Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 159)
WEDNESDAY 16 JULY 2008
DR IAN
HUDSON, MR
ALEX WALSH,
MS FIONA
WARE AND
MR BILL
BRYCE
Q140 Dr Iddon: What do the rest of
the panel think about this interface. Is it easy to transfer from
one sector to another?
Mr Walsh: BAE Systems is heavily
involved in the construction of nuclear submarines. That is what
we do. There are limitations as to how we can employ foreign nationals
on those projects because of the security implications. I personally
have worked in the defence industry and in the civil nuclear construction
industry and at Sizewell B. Half of the Sizewell B nuclear commissioning
team came from America or Czechoslovakia or Spain—from all
over the world. The reason for that was that when you are at the
commissioning stage and you are on the critical path with one
of these projects and the majority of the capital expenditure
has gone, you need the best, most experienced engineers with you
to mitigate the risk of something going wrong, that programme
being held for a day and £1 million of electricity not being
generated. You are very keen to have not just qualified engineers
but people who have done it before in other power stations. That
is why we went around the world. I do not doubt that when we come
to do the first power station in this country, at that end of
the programme we will have foreign engineers to help us, or we
will have needed to take UK engineers, like the CEGB in the 1980s,
place those engineers out into foreign construction projects so
that they can pick up their experience and bring it back to this
country. The other thing that happened at Sizewell was that in
1991, as the Cold War came to an end, the Government made the
decision that we did not need as many nuclear submarines. As a
result, it retired a bunch of those and an awful lot of nuclear-trained
people came out of the Navy. A lot of those nuclear-trained people
ended up at Sizewell B, working for me in my nuclear commissioning
team. They were excellent. First class. Those skills were perfectly
transferable in there and they were some of the core of the nuclear
team. Having done one nuclear commissioning, they would have been
ideal to have led the next nuclear commissioning in this country.
The problem now is that we have a smaller nuclear Navy which is
not giving the same amount of retirees coming out to help in that
area, and when we go outside and go international, this time to
look for those skilled engineers who have done decommissioning
before, unfortunately they are going to be employed on the American
programmes, because the Americans are looking for 30 power stations,
and the Chinese are going to be building. There is a massive demand,
so getting those people is going to be an issue. That is why,
in my submission, I made the point that we really do need to help
industry now get people out on foreign placement into these construction
and commissioning projects, so they can bring back experience
and be ready for our projects to take off.
Dr Hudson: When you think about
skills, once you can get over the security implications from a
military perspective, the people are transferable very applicably,
as well explained by Alex. Skills are also developed through the
use of certain facilities. There are some more subtle issues,
in terms of carrying out military programmes and civil programmes
in the same building. Whilst it would be nice to get complementary
facilities where you can build up some of those skills, you have
to think a bit more carefully about how you make those facilities
available and use them across the different parts of the industry.
It is just that point I was interested in making.
Q141 Dr Iddon: Nobody has mentioned
France. They have one of the biggest nuclear fleets. Are they
an international outfit working in France? Are they mainly French
engineers? Is there any transferability there between our near
neighbour and ourselves?
Dr Hudson: I have just a bit of
anecdotal information. The French have some good programmes in
terms of skills. France is comparable, from a UK perspective,
with what we do. I was in the States a couple of months ago and
the same issues were being discussed over there, because you have
the same issue of the indigenous population, you still need those.
Whilst Areva and people like that are active in the States and
keen to be part of the nuclear build over in the States, they
themselves recognise the fact that they are going to have to work
with the local population to build up the skills. You still need
to do that from a UK perspective.
Q142 Mr Boswell: I am interested
in the relationship between government on the one hand, academia
and industry, and whether these are all tuning in together. In
AMEC's evidence you refer to "the complexity and number of
the public sector ... training initiatives where there is increasing
overlap between the remits of the various bodies, and between
academia and industry." Could you say rather more precisely
what those problems are, and perhaps you could give us some examples?
Ms Ware: When I first got involved
with some of these bodies I found it extremely confusing in terms
of the remit of the sector skills councils and the overlap between
the sector skills councils.
Q143 Mr Boswell: Are there about
six in this area, if you tot them all up?
Ms Ware: There is Cogent and the
ECITB and the CITB. There is a number and it is quite confusing.
We get approached as part of the supply chain by a number of these
because AMEC works across a number of sectors. One of the issues
is that a lot of the skills are not sector specific, so it is
quite confusing. Also, the way that they work is different. Some
operate under levies and others are under voluntary contributions.
