North Cotswold Line

Debate between Robin Walker and Peter Luff

Friday 17th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I am very grateful for this opportunity to raise an issue of huge concern to my constituents and to speak before a Minister who I know is passionate about delivering investment and growth in our railways. Worcestershire has a world-class economy, and I was very pleased at the recent Conservative party conference to hear our Transport Secretary committing to world-class infrastructure for the UK. It is vital to the success of our country that this is delivered fast and that it reaches the great cities of England.

Given its romantic name, once could be forgiven for thinking that the North Cotswold line was one of those scenic routes that meander through the countryside serving beautiful villages and keeping alive the rural idyll with steam trains and fine views. In fact, it is the main line to an economy in Worcestershire alone of half a million people, and many more beyond in Herefordshire. Worcester is a county town with a population of nearly 100,000 and a work footprint of many more. The line is already a vital commuter link for Oxfordshire and should be a vital business link between the growing industrial, cyber-security and services sectors in our part of the west midlands and the capital.

I am grateful for the strong support and campaigning for this line from my neighbours, my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Worcestershire (Sir Peter Luff) and for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), and from my hon. Friends the Members for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) and for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), all of whom have spoken up for a better service for their constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire has been a tireless champion of redoubling for decades. I know that in asking for these improvements I have the full support of Worcestershire county council and Worcester city council, and our local enterprise partnership and chamber of commerce. Further down the line there is a great deal of interest, including from the Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) who, as well as backing previous investments in the line, has recently written to the Chancellor in support of further redoubling. However, despite all that support, our line, particularly its western end, has been neglected compared with other areas. After it was saved from total destruction in the 1970s it was for a long time single track and too much of it remains so. Line speeds have decreased and journey times have lengthened, particularly under the last Labour Government. More stops and little new rolling stock compounded the problem, and so even since the welcome redoubling of much of the track, delivered in 2011, the journey time to and from Worcester has improved by only about 10 minutes.

I remember travelling as a schoolboy, when there were three high-speed two-hour services per day, and I could leave London after school on Friday evening and easily be home in Worcestershire in time for dinner. That was on a line that was single track all the way from Oxford to Worcester, yet even today, with much more double track available, that same level of service is unavailable. I have also been told that the steam-powered cathedrals express ran from Worcester to London in less than two hours even in 1910. It is profoundly shocking that in the 21st century it should now take about two and a quarter hours, and often longer.

Mike Ashton, the chief executive of Herefordshire & Worcestershire chamber of commerce has said

“Time and time again local businesses tell us that the rail connectivity from Worcester is simply not good enough. Journey times that are longer now than they were at the start of the 20th century is just not good enough to meet the demands of modern businesses, to whom quick and easy travel is essential.”

The service compares very poorly with those to equivalent county towns a similar distance from London; Worcester’s current 135 minutes compares to Warwick’s 78 minutes and Rugby’s less than an hour. Even Exeter, York, Norwich and Northampton, all of which are further away, get faster trains and shorter journeys. The train line to Norwich is a good example of a line that has seen significant improvement in recent years, and we all know of the journey time improvements on offer to Birmingham and the north from HS2.

For my constituents and those west of Worcester on the line, our poor service means that huge substitution is going on, either directly to the roads or through road journeys to other lines and other stations. First Great Western knows that it is losing passengers from Worcester to both the Chiltern and the west coast main lines, and has said:

“A factor influencing behaviours has been the greater frequency of services on the alternative routes and journey times. Passengers from Birmingham International typically have 3 trains per hour to London, taking 75 minutes to the capital. Passengers from Warwick Parkway typically have 2 trains per hour to London, taking 78 minutes to the capital. By contrast from Worcester journey times on the North Cotswolds route can take about 135 minutes, with a lesser service frequency.”

Anecdotally I have heard from hundreds of constituents that they travel to those stations to get the faster and more reliable trains. Most travellers from Herefordshire catch trains from south Wales to avoid the long journey via Worcester. Overcrowded trains and poor reliability compound the situation, and so long as this remains the case the North Cotswold line will never reach its full potential.

Jim McBride, the chief executive of Lesk Engineers and director of Henley Business Group, has recently said:

“I am forced to either travel to Warwick Parkway or into the centre of Birmingham to get a train that leaves at times that are convenient without being forced to stand for the entirety of a two and a half hour journey.”

I can tell the Minister that traffic is an enormous problem in and around Worcester, and that anything that encourages road users on to the trains would be welcomed by my constituents, even those who do not use the trains themselves. I have been alerted by those constituents who do use the trains to particular problems with wi-fi not being available on all services and, having welcomed First Great Western’s decision to include free wi-fi in its offer for the franchise, I think it needs to be made universal.

The Cotswold line promotion group, of which I am proud to be a vice-president along with many of my colleagues, has been a great campaigner for the line, but as it represents communities all along it it has always been keen to keep every stop and to have as many trains as possible stopping at each. I do not want anyone to miss out, but I do want to see more trains running so that we can have both fast and stopping services. Only by having an express service from Worcester to London via at least Charlbury and Oxford can we maximise the opportunity to our economy and such a service, which has been run in the past, would again be achievable if we could secure two trains an hour along the line. I believe that that should be a strategic objective for the Government and a requirement of future franchises.

