COMMITTEE FOR EMPLOYMENT AND LEARNING

Report on the Inquiry into Education and Training for Industry (Continued)

2327.

Mr Hastings: It is now the responsibility of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, but the same personnel that used to work in the Training and Employment Agency administer it. For newcomers, one of the downsides of the new arrangements is that there is a little confusion about who administers it, as the staff in the business support division of the Training and Employment Agency transferred across to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment. The valuable part is that the company owns the training. The downside is that the company development pro­gramme is now very thinly spread, and the assistance rate is now down to an average of 20%, which, therefore, no longer encourages companies to take on new projects aggressively.

2328.

The other problem that bedevils our sector is the unwillingness of the company development programme to fund the same thing second time around. I constantly have new recruits coming on who need new training. They go on to other places. Therefore the training that we do benefits the whole of industry. We sometimes feel unfairly penalised for not being allowed to go back and do more of the same, which would continue to benefit the industry.

2329.

Modern apprenticeship programmes are the other element of T&EA funding and are a good model of a way forward. Companies can engage in the knowledge that the outcomes are what will be rewarded in an open and clear way. At any point in time, we have around 24 modern apprentices at the Hastings hotels. Again, we would have an attrition rate amongst starters there. In particular, what we find is that those who achieve level 2 suddenly make themselves very marketable, the programme is geared to deliver up to NVQ level 3. However, we have had difficulty in retaining such staff, albeit they are capable of going further. The funding mechanism does not perhaps take into account the level of attrition that exists in that programme. It is a good programme. At the start the administration was cumbersome but is now improving. The T&EA appears to recognise that and is to be praised for that.

2330.

I have made a note about raising the profile of the hospitality industry. We suffer more than some sectors, although every sector has its good employers and its less good employers - it does not matter whether you are in manufacturing, retail or hospitality. Hospitality has suffered an image problem more than most in the same way that many people equate the manufacturing industry with what they see in Mike Baldwin's workshop in 'Coronation Street'. Equally, the hospitality sector has been informed variously by people viewing 'Fawlty Towers' or the fly-on-the-wall documentary at the Adelphi Hotel. With real tyrannical chefs like Gordon Ramsay and imaginary tyrannical chefs like Lenny Henry, these images are only reinforced by individuals' own recollections of working as casual staff maybe 20 years ago, or more in some cases. Our answer to that is not poster campaigns. It will be long, hard and slow work.

2331.

Interestingly, what we find is that secondary school and grammar school pupils are now more attracted by recent media images such as the 'Ready, Steady, Cook' programme. They are more aware of leisure facilities in the sector. Also, they are attracted to the high-tech IT environments of front office and reception work. Therefore the marketing that we do is as much directed at the parents as at those wishing to come into the industry. To capitalise on this, we at Hastings Hotels no longer welcome whole classes of students into the hotels, rather we will attend the schools and make presentations to those classes.

2332.

For those who wish to know more, we invite them to spend an evening in the hotel with fellow students from other schools, although they cannot attend unless they are accompanied by their parents. We give them interactive demonstrations and also break them into small groups to encourage the sorts of questions that they have about the industry, which they would not ask in fear of peer pressure. We show them around the hotels, including the kitchens, the laundries and all those places that people think resemble the Black Hole of Calcutta. We show them that it is maybe not that way any more. This is also a good development activity for the staff who are engaged in delivering this for the students and their parents. We deliver this programme twice each year at all of our hotels. More than 1,000 students and parents have been through this system, which is slowly but surely starting to raise the image of the industry and redress some of the image problems. Members of this Committee are more than welcome to come along to one of these evenings to see for themselves. I extend that invitation.

2333.

The Chairperson: That is extremely helpful. Thank you for that and, indeed, for the written material as well.

2334.

Mr Byrne: I welcome Mr Hastings and I congratulate him on what his company is doing to improve the image of the hotel and catering industry. It is very worthwhile. Given the fact that there is this whole change in training people for the industry, there are also professional managers who often go on to do HNDs and degrees in hotel and catering management. That seems to be largely successful in producing the right image and well-qualified people.

2335.

