Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Bowie and Steve Brine

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Steve Brine]

Of course we want no child in our country to experience malnutrition. I mentioned the Healthy Start scheme and the breakfast clubs. Healthy Start is an excellent programme run by Public Health England that encourages a healthy diet among hundreds of thousands of families with children under four. It is exactly that which is helping us to tackle this issue.

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

10. What steps he is taking to support investment in life sciences for the development of new medical treatments.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Steve Brine)]

The recently announced life sciences sector deal draws significant investment into the sector from across the world, ensuring that the next wave of breakthrough treatments, innovative medical research and technologies—and highly skilled jobs, of course—are created right here in Great Britain.

[Andrew Bowie]

In Scotland today there are over 600 life sciences organisations employing more than 30,000 people, making Scotland one of the largest life sciences clusters in Europe, so they too will welcome the announcement the Minister mentions. Will he give the House some more detail on the sector deal and industry investments that could give even more strength to this world-leading industry across the United Kingdom?

[Steve Brine]

The sector’s commercial activity is very broadly spread across the whole of the UK—my hon. Friend’s concern. There are a number of strong emerging life sciences clusters. The deal highlights successes around the UK in Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Glasgow, south Wales, and the south-east, so it is a very broad spread.