I welcome the £70 million redoubling project that added so much capacity to the line, but I am deeply concerned that it has not yet delivered the improvement in line speed or regularity that we would expect. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire has asked a number of written questions on the subject and the answers he has received so far suggest it has reduced the journey time by only 10 minutes and has resulted in merely a slight improvement in their regularity. That does not suggest it is yet being used to the full.

[Sir Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the kind things he says about me. I congratulate him on how he is speaking in this important debate and associate myself with everything he has said. On the question of regularity, does he understand my gratitude to the House of Commons for not having a Division at 2.30 pm, which means that I can catch the 15.52 home rather than waiting an hour and a half for the 17.22?

[Mr Walker]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on how he has brought his great knowledge of the timetable into the debate and absolutely agree with him. I will be travelling up to Worcester straight after this to welcome Sir John Major on a visit to the county. That will be a wonderful occasion, but sadly neither he nor I will be able to take the train to ensure that we arrive in time for our dinner.

My hon. Friend’s written questions bring me to the question of how we can achieve a two-hour service and the opportunities for the Minister and the train companies to deliver. I know that First Great Western is working on timetable improvements and will be introducing some incremental change in 2015, including some faster services and slightly better regularity but also sacrifices, including fewer trains stopping at Pershore and Malvern. The current proposals offer Worcester a two hour seven minute journey time, but not at the most important times of day.

I welcome the small improvements on offer but they are not sufficient and I am very concerned that, according to the drafts I have seen, one of the most important services for business, the 8.30 am from Paddington, is being run on an old turbo. I want Network Rail to work more closely with First Great Western on the newly redoubled line and to ensure that every possible minute of line speed is being delivered. It needs to squeeze more minutes out of the timetable by reducing stopping times, maximising line speed and ensuring all the signalling is up to date. I also want First Great Western to look again at why so many trains have long stopovers at Shrub Hill station so that, while the 7.33 am departure spends only two minutes there the 6.30 am train before and the 8.41 am after it sit waiting at the station for more than 12. That is a major concern for anyone travelling from Foregate Street, Malvern or beyond.

The second opportunity is to consider what chance there is to use the passenger journey time improvement fund to deliver further incremental gains as soon as possible. Resignalling, further electrification from Oxford and further redoubling are all opportunities in that space. I note that no less a Member than my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney is a supporter of further investment in redoubling and I hope his support as well as mine and that of all my neighbours will be heard loud and clear by the Chancellor ahead of the autumn statement. First Great Western must work with Network Rail to determine the costs and benefits of full redoubling and also what further partial redoubling could make the biggest difference.

The third opportunity is to do with rolling stock. I cannot claim to be anything like as expert on this as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire or the noble Lord Faulkner of Worcester, but I do know we have been poorly served on this front for far too long, and the fact that turbos are still being programmed into draft timetables is not a good sign. We should be looking at high speed trains as well as greater use of electric/diesel trains, and as passenger demand grows that will continue to be more and more pressing.

I know that there has been some investment in converting first class carriages to standard to add seating capacity, but there is also a constant need to look at carriage and seat numbers. In 2018 there is both a major risk and an opportunity to ensure that the line is fully served by modern trains when the existing fleet of 180s will be handed over to Grand Central for its cross-country services. The Department must ensure that there are sufficient high quality intercity express programme trains for an hourly service and to begin the much-needed expansion towards a twice hourly one.

The fourth and perhaps biggest opportunity is Worcestershire Parkway station. I do not have time today to rehearse all the arguments for it, but our local enterprise partnership has estimated that it could add £47 million to revenues over 20 years. It provides better connectivity, faster journey times for Worcester commuters and a vital link between road and rail. It is what the noble Lord Prescott might have described as an integrated transport system.

Wherever there are car parks along the line they have been filling up. The welcome expansion of Charlbury has already been filled to capacity and the Worcestershire LEP recently showed that the Worcestershire stations on the line currently offer a total of just 418 parking spaces versus more than 1,200 in the same sized stretch of the Chiltern line in Warwickshire. Worcestershire Parkway has the potential to transform this situation. It also creates the opportunity, in conjunction with very welcome road investments, such as the dualling of the A4440 southern link, for people from across south Worcestershire to drive to Parkway and catch the line. Better connectivity with the M5 widens this catchment still further and, as the lesson of Warwick Parkway's spectacular growth trajectory shows, a massive increase in the number of people using the train is possible when good parking facilities and fast reliable journeys are available. It is enormously to the credit of this Government that they have funded Worcestershire Parkway with £7.5 million through the local growth fund. Something that has been debated and campaigned for over decades is now just a few years away. Now we need to ensure that it can be used to the full to deliver for Worcestershire's economy with faster journey times.