However, as I understand it, there was always very strong practical skills training in the past where students went to further education and followed what was called the 705/706 City and Guilds practical skills training. I would like to invite comment about practical skills training and how that is going. Is that being handled by the modern apprenticeships? Can I invite the witness to comment on the Shannon College of Hotel Management, the Cathal Brugha Street Catering College at the Dublin Institute of Technology and the Killybegs Tourism College? What sort of qualifications do they cover? In the past they taught City and Guilds-­based practical skills and then they had a degree. Can he also comment on the specialist training for those who want to be chefs in terms of advanced culinary skills?

2336.

Mr Hastings: That is an all-encompassing question. You are right to identify the traditional split, albeit slightly narrower now, between management and craft training. It is very hard for people to succeed right the way through the industry if they have not engaged in the craft-training element. Part of what makes them better managers in our industry is that they started and completed proper craft training.

2337.

Craft training and the 705 or 706/1 and 706/2 qualifications you mentioned are now largely related to the equivalent NVQ level 2 or 3. They would be delivered by that £12m of further education funding that I mentioned.

2338.

Mr Byrne: How do NVQ levels 2 and 3 compare with the City and Guilds 705 and 706?

2339.

Mr Hastings: My evidence is scant because I do not see a sufficient number of those people coming to work for me, but the impression is that it has become more generalist. It is described as being for the hospitality industry, but I fear that too many of the graduates of those programmes are ending up in what I call industrial catering - in hospitals, care institutions, schools and places like that.

2340.

We are missing the type of skills you have identified, which are produced by places like Killybegs. I am not so familiar with Cathal Brugha and Shannon, but they obviously enjoy high reputations. Higher skills training, for example, for chefs, has been driven in recent times by in-company training. That is to say, people wish to go and work in the kitchens of those very fashionable and successful restaurants that seem to have sprung up everywhere, and we should be grateful for it. Restaurants have taken on the burden of bringing on the higher skills training. I do not believe there is a huge provision at that higher level as there might have been in years gone by.

2341.

Mr Byrne: I have one supplementary question. I think it is fair to say that many hotel managers came through the practical and culinary skills background. I can remember two, a Mr Slevin and a Mr McGinn, whom I am sure you are familiar with. Can you comment on the type of manager who comes through the practical skills training and ends up as a hotel manager, and the other type, who goes only to university to do a hotel management degree course?

2342.

Mr Hastings: All the general managers in each of our six hotels have come through the practical skills route. Therefore it is slightly harder for me to comment on those who come through an academic route. Some of our managers have acquired degrees and qualifications along the way, but they have done their time on the craft end. I am sure Mr McGinn and Mr Slevin will be more than delighted to have their names recorded in Hansard for posterity. They have been very successful managers, originating from west of the Bann.

2343.

What the craft skills have given them is an entrepreneurial spirit that helps to make them successful managers. Their familiarity with what goes on behind the hotplate, both with customers and with the people working for them, is what is important. Ours is an industry where someone coming along with purely academic experience will struggle. Mr McGinn, who is the general manager at the Culloden Hotel, is the youngest manager in the group and has a politics and sociology degree. However, at his mother's knee, he was immersed in hospitality, and that experience stands to him as much as the academic experience.

2344.

Mrs Carson: It is always interesting to hear the presentations and the problems that different industries are meeting. I have just one question that has come up several times. What do you think of the basic literacy and numeracy skills of the young people that are coming into your employment? Do you have any problems there? What is your opinion of their ability when they come in? I am talking about people from your front desk right through to those in the laundry room.

2345.

I was very pleased to see that you have got the parents in your sights as well. That is important. In some of the other presentations, we found that the parents had a great influence on the academic field of their children, and they seem to want the easier option. We had some of the industries saying that they were looking for chemistry but were getting arts. Has it helped you to retain staff, having that liaison with the parents? I am very interested in basic literacy and numeracy.

2346.

Mr Hastings: The basic literacy and numeracy is a very important point. The biggest core skill that we are looking for in employees is communication skills. If they can present themselves orally, there is very little that we cannot train or assess in other areas. We have had people engaging in NVQs in the past, some of whom have held very senior positions. It is only when you start to engage them in this development activity that you learn that some of them have had problems with literacy skills in the past, and we have moved to find different ways of assessing what we know they can already do in order to make sure they are recognised at the level at which they are able to work. We have not been sending people back for remedial training in literacy and numeracy, but if people are able and willing to work at a certain level, we will use assessment methods that are appropriate in order to make sure that they can gain qualifications, very often qualifications that they have missed out on in their previous formal education.

