Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Freeman and Lord Willetts

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Willetts (Havant) (Con)]

Will the Minister confirm that one of the best ways of getting funding into innovative life sciences companies is for them to get contracts from the NHS earlier? He just referred to his very important early access review. What are the ambitions for that, and the timetable?

[George Freeman]

My right hon. Friend and predecessor makes an important point. Since we launched the life science strategy at the start of this Parliament, as set out and led by my right hon. Friend, this country has attracted over £3.5 billion of inward investment into the sector and created more than 11,000 jobs, so something is going very right. He makes a key point: the next step is to ensure that our NHS is driving quicker access. We shall shortly be announcing the chair of the review, and we have already started to gather evidence. My right hon. Friend will have noticed on his recent trip to America the support and the interest that it is gaining overseas for driving our sector forward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Freeman and Lord Willetts

Thursday 21st March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The aerospace announcement in the Budget, to which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has just referred, is crucial in supporting those industries. My hon. Friend can be proud of a constituency that has, in Daresbury, an important high-tech centre.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

This week, AstraZeneca announced a deep global restructuring, committing its manufacturing facility to Cheshire, but moving its global R and D to Cambridge, with a £300 million investment and 2,000 staff. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is a sharp reminder of the deep global restructuring in the pharmaceutical sector and the importance of the life science strategy we put in place 18 months ago? May I congratulate his Department on the speed with which the task force was set up?

[Mr Willetts]

The announcement was obviously disappointing for people at Alderley Park, but we have worked with AstraZeneca in setting up a task force, which I hope will secure a future for the site. Meanwhile, we should celebrate the fact that AstraZeneca decided, having looked around the world, that the UK was the best place to invest in new R and D facilities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Freeman and Lord Willetts

Thursday 20th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

The rising world population means that by 2050 we will need to double world production, albeit with half as much water, land and energy. Does the Minister agree that British agricultural science, not least at the Norwich research park, has a potentially huge role to play in helping the world to feed itself? May I welcome the agricultural science strategy and ask that it look to draw in as much investment from around the world into Britain’s science base as possible?

[Mr Willetts]

This is an area where British science has a lead. We have already invested more in the Norwich science park, which I visited with my hon. Friend, and we will continue to do so as part of our industrial strategy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Freeman and Lord Willetts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Next week is global entrepreneurship week. May I welcome the work that the Government are doing to support entrepreneurship, particularly their support for the national student entrepreneurship union, for silicon valley coming to the UK next week and for the launch of the important Cambridge cluster portal, which highlights that in Cambridge there are now 1,400 technology companies employing 53,000 people and more than 10 billion-dollar companies? Does that not suggest that our policy for an innovation economy is working?

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

That is an excellent example of the success of our innovation policies. Like other BIS Ministers, I will be welcoming visitors from silicon valley, who I am sure will be coming to England and Cambridge to see how it is done.

Higher and Further Education

Debate between George Freeman and Lord Willetts

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

We are talking about future graduate debt, and the House is noticing that the hon. Lady is wriggling on the issue. We are saying that the extra funding helps to pay out cash for students at university through higher bursaries that are paid for out of revenues from higher fees. Students will have observed the failure of the Labour party to commit to maintaining that money.

Let us look at the next item that will supposedly meet those losses. We have established that the cost is not £1.1 billion but £2 billion, and that £330 million of that already comes from a set of measures that students will dislike. The shadow Secretary of State went on:

“£300 million comes from cancelling the Government’s planned cut to the corporation tax on the banks”.

That is the next extraordinary device that he thinks will help him save that money. Let us be clear: this Government have introduced a bank levy to raise at least £2.5 billion a year. That was set out by the Chancellor in the 2012 Budget, to take account of the benefit to the banking system from additional reductions in corporation tax on banks. In other words, we are already raising this money; we are already collecting extra money from the banks through the banking levy which is to offset the effect of lower corporation tax. There is no reduction in the taxation on banks that the Labour party could use to pay for this policy; the banking levy is extracting that funding.

If any Member of this House were remorseless in ensuring that every pound of revenue was extracted from our banks to contribute to education and other purposes, it would be my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. We are already extracting a large amount of money from the banks, and it is evidence of the bankruptcy of the Labour party’s thinking that when faced with any problem or public expenditure challenge it keeps claiming that it can meet the cost by taxing the banks. The evidence shows that the funding is simply not available to pay for it.