The train companies are making supportive noises, but I have never been too sure that they have really woken up to the full scale of the opportunity. Only last week I was pleased to see First Great Western standing alongside Parkway campaigners at the Worcestershire LEP conference, but the effect was slightly spoiled when I was staggered to see that they had a poster of their Building a Greater West campaign, which showed line improvements across six counties but failed to mention Worcestershire. Their poster even managed to hide Worcester itself behind a label talking about line improvements in Gloucestershire. If they want to build a greater west, the main line to Worcester needs to be part of it. I have been more reassured by my meetings with them in recent days and I am very grateful to the Minister for arranging a productive conference call with the company and MPs along the line earlier this week. First Great Western tells me that it believes a journey time of less than two hours to the centre of Worcester is deliverable even with an added stop at Worcestershire Parkway. I want to see this happen as soon as possible. I want to see the Minister hold its feet to the fire in terms of the service my constituents receive. Awarding it a renewal of the franchise is acceptable only if it can deliver a real improvement to the service, both in reliability and speed. This Government have invested already in the North Cotswold line and substantial redoubling has taken place, but faster journey times and greater regularity are urgently needed.

There is a huge economic opportunity for our county in securing a connection of less than two hours to and from London, which is why I am pleased that it now features prominently in the strategic economic plan of our LEP. I recall taking evidence from Admiral Insurance when I served on the Welsh Affairs Committee as to why it had based its headquarters in Cardiff. The No. 1 factor was a two-hour journey time from the capital. Worcester wants to attract more corporate headquarters and more investment from overseas and securing better connectivity is vital. Some have suggested that this could come only at the cost of higher ticket prices. I disagree, as there is a huge loss of passengers and revenues as a result of substitution. I believe that ticket prices could be driven down by the enormous growth in usage that would be achieved from two trains per hour and a fast and stopping service.

In a few weeks I will be visiting southern China with a delegation of Worcestershire businesses in order to drum up investment in our world-class county. The cities we will be visiting have high-speed rail connections that have been built in just a few years, connecting them to the major centres of population hundreds of miles away. I want to be able to hold my head up high and show the world that Worcestershire, which already has a world-class economy and a world-class skills base has world-class rail connections too. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for listening so patiently to this request. I invite her to visit Worcester, preferably by train, and very much look forward to hearing her response.

Schools Funding

Debate between Robin Walker and Peter Luff

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sir Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

May I congratulate my hon. Friend on his significant role in achieving that breakthrough? It is, however, only an initial breakthrough, as he has said. As long as schools such as Prince Henry’s school in Worcestershire face significant real-terms funding cuts, despite those achievements, much more work needs to be done. I offer him every best wish in pursuing this excellent campaign into the future.

[Mr Walker]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. He has been a long-term champion of fairer funding for schools, and I think that his constituent, Helen Donovan, would be very proud of the work he has done on that front. The Worcestershire Association of School Business Managers and head teachers and governors have expressed their appreciation for the progress made so far, but he is right that there is still much further to go.

Having made the campaign my No. 1 priority as a result of meeting all the primary school heads in Worcester during my time as a candidate—every single one of whom railed at the unfairness of the funding system—I promised them that further progress will and must follow. Some F40 areas have not however been so fortunate, and I want to ensure this debate hears the voices of those such as Warrington, Trafford, Solihull and Nottinghamshire who, despite being F40 members and languishing towards the bottom of the tables for per pupil funding, have yet to see progress.

Engineering Skills (Perkins Review)

Debate between Robin Walker and Peter Luff

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Peter Luff]

I absolutely agree. Having come from an engineering background, the hon. Lady says that with much more effect than I can—politics’ gain is engineering’s loss. I am most grateful for her helpful and entirely correct remarks.

In a ten-minute rule Bill in February, I tried to be simple and focused. I wanted to increase demand from young people and to make them more enthusiastic about pursuing STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—and careers, whether as apprentices or graduates; to inspire them about the possibilities in engineering, science and technology; to show them by practical example and experience while at school that engineering and technology are exciting and important careers; and then to sustain that interest throughout their time at school.

Some things have changed for the better since February. A new design and technology curriculum provides the opportunity for schools to work with businesses to deepen understanding of the realities of engineering, which was my first objective. I want to pay real tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), the Minister with responsibility for schools, for working with all groups involved to transform the Government’s original proposals. Sadly, I see fewer signs than I would like that the Department for Education really understands its role in helping young people to prepare for the world of work. Employers still sense reluctance at the Department for Education to regard schools, in the memorable phrase of my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), who hoped to be here but is sadly indisposed, as part of the supply chain for industry.

I suspended my campaign on the policy suggestions in my Bill and said that I would wait for the Perkins review. It was due in July and sadly delayed to November, but it proved well worth waiting for. As I waited, I concentrated on two issues. The first was the need to do much, much more to inspire young people about the opportunities in engineering, and second was the need to counter the appalling gender stereotyping already discussed. I was therefore delighted to see those two issues considered so thoughtfully in John Perkins’s review, but the response of the engineering community now needs to be clear and convincing and needs above all to take on the challenge of marketing engineering to young people, starting at primary school age.

I should step back a moment and offer categorical congratulations to Professor Perkins. Indeed, the Royal Academy of Engineering has encouraged me to offer a bouquet to Professor Perkins and the wider Department for Business, Innovation and Skills team

“for conducting an exemplification of open policy making. John actively sought out the views of the engineering profession and created the conditions where institutions large and small could get their voices heard. It was brilliant work.”

It also offers a bouquet to the Department for Education, by the way, which, despite my earlier reservations, I do endorse,

“for their reforms to Computing, D&T and vocational education and their willingness to take detailed advice from the engineering profession. The engagement on both sides has been excellent.”