2347.

I am glad you picked up on the issue of parents. The point I was trying to make is that young people can be turned on to hospitality as a career, but the evidence from chatting to people from the Training and Employment Agency job offices is that parents retain a veto over what their children will do, in the same way that I was advised that ballet dancing was not for me. Some parents will advise their children not to go into hospitality. If I have the student already enthused, I need to recruit the parent as well so that their fears, which I hope are often irrational, are addressed.

2348.

Ultimately, I am offering these young people places on modern apprenticeships, and so on. These are young people who maybe have had a bad night out on a Sunday night. I want their parents to be on my side, to say "That is a good job you have. You are going in today". That is the aim I have - to recruit the parents to be on my side, to encourage and enthuse their youngsters as well. I cannot identify what overall impact that has had on retention levels, but, clearly, the more I invest in training and development, the more retention levels go up. People use different measures, but the one that I use is the number of people working for me today that were there at the same time last year.

2349.

The past three years have seen a huge rise in the number of jobs in the sector, with large premises opening and competition coming in at a time when it would be feared that staff would be lost to those new ventures. My retention levels over that period have been between 66% and 70%. Although very few people publish their retention levels, I believe that to be a credible figure.

2350.

Mr Beggs: From your presentation, you value training, both as an individual and as a company. You see benefits from it for both your employees and your organisation. I was struck by your comments on NVQs, which you use heavily in your training. If I have picked it up correctly, there are 26 unco-ordinated courses. What mechanism, if any, currently exists to co-ordinate such courses?

2351.

We received evidence last week on National Training Organisation (NTO) and Sector Training Council (STC) groups. It became very evident that there were a lot of sectors where no one represented industry's input into the training system or ensured that the training fulfilled industry needs.

2352.

Is there a National Training Organisation covering the Northern Irish hospitality sector? Is there a national training sector group? Do you think that such a group would be an advantage if it were set up in Northern Ireland?

2353.

If you believe that NVQs will continue to be a main plank of training in the industry in the future, how should we all move forward to an interactive means of getting industry's views in to the Training and Employment Agency (T&EA) and in to the NVQs themselves so that they will meet the needs of the companies and individuals involved?

2354.

Mr Hastings: You have touched on a very valid point. The best STCs or NTOs are those that are wholly owned, driven and run by the private sector. Our sector is not sufficiently well organised or financed to achieve that. That has bedevilled the T&EA's efforts to answer the question: what is it that you need? Therefore that has contributed to the supply-side solutions that we have in the further education sector.

2355.

The answer has been a publicly funded STC of sorts. The Tourism and Training Trust (TTT) has been established. That operates a little like a sector training body, except that it also includes wider Government representation. There is representation from colleges, further and higher education, the T&EA, innkeepers, bed-and-breakfast owners. Representation is both public and private.

2356.

The Tourism and Training Trust applies to the T&EA for a budget to do what it wants. It is not a training provider itself, but it is supposed to sanction the training that is going on. The trust has identified that we need more research in that area.

2357.

Research has been commissioned on where students go, what their aspirations are within the sector and what the range of available provision is. That work is commencing, but, as yet, the TTT is not a homogeneous body. It is financed by time-bound European funding.

2358.

It is unclear to what extent the TTT's recommen­dations will be binding on the T&EA. It was originally envisaged that the TTT would also have direct influence over the Department of Education, but that has not been the case in practice. There appears to be no influence of the TTT over the £12 million spend by the Department. It is a live question, but it is too early to answer it.

2359.

Mr Dallat: I know you wear many hats, and the one I would not attack you for is as managing director of the Hastings Hotel Group. I have been in your hotels, and they are an absolute credit to the tourism industry. However, wearing your Tourism Ireland Limited hat, you are one of two very important hoteliers, and your vision of tourism must extend from Belfast to Belcoo and from Saintfield to Strabane. So why are you so set against the training being established at probably the best university in western Europe? That deeply offended a lot of people.

2360.

Mr Hastings: The University of Ulster is a very fine university, and it operates on many sites. The evidence shows that when it put its provision in the north-west of the Province it attracted a lot of people from the Province who then escaped it. Funding for training and education should deliver more for the Province. Therefore there is a unique opportunity for the University of Ulster to resite its school of hospitality in the centre of Belfast where approximately 75% of the jobs exist, and, in conjunction with the Belfast Institute of Further and Higher Education and the Springvale project, to be able to create a provision of craft and management training co-ordinated in one hospitality school. That is not to deny the claims of Coleraine. It is a lesser choice of site. If movement is to be made, the industry and those who work for that department should be consulted.

