Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

My right hon. Friend is quite right. That is one of the key pillars in our science and technology framework. This should be a partnership with industry. We have already begun that journey, working with the likes of the Schmidt Foundation, and I look forward to updating the House on our further collaboration with industry.

Let us look at something like Alzheimer’s disease, an illness that is projected to impact one in three people born this year in their lifetime. Many people here today or watching the debate will know at first hand the devastating impact that that illness can cause, yet there is hope, through the extraordinary opportunities for progress made possible by quantum technology. British researchers are already in the building stages of quantum sensors that can map the human brain in a way that is unimaginable to us at the moment.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

My father has dementia and is in a care home—he has been during covid—so I know that it is really important to make significant advances in this field. One of the difficulties for business that are trying to take great scientific and medical ideas into the market is that it is much more costly if we have a different regulatory regime in this country from the rest of Europe. Will the Secretary of State ensure that we align our regulatory regime in this field with the rest of Europe, rather than diverge from it?

[Michelle Donelan]

The Chancellor, at the same time as delivering the Budget, published the Vallance review of the regulation of new and emerging technologies. That is all about how we can support the incubation of technologies, and how we should have a lighter touch to regulation in the first stages and then synergise with the rest of the world later on. I invite the hon. Member to read that very useful document.