Steve Holliday, chief executive officer of National Grid described the Perkins review to me as

“one of the best reports I have seen in quite some time”.

I agree with all that, but I want to examine one or two details with a critical eye. The royal academy offers the correct cautionary note:

“None of this is easy—particularly the things around diversity—and so on-going collaboration between Government and the engineering profession is key. We’ve had that during the periods of review and reform [good] and now the challenge is to find a mechanism to keep that going in the long term steady-state.”

We need an implementation plan from the Government and from the engineering community.

Against that background, I offer eight observations on areas of the report. The first is a particular bête noire of mine: the lack of attention to defence. The report is strangely silent on the wider security and national resilience issues caused by a shortage of British engineering talent. Defence and security face the greatest threats, as they often cannot use non-British labour on national security grounds. It is true that the bigger companies, such as BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce, have no problem recruiting as they are so well-known. They are now over-recruiting to their apprenticeship programmes to feed apprentices into their supply chains, which is welcome and good of them. Smaller companies, however, face huge challenges in finding the right skills. Organisations such as GCHQ are also challenged and need all the home-grown cyber-expertise they can find. I am delighted to be a member of the skills group of the defence growth partnership, and I hope to be able to play my part and to address some of the issues.

My second concern, at which I have already hinted, is that the age group recommended by Perkins is too old. We need to go younger. The National Foundation for Educational Research looked at features of the activities and interventions in schools that were most successful at improving young people’s engagement in STEM. It found that of the five most beneficial activities they identified, the first was to engage pupils at an early age and at key transition points. Indeed, the Perkins review actually says:

“If we are going to secure the flow of talent into engineering, we need to start at the very beginning…Starting to inspire people at 16 years old is too late; choices are made, and options are closed off well before then. So we need purposeful and effective early intervention to enthuse tomorrow’s engineers.”

It is no accident that the “inspiring women” campaign, organised by Inspiring the Future and recently launched by Miriam Gonzalez, aims to start talking to girls at the age of 8, not 11 as Perkins recommends. A recent report from King’s College London on young people’s science and career aspirations said:

“Efforts to broaden students’ aspirations, particularly in relation to STEM, need to begin at primary school. The current focus of most activities and interventions—at secondary school—is likely to be too little too late.”

Steve Holliday told me of his company:

“National Grid’s current strategy is to ‘get in early’ by presenting engineering as a vibrant and viable career choice to a mixed culture and cross gender audience from the age of 8 years upwards.”

If hon. Members want to see a good video for encouraging people to get into STEM careers, I recommend the film produced by Nigel Whitehead of BAE Systems. I have the YouTube address here, but if hon. Members google “engineering careers and BAE Systems”, they will find it. I will happily share the link with anyone afterwards. Perkins’s fifth recommendation to reach out

“particularly to girls aged 11 to 14”

should be rethought. Eight is a much better age to begin.

My third concern is about female participation; the report contains insufficient detail on what we can do to address that problem.The Women’s Business Council’s report, “Maximising Women’s Contribution to Future Economic Growth”, makes the point that while women need work, work also needs women. Ford of Britain said to me:

“Above all there is a need for stronger and more systematic collaboration between educators, industry, BIS and the Department for Education to improve both the reputation and the uptake of STEM subjects and engineering amongst girls.”

I agree with that and worry that, despite the damning evidence produced by Perkins, his recommendations fall well short of a credible path to do something about it. I am working with Science Grrl, a creative group of young professional women working in STEM, to produce specific recommendations to address the issue. We aim to produce a report in March. The Select Committee on Science and Technology, which is chaired by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller), is holding its own inquiry and will hopefully produce its report in the not-to-distant future. The Women’s Engineering Society has some pretty clear and compelling advice to employers and schools, which I commend. We certainly need a clearer plan of action than that offered in Perkins.

The report fails to address the failure to engage local enterprise partnerships, whose potential contribution could and should have been addressed. As the Minister of State at BIS said in a recent written answer:

“At local level, Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) have the lead role in setting strategies for skills within their overall Strategic Economic Plans”—[Official Report, 8 October 2013; Vol. 568, c. 268W.]

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the excellent points he is making, and on the enormous impact he has already had on turning round the design and technology curriculum. Does he welcome the work going on in the Worcestershire local enterprise partnership to get local business, such as Worcester Bosch and Mazak, working with local schools to promote engineering at both primary and secondary level?

[Peter Luff]

I welcome the intervention from my hon. Friend, who is my own Member of Parliament. He is absolutely right that the Worcester LEP is doing all the right things, but I doubt whether that is necessarily the case in every LEP area. The Government need to do more to ensure that best practice is shared, even if they do not go down my preferred route of LEPs having a statutory responsibility to share it.

