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Science in Higher Education

I always welcome the interest of the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) in my constituency. I know that the vice-chancellor of Reading university, who has been in post for a long time, is looking forward to meeting the hon. Gentleman. The key point is that both student numbers and research grants need to come together to fund physics departments. The issue is not just about one or the other; both need to work in concert. I turn back to funding. Funding schemes are often too complicated and long-winded and end up so diluted by the time they get to the university that they are not much help. There are too many schemes, all achieving too little. Let me provide an example of the dilution of funding meant to help solve recruitment to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, subjects. It should be said that the funding to help recruitment in chemistry is much needed. However, one of the strands for the recent Royal Society of Chemistry programme—““Chemistry for our future””—has funded a regional co-ordinator simply to co-ordinate all the networks in the south-east aimed at increasing the uptake of chemistry degrees. Through another strand, Reading and the university of Southampton have been successful in attracting funding for a half-time post to introduce methods designed to accelerate and enhance the way in which new students taking chemistry settle into higher education after secondary school. That is particularly important as universities try to widen participation in chemistry, but it does not do enough to cover those parts of the south and east, especially Kent and Essex, which are under-represented in terms of providing students to do chemistry. Reading and Southampton will need to bid to Aimhigher South East for Kent, and a different Aimhigher for Essex. That is not an untypical example of the complexity of funding streams for improving STEM recruitment. This country needs to make some decisions about whether we wish to retain the traditionally strong science base in the UK. Can the Minister share with us, for example, how many physicists the UK wants or needs? How many institutions are required to provide them? Do the Government, the HEFC and Universities UK take any view about what is needed to retain our position in scientific research? How many university physics departments with how many students is acceptable? Or can the number of departments be allowed to wither to, say, 20 to 30, as some leading academics believe is the intention? Those are big questions of great substance, and I am not sure whether the Minister or anybody in Government have the answers. If those questions have not been considered, why not? If they have been considered, let us have the answers, and let us have an honest public debate. Nobody at Reading university wants the physics department to close, as that will have knock-on effects for other departments with a strong physics base such as meteorology, chemistry and others. And before the Minister says it, I certainly do not want him to micro-manage Reading university, as it is extremely well run. It is without doubt true that the changes in Government policy and in HEFC funding have severely damaged the short to medium-term sustainability of science departments such as the physics department at Reading university. I ask the Minister to consider the changes in funding that his Department and the Government are proposing and to ask his officials to talk with me and Reading university to determine whether they will help to make physics at Reading sustainable. I hope that he will assist me in doing everything possible to ensure that physics at Reading and STEM subjects at other universities get a fair chance to survive. However, if he will not listen to me—a single voice from the Education and Skills Committee—perhaps he will consider the report of the Science and Technology Committee, which stated that"““it is reasonable to assume that there will be further closures. If this process continues unchecked, there is a very real possibility that the system will no longer be able to provide sufficient numbers of STEM graduates to meet the needs of the UK economy.””"