PL
Prime Minister, if I could begin by asking you what your reaction has been to the noisy demonstration that has greeted you today?
PM
Well the noise doesn't matter. They were really very well behaved.
PL
Now, as far as the issue surrounding their demonstration is concerned, what they call cuts in higher education, haven't the students got something of a grievance with their student grants apparently being eroded over the years, a 4%; increase this time that's below the rate of inflation and also general cut backs in higher education?
PM
Well, let me point this thing out because you haven't quite got it right. There is a bigger proportion of the age group now having higher education than at any time previously. So young people in that age group have more opportunity now than their forebears and I have just been round University of Warwick which has fantastic opportunities. I mean I was thrilled as I went round it to see both the arts centre, to have a talk with the professors on the work they are doing, to see how much they have co-operation between universities and industry which is what we all need. This university is a magnet of opportunity which is being provided by the taxpayer for future generations and I think the overwhelming majority of our young people appreciate it and take advantage of the facilities here. [end p1]
PL
You have opened this Venture Centre today—what do you think of the ideas behind it?
PM
Well they're excellent. It's part of a Science Park and the idea of a Science Park is that here you have all the talents of the science departments of university. And close by you have many, many industries and how do we best bring those together and help young people who want to start up on their own? Now the idea of Science Parks started in the United States so we have learned a good deal of their development there. We are now getting some in this country and it is bringing these things together—the inventive genius of the scientist in university plus the finance of people who can provide it: the banks and people who put their savings into banks, who like to start young people up to give them a chance, and the industries themselves who want to use science to keep a step ahead of their competitors. And so young people can start up here. There are opportunities here where they will have the advice of financiers, the advice of universities. Not easy. It isn't easy to make a success of anything in life, you've got to work jolly hard at it. But here you will have all the advantages of the advice of people who know how to go forward.
PL
The Coventry area has in the past pioneered many things—the bicycle industry, the motor car industry—do you think we can pioneer something here?
PM
Oh yes, I think you can. And that's why I think this is an excellent place for a Science Park. You did the traditional engineering, or what we have come to know as the traditional engineering, and the great motor vehicle revolution, and the engineering revolution of the last century and of this century. Now we are going on to different industrial revolutions. I mean when I was young, the great thing was the new plastics industry, the new synthetic textiles. Now there are two great new industries—the whole electronics, the computers, the calculating machines, the video, all the new electronics which we call information technology and also all the new biology industries. You know, everyone knows about cloning, the new methods of producing agricultural things, [end p2] pesticides, the new methods of getting ore out of rock and so it is easier to get metal out of the ore that we've had. All of these are new industries and just as this area pioneered those in the last century so we should be in the forefront of advancing these industries in this century.
PL
The Venture Centre will provide, I suppose, a sort of half-way house between the academic world of the university and the commercial world and maybe some of the things that come from the laboratory can now be commercially exploited. Now it has taken the initiative of the university, various local authorities and funding from Barclays Bank. Could the Government help any more in the creation of Science Parks?
PM
Well it enables you to get a start. But don't forget the Government, which is the taxpayer, hasn't got any money. Every penny I have I have to take from your citizens together with citizens elsewhere or from industry. So I don't have any money and I've got to think, well, could those citizens use it better or could those industries use it better? But Government provides the main funding, the overwhelming funding, for the university. And here you have got banks coming in and you have got industry coming in and you have got local authorities coming in. It is the right partnership. But so often you know, industry knows better where to expand and where to put its money than government and here we have got a partnership and I think it's the right partnership.
PL
Isn't one of the stings in the tail really as far as this is concerned, although it is obviously right to gear our industry up to the new technological age, that many of these new technology industries are not very labour intensive and therefore they won't really help our unemployment problem?
PM
No, well, if you think back to the beginning of the century when most people were working in agriculture and there was no such thing as cars, they would have said, well, my goodness me, you're going to put all the blacksmiths out of work, all those who look after horses and ponies and traps out of work. But you saw what the revolution did: it created jobs and a high standard of living for many people who had never had it before, with the great car revolution. Now you are getting [end p3] new things being produced. In videos for example, there are jobs where there were none before. In television, in radio there are jobs where there were none before. In creating computers there are jobs where there were none before. Then there are great new service industries, great new hotel industries, great new tourist industries, great new industries in restaurants and catering. So you have got both things—you've got the need for the high technology and also you've got the need for different kinds of jobs in the great new service industries which are developing.
PL
So you see this Venture Centre really as being the centre of a new kind of industrial revolution?
PM
It's a fantastic opportunity and it is the new industrial revolution. After all, your grandparents couldn't have had the job you've got now, could they?
PL
We are obviously with the Venture Centre and many other things that are happening, we are restructuring our industry. But what about restructuring employment itself. Because people need to be retrained obviously?
PM
Well many young people now are trained in a way their fore-fathers never were. For example, one of the things this government has seen to is that there is a computer, a micro-computer in every school, every secondary school. So that youngsters are trained in the habit of thinking this way. A tremendous opportunity. We have over a hundred computer centres in the universities, we finance the majority of the work of the universities, we also put something like £500 million into scientific research. We also provide small grants for people to start up on their own and to launch new products. So we are doing every single thing to harness change to a higher standard of living and more jobs for our people.
PL
We are sitting in this centre representing future industry. Would you have a message though for people working in the older industries of Coventry and the West Midlands which are on the decline and possibly can never recover? [end p4]
PM
But we have always had declining industries as new industries have taken over. Always, that has always been so. But people are very adaptable, very adaptable, as you find when you go around factories up and down the country. Management retrains them and they take to it easily, and that's not surprising, you know, because if you look at the record of what people buy in this country you'll find that more of them have purchased video recorders and home computers in this country per proportion of population than any other country in the world. That indicates that they do take to new processes naturally and so they are very easy to train.
PL
Finally, you have been mentioning things like video and radio and television. And indeed, Coventry is to be one of the cities which will have its own cable television network soon. What sort of opportunities do you think that provides for the city?
PM
Well, first it provides the opportunities for the manufacture of the cable and associated industries. Secondly, it provides all kinds of opportunities to make the programmes that will go down the cable. We ought to be in making programmes. We make some superb ones. Not merely to buy programmes from the United States, we make some of the best ones here and that too provides a whole new industry on its own. Look, I have just been to the arts centre in the university. I have not the slightest shadow of doubt that in the dramatic art work they do and in the music they do they can provide some of the programmes which people will take on that cable television.
PL
I think that's all, Prime Minister, thank you very much.