There is also the question of careers advice. Engineering fits into a bigger picture of careers advice in schools. Some interesting research from the Education and Employers Taskforce on NEETs—those not in education, employment or training—was recently drawn to my attention. It is actually two years old, but I only found out about it last week. It was published in February 2012 and asked young adults aged 19 to 24 about their current employment status, and to reflect on their experiences of the world of work while they were at school. The findings were striking. Of the young people who could recall no contact with employers while at school, 26.1% went on to become NEETs. That reduced significantly to 4.3% for those who had taken part in four or more activities involving employers such as career insights, mentoring, work tasters, work experience and so on. As Steve Holliday of National Grid puts it:

“Beyond the Perkins report, the final point I would make is that for the engineering sector to land its messages well, there needs to be a solid foundation of general careers advice/awareness in schools…This will require a joined up strategy between DfE and BIS, with schools and business then having their part to play in making this a reality. I fear that without it, interventions will be too fragmented to make a real impact.”

That would be very serious.

On a slightly more positive note, the report’s recommendations 12 and 13 on vocational education are valuable. The Royal Academy of Engineering offers this perspective:

“In all of John’s work, probably the bit with the greatest potential for long term impact relates to apprenticeships. All critiques of ‘modern apprenticeships’”—

those under this Government and the previous one—

“show that not all have matched the generally accepted benchmark of the advanced engineering apprenticeship. And government’s response to the Richards’ review promises to make even the engineering apprenticeship better. But the potential significance of those reforms is not obvious to most readers of the Perkins review. With cross-party consensus on apprenticeship, this is the time for a drive to quality outcomes and not just growth in apprenticeship starts”—

as welcome as those are.

“Britain could close the gap on the German dual system if she put her mind to it”.

That is an important point for the Minister. I know he is working hard for this and I congratulate him on and thank him for all his work, but it is encouraging to see the Perkins review so welcomed by the engineering community in that respect. I would labour the point, but I want to make progress and leave time for others to speak.

Moving on to my final two related points, for something to happen, someone has to own the issue, and what is needed is a proper marketing campaign devised by experts, not the engineering of ever more elegant solutions by engineers. I am afraid that the Perkins team clearly did not speak to any marketing experts as they prepared their report. The recommendations under the heading “Inspiration” are helpful but, to be blunt, inadequate. Recommendations 3, 4 and 5 are well intentioned, but not informed by proper understanding of communications. They are recommendations by engineers to engineers. Recommendation 3, on core messages, is okay, and the fourth one, on support for the Tomorrow’s Engineers programme, is correct but limited. Recommendation 5, however, desperately needs to be strengthened.

Rightly directed at the Government and the engineering community, recommendation 5 is for a:

“High profile campaign reaching out to young people, particularly girls aged 11-14 years, with inspirational messages about engineering and diverse role models, to inspire them to become ‘Tomorrow’s Engineers’. The engineering community should take this forward as an annual event.”

For me, this recommendation is groping towards a definition of the central task, but it does not address the right age group and is too limited in its understanding of what is involved. Furthermore, remember that reference to an “annual event”. I repeat my profound concern that starting at 11 is simply too old. Girls in particular are being told at primary school that they do not do science, engineering and technology. We must address that problem. Rightly, the report states that

“we need purposeful and effective early intervention to enthuse tomorrow’s engineers”,

and that there are

“widespread misconceptions and lack of visibility that deter young people”.

The logic of those compelling points, however, has been pursued rigorously. A full, year-round marketing campaign is needed to address not only young people—primarily eight to 14-year-olds—but their parents and teachers; all the other valuable initiatives can sit under that campaign, from which they will all benefit. There are literally thousands of such initiatives. The better known include Big Bang, Tomorrow’s Engineers, STEMNET, Primary Engineer, the 5% Club and Bloodhound SSC, as well as the programmes of individual companies, voluntary bodies, public sector organisations, trade associations and professional institutions. Much work has been done by Engineering UK to bring all those initiatives together under the Tomorrow’s Engineers banner, but we need to do much more to explain the overall message of engineering.

I am indebted to George Edwards—he is sitting not a million miles away from us in the Public Gallery—an 18-year-old A-level engineering student from Kent who told me just how bad things are. He had some suggestions to make:

“As a student who has been on the receiving end of almost all of the engineering propaganda aimed at schools, 1 genuinely couldn’t describe what I am supposed to think about a career in engineering. Other than the need for more engineers, there are no clear or pragmatic messages being put across and as the problem becomes of a higher agenda for the media, the response is just to shout louder about the need for engineers.

Outreach must have substance and peer-led inspirational marketing, targeted at appropriate age groups”.

He is absolutely right.

Professor Perkins correctly speaks of the need to inspire, which requires not engineering skills but marketing and communications professionalism. He says in his report’s introduction that he has

“spoken to…industrialists, professional bodies, and educators.”

Although he rightly concludes that inspiration is essential, he appears not to have spoken to people with the appropriate marketing skills to inspire eight to 14-year-olds. This leads him to a limited understanding of what is needed to address the problems he identifies.

The UK marketing sector, similar to engineering, is world class and noted as such by many leading global brands. It is time for engineers to stop engineering solutions to the skills issue and to turn to professional marketing, just as any other organisation, product or brand would. Perkins rightly says:

“We should ensure that…messages are carefully crafted, based on the best available evidence about how to influence and communicate effectively with young people.”

I underline the point that this means working with marketing experts with proven expertise and success, not engineers. What engineers think is important might have no resonance at all with their audience.