Q144 Mr Boswell: Do you have the
impression that in terms of their influence as sector skills councils
they get their act together and unify their offer, or are you
always having to negotiate between them in order to fit into their
programmes?
Ms Ware: I sit on the Cogent Nuclear
Employers Steering Group and that was a way of trying to say that
we want the sector skills councils to be more joined up, because
they are not, and they do offer different types of training. In
the nuclear industry, we have the creation of the Nuclear Skills
Academy, which is great. When you look at the agenda that was
set out for that, it was set out by industry. When you look at
the funding, the funding has been provided by industry, because
it is industry-led. If you look at the flipside, with the ECITB,
where we are levied—and I can only speak for AMEC personally
and, in particular, the nuclear sector—we do not get an
awful lot back from that. We do not get involved in setting the
agenda. Where industry is driving what is required, the funding
will follow, because industry knows what it needs.
Q145 Mr Boswell: To pursue that—and
it may be more relevant to another inquiry we are carrying out—at
least the rubric is that sector skills councils are industry-led.
Ms Ware: Yes.
Q146 Mr Boswell: Does anyone else
want to comment on that sort of perception of SSCs?
Dr Hudson: When I came to the
NDA about three years ago, there seemed to be quite a confusing
picture around Cogent and the footprint that Cogent had. There
was a change in CEO and the regime in Cogent. We sat down and
spent quite a bit of time working with them to try to understand
what our needs were and what they were trying to achieve. I would
say we have worked pretty well with them in respect of helping
create the National Skills Academy for Nuclear and built up some
of the occupational standards and things like that. I would agree
with Fiona, the mixture of different sector skills councils is
difficult. If you look at the ECITB situation and NSAN, it seems
to me there is a potential policy difference. On the one hand
you have NSAN, which is run by the employers or employer-led.
They do not deliver skills; they set standards and franchise people
to meet those standards. On the other hand, you have ECITB, and
they levy. The only way you can get your levy back is by using
their products, and they may not necessarily be products that,
as employers, we would want. That policy difference is still there.
Mr Bryce: Yes, there should be
much more integration. There is a little bit of competition for
funds but the different boards, the ECITB, the NSAN, et cetera,
are willing to talk with one another. In fact, the NIA is trying
to progress that so that we get everybody singing from the same
hymn sheet, because they are complementary.
Mr Walsh: The ECITB we use a lot,
because of the apprentice training schemes that we run, so they
are very important to us. We engaged with Cogent a few years ago
and very much the focus of Cogent has been driven by the focus
of the industry over the last few years on nuclear decommissioning.
That now needs to start swinging a bit more to what is going to
be the nuclear new build as well, but that is only natural at
this stage of the game, when there are no further orders and we
have only just started to see the commitments going forward.
Q147 Mr Boswell: Who is the appropriate
body then to rationalise these initiatives? We have identified
that there is a bit of confusion. Who is going to blow the whistle
on this?
Mr Bryce: That is a difficult
question. Cogent is in a position to do this. The NIA has been
asked if it could do this but it is quite a big task. The NIA
is limited by its funds which come from a subscription from the
members. If the members wanted to do this, we would be willing
to do it but there would need to be a bit more money put in.
Q148 Mr Boswell: Is that a general
view?
Ms Ware: I think it is wider than
that because it covers a number of sectors. I think there was
a recommendation in the Leitch report that the number of bodies
needs to be rationalised. I do not have a short answer as to how
we might do that because it goes across a number of industries
in a number of sectors, so it is difficult to say one organisation
would take that responsibility.
Q149 Mr Boswell: Perhaps I could
stay with you and ask, concerning the proposed UK National Nuclear
Lab, why you think there will be unfair competition between the
academic world and industry.
Ms Ware: The point we are trying
to make is that we need to make sure there is not unfair competition.
Q150 Mr Boswell: There does not have
to be but there might be.
Ms Ware: Yes. The remit of the
National Lab needs to be clear. I think the lab will have a remit
to protect and nurture skills, and I think it needs to be very
clear that industry also has a role to play and a lot of those
skills belong within the supply chain and within industry where
they are deployed on real jobs. Whilst we support the need for
a national nuclear laboratory and some co-ordination in terms
of some of the research in the programmes because the UK is fragmented,
it needs to be clear that this is not just about creating programmes
that would sit within academia or within the National Lab but
it is about involving and engaging industry to make sure that
the skills are transferred into industry.