Reversing the VAT increase—£13.5 billion—is supposed to be met by taxing the banks. The Opposition have called for more capital spending—£5.9 billion—which will supposedly be met by taxing the banks. Reversing the child benefit savings of £2.5 billion will apparently be met by taxing the banks. Reversing tax credit savings—£5.5 billion—will be met by taxing the banks. They want more regional growth funding, and now we learn their plans for universities as well. There is simply no way in which taxing the banks will solve the gaping black hole in the Opposition’s financial proposals, and we will not let them get away with it.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Willetts]

Let me continue to make progress.

The final item, and the biggest on the shadow Secretary of State’s list, is in some ways the most curious. Some £500 million is to come from the top 10% of graduates. I quote the shadow Secretary of State, who wishes to ask

“graduates earning over £65,000 in each year of their working life—to pay more through a combination of a higher interest rate…and to continue to pay for an additional two years.”

That is £65,000 in each year of their working life. The shadow Secretary of State is possibly the only person in the Chamber who could have imagined earning £60,000 a year in each year of his working life. The idea that a levy on people earning £60,000 in each year of their working life could raise £500 million is absolutely incomprehensible. Does the Labour party perhaps mean that when someone’s earnings eventually reach £65,000, they will be charged a higher rate or be charged retrospectively? Again, however, there is no way in which such a measure could raise anything like £500 million, not least because in a free and voluntary system in which we have—quite correctly—protected the right of people to make early repayments of their loan, people whose earnings are heading that way will simply repay their loans. The idea that they will find themselves trapped in penal repayment terms when they are earning over £65,000 a year is complete fantasy. There is no £500 million.

I am, incidentally, offering the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood a free briefing on her policy, and I hope she appreciates how helpful it is. I am trying to explain it to her. In addition, if she were to move to anything like the commercial terms envisaged by the Opposition, consumer credit legislation would come into force and she would find a whole host of new regulatory requirements placed on her scheme that it would not be able to meet because of the design of the scheme that we inherited from the previous Government. It would simply become unworkable. There is no £500 million to finance the Opposition’s proposal, and they have no way of financing fees of £6,000.

[Mr Willetts]

It has come to a pretty pass when a loyal Opposition Back Bencher has to help those on the Front Bench by diverting attention from his party’s own policies, but that is what it has come to. The fact is that there is a black hole in the Opposition’s accounts, and we need to know whether they will cut £2 billion from resources that are now going to our universities. How are they are going to provide an extra £2 billion that is financed properly and honestly, and not by the slick accounting tricks used in the only attempt that they have so far made to explain their policy?

[George Freeman]

The Minister is famously well read, and I wonder whether he saw the comments made by Lord Mandelson in his paperback autobiography. He said that when he launched the Browne review in November 2009, he

“assumed, as the Treasury did, that the outcome would have to include a significant increase in tuition fees. I felt that they would certainly have to double.”

Is not the truth that dare not speak its name on the Opposition Front Bench that the Labour party would have doubled fees had it stayed in power?

[Mr Willetts]

I do recall that vivid and frank admission from the former Secretary of State.

The final irony of the Labour party’s proposals is that it is not at all clear what purpose they achieve. Let us be clear: there is nothing in those proposals for students who are currently at university; there are only risks. There are risks of having less money to pay for the student’s higher education, and, as we have seen, of less money for their bursaries. There seems to be no proposal to change the repayment terms of the scheme—9% on earnings above £21,000—and there is no reduction in the monthly repayments that graduates pay. There is, therefore, nothing in those proposals for people in their 20s or 30s; it will simply mean that they end their repayment period a bit earlier than they would otherwise have done. There is absolutely nothing for recent graduates.

Therefore, there is nothing for students, nothing for recent graduates because monthly repayments are not reduced, and there is no help for the poorest graduates, the one third who are better off under our scheme because we fully accept that they will not be able to repay the full amount under the current scheme. The Opposition managed to spend £2 billion that they do not have, with no help for students, no help for recent graduates, and no help for the poorest graduates. That is an extraordinary achievement.

I do not know which bit of the policy-making process produced this proposal, but the Opposition really need to do better. Just possibly, the Leader of the Opposition recognises that problem. In September last year he was asked on the “Andrew Marr show” about his policy, and about the status of the commitment to £6,000 and whether it was a policy that the Labour party would take into the next election. He said:

“The status is that it’s something that we would do now, that it’s something we’re committed to. But the manifesto’s three and a half years away. We'll announce the manifesto”.

It does not even look as if the Leader of the Opposition believes that that policy will ever make it into the Labour manifesto, and after what we have understood about it in today’s debate, I am not at all surprised.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Freeman and Lord Willetts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

My Department has a key role in supporting the rebalancing of the economy and businesses to deliver growth while increasing skills and learning. May I repeat, Mr Speaker, that the Secretary of State has a long-standing commitment to be in Berlin and Düsseldorf and therefore regrets not being able to be with us today?

