Educating Engineers

Debate between Stephen Metcalfe and Charles Walker

Thursday 16th May 2013 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Absolutely, and that leads me to my next point beautifully. All those things are brilliant, and to see them in action is fantastic. My concern is that what is happening is not systematic enough. We are not getting it into every school, and not every pupil or student has access to it. One of the recommendations in the Select Committee report—I was delighted that the Government accepted it without amendment—was that all the learned societies, professional engineering institutions and trade bodies should oblige their members to go into schools, in a systematic way, to promote engineering and technology. Even if it was just for one day a year, if each of those engineers could go into schools across the whole school body, it could have a significant impact.

As a result of some of the initiatives, we are beginning to see an improvement in the uptake of engineering and particularly in the number of engineering apprentices and apprenticeships in our economy. Today, just before I came here, I had some very good news. DP World, which is constructing the London Gateway container port down at Shell Haven in my constituency, will on Monday announce the creation of six new engineering apprenticeships to support the engineering activity that takes place on that site. To see £1.5 billion invested in south Essex is great, but the engineering feat—the reclamation of the land and then the handling of millions of containers—is a fantastic sight and something that will, we hope, excite those six potential engineers.

In conclusion, there are some fantastic organisations and companies throughout our country doing some great things to inspire the next generation of engineers, but we must do more. We face a lack of skills and a shortage of aspiration to give people those skills, but those problems are not insurmountable. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that

“engineers are the real revolutionaries, the ones who take society forward, who create the technologies and the structures which carry us into new worlds.”

Although progress is being made and the general thrust of what the Government are trying to achieve is welcome, we must do all that we can to ensure that engineers can continue to take our society forward and continue to forge a future that will meet our increasingly complex needs. I hope that the Government will revisit our report, take it in the spirit in which it is meant and use it to achieve our shared and combined goal of creating a broader uptake of engineering across our whole society.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. Depending on the length of the next speech, we will start the winding-up speeches at 4 pm ideally. If the Front Benchers could leave two minutes for the Committee Chair at the end—we are due to finish at 4.30 pm—that would be well received by all, I am sure.