Science and Technology: Economy

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I concur in the praise that has been accorded to the proposer of this debate and to the maiden speech. I wish to discuss the failures of Britain to profit from its own technological innovations, which has been an enduring pathology.

Long ago, the Civil Service developed a methodology of cancellation aimed at projects for which it could not envisage immediate and secure returns. To understand the development of that mindset, we may cast our minds back to the early post-war years, when Britain was at the forefront of a wide range of scientific and technological innovations. Britain was endowed with a large and vibrant aircraft industry, which had been sustained by the demands of the war. Under the aegis of the Ministry of Supply, it had been devoted to the mass production of a limited range of military aircraft. After the war, the constituent firms acquired their independence. Many of them had active design offices and there was a proliferation of military prototypes that sought and received government support.

However, the expense was exorbitant and in 1957 the Minister of Aviation, Duncan Sandys, called a halt to military aviation. It was decreed that henceforth military aircraft should be replaced by guided rocketry. Surface-to-air missiles were to replace interceptor aircraft and ballistic missiles were to replace bombers. The project was successful in staunching the expenditure and in curtailing the aircraft industry. Some projects for manned military aircraft did survive, only to face later cancellation, and we aimed to purchase American aircraft instead.

The Civil Service also turned its attention to other expensive technological endeavours, of which those of the nuclear industry were the most prominent. Britain had been a leader in civil nuclear development, beginning with the Magnox reactor, which was succeeded by the advanced gas-cooled reactor—AGR. The development of the AGR was protracted and problematic but eventually the design was perfected and such reactors remain in operation today, albeit they are approaching the end of their life. However, such a prejudice against the AGR had been derived during the process of its development that it was abandoned at precisely the time that it had reached perfection. The next reactor to be commissioned in the UK, of course, was the American pressurised water reactor, such as at Sizewell B.

Our nuclear industry is currently subject to a weak attempt at its revival, but this is also subject to the familiar pathology. We are seeking to restore our electricity generating capacity by harnessing wind and solar power and by using nuclear reactors to provide a baseload of generating capacity. This is to be provided mainly by small modular reactors. There are four contenders for the favoured design: three from American companies and one from a British company. The American contenders benefit from substantial subventions from the American Government and our Treasury is glad to have been relieved of the costs of developing these reactors.

All of the SMR reactors embody a tried and tested pressurised water technology that is fit to be replaced by the superior technologies of fast closed-cycle reactors, molten salt reactors and advanced high-temperature gas-cooled reactors. There have been projects within the UK aimed at developing these technologies, which threaten to go into abeyance or to be withdrawn to other countries through lack of government support. It is likely that Britain, which pioneered these technologies, will be depending on foreign suppliers for its future technology.

I would like to instance many other cases where we have failed to exploit British technological developments, but there is insufficient time to do so, as I have been strongly reminded. However, as a footnote, I will mention that I recently travelled on an Italian Pendolino tilting train on the west coast main line. This is a straightforward derivative of a cancelled APT—our advanced passenger train.