Science and Innovation Strategy

Baroness Morgan of Huyton Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I echo the thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for his excellent introduction to this debate. I am fortunate to serve as a member of the Science and Technology Select Committee under his leadership, which followed the able leadership of the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, who initiated this area of scrutiny for the committee. I draw attention to my entries in the register.

This House scrutinises and discusses this subject matter repeatedly. The future industrial strategy is of paramount importance to the UK economy and the big issue, of course, is implementation. What? How? Where? We will rightly hear a lot today about HE and science but in my brief intervention I want to talk about a component that is often not talked about quite so much—the need for a real, quality, deliverable skills strategy that meets the future economic requirements of the country and does not jump to ticking boxes and obsessing about big target numbers: I think about the 3 million apprenticeships. We have been here before. All Governments want to talk big numbers, but all in different ways have failed to deliver the content, quality and skill sets needed to go forward.

We have, of course, talked about this before. In many ways, it went wrong with the Education Act 1944 and our failure to set up technical schools. That established a mindset of academic top dog, and everything else being the poor relations. Like many of us here today, I hark back to the days of ONCs leading to HNDs at strong local polytechnics, which could then be topped up to degree level if wanted. All this was replaced for well-meaning reasons, but the replacement technical structures and qualifications were frankly inadequate. In addition, FE colleges have been woefully underfunded and inadequately staffed for many years. Typically, the recent review of FE colleges looked only at financial sustainability, not skill needs or quality of provision. Employers tell me regularly that they have to retrain young people who come to them supposedly ready for work.

In 2015, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills found that 43% of STEM vacancies were hard to fill due to a shortage of skills. That is the biggest challenge facing London’s tech businesses, while the Tech Partnership says that 72% of large companies and 49% of SMEs are reporting skills gaps, with significant impacts on productivity. Engineering and construction firms are finding the situation increasingly difficult, and that is without Brexit.

The recent productivity figures have to be a huge wake-up call for us all. Put Brexit on top and the need for a complete change of gear in this area and honest appraisal of what is needed is apparent. We spend most of our time and money talking about schools and HE. I give an example of the sort of focus needed by the Government—that is, delivery of technicians. By that I mean workers possessing levels 3 to 5 STEM skills. Technicians are workers who apply proven techniques and procedures to the solution of practical problems. They carry supervisory or technical responsibility and competently deliver their skills across the fields of science, medicine, engineering and technology. They are in very short supply already. Every employer in these fields is desperate. The Government, frankly, are not joining up the dots sufficiently. For example, very little of the advanced learner loans—basically, the only way 24-plus year-olds can get funding for technician awards—are going to level 4-plus courses. In 2015-16, it was £8.6 million out of a total of £162 million.

Paul Lewis at King’s College—I declare an interest as vice-chair of council—has undertaken an interesting and illustrative piece of research on the role of technicians in life sciences. I know that the Minister is particularly interested in this area. The life sciences strategy is, of course, both a strategy in its own right but also an important strand of the industrial strategy. His research found that, as industrial biotechnology, cell therapy and regenerative medicine remain in the relatively early stages of their development and heavily involved in research, the focus has been on graduate and postgraduate skill needs, which are also in pretty short supply. However, sector-level bodies and employers readily acknowledge that any movement in the future to full-scale manufacturing—as we hope there will be —will demand increasing numbers of specialist manufacturing and laboratory technician roles. Significantly, many of the emerging roles in the life sciences sector could, and probably should, be carried out by technicians. These roles are highly routinised but take place in accordance with strict guidelines and standard operating procedures from which people must not deviate. Such roles place a premium on attention to detail, care in following instructions and practical skills—for example, on cell cultivation—rather than on graduate-level theoretical knowledge.

In practice, many manufacturing and lab support roles have hitherto often been filled by graduates. This overqualification can lead to difficulties. The graduates have greater theoretical knowledge than is essential, but they often lack the practical skills required to do the job effectively over a reasonable period of time. They often also become dissatisfied with the job, both with the highly routinised work and the relatively low pay. They may leave pretty quickly, which is frustrating for the employers, who have put the training in.

Apprenticeships could and should help, if planned properly. When it comes to planning and delivering apprenticeships, there are lessons from other specialist sectors, and it is now time to learn from them. We need small numbers. In any geographical area, small numbers make it difficult to get a training provider to collaborate properly under the current funding system. This needs to be planned properly. For example, we should look at centres of excellence, technician training that can cover a range of industries, more distance learning with residential blocks, involving the catapult centres, and so on. The point is that a practical, comprehensive piece of work needs to be done on this now.

I choose this issue of technicians to be illustrative of the wider issues. My plea to the Minister is that collectively we need to roll up our sleeves and deliver a properly thought-out, joined-up skills strategy—not have schools over there, FE here and HE somewhere else, planned by different departments at the moment with different Ministers and different civil servants. We need to try to avoid the big claims and the big numbers and plan a proper, detailed, quality provision that is absolutely essential for our economic future.