[George Freeman]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the UK’s life sciences in areas such as biomedicine, clean energy and agriculture offer a huge potential opportunity for us to drive a sustainable recovery here in the UK by supporting sustainable development in the developing world, and that our science base, not least in Norwich research park in my county of Norfolk, has a key part to play in that revolution?

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, I will be visiting Norwich research park later today and will be able to announce £250 million of research funding going into life sciences across the country. Alongside the commitment to human health that we have already made, this will be a commitment to research in animal health, plant breeding and the agricultural industries of the future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Freeman and Lord Willetts

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

That is, of course, a matter for the Treasury. The Department is on the side of small businesses. I have visited that business in Tech City and was very impressed with what it does. Tech City, which had about 100 small businesses when the coalition came to office, now has more than 600 small businesses because of our commitment to the area.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

T8. May I, on the eve of national apprenticeship week, congratulate the Minister and the Government on the steps they are taking to increase the number of apprenticeships? I invite him to support the Norfolk Way project, which is giving youngsters work experience and entrepreneurial mentoring. I also invite him to agree with the wonderful words of Galileo Galilei, “We cannot teach people things; we can only help them discover it within themselves.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Freeman and Lord Willetts

Thursday 8th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

9. How he proposes that his Department’s investment in graphene will be spent. [R]

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

Graphene is the thinnest, lightest, strongest and most conductive material known to man. Its discovery in Manchester in 2001 is testament to our strong science base and opens up a wide range of possibilities. That is why we have committed £50 million to create a new UK graphene hub to focus on its commercialisation. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Technology Strategy Board are now developing a detailed business case, which will be submitted to the Government shortly. We expect funding to start next year.

[George Freeman]

I welcome that announcement. Does the Minister agree that the investment of £50 million in a world-class hub is testament to the Government’s serious commitment to a rebalanced economy and a regional growth strategy? Will he agree to place a sample of graphene—like this—in the Library for the edification of us all?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Freeman and Lord Willetts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that this research is very important in tackling fundamental human illnesses such as Parkinson’s, and that is why we will continue to support it. We are assessing the implications of the ECJ ruling. It is important that stem cells can be derived in a variety of ways, and embryonic stem cells are only one source of stem cells. That is why we need more time to assess the implications of this judgment.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I am sure the Minister agrees that stem cell science is one of Britain’s great strengths. The feeling within the industry is that this Government are putting their money where their mouth is. In contrast to the accusations and nonsense coming from Opposition Members that we are not investing in science, the recent £195 million investment in graphene and supercomputing and the protection of the science budget amounts to a real growth strategy.

[Mr Willetts]

We are totally committed to investing in life sciences in Britain, and let me give a practical example of how we can cut the burden of regulation to bring this industry forward: we have committed to reducing the time it takes to start a clinical trial from over 600 days—the period we inherited from the previous Government—to 70 days in future under us.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Freeman and Lord Willetts

Thursday 14th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

I know that there is strong feeling in England about that, but it is a matter for the Scottish Government and therefore not one for which this Government are responsible.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I know that the Minister shares my passion for the potential of our biomedical sector to create new jobs and businesses. Will he update the House on some of the exciting developments at Sandwich, Charnwood and Stevenage, in regard to the opportunities for the UK in reorganising the pharmaceutical sector?

[Mr Willetts]

This morning, I will be going to the topping-out ceremony of the bio-incubator at Stevenage, which represents precisely the kind of future for our life sciences that we wish to see. It is also very good news that Pfizer has now decided that it wishes to have a continuing presence at its research centre in Sandwich.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between George Freeman and Lord Willetts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

That is why, of course, the Browne review was set up on a cross-party basis—to look at these issues so that we can find a way forward that I hope will command consent on both sides of the House of Commons.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

15. What steps he is taking to support the UK’s science and innovation industry.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

We will encourage universities to work with businesses and enhance the effectiveness of the UK’s innovation system to support successful business innovation. The coalition agreement made it clear that we are committed to refocusing the research and development tax credit on high-tech companies, small firms and start-ups, as recommended by Sir James Dyson. We are considering the other recommendations in his report.

[George Freeman]

May I say how nice it is to see such a heavyweight business and finance team on the Front Bench? I would also like to declare an interest as someone who has had a career in business before coming to the House. Does the Minister agree that, in order to unlock the significant economic potential of our science and research base, instead of scattering money to the four corners of the kingdom, as the previous Government tended to do, we should focus our money on those centres that have a demonstrable track record in commercialising technology, such as the excellent John Innes research centre and the Norwich research park on the edge of my constituency?

[Mr Willetts]

The John Innes centre is a centre for plant science, but that does not mean it was a planted question.