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Physics Research

That is right. What was disappointing about the press release and the announcement is that, in many cases, it was not a long-term solution. I realise that funding for the support of large domestic facilities will be ring-fenced, and that arrangements will be made for other research councils to pay their fair share, and I welcome that. However, in respect of international subscriptions the press release says only that""from the next spending review onwards…BIS is looking at options for managing the currency risks better."" I thought that it was doing so before 16 December 2009, and before the review. If it is still doing so, it is not the long-term solution that we need. The press release states merely that""BIS is working closely with the Bank of England on how to reduce the exposure of the STFC."" It then states that a "new arrangement will provide". A new arrangement might provide, or would provide, but no new arrangement has been proposed as yet. I would be grateful for some clarity on that. I have seen proposals whereby the Treasury will take the risk and benefit of any changes that have an impact greater than £3 million on budget exchange rate changes, but the key point is where the baseline is drawn. Criticisms have been made, not least in the report of the Select Committee on Science and Technology, about the management of the STFC. I shall not speak for or against the recommendations or the criticisms made in the science community. However, politicians should take responsibility for the overall budget position, and not seek to hide behind their failure to recognise that there is a problem—or behind those individuals running the research council. The Haldane principle makes clear that it is for research councils, through peer review, to allocate funding to specific projects. I realise that, but the Government must take responsibility for the overall allocations to research councils. They are made by the Government. In the remaining time, I wish to deal with the question of scientific careers, particularly in physics. At the moment, it is difficult. People working in university physics laboratories that are funded by the STFC or the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council—the success rate for grant applications to the EPSRC is so low that it has taken the unusual step of placing a ban on repeat funding applications—are not happy with the situation. When PhD students or young post-doctoral students in such departments seek advice on whether it is a healthy area in which to work, they get the answer that one would expect from more senior researchers who are facing difficulties with ongoing funding and with cuts in the projects on which they are working, often in collaboration with other countries which are not withdrawing support. What advice do those researchers give to the undergraduates, doctoral students and post-doctoral students in their department? They will not tell them that it is great field in which to work and that the future is healthy. They will tell them the opposite, which will lead to problems in retaining some of the brightest and the best that we need. We have that problem throughout our education system, which my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) will talk about. We still have a fundamental problem with the number of entries to A-level physics. Data from the Joint Council for Qualifications show that between 1985 to 2008, there has been a slow and inexorable reduction in numbers. Indeed there was a year-on-year reduction until 2006-07. There was a slight upturn in 2008, but the number was still the third lowest since 1985. Although there has been an improvement in mathematics and, to a certain extent, in chemistry, we have not seen the same in physics. Without people taking physics A-levels, it is hard to see how we can encourage them to take physics degrees. Other data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, which the Minister must be intimately acquainted with—I am sure that it is his bedtime reading given his worries about the state of higher education funding, and it may even help him get to sleep—show that the number of applicants to study physics as a first degree qualification has not risen since 1985; indeed, the number has been flatlining. Therefore, despite the best efforts of this Government to promote science, which have been far better than those of the previous Government, it cannot be said that they have been successful. One of the reasons is that we are in a vicious circle. Students are not studying physics and graduating in sufficient numbers with physics, so there are not enough people who have the necessary specialist background to go back into teaching physics to inspire the next generation of young people to study physics at school. That circle must be broken. I do not see how that can be done while the Government continue to pile debt on students. Students will not choose—if they can do the maths and these students can do the maths—to take relatively low-paid jobs in teaching or in research when they can go into other jobs in, for example, the finance sector where their numeracy is not only well regarded but much better rewarded. Public sector teaching posts and research posts will never be able to compete with some of the salaries that are on offer in the City, but the Government can make an effort by not imposing a further distortion of career choice by piling huge amounts of debt on graduates. Students know that that debt is there waiting for them when they pass the threshold and will hold them back in their ability to get a mortgage and settle down with a family. Moreover, they will see their peers, who are in other fields, get on the housing ladder much earlier. That is a real problem. The first thing that I want to hear from the Minister is that he recognises that we have not made progress in the number of entrants to physics A-levels and physics degrees. I want to hear those words from him, because the first law of science is to define the problem. If we are not able to define or recognise the problem, it will be difficult to find the solutions that we need. Another problem is that half the population—the female half of the population—are not staying in physics or in engineering. The burden of debt is a particular problem for them. There is obviously a stereotyping of careers going on and a question over whether careers advice is adequate in girls' schools or to girls in schools, given the relatively small numbers who study the subjects. The Royal Society report recently demonstrated a significant leaky pipeline, which is much greater for women scientists than for male scientists, and much more work needs to be done by research funders to identify the problems, to do exit interviews, to do surveys and to find out why the people they fund are leaving science in such a way. A short debate such as this is not enough to do justice to all the information that I have been sent, and I am very grateful to the people in the field for sending me the information and background, to the Institute of Physics and to the research councils themselves that have provided briefings. In the next few weeks, as we go through to the general election, I hope that physics and science will have a very high profile. I will continue to make these points, seek to hold the Government to account and hope that we will see, in the general election, a clear difference between the parties on the specifics of funding. I hope that my own party will make it clear that it will find the resources from existing budgets to re-stabilise the STFC, and that we have clear proposals to give stability to physics funding. We need to break the vicious cycle that exists for physics students, physics graduates and physics teachers. We have failed to break out of that cycle over the past 20 years and, disappointingly, during the tenure of this Government. I recognise that the Government have increased the science budget in real terms and that, overall, science spending has increased, but the fundamental facts, as set out in the Royal Society report, are that our share of spend on science as a proportion of our GDP is no higher now than it was when this Government came to power and no higher than it was during the Thatcher years. We have not solved the problem and we must not be complacent. I urge the Minister not to be complacent because we are far, far away from the target of 2.5 per cent. of GDP being spent on science, and the trickle-down effect of the failure to meet that target can be seen in physics and so many other subjects. I look forward to hearing his response to this debate.