2361.

Mr Dallat: In Germany hotel workers are compre­hensively trained for three years and acquire a qualification that is highly valued by employers. Can you give the Committee any further information or observations on the German system?

2362.

Mr Hastings: I do not have direct experience of the German system, but it is a proper apprenticeship in the old-school style. It is very thorough, very rigorous and very highly sought after with a lot of public intervention to make it happen. In the modern apprentice­ship programme we offer a three-year programme leading to an NVQ level 3 in a work-related environment. It may not deliver the highest standards of excellence that you would get from an off-the-job programme, but it does develop skills that are required for the industry at present.

2363.

The difficulty is that our industry has large and small organisations which are geographically dispersed. That has led to the question of what you want from training. If more ownership can be given to individual operators they will deliver for the industry what they want for themselves and for their own businesses. That is a better model. Research is ongoing to find out if we need a school of excellence for hospitality. We have to work out what will deliver the industry's needs in the most cost-effective way.

2364.

Mr Dallat: Grant support has dropped from 40% to 20%. Is that an issue that we should address?

2365.

Mr Hastings: I am not sure whether it is within the remit of this Committee to examine the value of the company development programme, but with regard to intervention to help business deliver on training and development, it is something to consider.

2366.

The Chairperson: Strictly speaking, it would be in the remit of the Enterprise, Trade and Investment Committee. We might want to make a recommendation to it and in turn to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment.

2367.

Following up on the previous question, my impression has been that over the years there has been a number of consultancy reports on the quality of personnel in hotel, catering and hospitality in general. They often come up with fairly negative appraisals - terms like "a lack of professionalism" have sometimes been quoted. While it is dangerous to resort to anecdotes, a number of people have commented to me that they sometimes get that impression. I am certainly not talking about your own group, but you always hear the story of people sitting down to a meal and getting it thrown down in front of them. I am not sure how you train people for this, but there may be issues of excellence and even basic courtesy in the handling of customers.

2368.

This leads to another specific point, the availability of people who have foreign language skills, especially French and German, to handle the increase in foreign visitors which we all hope for. Do we have the capability to deal with people visiting Northern Ireland who cannot speak English?

2369.

Mr Hastings: You have raised two issues - professionalism and customer care. It depends on the ability of entrepreneurs to provide that. They all wish that their staff would be courteous and able to greet everybody. However, this depends on what they can afford to do. I do not want to divert the conversation on this, but we have seen in the last month how the agricultural crisis has created an immediate cash flow shortage for the hospitality sector. This is a time of the year when smaller units would tend to do whatever work they intended to do such as refurbishing and gearing up for the new season. Their cash flow is at its weakest at present, just when they are ready for the season to begin.

2370.

If someone comes along, as has happened in the last month, and says that their season is postponed by two months, that creates grave difficulties for them. Those difficulties persuade those entrepreneurs, in order to survive, to become very short term about their thinking. That means cutting out on some essentials, not just luxuries. The first to go, I fear, are things like training. It is a difficulty and is something I have said in other places. The bank manager still needs paid at the end of the week, even if no one else does. I worry that this sudden shift to "short termism" means that some customers may end up receiving a lesser standard of service than they would expect and which the proprietors would like them to receive.

2371.

If you ask people if they believe that their staff should be more professional, they will all say "Yes". It is about aspiring to higher standards of professionalism. More tourists coming from other destinations will, strangely enough, lead to higher standards of professional­ism as they explain to the proprietors the standards that they actually expect. Many proprietors are under­experienced in what is expected, and that is not meant to be a patronising remark. We are getting visitors from many more jurisdictions than before.

2372.

Regarding language training, the Tourist Board has taken the lead on this in developing a programme called Welcome Host, which is a generic customer care programme training staff about the courtesies of meeting and greeting, and being aware of what the local attractions are. The idea is that communication with the customer can be improved. There are different strata to Welcome Host. One is about accessibility; another is about language skills. There are a number of strands beyond the basic award. Companies with more than 90% of their staff having gone through the programme are awarded the Welcome Host Gold Award and a presentation takes place. The Tourist Board is to be congratulated for that.

