UK Industry: International Competitiveness

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe]

My Lords, I am grateful to be permitted to speak briefly in the gap in what has been a really stimulating and erudite debate. I will make a simple point, which has been referred to tangentially by several other noble Lords in today’s debate. The Government are looking for trade and export-led growth, and a key sector for such growth is higher education. Indeed, there is a Lords Select Committee currently looking at SMEs and growth that is highlighting the HE factor as an essential component.

Depressing figures on growth are regularly quoted in the media and, indeed, in this House. I need to avoid being a Pollyanna, but there is a mechanism with a proven track record that deserves support in the current climate. I am talking here about the role played by the UK’s research base and our higher education sector in contributing to the international competitiveness of the UK. Noble Lords will have seen for themselves the calibre of research taking place up and down the country, the extent of collaboration and knowledge transfer, and the success of our research clusters in attracting inward investment.

While we are undoubtedly in difficult times, it is worth saying that the UK has one of the strongest university research sectors in the world. Our research activity both attracts inward investment and generates export income from a global market. Many global companies—I think immediately of BP, Siemens, GlaxoSmithKline, Boeing and Rolls-Royce—have established successful collaborative research partnerships with UK universities. Our world-leading institutions have a crucial role to play in helping the UK survive the economic downturn and work its way back to economic growth. One example is that the Technology Strategy Board has just announced that one of its technology innovation centres, for stem cell therapies— I declare an interest as chairman of the Human Tissue Authority—will be established at Guy’s Hospital in London because of its credentials as, among other things, a large research and teaching hospital and its access to world-class universities. The UK will be ideally positioned to gain a substantial share of this young industry, due to its leading position in the science of stem cells and regenerative medicine. The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, gave many more such examples in his tour de force of a speech.

The Universities UK report, Driving Economic Growth, makes the case that higher education is a “core strategic asset” to the UK. I was pleased to see last week that, as part of its response to Sir Tim Wilson’s recent review, the Government announced the creation of a new national centre focused on strengthening the strategic partnership between universities and business, with a view to driving economic growth and recovery.

My plea to noble Lords and the Minister—my friend—is to ask: what further support can be given by the Government to university and business leaders as they work together to address the challenge to the UK of the global economic downturn?