The Science Budget — House of Commons, 2016-03-02
Topic: Technology
Tristram Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. The Science and Technology Committee report makes a point about the innovation lag, and the investment my hon. Friend talks about yielded extraordinary results afterwards. So successful was the Labour party’s science policy that the pressure group Save British Science had to go into liquidation—its work was done When the coalition Government came to power, they ring-fenced a flat-cash science budget. They cut the capital budget by 40% and then reversed the cut. Those were not the long-term, sustainable decisions our science base needs. Today we have heard that the capital part of the science budget stands at £1.1 billion a year, and that will be protected in real terms until 2021. However, I share the Science and Technology Committee’s concern about the UK falling behind our competitors in R and D investment. I agree with the Committee’s plans for a road map to take us towards R and D investment of 3% of GDP and up to the Euro norm. I agree very much with the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) that spending on science is not a subsidy but an investment This limited debate offers us a broader opportunity to think about the role of the state in creating the wealth of tomorrow. A decent science policy should set out how a supportive, collaborative and inventive state can generate not only the basic science, but the knowledge transfer and institutions for innovation that are fundamental to a high-wage, high-skill economy. Wages for jobs in the knowledge economy are higher—in 2013, they were in fact 40% higher. If the knowledge economy made up one third of jobs in Britain, we would create an extra 2.4 million better-paid jobs While the Business Secretary is a market fundamentalist and a minimalist-state zealot—my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) spelled out brilliantly the failure of his negotiation strategies—and the Chancellor is eyeing up further spending cuts, I am very glad that the Science Minister has outed himself as a supporter of Mariana Mazzacato’s work on an entrepreneurial activist state. Publicly funded research and development has a strong multiplier effect in that it crowds in private sector, charitable and inward investment. We all know the stories of Stanford University and Xerox, and the National Science Foundation and Google. From hi-tech to bio-tech to nanotech to green-tech, we will succeed in these sectors only with a state committed to driving innovation, research and knowledge transfer Let me briefly lay out a few areas of concern. The first is how other Government Departments use their science budgets, where we have seen a real cut in terms of science expenditure. This money is not ring-fenced and there is very little strategic approach to how it is utilised. In the United States, departments use their money effectively for areas of strategic direction. We need a lot more of that across the UK Government Secondly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) spelled out, the Government’s regional approach to science spending is a mess. I applaud the Chancellor’s investment in Manchester—a city that likes to think it was the birthplace of the industrial revolution, when we all know that Josiah Wedgwood pioneered that in Stoke-on-Trent, at Etruria. But beyond the Irwell, the level of investment in regional universities and laboratories, and indeed in the Catapult centres, is pathetic. In 2013, 52% of total UK R and D expenditure was in the south-east. The Government are pump-priming the silicon tech, silicon roundabout in Old Street, and the Olympic park in the east end, but it would do much more if it supported organisations such as the Lucideon research facility on ceramics in my constituency Thirdly, as the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) suggested, we need to work much harder on getting young people into science and technology subjects. I wish the Government would stop pretending that careers advice does not matter and get a grip on that area. We face a crisis in getting high-quality maths teachers into high-poverty areas in order to allow young people to pursue a career in science. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool suggested, we must also do something about supporting the growth and development of technicians Finally, while I do not wish to intrude on internal family disputations, it is clear that our place in Europe is absolutely fundamental for the continuing support of our science base. Only this week, 50 biotech and pharmaceutical chief executives reminded us of the importance of remaining inside the European Union if our life sciences sector is to continue to grow, saying: "Not only would an exit from the EU negatively impact on the life sciences sector, but changing the current arrangement would lead to disruption, expense, and significant regulatory burdens." We have to make sure that we remain in a reformed European Union, but if we want to get more out of our investment into UK science, we also need much more concerted belief in, and support for, a truly entrepreneurial state.