2373.

Admittedly we do not get large numbers of customers speaking foreign languages. If we got the Czechoslovak football team we would not be able to gear up for them in short order. I fear a mismatch, and I do not think that a great raft of supply-site Czechoslovak language-skills training is going to cure this. We need to be careful as to how we best direct the resources that are available to us.

2374.

The Chairperson: Would it be the case that in your hotel group you could cater for the main European languages?

2375.

Mr Hastings: A previous Minister, Mr Needham, once tried it on by coming to the Stormont Hotel one evening with a French visitor. He was not a great fan of the hotel and came in to give us a lot of grief. Happily, our restaurant manager, who was born and bred on the Newtownards Road, was well able for the customer, much to Mr Needham's chagrin.

2376.

Ms McWilliams: Has competition from the large international hotel groups such as Hilton and Raddison skilled-up or skilled-down the industry? You make the point that they tried to aggressively poach your staff from you.

2377.

Mr Hastings: That is a good question. I am not sure that I would be the best judge of that. Having a large number of hotels with a critical mass of staff is beneficial to the industry as a whole because the larger hotels tend to have more sophisticated management structures. They also tend to have more sophisticated front-office demands. We would have a greater pool of IT-trained front-office staff. That, in the longer term, has to create a labour pool of more highly skilled people.

2378.

It has also created opportunities for middle management. One of the early surveys would have shown that the industry was characterised by small owner-­operated outlets for which the only possibility to achieve what you wanted in management was to move away. The larger outlets have now created an opportunity for managers to improve their skills.

2379.

Entrants into the market have received remarkable support from the Training and Employment Agency in order to deliver training. I do not know whether members of the Committee feel that the Training and Employment Agency has had value for the level of intervention that was delivered to those inward investing projects.

2380.

The Chairperson: Would you like to hazard a view on that as I suspect that is what Ms McWilliams's question is about?

2381.

Mr Hastings: That is not fair, but I do not mind your asking.

2382.

Ms McWilliams: That was the first part of my question. The second part is that in your submission you make a point about them aggressively trying to poach your people and not succeeding. One would be led to think that the remuneration and the opportunities were already there in-house or that the attraction was not sufficient internationally from the others to take your staff away from you. Is that still the case?

2383.

Mr Hastings: People did move across to the new establishments. It is attractive to be part of an international group with opportunities to live and work abroad as time goes on. Undoubtedly that is one of the attractions of joining a multinational group. I feared that we would lose many more than we did. We must be doing something right because we have retained those who are still working for us.

2384.

I suspect that for some people living in the Province and working for multinational chains here it is better that they have opportunities to travel and work within the group. Before the arrival of the multinationals, they did not have that option.

2385.

Ms McWilliams: The wage councils obviously apply to this industry, and I note that you made a point about European Directives. This is not a European Directive; it is a domestic directive. Has the minimum wage improved the industry and the skill levels?

2386.

Mr Hastings: There are two answers to that. One is that the more exacting the minimum wage becomes, the more proprietors will seek to gain additional productivity from the staff who work for them. It is a spur to higher standards. You need to be employing people who can work at a level that commands the wages on offer. The corollary to that - this is anecdotal - is that I get many more people who want to come and work asking what the remuneration "in one's hand" is. Obviously an organisation like ours does not make payments "in one's hand". At one level, it has probably spurred some employers on to gaining greater productivity and skill levels from those working for them, but at another level there are probably sectors of the hospitality industry that are more inclined to be tempted by the black economy.

2387.

Mr Byrne: Is the culture of customer care and hospitality in catering generally improving in Northern Ireland? How far do we lag behind international standards?

2388.

Mr Hastings: Generally, it is improving. With my Irish tourism hat on, I can say that one of the fears of the Southern part of the jurisdiction is that the worth of the Irish welcome has been lost because it has not been able to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of indigenous staff. It has supplemented its staff with European and other imports in order to fill the demand for staff in the rapidly growing tourism economy.

2389.

We get very high ratings from visitors coming to the jurisdiction. What we may sometimes lack in professionalism, we make up for in natural warmth and friendliness. That has long been recognised. I also believe that as a jurisdiction, we beat ourselves up terribly and do not sufficiently celebrate what we are good at. Each person's perception is different when one travels. I am not aware of any qualitative surveys that have been done which include Northern Ireland, but I believe that we are capable of delivering standards of service to international visitors which are very often in excess of what they expect.