The Government and the engineering community are both good at patting themselves on the back for all that they are doing. For example—I tread on dangerous ground here—Professor Perkins praises the Royal Academy of Engineering’s STEPS at Work initiative because it reaches 1,300 teachers and enables them to spend a day with a local engineering employer. I bow to none in my admiration for the royal academy and the outstanding work of Matthew Harrison on such issues, but with respect to them and to Professor Perkins, that scheme is a well-intentioned failure, not a success. There are more than 400,000 teachers in the state sector alone—can engineering really boast that only a little more than 1,000 of them have been persuaded to spend just one day finding out more about local jobs for their students?

The report tells us that the majority of boys and girls have had no encouragement from anyone at all—parents, teachers or friends—even to consider engineering as a career.

Design and Technology Curriculum

Debate between Robin Walker and Peter Luff

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the draft design and technology curriculum and to hear the Minister’s response.

I shall sum up the issues that are worrying people in three themes, which an academic suggested to me. The first is that there is a narrowing of focus. The draft programme of study for design and technology returns to a 1950s DIY curriculum with an emphasis on basic craft and household maintenance skills. It places at risk the creative, challenging learning in design, engineering and technology that is part of the present design and technology curriculum.

Secondly, there is a lack of rigour and challenge. The published draft programme of study for design and technology lacks academic or technical rigour, challenge or ambition. It is completely out of step with the needs of our advanced industrial economy and sophisticated labour market. It will undermine routes into further and higher education for talented students by failing to provide the skills and knowledge that they need to progress, or to inspire students to pursue careers in the creative industries, design, engineering, manufacturing and technology. Thirdly, there is a reduction in value, status and popularity. The draft proposals will further reinforce the perception that applied subjects are less valuable, which in turn will lead to academically gifted young people being discouraged from choosing technical and creative subjects at GCSE.

So, what the Minister decides on the design and technology curriculum will be every bit as significant for our country’s competitiveness as what the Chancellor announces in his Budget speech in an hour or so, so I hope the Minister’s voice lasts during her response. I am sure she understands the importance of getting it right, and I am sure the Department’s current consultation is genuine and could lead to meaningful change. I hope she will regard my speech as a constructive submission to that consultation. I apologise for any unintentional plagiarism in my remarks. I have been deluged with advice, for which I am grateful, and I will endeavour to attribute all my quotations and points.

I am here today primarily because of a constituent, Sue Wood-Griffiths, a lecturer at the university of Worcester, who recently came to see me in my constituency surgery to express her concerns. A phrase in the e-mail that Sue sent me yesterday sums everything up nicely:

“We should acknowledge that we are educating children today for a world that they will live in in the future and not the one we used to live in.”

That is why I was so encouraged to read the Minister’s speech from Monday, when she said,

“we will fall hopelessly behind in the global race if we do not equip successive generations with contemporary skills.”

My constituent, the Minister and I are in profound agreement.

I am also here because of my deep concern about the serious shortage of engineering skills. I now advise Northern Defence Industries, a defence and aerospace supply chain organisation, and I am a non-executive director of a small advanced manufacturing business. I am learning directly about the challenges that employers are facing. I conclude that the two greatest avoidable threats to our prosperity and security are, first, the deficit, which I am sure will feature largely in the Chancellor’s Budget speech, and secondly, science, technology, engineering and maths—STEM—skill shortages. That is what makes our debate so important. I want to see people studying to become skilled engineers so that they can maintain and sustain the F-35, which will shortly be based at RAF Marham in the Minister’s constituency. STEM skills are important to our security.

Engineering UK estimates that we have to double the education system’s output of engineers. That means increasing engineering graduates from 20,000 to 40,000 each year, and the same is true of apprentices. If new technologies make new demands—and the history of the human race suggests that is exactly what will happen—we will need many more engineering graduates and apprentices.

As I am sure the Minister knows, the low participation rate of women in engineering is a particular scandal, and I believe the design and technology curriculum can help to address that. I suggested a package of solutions in a ten-minute rule Bill last month. My first objective in that Bill was to give schools, from at least key stage 2, a duty to provide pupils with a meaningful experience of modern science, engineering and technology. I believe that objective can be met through a well structured design and technology curriculum in which the business community participates enthusiastically.

As the Minister will be aware, academics and teachers are expressing great concern about the draft design and technology curriculum. That is no plea of simple self-interest from producer groups. Industry, which is the end user of the skills provided to our children at school, is also very worried. James Dyson’s brilliant Times article of 11 February, “Grilling tomatoes won’t train new engineers,” explains that clearly and praises the changes made in the computing and maths curriculums, but it expresses deep concern about the design and technology curriculum. Yesterday, he told me:

“We need more engineers but the E from STEM is missing in our schools. Design & Technology should rank alongside maths and the sciences in importance—helping future engineers understand their practical applications.”

I talked to Steve Holliday, chief executive of the National Grid Company, about all that on Monday. Steve has a profound understanding of, and involvement in, skills issues. He, too, is deeply worried about what the draft curriculum could do to the future flow of engineers and technicians. He has just sent me this remark:

“D+T is today beginning to bring to life science and provide inspiration to tomorrow’s engineers who are so critical to our future.”

I strongly agree with Steve.