Q151 Mr Boswell: I notice you nodding,
Ian. Is that the view across the panel, that that is the right
kind of way to approach this issue?
Dr Hudson: I think so, because
you can maintain skills through initiatives such as the National
Nuclear Lab but it is quite important that you maintain skills
throughout the supply chain as well. You get different approaches.
You get a slightly more commercial, innovative approach linked
into the supply chain; you are able to take a slightly longer-term
view through things like the National Nuclear Lab. I think the
National Nuclear Lab needs to have its role linked across the
supply chain as well as the academic establishment and operate
around that agenda. A lot of the key skills in the National Nuclear
Lab were mostly focused around the access to facilities, which
are large capital facilities that carry out active work that industry
does not tend to have access to because of the huge capital outlay.
Making those facilities available into the broader supply chain
helps build those skills.
Q152 Mr Boswell: That will be available
to anybody, even if they are a comparatively minor subcontractor
who could use the large facilities.
Dr Hudson: The aspiration from
NDA's perspective is that you give access to the broader supply
chain and into the universities. That is the aspiration.
Q153 Mr Boswell: AMEC has called
for a demarcation between the application of technology in industry
on the one hand and pure research taking place in universities
and the National Nuclear Lab on the other. I take it that is,
as it were, a management view which is not necessarily uncongenial
to the other members of the panel. If we are going to do that,
how are you going to bridge the gap? If you are making a conscious
separation of mission in that area, how do you integrate the missions
as part of the national effort to get nuclear decommissioning
and new fleet build at the same time? How do you tune that?
Ms Ware: I think it comes back
to being clear about the remit of the National Lab, if some of
the programmes are going to be going through there. It is making
sure that that industry is involved and it is not in competition
with academia. Ultimately the skills need to come through from
academia and they need to reside inside the National Nuclear Lab,
where their needs will be nurtured if there is not a commercially
acceptable way of doing that. If it is commercially viable to
do it, then the supply chain is well able to do that itself. I
think the role of the lab is to protect some of the skills which
are critical. Currently a lot of the commercial programmes do
have short term requirements as well as long term, and some of
the short-term programmes perhaps do not need those skills. There
is a requirement to maintain those, therefore, but I think it
is just making sure that with some of the research programmes
industry gets access to participate, that the skills transfer
comes from academia out into industry and that they do not retain
them in academia because there is a need to transfer to industry.
Q154 Mr Boswell: The point at which,
as it were, the flag drops is with the National Nuclear Lab. Or,
rather, it requires the active involvement of the industry as
well as the academic world.
Ms Ware: Yes. Absolutely. There
needs to be a partnership.
Q155 Mr Boswell: You are nodding,
Ian.
Dr Hudson: Absolutely. We have
been involved with BERR to support the creation of the National
Lab. We see it as very strategically important to us to deliver
our mission. Making those facilities available on a national and
international perspective is very important.
Chairman: On that positive note, I turn
on to Ian Cawsey.
Q156 Mr Cawsey: Thank you, Chairman.
Earlier in the session there was a little bit of discussion about
the role of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. As you said,
it does what it says on the tin, and that is what the Energy Act
allows you to do. But of course these things can change, and in
a period of new commissioning it might be an appropriate time
to change. Would you like to see the scope of the authority broadened?
What would be the rationale behind such a move?
Dr Hudson: It is an interesting
question and I do not feel particularly qualified to offer a view.
I think it is a government decision, so from an NDA position it
is not something I would like to speculate on.
Q157 Mr Cawsey: You do not have a
personal view on whether it would be helpful?
Dr Hudson: I do not believe I
can offer a personal view, sat here on behalf of NDA.
Q158 Mr Cawsey: Does anybody else
want to say whether he should be expanded?
Ms Ware: I think that some co-ordination
is required. With the fragmentation of BNFL—and the NDA
came in to oversee that—the industry itself has fragmented,
so in terms of new build there needs to be some kind of co-ordination,
whether that would go to the NDA or an alternative body.
Dr Hudson: I could offer a view
into it. Our skill strategy is to partner with people. For instance,
in creating the National Skills Academy for Nuclear, the fact
that it covers a nuclear footprint and we are able to participate
in that we see as very positive. I think getting more consistent
approaches to the skills agenda, getting a consistent approach
in terms of understanding needs is important but you do not necessarily
have to do that with respect to NDA.
Chairman: You did have a view after all.
Q159 Mr Cawsey: It took Fiona to
wheedle the answer out of him.
Dr Hudson: That was not a view.
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