Science and Public Service Broadcasting

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Andrew Miller

Tuesday 4th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and a pleasure to have the opportunity to discuss the important but oft-neglected subject of science and public service broadcasting. By “science”, I also mean engineering. I must declare an interest. For 23 years before coming into Parliament, I worked as a professional engineer, so the representation of science and engineering on the BBC, Channel 4, ITV and Channel Five is of some personal interest to me.

The Minister will be pleased to know that I shall not simply ask him to account for the representation of science and engineering. I shall set out their importance to our economy and culture and mention the role of public sector broadcasting and the general great contribution it is making to the popularisation of science and engineering, and discuss how it could do better.

Like many people, I was inspired by Danny Boyle’s wonderful Olympics opening ceremony, which brought to life the importance of science and the industrial revolution in our history. If it is possible, I was even more pleased watching the Paralympics opening ceremony, which Paul Nurse, the president of the Royal Society, said highlighted

“the achievement of human will in overcoming the adversity of disability and tackling the difficult problems of science.”

Science and engineering are an important part of our economic prosperity, especially now we are seeking to rebalance our economy, get out of a double-dip recession made in Downing street and at the same time address that grave legacy of the first industrial revolution: climate change. Research compiled by Josh Lerner of the Harvard Business School, looking at the last 100 years of growth in various economies, suggests that only 15% of growth in any economy can be accounted for by increasing inputs. That means that 85% of growth in economic output must come from innovation. Science and engineering drive innovation; without them, we will lose our place as a leading economy. Other countries know this. Some 1.5 million science and engineering students graduated from Chinese universities in 2006 alone. In the UK, more young people chose to study fine art than physics. Fine art is a fine choice, but so is physics.

In its 2009 review, Ofcom set out the purpose of public service broadcasting and said that it should stimulate our interest in and knowledge of arts, science, history and other topics through content that is accessible and can encourage informal learning. Ofcom said that public service broadcasting should be high quality, innovative, challenging and engaging. In addition, Channel 4 is required to support and stimulate well-informed debate on a wide range of subjects. I hope the Minister will say whether he believes that those criteria have been met in regard to science.

There are great strengths in our public service broadcasting science coverage, which has improved considerably over the past 10 years. We no longer see so much of the Q format. Q was the gadget man in the 007 films and all too often in the past science programming consisted of a man with a gadget explaining why it would get some Bond wannabe out of a tricky situation. Now on BBC radio we have the “The Infinite Monkey Cage”, “Saving Species” and “The Life Scientific” to name just three. BBC television has given us the “Secret History of…”. “Bang Goes the Theory”, “Stargazing” and “Frozen Planet”. “Horizon” continues to offer great science specials, such as “To Infinity and Beyond”, which discussed the science of endless time and space—something politicians have a particular problem grasping. Channel 4 also has a wide range of science programming, from “The Science of Seeing Again” with Katie Piper to “Brave New World with Stephen Hawking” and one of my favourites, “Dambusters: Building the Bouncing Bomb”.

Ofcom’s most recent survey, published in June, did not reflect general satisfaction, with 65% of respondents thinking that showing interesting programmes about history, sciences or the arts was important but only 46% saying that the public service broadcasting channels were doing that. The level of satisfaction varied highly: 71% for BBC 2, which is excellent, but a worrying 26% for Channel Five. The fact that science is lumped in with the arts and history makes it hard to see precisely where the problem is. Equally, it is difficult to get hard figures on the percentage of commissioned programmes on science and the viewing figures associated with them. I am not aware of any specialist programming aimed specifically at children. Perhaps the Minister will respond to those two points.

Although there is much to be proud of, there is still much to do. I watch and listen to science and engineering programmes with both a personal and professional interest, and I believe that there is one significant weakness. The BBC and Channel 4 have separate science programming, so if people want to watch science and engineering programmes—if they are already interested in infinity, arctic wildlife or how the bouncing bomb was designed, for example—they know exactly where to go. Science programming is heavily signposted, ensuring that those who do not already have an interest in science and engineering can easily avoid it. The Olympic and Paralympic opening ceremonies managed to integrate those subjects successfully, but public service broadcasters have not integrated science and engineering into general programming that can be enjoyed by all. I am afraid that the public service broadcasters have created high-quality, well-resourced science ghettos.

