Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 91)
MONDAY 7 JULY 2008
CLIVE SMITH,
OBE, ROBERT SKELTON
AND MICHAEL
GRAVE
Q80 Mr Marsden: Is it showing new
build to do that?
Clive Smith: We have not actually
started much on the new build yet, so there is little evidence.
Q81 Mr Marsden: So, it is too early
to tell. Can I move on to the issue of the qualification levels
at which there is a shortage of engineers and perhaps again to
take the view from Clive, although I welcome the comments from
Michael and others as well. According to the graph that was submitted
to us by Cogent and NSAN, there appears to be an oversupply of
engineers at NVQ levels 1, 4 and 5, and a shortage at levels 2
and 3. Why, therefore, has the discussion around the solutions
to skill shortages been so focused on universities. Again, picking
up your previous point about the seamless track, do we need to
do more in FE colleges and industry in providing nuclear engineers?
Clive Smith: From the last session,
where it was mainly the HE sector, certainly the discussion there
would have been focused on 4 and 5. The NVQ level 1, I think we
can discount; there are very few elementary trades, much less
than 5% of the industry are at that level, and that is part of
making sure that people leave school with the right levels of
qualification. Generally, for the people entering the industry,
the bottom qualification is NVQ level 2. We are starting to get
solutions and see a seamless track through there; the implementation
of the diplomas in engineering and in 2011, the diploma in science
will give qualification routes through from the traditional GCSEs
but now in the diplomas, entry into foundation degrees, foundation
degrees up into honours degrees, to give learning and career pathways
for people to progress, and also the right qualifications for
people to operate a skilled trade or technicians.
Q82 Mr Marsden: Michael, Robert,
do you see that in your areas?
Michael Grave: I generally agree
with that. In the industry I work in, we are largely concerned
with keeping existing nuclear power stations going and our work
requires largely number of trades people, some who progress to
become site engineers and site managers. I was reading an article
in the paper the other day by Sir John Rose from Rolls-Royce,
who was making a comment that a large number of their apprentices
go on through career development to getting a degree at some stage.
There is going to be an interchange between people who perhaps
start off at what I call a skilled trade level who, through career
progression, also eventually get degrees. It is quite a complex
matter.
Q83 Mr Marsden: There are lots of
ins and outs.
Michael Grave: Yes, lots of ins
and outs.
Robert Skelton: There is a problem,
not just faced by the nuclear industry. Bodies like the Health
Service face this sort of problem as well. There is a significant
shortage at technician level, which is basically where that gap
appears. I wonder if it is partly because of the way our education
system has gone. Many people in the past may have been interested
in a career, becoming an apprentice, or joining organisations,
say, post-O-level as technical trainees at various levels, experimental
officers, to use the old Civil Service term. These people now
go on to something totally different. It is a national problem
which we really have to address. Countries like Germany perhaps
address this a lot better. Coming from Cambridge, I am a little
bit biased, but I am not 100% certain that sending so many people
on degrees in various non-technical subjects is really the right
thing for the nation. It is a reflection of our education policy
that this gap has opened up and people who in the past would have
become technicians, experimental officers, now go off elsewhere.
Q84 Graham Stringer: I want to go
back to something we have touched on before. The Government are
changing the image of the nuclear industry from being a sunset
industry to having more of a future. Is there anything the industry
itself can do to change that image as well? The Government has
given it a big boost, is there anything else that can be done?
What else would you do to change the image?
Clive Smith: It has been in the
background that the media reported the contamination, the dirty
image of the industry, that is very much cleaned up. I do not
think there is an awful lot more the industry can do to present
itself now as the clean industry for the future. It has put a
lot of effort into making sure its image is much better than it
certainly has been in the past.
Michael Grave: One of the things
that concerns us in the British Nuclear Energy Society—we
do not represent the industry, we represent professional people
who work in it—was that one of the fragmentation issues,
which somebody raised earlier, has led to a lot of the visitor
centres at nuclear power stations, which have always been a major
source of keeping the public informed, are not there. There is
one very good example still left at Sellafield, which does excellent
work, but in the British Nuclear Energy Society, when we were
looking at our education and training initiatives that we might
do in the future, I remember pointing out to our trustees two
or three years ago that the British public at some stage are probably
going to have to be in a position to make a political decision,
if you like, on new build and therefore the public needed to be
made aware of the issues of nuclear power. So, we are funding
this year, for example, out of our education and training committee
budget, a small study by somebody at City University, to look
to see how we could possibly make up this deficiency which has
started to develop. We would not be able to do it on our own,
but we are looking at the issues that might improve knowledge
exchange amongst the public at large, not just the engineering
people who we normally work with.
Q85 Graham Stringer: That is a very
interesting point. Why is Sellafield so different from other nuclear
installations? Why are they not all doing it?
Robert Skelton: What happened,
as I understand it, the old CEGB used to have excellent visitor
centres at all of their power stations; they used to lay on all
sorts of things for schools and did a marvellous public relations
job. When British Energy got into their serious financial difficulties—what
must be four or five years ago—they basically closed all
of their visitor centres as an economy measure. We used to take
people to Sizewell and that closed; as far as I know they have
all closed. It was a commercial decision taken at the time when
they were in a very serious financial position. Most of the buildings
are still there and it is time they thought very seriously about
reopening them.
Q86 Graham Stringer: That is very
interesting. We talked a lot about skills gaps and shortages,
are the solutions in training and skills gap, are they primarily
resource-based financial, or are there structural changes that
can be made?
