A Ministry of Energy and Science There is no doubt
that the Government's announcement of aid for the coal industry should be welcomed; but that welcome cannot be altogether unequivocal. The new policy is welcome in so far as it reverses the absurd policy followed — under bad Civil Service advice — by the last government of running down the activity and assets of the Coal Board before any clear alternative source of fuel and energy was in sight. An element of equivocation must nonetheless enter into the welcome because it is by no means clear that Mr Walker's statement is other than a face-saving, and industry-saving, operation. Asked by Mr Alex Eadie whether the Government had an energy policy, or planned to develop one, Mr Walker replied: I agree that there is a need to develop an energy policy. Some major countries, including European countries and the United States, are well aware of impending problems in this sphere. It is right that we should be aware of them too.
The degree of lax brooding implicit in this statement is not merely discouraging: it is frightening: Fuel and energy are vital to the economy of any country; in an industrialised society, the sums involved in providing for the development of a national energy policy are so immense that the government of the day has to be responsible, both in terms of policy and in terms of cash, for its evolution.
It is necessary that this point of principle should be clearly understood. It is true that the amount of money the Government proposes to spend on the nationalised coal industry is very substantial, and will certainly be inflationary. But it is also true that both France and Germany spend even more; and it is now clear that the new Japanese government will commit resources undreamed of on this side of the world to the conservation of coal resources. However much doctrinaire Tories might like to see a national private enterprise system of energy conservation and development operating, in this country, the problem is too great to be left to the chances of the market.
That said, it must also be said that the record on energy of every government since the war has ,been deplorable. The nationalised coal industry has been sUstained, not for the contribution it can make to the economy, but because of a semi-religious belief in the virtues of nationalisation on the part of the Labour governments of 1945-51; and because of a recurring fear of the coal-miners and their union on the part of successive Conservative administraticins. When the Labour government of Mr Wilson decided to irun coal down, they did so at a precipitate rate, under the kind and mistaken belief that a nuclear alternative was just around the corner. At the same time the exploitation of most of our vast, new-found under-sea resources of oil and gas were being hastily and blindly handed over to foreign interests.
• The story of Britain's young gas-oil industry summarises all the follies of fuel and energy policy over the years. Few stipulations about native control of the industry and its resources have been made; and this country exercises less stringent control over the nationality of oil industry employees than does any other major oil producing country in the world. Yet, outside Scotland, where the effect of oil development is most closely felt, this amazing squandering of a vital national asset has excited very little debate. There is, so far as one can detect, very little difference between the major parties on the subject; and only the Liberals have come forward with a detailed alternative policy, based firmly and rightly on British ownership and exploitation of North Sea oil. While the muddle persists, oil supplies from the Middle East become monthly more expensive, and yearly more uncertain.
Yet, all these past errors of commission and omission might be forgiven if one could trace even the faint outline of, a serious policy for fuel and energy in what Mr Walker had to say last Monday; or in what Labour spokesmen had to say. There is no indication •that either the Government or the Opposition has given much thought to the matter, let alone begun preparations for the resolution of the problem. The whole business of science and scientific development is uneasily divided between the Secretary of State for Defence and the Secretary of State for Education and Science. When the Department of Education and Science was first established, during the Prime Ministership of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Lord Hailsham was made its first chief, even though at the time he occupied the junior, seat of Minister of Science. It was widely felt at the time that the job should, on merit, have gone to Lord — then Sir Edward — Boyle, the Minister of Education; but it was given to Hailsham presumably becatfse be occupied a more senior position both in the Government and in the Conservative Party. Such feelings reflected the then current belief that education was the more important of the two main activities of the new Secretary of State; and that belief has since become an enshrined myth of the Department. It is nonetheless a wrong belief. Science is too important to be stuck on the end of education and left to the part-time care of the educationalists. Certainly, the education minister in any government must play an important part in the training of scientists, and must work closely with whoever is responsible for scientific research. But it is absurd that he — or she should be responsible in any serious degree for applied science itself. And it is particularly absurd that responsibility for the application of science in relation to fuel and energy should be divided, as it now is, between the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of Education and Science.
It is absurd, further, that the only major analysis of the role of Government in relation to science—and particularly nuclear science — should have been produced by the Think Tank, under the overlordship of Lord Rothschild, not as a report to any particular minister, but as a piece of philosophical bread cast on the waters of debate. There has, of course, been neither serious debate, nor a serious decision. Yet Lord Rothschild, to do him justice, did try to answer the major question of how to divide scarce public finance between pure and applied scientific research; and he came up with the answer that governments would in future have to demand rather more in the way of results of a practical kind from their nation's scientists than they have done in the past.
Yet this is only part of the question, and only part of the answer. If this country is, by the end of the century, as fossilbased fuel and energy resources decline, to be able to compete with those other countries which, in Mr Walker's words are aware of impending problems in this sphere," but which have, in the meantime, developed an energy policy, then our resources of scientific inventiveness must very soon be linked to the specific practical problem of nuclear energy development. And, over the same period, it will be necessary to husband our natural resources and to see that their exploitation is under national control and in the national interest.
There is only one political and administrative way in which those two very different but associated tasks lc an be carried out, and that is to have a Minister of Energy and 'Science. Such 'a minister would take control of those nationalised industries whose activities have a bearing on our present fuel and energy needs; and he would also be responsible for Planning for the ultimate replacement of those industries. Further, he would be responsible for such scientific research and investigation as relate to the nation's requirements in all these spheres. The appointment of 'a Minister of Energy and Science would create a focus of responsibility, now sadly lacking. It did some credit to the present Government's collective iheart when Mr Walker said that 'he and his colleagues were not prepared to see 'too rapid a rundown of the coal industry because of "the serious social and human consequences which it would entail," 'but it did no credit at all to their collective head. The reasons for saving the coal industry for the next thirty years or so have nothing whatever to do with the social make-up of the industry's work-force. They have a great deal to do with the very critical state of our natural resources, and the very critical state of our planning for new developments. The sooner everyone's mind is clarified about what must be decided and what must be done in this whole area the sooner our national prospects will nnprove.
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