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend may have visited the Royal Society exhibition on broadcasting science. It is interesting to note that the challenge she describes goes back to the beginnings of broadcasting in the 1920s. I should like the House to set up a working group to work with broadcasters and examine that challenge, because it has been around for a long time. My hon. Friend has raised an important point.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that important point, and I pay tribute to his work as Chair of the Select Committee on Science and Technology. I have not yet visited the Royal Society to see that exhibition.

[Andrew Miller]

It runs until November.

[Chi Onwurah]

Excellent; I shall attend. Working together with broadcasters to address this subject is an excellent idea. I am by no means suggesting that the fault—such fault as there is—lies entirely with the broadcasters.

Non-specialist science programming all too often displays a depressing lack of scientific literacy. I wrote to the outgoing director-general of the BBC, Mr Mark Thompson —the first of many letterss— and the correspondence is on my website.

I thought about reading it in all its Kafkaesque beauty, but I took pity on the Minister and decided that a summary would do. In a programme called “Foreign Bodies”, a BBC reporter said that there was a high proportion of Chinese students on engineering courses in the UK because engineering was more valuable in China. I pointed out that that was not the case: engineering is an excellent career choice for students concerned with material reward—I should know—as engineering degrees dominate the top 10 most well-paid graduate professions, with chemical engineering graduates earning the third highest wage in the UK on graduation at more than £27,000. As I said, in terms of UK plc, engineering is incredibly valuable.

What the journalist may have meant to say was that engineering was not as valued in this country, although that is certainly not the case in the north-east and in my constituency. That might be true for a certain section of the population and, perhaps, some of those people may find themselves commissioning public service broadcasting programming. Certainly only one member of the BBC Trust has a background in science or engineering, as against 11 humanists. In a famous 1959 lecture, the British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow warned of the dangers of two cultures—science on the one hand, and the humanities on the other—and of the limitations that that would place on our society. Only last year, Google’s chair Eric Schmidt used his MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh festival to condemn the same gap. The UK, he said, was culturally divided into luvvies and boffins. Schmidt called for art, technology and science to be brought together—a call endorsed by popular TV scientist Brian Cox.

All too often, public service broadcasting programmes present science and engineering as boring, freakish, immensely difficult, or all three. I have lost count of the number of times that interviewers have said something such as, “So you thought about going into science but then you decided to do something creative instead.” I sometimes imagine how broadcasters would react if a reporter treated Shakespeare as they often treat science. Imagine a reporter saying, “I dropped Shakespeare when I was 12—it was just too difficult,” or, “Oh, Shakespeare—I have to ask the kids to help me out with that.”

The consequences can be serious. The BBC’s approach to scientific balance seems to be culled straight from the world of politics, without any understanding of scientific method. Even though the vast majority of scientific evidence supports climate change, the BBC will put up one pro-climate change and one anti-climate change scientist and think that that constitutes balance. Equally, its general interest programmes will be chock-full of historians, artists, celebrities and journalists, but with few engineers or scientists.

[Andrew Miller]

The point just made by my hon. Friend was central to the discussion of the Select Committee with Professor Steve Jones before his recently published review for the BBC Trust. I would welcome a response from the Minister about any discussions that he has had with the BBC about the implementation of recommendations on precisely the point made by my hon. Friend.

[Chi Onwurah]

I will certainly leave time for the Minister to respond on that and other important points.

The general interest programmes of the public service broadcasters are chock-full of historians, artists, celebrities and journalists, but include few if any engineers or scientists. I wrote to “Woman’s Hour” to ask if it had interviewed as many women engineers this year as women sex workers. Unfortunately that information was not available, but an admittedly unscientific Google yielded more hits for “Woman’s Hour” coverage of prostitution than for science and engineering. The fact that only 6% of engineers in the UK are women, compared with 30% in Latvia, contributes to an environment in which half our scientific and engineering talent goes to waste.

To go back to my original example, the opening ceremonies of the Olympics and Paralympics proved that it is possible to show scientific themes to a general audience successfully. Further, they showed that non-scientists can successfully represent scientific themes alongside other ones. Surely public sector broadcasters can do so as well.