Clive Smith: There was a general
lack of apprenticeships at one stage. The new National Apprenticeship
Service is coming on; the National Skills Academy for Nuclear
is invigorating apprenticeships for nuclear, which will assist
in filling what could be classified as a structural gap, in that
we were not putting apprentices through the system. There is a
lot of work going on in filling that gap and putting in place
apprenticeships and through the network of regional training providers
that NSAN is establishing, making sure that there is sufficient
joined up thinking between the colleges and industry to provide
those apprenticeships in the areas where they are required and
to an acceptable quality assured standard.
Q87 Graham Stringer: Can you tell
us how the nuclear skills passport will help in this process and
is that passport tailored to apprenticeship level or to the authoritative
intelligent customer capability?
Clive Smith: It is focused across
the skills pyramid. The work being done at the moment takes it
up to about the NVQ level 3 and 4, but the ambition is to make
it go through the whole of the skills pyramid and it will include
within it the apprenticeships. Initially, the backbone of the
passport, the Nuclear Industry Training Framework, will be to
lodge four qualifications but with a view to, by 2010, putting
on bite-sized qualifications so that people can see what qualifications
they have got, what they need to achieve to continue to move up
through the learning pathway and the career progression pathway,
all the way from entry NVQ level 2 up through level NVQ level
4.
Q88 Dr Iddon: We are also looking
at the Leitch Report with respect to skills across the engineering
sector. One of the things that comes out is that there are just
too many organisations trying to do essentially the same thing.
Does that apply to your industry also?
Robert Skelton: Basically, we
knew this question was coming, or at least we thought there was
a good chance that it would. The first thing we can say is that
Michael and I at the moment represent two different organisations
and we have come today from a meeting where we are discussing
merging, and it is almost certain that the two bodies in the nuclear
industry will be merged by the end of the year. There are a lot
of engineering institutions; we are looking at ways of working
more closely. We have had discussions with the Institution of
Chemical Engineers to see how we can work more closely with them.
We are doing our best to ensure that in terms of our learned society
activities, organising meetings, etc., all the major engineering
institutions work together. Historically, it is just the way things
have developed and I am sure you will know that many people—going
back to Sir Monty Finniston and quite a few other people—have
tried to knock the heads together of the various engineering institutions
with very little success. It is a system which, in the United
Kingdom, does actually seem to work.
Michael Grave: I would just like
to add a comment to that. The BNES was actually founded in 1962
by all the major professional institutions, recognising that there
needed to be a co-ordinated nuclear approach. It is nothing new
and continues today and will form part of the new Nuclear Institute
also and we continue to work closely with all the other professional
institutions. It is very important. Not only that, putting an
industrial side on it, one of the big problems that we found in
our company is the different training qualifications that are
required if you want to work with this nuclear site here and that
nuclear site there. Our big hope and aspiration, and we support
it 100%, lots of industries are joining and working on NSAN which
is driven by industry need and the big hope is that NSAN will
succeed in getting certain skills development level all working
together and singing off the same hymn sheet. I sit on one of
the NSAN steering committees as a BNES representative and I am
quite heartened about what I am seeing in terms of doing this.
Somebody said earlier that we have some concerns as a citizen
about skills but looking at what is going on in NSAN and their
plans, I have also got a lot of confidence for the future that
we will sort these problems out.
Clive Smith: The funding routes
are quite tortuous and diverse and it is being able to understand
where they come from to assist industry. Much of industry is confused
about where it can draw the funding down from LSCs, from RDAs
and other sources; through the assistance of NSAN that should
help in co-ordinating those funding routes.
Q89 Dr Iddon: I know of Cogent because
I am a chemist and it represents pretty well all the chemical
industry, but it represents quite a varied sector of industry,
including your own. How successful has Cogent been for the nuclear
industry?
Clive Smith: Very successful.
It has managed to pull the employers together to try and undo
some of that fragmentation and through establishing and now launching
the National Skills Academy for Nuclear within the Cogent footprint,
providing a real deliverables vehicle for training and education
for the nuclear industry. Whilst you have said it is diverse,
it is the same engineering science skills required by the chemical
industry, as required by nuclear, as required by oil and gas—Piper
Alpha has been in the news again this week—a big safety
regulated industry through the HSE, the same as nuclear. Much
of the same basic skills and safety regulatory requirements come
to the fore in all those industries.
Q90 Dr Iddon: You mentioned Germany,
Robert, as being a country which may get skills training better
than ourselves. Do you admire any other countries? The French
have got the biggest nuclear fleet per capita, is their system
of training skills for their industry better than ours and better
than Germany's? Who is ahead? Who should we be looking at as a
model?
Robert Skelton: I must admit,
I find it hard to comment too much beyond the graduate level.
I used to work in industry and I know that a shortage of technicians
has always been a problem.
Q91 Chairman: The question was, who
else is there as a model?
Robert Skelton: Yes, I wonder
if Clive has a better view on this.
Clive Smith: I do not think I
am qualified to answer that.
Michael Grave: I cannot answer
that except to repeat to you a statement by a German human resources
person to me in Hamburg the other week, who envied the system
we had in the United Kingdom.
Chairman: Well, I think on that note
of self-congratulation, we will end this session. Clive Smith
OBE, Robert Skelton and Michael Grave, thank you very much indeed
for joining us this afternoon.
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