2390.

The Chairperson: That is a good note to finish on. Thank you very much, Mr Hastings, for the presentation, the question session and the written evidence for our inquiry. That was a very helpful discussion and quite amusing in places, which always helps us to get through the business. We wish you and the company well in the future.

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

Thursday 29 March 2001

Members present:

Dr Birnie (Chairperson)

Mr Beggs

Mr Byrne

Mr Dallat

Mr R Hutchinson

Ms McWilliams

Witnesses:

Mrs J Trewsdale                        ) Northern Ireland Economic Council

Mr A Gough                        )

2391.

The Chairperson: On behalf of the Committee, I welcome Mrs Janet Trewsdale and Mr Aidan Gough, the chairman and acting director of the Northern Ireland Economic Council, respectively.

2392.

This is the second time you have given formal evidence to the Committee. We are looking at the impact of the training system and research and development within the university context. One of the things we want to talk about is the report that you commissioned from Michael Best, 'The Capabilities and Innovation Perspective: The Way Ahead in Northern Ireland' (the Best Report). Mr Byrne and I had the pleasure of attending the session in Queen's University at which Mr Best discussed his paper, and we both found it extremely interesting. We felt that it would be valuable to table that report, along with other things, in the Committee today.

2393.

Mrs Trewsdale: We also found the seminar useful. It is a difficult paper to read and understand. It is a very dense paper, to which Mr Best brings life when he explains it.

2394.

I thank the Committee for its invitation to appear here. We are happy to provide what help we can in furthering the discussion and information on economic topics. Normally we prefer to comment on reports that we have completed and published on specific issues. In this case, we wish to confine our comments directly to the relevant issues that have arisen out of the Best Report.

2395.

The Chairperson: Yes, that will be all right.

2396.

Mrs Trewsdale: I will not try to perform Mr Best's hand gestures. In the opinion of the Council, however, the attainment of his "virtuous circle", in which a growing economy helps to generate the resources and opportunities to tackle social exclusion, should be an important strategic objective of Government. He details three key issues - the business model, production capabilities and skill formation. He sees those as three interlocking circles. In other words, they are all feeding around each other. Transformational growth of the type that is required to increase GDP per head in Northern Ireland, as called for by 'Strategy 2010', requires integrated action across those three domains. They are not three separate areas operating in isolation.

2397.

Professor Best's other key message is that skill formation for the transitions that are taking place in technology should be anticipated. The region should not just simply be reactive to what is currently happening, but should attempt to anticipate future changes and therefore be ready for them. Doing that creates a simple comparative advantage over other regions that do not anticipate those changes.

2398.

Best also argues that we have world-class research facilities in several areas in the two universities in Northern Ireland, but he sees the university/business partnerships as being too few. He does not say that they are non-existent, but that they are too few. Best also says that the FE colleges in Northern Ireland are currently enjoying little guidance, particularly in the crucial area of manpower planning.

2399.

Those are the two key areas. Both Professor Best and the Northern Ireland Economic Council recognise that investment in skills is costly. What we are suggesting is not cheap. If you are to get a return on your investment, it is important that you match the demand for skills from firms that advance technology with the supply that is going through the educational institutions. It is a case of matching what education is producing with what is being demanded by increasing technology.

2400.

Best acknowledges that that might sound as though we are talking simply about further and higher education. He takes it down a step and says that we are looking for co-ordination between employers and teachers at all levels, right through to and including the education authorities. That is one of the key priorities in developing the active partnership idea.

2401.

Ms McWilliams: Professor Best drew on his experience in Massachusetts, and he talks about the three partners. We know that it is being done, it can be done and it could be replicated. Would you like to comment on that?

2402.

Ms Trewsdale: Best gives the demand for engineering/technology graduates by the new high technology firms as a key example. Co-operation between the firms, including those investing, and the local universities was necessary. The firms did not say, "We need such-and-such, please produce it". They were prepared to put money into the universities in order to increase the ratio of staff to students. Staff had to be put into universities to produce the graduates for the firms. That is where the firms were prepared to help, and Professor Best has the data that shows a substantive rise in the number of engineering and technology graduates that were produced.

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