Skills: Importance for the UK Economy and Quality of Life

Lord Mair Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mair (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend, Lord Aberdare, for introducing this important debate. I also congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Marks of Hale and Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell, for their excellent maiden speeches.

I will make two points, declaring my interests as an academic and a practising engineer, as set out in the register. The first is on the acute shortage of skilled engineers and technicians, who are so important for the success of the economy, and the second is on climate change and the pressing need for green skills to be embedded in our education system.

A recent report led by the Institution of Engineering and Technology estimated that there is a shortfall of around 200,000 workers in the STEM sector. It called on the Government to help tackle the UK’s engineering skills shortage by embedding engineering into the current school curriculum. This is consistent with the findings of the recent inquiry of this House’s Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee, which the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, mentioned. Like them, I was privileged to have been a member of that committee.

A key finding of our report published in December is that there has been a significant decline in recent years in the number of pupils taking up technical subjects during key stage 4—14 to 16 year-olds. This is coupled with a wider decline in the opportunities available throughout the education of 11 to 16 year-olds to develop practical skills. Our committee heard from many witnesses that the current GCSE curriculum is too full and overly focused on academic pathways. Our report recommended a more balanced national curriculum to enable all pupils to study at least one technical or vocational subject should they wish. We recommended that the EBacc performance measure should be abandoned, as was so forcefully advocated in this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking. Creative, technical and vocational skills must not be sacrificed in favour of an overly full curriculum of academic subjects, as so well articulated by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton.

The UK must do much more to encourage children to develop STEM skills, including practical skills, and to make full use of them. This is not just about universities and higher education. Although we have outstanding engineering courses in our universities right across the country, more than half our young people are not suited to universities. The importance of further education colleges has been overlooked for far too long and the opportunities for attractive degree apprenticeships are growing. Both these routes were spoken about by the noble Lord, Lord Harrington of Watford. They could have a major impact in reviving the fortunes of vocational and technical education, critical for the engineering industries. It is highly significant that in Germany 20% of 25 year-olds have a higher technical qualification, whereas in the UK the present figure is only 4%. That is because in Germany there is a much wider range of opportunities in technical education for young people.

My second point relates to climate change and green skills, about which the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, have spoken. There is an urgent need to fast-track vital green engineering skills into our economy by 2030 at the latest. Led by the Royal Academy of Engineering, Engineers 2030 is an education and policy programme rethinking engineering and technology skills for our future world. It challenges how the engineering workforce needs to be different and how we should teach and professionally develop young people. We need to do things differently. The reality is that right now we lack sufficient numbers of engineers and technicians to deliver even the commitments already enshrined in legislation. The demand for substantial growth in green jobs comes at a time when engineering skills have largely stagnated over the past 10 years. In higher education, the proportion of students studying engineering has remained at around 5% for the past 15 years in this country; this compares with 22% in Germany.

A large proportion of young children have a strong preference to contribute to solving environmental problems and achieving net zero. It must therefore be a top priority that we equip them with the green skills and technical tools to do this, particularly promoting greater engagement of girls and young women. Gender diversity in engineering remains largely static. According to EngineeringUK, women made up just 17% of the engineering workforce in 2021. The real barrier to girls entering the engineering profession is perception. Many girls miss out because they perceive that engineering is only about machinery or hard hats and construction—apparently subjects only for boys—and they do not want to be thought of as the odd one out. This mistaken perception is also widely held by parents and by many teachers. In reality, engineering is very much wider than machinery or hard hats and construction. Engineering is simply applied science, which employs—I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Lilley—very clever people. It covers a huge range of subjects, many of them involving green skills that will build the net zero world of tomorrow, ranging from biotech to environmental solutions and from innovative new materials to novel energy systems such as hydrogen, all of which are potentially hugely attractive to both boys and girls.

In summary, both our economy and our path to net zero depend critically on engineering. There is a substantial untapped resource of future engineers and technicians—especially girls—in our schools. We need to address this urgently and plug the skills gap. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Lord Mair Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mair (CB)]

My Lords, in the limited time available, I will confine my remarks to Part 3 of the Bill concerning innovation, and I will address the role of Innovate UK under the proposed new structure. I speak from my experience as a practising engineer in industry for almost 30 years, and subsequently as professor of civil engineering at Cambridge University. I declare an interest as a Cambridge professor currently leading a large research group receiving substantial funding from government, as well as industry.

One issue on which there has been considerable debate is whether or not Innovate UK should be part of UKRI, along with its eight other constituents: the seven research councils and Research England. It is essential that in creating UKRI, Innovate UK’s unique business-facing focus and links to its customer base are not put at risk.

We all know that science, engineering and technology underpin our whole economy, and that they are underpinned by innovation—that crucial process by which new ideas generate economic value in the form of new and improved products and services. But innovation is an inherently risky process with an uncertain outcome. The “I” of UKRI is all-important. UKRI will have to be explicitly comfortable with risk if it is to support Innovate UK in promoting high-risk and disruptive innovation. Will this be the case? This House’s Science and Technology Select Committee, of which I am a member, heard in evidence that many businesses have concerns about the status of Innovate UK in the proposed UKRI, especially in relation to risk and new finance products.

