Q179 Ian Stewart: Is that not a weakness?
Mr Read: I think it is, and that
is what we were saying earlier. We are trying to get the organisations
working much more closely together than we have done in the past.
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