UK Science Budget

Lord Johnson of Marylebone Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Joseph Johnson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) on securing the debate on a subject that is being explored in great detail at the moment by the Science and Technology Committee. I am glad to see the Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), here, along with other members of the Committee.

My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey raised the issue of medical research and the contributions of the British Heart Foundation to that. I was pleased earlier this month to see BHF employees in Manchester during the Conservative party conference, and I enjoyed looking at their stand and hearing at first hand about the high-quality research that the organisation is doing on cardiovascular diseases. The BHF’s research remains one of this country’s great success stories, and it has a long history going all the way back to the pioneering heart surgery technique for babies developed by Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub in the 1970s, which is still used today, all the way through to the more recent and ongoing improvements in heart attack diagnosis that are helping to save lives in Britain and across the world.

Research investment in medicine and cardiovascular disease is an important illustration of the strength of our science base. The investment we are making as a country through charities, Government and pharmaceutical companies is helping to ensure that Britain remains at the forefront of science and research in Europe and throughout the world. I should like to point out a few examples of that investment. The Medical Research Council currently spends around £20 million a year. That, coupled with the £49 million spent by the National Institute for Health Research, which is funded by the Department of Health, makes the UK the top contributor among EU member states to cardiovascular research. We are building on that base. This year, we committed to fund the Academy of Medical Sciences, alongside the other national academies, for the first time, granting it £0.5 million.

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

We are talking about what we are spending, but we are not talking about what we are saving. We are developing the life sciences, agritech—agritech is hugely important to rural constituencies such as mine, and my constituency is on the edge of the Cambridge phenomenon—biotech, digital health and so on, and we need to take those savings into consideration. If we lose that research abroad, we will lose the savings, too.

[Joseph Johnson]

Indeed, this is a good investment, which is why the Government have been supporting our science base over time. We recognise the huge economic benefits that it brings to the country.

I was in the middle of describing the investments we are making in cardiovascular and other medical technologies research. We have supplemented the ongoing spending of the MRC and the NIHR by announcing a couple of new innovation institutions, which will be extremely helpful to the sector in developing new medical technologies. We have just announced a new medicines technologies catapult, which will be based at Alderley Park in Cheshire. We have also announced the headquarters of the new precision medicine catapult in Cambridge, which will have one of its five centres of excellence in the north of England. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) focused on excellence in Cambridge. I am happy to tell him that I was in Cambridge last week and saw the laboratory of molecular biology. I was as impressed as his comments would have led me to expect—it is an extraordinary centre, and we have every intention of continuing to ensure that it remains one of the world’s leading research institutes.

The examples that Members have already cited, such as Cambridge and the scientific centres in the northern powerhouse, are good examples of why Britain is such a powerhouse in the world of science and why we want to ensure that we make Britain the best place in the world to do science. Our global scientific impact is completely out of proportion with both our population and the size of our research spend as a share of global research and development expenditure. The UK punches well above its weight.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

Does the Minister agree that, although we are doing extremely well in science at the moment, there is concern in the scientific community that emerging markets in east Asia and India will overtake the UK’s scientific research if funding is not continued and increased?

[Joseph Johnson]

We have discussed that question at great length in Select Committees and, of course, we understand that the impact of our science spend is a function both of the efficiency of our science base and of the inputs that go into it—the amount of money that we spend every year on science. The hon. Lady will recognise that we underscored our commitment to science in the last Parliament by ring-fencing expenditure at £4.6 billion at a time of discretionary savings across the rest of Government activity to the tune of £98 billion. Furthermore, she will know from our previous discussions and from Government documents that we have committed to a road map for capital expenditure all the way to 2021 to the tune of £1.1 billion per annum, which will give businesses, researchers and charities the certainty they need about the role that the Government intend to play in investing in our science base.

[Nicola Blackwood]

The Minister is right to sing the praises of our science community. We are a science superpower in terms of quality and impact, but the Science and Technology Committee has heard widespread concerns about time lag and how historical investment is perhaps leading to our current strength. Does he share the concerns expressed on both sides of the House about the low level of current R and D investment? Will he commit to a long-term plan to raise that investment?

[Joseph Johnson]

We have set out a road map taking us all the way to 2021, and it provides considerable certainty on capital. Of course, a spending review is coming up 25 November, so it would be rash of me to embark on commitments here and now.

[Kit Malthouse]

Be bold!

[Joseph Johnson]

I would not want to do that for obvious reasons. I do not agree with the generally pessimistic tone of my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon, because investment in science is increasing. The Government play their part, but we should not forget the important part played by the business community in R and D, nor the part that R and D tax credits play in enabling business to make that supporting investment.

I told the Select Committee the other day that the value of our R and D tax credits has now increased to £1.8 billion a year, enabling more than 11,000 businesses to do innovative research. That is significantly up on the previous year, when the figure was only about £1.4 billion. The taxpayer is making a substantial contribution to enabling R and D in this country; business R and D expenditure is also up. In 2013, UK businesses spent a total of £18.4 billion on R and D, an increase of 8% in cash terms on 2012, so it is wrong to focus only on the Government’s share, which we protected in the last Parliament and for which we have outlined a trajectory to 2021 on the capital side. There will be a real-terms increase in capital spend. We are putting in place an ecosystem to make it possible for business and others to continue their investment.

[Nicola Blackwood]

I think the Minister has misunderstood me. I intended to ask for a road map for both public and private investment. I agree that one is useless without the other.

[Joseph Johnson]

The 3% target is an EU target that may or may not be relevant to the UK environment. Targets, in and of themselves, are abstract things. What is relevant is the policy levers that we have put in place to drive behavioural change in companies and charities in order to increase investment. A target in itself achieves nothing, and I do not want to indulge in such targets.

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend recognise the capacity of British science to step up and increase the level of top-quality science? With 20% of excellent research grant applications currently being turned down, we have an opportunity in Britain to improve our productivity greatly over the next five years.

[Joseph Johnson]

Indeed. Our science base is productive and very efficient. For every £1 the Government spend on R and D, private sector productivity rises by 20p a year in perpetuity. We see clear public benefits in R and D, and we appreciate the important role of public investment in crowding in private investment.

The Chancellor appreciates the importance of science. As I told the Select Committee the other day, it is hard to think of a Chancellor who has spent more time in lab coats and high-vis clothing than he has. He has revealed his preferences over his chancellorship by ring-fencing science over the last Parliament. We in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills are working hard to make the best possible case for science going into the spending review. Obviously, there are difficult decisions and a difficult settlement to be made, but science has a strong set of arguments to make, and we are reinforcing those arguments in our discussions with the Treasury.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).