Transcript
Lord Bichard
I’m actually delighted to be able to introduce, therefore, our next speaker, who’s David Willetts. David has flown in from Brazil so, you know, come on. He’s given up Copacabana beach to be here this morning and we’re delighted to have him.
Most of you know he’s the Minister of State for Universities and Science but you’ll also recall, of course, he’s worked at the Treasury, number ten policy unit, Paymaster General in the last government, spent too long, he will feel, in the Shadow Cabinet, has written widely on economic and social policy and delighted to have you here, David.
Rt.Hon David Willetts MP
Thank you very much, Michael. Well, it was actually my first visit to Brasilia, which is itself quite a design experience. I mean, I… Brasilia was a more exciting environment than I had expected. I think it does work. That’s a subject for another day.
What we’re talking about today is design and it’s great. We’ve already had two fantastic and enthusiastic contributions to that debate from Michael Bichard, from Ralph Speth. And I’m so grateful to the Design Council for bringing this whole event together and particularly to David Kester and his team.
Government has been involved in design for a very long time. You could argue it was, you could trace it back to 1851, if you like, and the Great Exhibition. The, it was actually, though, the previous coalition government of Churchill’s wartime coalition that set up the Council of Industrial Design in 1944, and that later became the Design Council, to aid post-war economic recovery.
And Martin Temple’s review last year – and it’s great to see Martin here as well – set out a compelling case for continued government support for design and the Design Council. Today is the first major event since we secured a future for the organisation as a private sector charity and expanded its remit to take on some of CABE’s responsibilities for the built environment.
And I was very pleased that we’re able to continue funding the Council and strengthened its role as an advisor to government on design and as a champion of design, as a heart of our debate on economic growth. So one reason why I was very keen to come here today was to make it absolutely clear that we are committed to this institution and to the role of design in economic growth.
It’s actually not just economic growth. Inevitably, today, we’re going to be talking about the economic agenda. I’m going to touch on that very briefly. But good design is not simply a matter of economics. Good design is deeply satisfying and worthwhile in itself. As a consumer you feel that you are understood and valued when a product has been well-designed and you are experiencing it.
It’s where function becomes beautiful and it does, of itself, make an important contribution to the quality of our lives and I’m sure that there are many people in this room committed to design who whilst, of course, they believe in its economic value, came to design because of values that go even beyond that and that is something that we should always recognise and never lose sight of.
But of course, it does have important, practical value and we in the public sector have to do better at ensuring that we use good design. The Design Council has already made a big contribution at bringing high-quality design into the public sector. When I was here a few months ago, saw a fantastic exhibition of work at designing bugs out in the NHS by improving the design of furniture so that it was easier to clean, didn’t leave spaces in which bugs could breed.
Improved design in hospital A&E department, lowering aggression and assault on staff because of improvements in the environment in which patients were being handled. So there’s a lot that we can do in the public sector to benefit from good design. It’s also, of course, crucial to economic growth and innovation.
Another product that I saw here months ago and I believe there’s going to be a slot in the programme for them today; the Navetas smart meter where you take what is essentially a brilliant piece of software and use good design to turn software into a real product that’s going to make a very important contribution to all of us saving energy.
So it’s design is worthwhile, it’s design matters for the public sector, design contributes to growth. And of course, there is already a lot of design activity in the UK. Our estimate is that there are about 230,000 designers in the UK. £15 billion was spent on UK design in 2009. It’s a growing sector and it matters for innovation and growth in the future.
And that’s why I can say and announce today that this Summit and the further Summits that Michael rightly referred to are going to be drawn on by us as we produce, later on this year, an innovation and research strategy which will contribute to the Government’s growth agenda and will have design at its heart.
So we want to learn and hear from you all today about your ideas of how we can do that and also, later this summer, we will be doing more about the crucial challenge of drawing on good design for some of the public policy challenges we face. And I can announce two further projects to be launched by the Design Council around the issues of living well with dementia, which has been funded and commissioned by the Department of Health, and helping older adults to stay independent at home for longer.
So there is a lot that we can do. For me personally, with my responsibilities not just for design but also for science, research and universities, I’d also like to emphasise how committed I am to design as part of education and research. Generally, design courses are at band B in the Hefce funding structure, which means that they will continue to get teaching grant as well, of course, as universities being able to charge higher fees, which will not – I always have to emphasise this – not be paid by students up front, covered by loans, but will indeed ensure – yes, they are covered by loans, honest! – which will ensure actually, when we produce our higher education white paper in the next week or two, I believe, if anything, more cash coming into universities to pay for teaching and a high-quality academic experience, which is the crucial aim.
That’s the teaching side. Then there’s research and we’ve been able to ring-fence our research budget – it is cash-protected – at £4.6 billion and it includes not just the physical sciences, it includes the whole range of research activities in modern Britain. It includes, of course, the work of the Arts and Humanities Research Council which has prioritised design research as a key area of national capability. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council leads the cross-council digital economy theme to transform lines through the novel design and use of digital technology. That’s got a design element.
In the Higher Education Funding Council’s allocation of research funding we reckon there’s over £50 million going to excellent research and design and through the Higher Education Innovation Fund funding scheme which we’re also able to protect and sustain, there’s already a lot of work that’s gone in linking higher education institutions and the practical world of design such as, for example, at the University of the Arts. The link between the Method design lab, which was a joint venture bringing together the expertise of US digital design agency Method with the college’s design laboratory and creating a fully-functioning design studio.
So there’s a lot going on but there are new challenges. I think, for example, of the observations in the Hargreaves report and recognise that that has brought to the fore quite an important issue about intellectual property rights around design where we do need more research and we do need to ensure, as Hargreaves says, that design rights are properly protected and we need to understand, first of all, exactly how that is working.
So there’s a lot on. We have a strong commitment to design. We have a strong commitment to this Design Council. We want to learn from this summit and there’s no-one more important for us to learn from than our next speaker, Jony Ive, because in my household like, I suspect, in many households represented here, there’s rather a large number of Apple products. We were an early adopter and have… not least under pressure of our extremely tech-savvy kids, and for me as an… there are…
Apple products embody design at its best and it’s a source of great pride that it is someone who studied in Newcastle, who trained and studied in the British design environment who is at the heart of those products and we very much look forward to hearing from Jony Ive next. Thank you very much indeed.