As a minimum, the Government must ensure that three key features of Innovate UK are protected: its autonomy, its funding and its business-facing focus. It is clear that the Government recognise these as important features of Innovate UK and have sought to protect them in the Bill. But the question remains as to whether these provisions are enough to protect Innovate UK as it is integrated into UKRI alongside the seven research councils, with their very different functions and ways of operating.

On the positive side, the creation of UKRI could result in an outward-looking combined body, enabling the whole to deliver more than the sum of its parts, with Innovate UK having even greater influence and impact than at present. But there needs to be adequate funding to achieve this. There has been concern that the current resourcing level of Innovate UK is a constraint, especially following its flat cash settlement in the 2015 spending review and the requirement to deliver new financial products.

However, we now have the Government’s welcome announcement in the Autumn Statement of an additional £4.7 billion for research and development from 2017 to 2021. This means an extra £2 billion per year for R&D by 2020. This is a substantial increase—around 20%—in total government R&D spending, after several years of flat science budgets. Two broad funding streams were outlined in the Autumn Statement. The first is a new industrial strategy challenge fund to back priority technologies. This is described as,

“a new cross-disciplinary fund to support collaborations between business and the UK’s science base”.

The second new funding stream is described as,

“funding … to increase research capacity and business innovation, to further support the UK’s world-leading research base and to unlock its full potential”.

Of course, this additional R&D funding is very welcome. But it points all the more to the importance of ensuring that Innovate UK, in its new role within UKRI, can effectively deliver what is needed. The proposed new programme of investment clearly focuses on the crucial role of collaboration between business—especially SMEs—and the UK’s world-leading research base. No commitment has yet been given by the Government on the distribution of this additional R&D funding. Can the Minister give an assurance that a substantial part will be assigned to Innovate UK?

With its strong business-facing focus Innovate UK, along with the engineering community, must be allowed to continue to play a key role in promoting research and innovation. It should also seek to maximise the benefits of the Government’s important and welcome new initiative of additional R&D funding. The structure and governance of UKRI must enable Innovate UK to achieve both these goals freely, successfully and with full autonomy, otherwise there is a danger that it will not be as effective as it should be.

Brexit: Impact on Universities and Scientific Research

Lord Mair Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mair (CB)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Soley, on initiating this important debate. I begin by declaring an interest as a fellow of both the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering. I am also a professor of civil engineering at the University of Cambridge where I lead a large research group, which includes many non-UK EU nationals. I will make two points: the first relates to EU funding for research and innovation and the second—closely related to funding—is about collaboration and retention of international talent. In both cases there is considerable uncertainty following the referendum.

Dealing first with EU funding, the UK receives a significantly greater amount of research funding than it contributes, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Trees. If the UK loses access to EU funding for scientific research, will the Government pledge at the very least to make up for this funding gap? This question was also asked by the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury.

My second point is about the crucial role of collaboration and the all-important retention of international talent. UK science and technology is world-leading. The Royal Society reports that 60% of the UK’s internationally co-authored research papers are with EU partners. Losing this ability to collaborate freely would be very damaging. In my own department of engineering at Cambridge, in addition to our academic staff—many of whom are EU nationals—we have several hundred post-doctoral researchers. This community of post-doctoral researchers is the engine room for the research that underpins the university’s world-leading reputation. One-third are EU nationals—the picture is similar across the whole of Cambridge University, and for other leading UK science and technology universities.

Free movement is vital in attracting top academics and students for the benefit of UK science and technology, and for the benefit of the UK economy. The Government need to act now to ensure that academic staff, researchers and students from EU countries have certainty about the future. Otherwise, they will be deterred from working in British universities and will simply go elsewhere. Well-funded science and engineering research is vital for the economic growth of the country. Engineering contributes at least 20% of gross value added for the UK economy, and accounts for 50% of the UK’s exports. Innovation is critical to the economy; it underpins the research that has real impact on business and enterprise, as the noble Lord, Lord Broers, said.

Start-up companies play a key role in driving innovation. EU nationals are often highly influential scientists and engineers in many start-ups, generally having very close links with university research groups. Cambridge alone has more than 1,000 technology companies in or near the city, many of them spin-out companies from the university’s research groups and many of them receiving EU funding. According to the Royal Academy of Engineering, 25% of UK start-ups were founded by EU nationals, and 45% of UK start-up employees are EU nationals. A clear message is urgently needed from the Government if these vital start-ups are to remain and thrive in the UK. It is of course also crucial that these start-ups do not relocate. Other countries in the EU have been quick to seize the initiative in this period of uncertainty, encouraging UK-based start-ups to go elsewhere. The Royal Academy of Engineering draws attention to Berlin being especially proactive. The Berlin Senator for Economics, Technology and Research has been writing directly to such companies to persuade them to relocate to Berlin. Proactive government action is needed quickly to prevent this.

There is a vital need to remove the uncertainty that is already so damaging to universities and their researchers. The Prime Minister has stated that the Government are committed to ensuring a positive outcome for UK science as the UK withdraws from the EU. If this to be achieved, the major funding gap for scientific research caused by leaving the EU must be filled, one way or another, by the Government. Most importantly, the UK must remain a magnet for international talent. Without outstanding EU researchers, our science and engineering research base will suffer badly. This will be damaging for universities and innovation, and for the UK’s economy. We ignore these risks at our peril.