“Design and technology” is perhaps an unhelpful phrase that can mislead those outside teaching. In design and technology pupils design, test, make and evaluate innovative, functional products and systems with clear users and purposes in mind. They use a wide range of tools, equipment, materials and processes, including leading-edge, industry-standard computer-aided design and manufacturing, such as laser cutters and 3D printers. They also integrate electronics and computer programming into their designing and making, and they produce intelligent products. In fact, there is real scope for getting local small and medium-sized enterprises to run their businesses from those well equipped school workshops. They could take advantage of modern equipment used to teach design and technology that is used only for a few hours each school day. That would bring into schools welcome direct business engagement and experience of what technology can do. I know of at least one school where that is already happening, but the Government are right to propose changes to the current curriculum.

Education for Engineering, E4E, says in its excellent recent report that

“the subject is in need of reform to bring it in line with current Design thinking and modern technologies”.

The report proposes

“a new model for the D&T that realigns the subject with the original progressive vision proposed when it was introduced in 1989 while making it relevant for the 21st century.”

The report has this to say about the subject:

“D&T is one of the very few opportunities for pupils to partake in a technical, practical education. It plays an important role in providing young people with a hands-on, creative experience and develops a practical identity and a capability for innovation. The subject provides opportunity for collaboration, team working and communication—skills that are essential for future employment.”

Women have those skills in abundance. The report emphasises that design and technology

“is the closest subject to engineering in the National Curriculum.

D&T is not a vocational subject. It is a general academic subject, and has its own fundamental body of knowledge, principles and concepts which are not provided elsewhere in the curriculum.”

Design and technology is now leading-edge stuff that has changed beyond recognition in the years since I was at school, but the draft curriculum does not reflect that.

In a letter to The Times, Sir John Parker, president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said:

“The original D&T curriculum brought in by Kenneth Baker 20 years ago was more progressive than what we have now.”

Although I worry about curriculum overload, it is right to include food technology in the design and technology curriculum because it suits many of the concepts that should be included, but it is surprising to see cooking given absolute primacy:

“The National Curriculum for design and technology aims to ensure that all pupils: understand food and nutrition and have opportunities to learn to cook.”

The draft curriculum lists the subsidiary objectives of the curriculum with these introductory words, and I note the word “also”:

“It also aims to ensure that, working in fields such as materials (including textiles), horticulture, electricals and electronics, construction, and mechanics”.

The list then begins with a series of rather mundane objectives compared with what we ought to expect from the curriculum.

Dr Paul Thompson, rector of the Royal College of Art, wrote to me:

“We need our young designers to be focused on problem solving, market analysis, proof of concept, user interface and user experience, materials technology, visual literacy and aesthetics, sustainability, commerciality, and so much more. I really cannot see how home economics fits with this discipline at this particular level.”

Dr Marion Rutland of the university of Roehampton made a strong case to me for including food technology, but not cooking, in the curriculum. She differentiates between the two key issues underpinning the teaching of food in schools:

“One is the perceived importance of pupils learning to cook as a ‘life skill’ and the second is the potential contribution of food technology in design and technology to include academic rigour and contribute to the pupils’ overall learning. Ofsted has noted a lack of clarity regarding the nature of food technology and a need for a more intellectually challenging curriculum with more in-depth nutritional knowledge and greater scientific understanding and technical rigour.”

She went on to suggest that cooking may be more suited to the personal, social, health and economic education curriculum or to cooking clubs.

My principal concern, though, is that the whole draft curriculum is written in a way that retreats from the combination of rigour and inspiration that the Department is rightly seeking in other areas of study. The curriculum should be encouraging creativity in its students, offering them choice on how to approach problems and giving them as much autonomy as possible in their approach.

Students need to experience the reality of STEM in the modern world to understand it, and they need real project work and real industry partners to bring all that to life and to make design and technology fun, relevant and stimulating. Instead, the draft curriculum prepares its students for a low-technology past, not for a high-technology present and future.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour on his excellent speech. He mentioned earlier that he was approached by a constituent who happens to work in my constituency at the university of Worcester. I have been approached by a constituent who is a senior lecturer at Birmingham City university, and she strongly supports my hon. Friend’s point. She said that there is concern that the current draft of the curriculum appears to hark back to the past by trying to create a “make do and mend” culture. If we are looking for phrases from the past that ought to be relevant to our design and technology curriculum, perhaps we should be looking to “the white heat of the technological revolution,” rather than “make do and mend.” Does he agree?

[Peter Luff]

I am glad to hear Harold Wilson’s words spoken on this side of the House for a change. I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. The phrase “make do and mend” will feature later in my speech. His constituent makes a powerful point that goes to the heart of the issue that we need to address. I pay tribute to the university of Worcester for teaching design and technology so well to design and technology students and teachers.

Speaking to a conference at the Royal Academy of Engineering a couple of weeks ago, Dick Olver, chairman of both BAE Systems and E4E, contrasted the experience of the computing and design and technology curriculums. He said that with design and technology

“we seem to have a problem. Again, the Royal Academy of Engineering, along with the Design and Technology Association and the Design Council, provided advice to the Department for Education on new programmes of study for the subject.

This time however, it seems our recommendations have been completely ignored. Instead of introducing children to new design techniques such as biomimicry, we now have a focus on cookery. Instead of developing skills in Computer Aided Design we have the introduction of horticulture. Instead of electronics and control we have an emphasis on basic mechanical maintenance tasks. In short, something has gone very wrong.”

