I do not propose to deal with every suggestion made by the right hon. Member for Flint, West (Mr. Birch), but perhaps I might recall the first meeting of the Welsh Grand Committee at which I had the privilege to be called to speak. I was followed by the right hon. Gentleman who taught me that I should not make a constituency speech in the Welsh Grand Committee. The chickens have now come home to roost, and we have heard a constituency speech from the right hon. Gentleman.

I should like to express my gratitude to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales for the good news given in his speech this afternoon with regard to the introduction of the Firestone Company to Wrexham. This will open a new chapter in the industrial history of the Wrexham area.

The setting up of the industrial estate in 1947 was a step in the right direction, in that it diversified industry in an area of basic industry, mainly coal. Prior to that the area had suffered the stresses and strains of that industry. Up to 1951 we thought what Wrexham's industrial future had hem assured, but after that we found that no new industries were being attracted into the area. Indeed, in 1960 the area was descheduled. But worse was to follow. The then Government decided to sell the industrial estate and, alarmed at the prospect of that, the local authorities sought permission to purchase the estate to make it into a public concern but the Government at that time were not prepared to allow that. They were refused.

The House will know that I fought hard on this question, and I felt that I was fighting and waging a losing battle, but time has proved to be on our side. Earlier this year the Firestone Company took an interest in that site and decided that Wrexham was the most suitable place for its factory. There were, of course, difficulties, almost insuperable difficulties, but the greater the difficulties, the greater the sense of achievement, and I am very pleased that, through the Welsh Office and the Secretary of State for Wales, the Firestone Company has come into Wrexham, and I warmly congratulate our Minister on what has been achieved, and in doing so I know that I am expressing the unanimous voice of the Wrexham division.

I do not want to detain the House for very long, and I propose to deal as briefly and as succinctly as possible with one particular point only. I am glad of this opportunity to do so, because I consider it to be a matter of extreme urgency, for 12 months from now it may be too late. The point to which I want to draw attention is the place of North Wales in the pattern of industrial development in this technical and electronic age.

Time was when geographical factors alone determined the location and distribution of industries. Today there are new factors which can have a marked effect on the location of industries. These new factors are scientific, technical and technological, and I feel that in this situation hitherto non-industrial areas will have a place in the new pattern of industrial development.

We are all familiar with the structure of modern industry. This is the age of the big firm. This is the age of the gigantic plant, one example of which is the steel industry. Yet alongside this development of giant plants there is another of tremendous significance. I am referring to the production of goods of the tiniest dimensions, the concentration of power and energy into small valves. This is the age of transistors, of telecommunications, and of precision instruments. Indeed, these are the red corpuscles in the bloodstream of the industrial giant.

Steel output and steel furnaces, to give but two examples, are regulated by tiny electronic devices which are becoming of increasing importance both in manufacture and in the product manufactured. They are already important in the manufacture of steel, in the building of ships, motor cars, fire extinguishers, and so on, and industrial plant and production will depend more and more on these tiny instruments of concentrated power. I believe that they are the key to industrial productivity in the immediate future.

Before I come to state the case for North Wales in this new development, perhaps I might be permitted to describe the new structure in outline. Industrial plants—for example steel—in their day to day activities are brought face to face with problems of a scientific or technical nature which call for solution. The problems are then handed over to the science departments of our universities where they are analysed scientifically and if possible solved theoretically. Once this has been achieved, the ground is ready for their practical application in industry. It is at this stage that the industrial research worker steps in. It is his task to produce the instrument, the prototype, and to assess its potential industrial use. We then get to the third stage, which is the manufacture of instruments to supply the needs of industry, and so, in a well-organised industrial system we should have a system of two-way traffic, first, from the industrial plants to the science departments of the universities with a request to study their problems, and, secondly, from the universities via industrial research plants and light engineering factories back to the giant industrial plants. Such is the general picture and there can be no doubt that this will become more true in the immediate future.

This fact opens out a new field and creates a new situation. More important, it demands a deliberate policy of a planned distribution of our national technological programmes. Programmes are not enough; they need to be distributed. We do not want to see them concentrated in one area—especially in the London area. We want to see them distributed between regions.

It is just at this point that the Welsh Planning Board and the Welsh Economic Council, along with the Ministry of Technology, enter the picture. We do not want to see a haphazard and accidental distribution of these technological programmes, but that has been the tendency. We have seen ideas conceived in the provincial universities taken to the London area for development. It is correct to say that one of the main objects of the regional planning boards and economic councils is to provide the regions with a fair share of these technical and technological programmes. If this is not done, and done quickly, and if these programmes are allowed to concentrate in one area, generation after generation of scientists who have trained at our universities will move to the area of concentration, and we shall witness in Wales a continuous and irresistible brain drain.

Wales has always suffered and is still suffering from rural depopulation—the draining away of its youth. But we cannot stand by complacently and witness this new phenomenon of a brain drain in this technological age. Let us be absolutely clear on this point. Scientists as a class are not attracted primarily by salaries, important though they are. They are usually dedicated to science and scientific research. That is their work and their life. What attracts them are suitable and ample facilities to carry out their work and to see the fruits of their researches.

Against that background I want to draw the attention of the House to the situation in North-West Wales, with special reference to Bangor. Culturally, Bangor is the seat of one of the university colleges of Wales. Geographically, it is centrally situated between the rural and semi-rural areas of Anglesey and Caernarvon. It is also situated roughly midway between the Wylfa Nuclear Power Station in Anglesey and the Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power Station of Merioneth. At the university there is an eminently successful school of engineering science. This is not in its infancy. It is not crawling and feeling its way, it is already well-established, and its reputation as a school of engineering science is fully recognised.

This school of engineering science receives in its research department the problems of industry, and it is solving them scientifically and theoretically. But I suggest that this is not enough. What is needed now are links between the university and industry, so that the results of the work of the school of engineering science can flow easily towards the industrial plants.

These links need to be established, and after being established they need to be strengthened. What happens at the moment is that ideas worked out at the university at Bangor are taken elsewhere to be developed. This is a procedure which can be most frustrating to the scientists working at the university. Hence, there is a new step—a projected industrial liaison unit which will establish links between the university and industry. This project will work in close connection with the school of engineering science at the university. As soon as a project assumes industrial significance it will be taken up by this liaison unit. But this unit will also establish contacts with industry. It will manufacture and sell equipment, and in due course will be able to plough back resources for greater development.

But this excellent and pioneering project needs resources, and it needs them now. Now is the time to make the decision. Now is the time to assist, in order to give this liaison unit the fullest encouragement. Here is a scheme to develop basic ideas into prototypes, to assess the industrial value of those prototypes and to manufacture instruments, opening out a new field of light engineering close to the university. If this liaison unit is well established it will have its repercussions in due course elsewhere in those rural areas of Wales which cry out for light engineering projects of this kind.

But that belongs to the future. Sufficient unto the day is the problem thereof. I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales to look very carefully and sympathetically at the needs and claims of this industrial liaison unit, so that it may play an immeasurable part in the economic life of Britain in general and Wales in particular.