Space Policy

Lord Winston Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

I shall look into what it is possible for me to release to the noble Lord in response to his question on publishing the business case. I certainly feel that we would want to be as open as possible about why we chose the site in the north of Scotland and what we consider its advantages to be. I will write to him in due course.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

In the Statement, Britain’s universities were praised for being at the top of the tree, but there is a significant problem here. I focused at Question Time on the paucity of qualified science teachers in primary schools. This runs right through our system; if we are to be competitive in the space industry, we need better physics, better mathematics in particular and, of course, as much engineering as possible. There are quite insignificant numbers of A-level physics teachers; far more are needed. As the Institute of Physics and the Royal Academy of Engineers point out, far more of these posts remain empty. What can the Government do to ensure we have more teaching, particularly of physics and mathematics, at A-level?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention; I am sure the Government as a whole are grateful for the intervention he made earlier at Question Time. I was in the Chamber to hear it; if I remember correctly, I now know, as I did not at the time—and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is with me on this—that nitrogen is the commonest gas. But the noble Lord, Lord Winston, makes a more important point. We have a very strong university sector. We have enormous strengths in science in the university sector and we want to make sure we maintain them. It would not be right for me, in responding to this Statement, to go through all the Government wish to do to improve the teaching of science in our schools. However, I shall certainly make the comments of the noble Lord available to my colleagues in the Department for Education.