The introduction to the subject content of the draft curriculum begins depressingly:

“In Key Stages 1 to 3 pupils should be taught progressively more demanding practical knowledge, skills and crafts”.

Contrast that with the well-crafted phrases in the purpose of study for the computing curriculum which, ironically, comes immediately before D and T in the consultation document:

“A high-quality computing education equips pupils to understand and change the world through computational thinking. It develops and requires logical thinking and precision. It combines creativity with rigour: pupils apply underlying principles to understand real-world systems, and to create purposeful and usable artefacts. More broadly, it provides a lens through which to understand both natural and artificial systems, and has substantial links with the teaching of mathematics, science, and design and technology.”

My request to the Minister is a simple one. Will she please devise a D and T curriculum that follows the excellent example of the computer curriculum, and perhaps look at what her opposite numbers are doing in the widely praised Scottish curriculum for excellence?

I welcome the Minister’s emphasis on the need to avoid excess prescription in the curriculum, and to allow schools to be as free as possible in what and how they teach, but the words in the draft curriculum will direct what teachers do. The Design and Technology Association says:

“The core knowledge in the D and T proposals will not encourage teachers to develop exciting and stimulating lessons. It marks a radical and regressive departure from current practice. The language of the draft is utilitarian and uninspiring”.

It refers to “common” practical skills, “common” materials, “common” ingredients, “common” tools and techniques, “straightforward” recipes, “straightforward” skills, “simple” techniques and “everyday” products. DATA says:

“It will not inspire teachers to use their professionalism and expertise to motivate and engage pupils.”

Why does this matter so much? As I said, the UK has a desperate shortage of engineers and technicians. I loved abstract maths and physics, but there was no D and T at my grammar school and metalwork and woodwork were for the less academically able. I did well in maths and physics, but I never really understand what I could do with them, and that is probably why I am not an engineer today. A good D and T curriculum helps students to appreciate the uses of maths and physics and will inspire many young people—especially girls, I suspect—to pursue careers in science, technology and engineering. Some students might not have thought of that because they thought that sciences were not for them, but D and T made science relevant.

Worryingly, DATA also says:

“The draft proposals will further reinforce the perception that applied subjects are less valuable, which in turn will lead to academically gifted young people being discouraged from choosing technical and creative subjects such as D and T. We need our very brightest young people to be creative and able to focus their talent on real-world challenges. Design and innovation are widely identified as drivers of economic growth and the basis of Britain’s long-term competitive advantage. If subjects like D and T are marginalised, where will this innovation come from?”

The irony is that the UK has been leading the world in its understanding of the issue, and our competitors are catching up. An academic wrote to me:

“Research into D and T education over the last 20 years has been world-leading. Other countries look to ours for the lead in how to teach Design and Technology. The works of Richard Kimbell, David Barlex, Kay Stables, Marion Rutland, Eddie Norman, David Spendlove, Frank Banks which build upon earlier higher education research by Ken Baynes, Bruce Archer and Phil Roberts leads the world in this area.”

He continued:

“Their research has led to what is modern D and T, and while there is of course a place for practical work and skills, this should not be the main focus of any argument for the defence of the subject.”

Can sustainable growth ever return if we are rejecting the knowledge economy in favour of simply training up young people for manual jobs? The draft curriculum suggests that the intended direction is to equip operatives for middle-sector manual jobs, or empowering people to be able to make do and mend. Where then will the next generation of designers and engineers come from? Another insidious influence that affects the brightest students, both boys and girls, is that both sexes are often turned away from STEM careers due to a totally mistaken belief that they offer only technician-level activity: oily rags and machine shops. We need more technology in schools, not less, to show the exciting reality of modern science, engineering and technology. In the days when technical drawing, woodwork, metalwork, electronics and engineering were taught and respected in schools, Britain produced some of the most successful inventors, designers and engineers on the planet.

A modern D and T curriculum would be concerned with learning about today’s world of design and technology, and its economic and social value. It would use real projects that are relevant to students to show how maths, science technology, design and engineering work together; it would use modern methods and project management tools to manage deadlines and resources; it would teach safety and precision; it would teach how to develop and refine products to meet real needs; and it would straddle materials, components, systems, electronics, data and services to create high-quality outcomes. It would do that using a range of technologies, including food and textiles, but not to the exclusion of all those other technologies of the future that it should encompass.

As the Minister reminded us in her speech on Monday, the Prime Minister rightly says that we are in a global race, and he did not mean a pancake race. To win that race, we need to foster our creativity and innovation. To extend the metaphor, our young people must learn not just how to cook pancakes, but to search constantly for better pancake ingredients, recipes and design, and to build better stoves to cook them on.

Keeping the “e” in STEM silent, to use James Dyson’s brilliant phrase, means that the draft curriculum will stifle innovation and deter talented young people from careers in technology and engineering. With the same vision that underpins the computing curriculum, our young people could ensure that our country wins that global race. At the Queen Elizabeth prize for engineering award ceremony on Monday, one speaker said that engineers are the poets of the practical world. My plea to the Minister is to help them to keep on writing that poetry.