Jeremy Peat wants Scottish companies to work closely with our universities to achieve greater export success (??HE sector is key to expanding our global horizons??, The Herald, December 1).

Jeremy Peat wants Scottish companies to work closely with our universities to achieve greater export success (??HE sector is key to expanding our global horizons??, The Herald, December 1). I agree that our export performance is dismal and I agree that the ability of our HE sector to attract foreign students is very impressive and yes, those foreign students should become friends of Scotland.

But I fear there is a parallel between the time when our manufacturers could export to our colonies and now when there is a craving among young foreigners to study in an English-speaking university. Circumstances permit these two things to happen.

Selling a Scottish built robot to Germany or China or Brazil is a battle against European and American competition. The natural place for our customers to shop for machinery is Germany, not Scotland. What exactly does Jeremy Peat want a small manufacturing exporter in East Kilbride to do with the higher education (HE) sector?

What we would like from the HE sector is a stream of engineers who speak a foreign language and who understand how to communicate within a range of cultures.

But the HE sector will not produce such graduates until the business sector shouts for them. And the business sector will not shout for them because it does not understand the magic they can weave, because such people have never existed - even when ships and sewing machines and locomotives flowed from the Clyde.

The ability to speak a language allows relationships to be more easily established; it permits a much better understanding of how hard it is for customers to speak English and especially on the phone. It secures orders and our export customers (90 per cent-plus) have told us this very clearly.

Yet, when I spoke at an assembly in a secondary school of 1,750 pupils last week about the importance of learning a language, I was shocked to discover that three pupils were doing Higher French and none was doing German because the universities do not require it and the business sector does not articulate a need.

Scottish Enterprise tell me that only eight per cent of Scottish manufacturing companies even mention that language skills are important for their business.

The business sector has to make its case tirelessly to the HE sector. Who will join me?

Dick Philbrick,

Chairman, Clansman Dynamics,

Stephenson Building, Nasmyth Avenue,

Scottish Enterprise Technology Park, East Kilbride.