Research and Development Funding

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Dowd. I thank the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) for his interesting and comprehensive speech, and for arranging a debate on this important issue.

Research and development underpins our economic resilience, our global competitiveness and our progress towards a sustainable and climate-friendly future. The UK has always been a centre for research excellence, and Wales has played a foundational role in driving innovation across the UK. Wales is home to eight universities, including Bangor University in my own constituency of Arfon, and—as you would expect me to say, Mr Dowd—Bangor is a leading centre of excellence across the disciplines, in fields as diverse as social science, forestry and psychology. Wales has long driven innovation, from producing the historic first hydrogen fuel cell in 1842, to innovations reflected in the work of leading Welsh companies such as Riversimple. I hope that the Minister can confirm today the protection of funding for Bangor University’s research into agricultural microplastics and the consequences for food security and sustainable development in developing countries.

Welsh research has global implications, with Welsh-based researchers active in many countries, not least in the developing world. Perhaps the only really welcome aspect of yesterday’s grandiose integrated review was the commitment to return spending on overseas development to 0.7% of the UK’s national income. That, of course, was qualified, but I assure the House that I will do what I can to encourage the Government to return to their commitment, as set out in law by a previous Conservative Government. I hope you will allow me to say, Mr Dowd, that I was dismayed by that particular cut in the midst of a global pandemic. It is a cut in aid to those in conflict zones such as Yemen, where British-made weapons and systems are causing and compounding untold suffering. More positively, overseas development assistance also supports research by universities across the UK to advance our global progress towards achieving the UN’s sustainable development goals. As I said, I hope that the Government can confirm that funding for Bangor is protected.

From supporting sustainable development to ensuring our global competitiveness, research and development funding is pivotal to sustainability and productivity in our economy. That is why Plaid Cymru welcomed the UK Government’s commitment to raise R&D spending to 2.4% of GDP by 2024, yet the same regional inequalities that split our economy, favouring London and the south-east, are reflected in how the UK Government support research and development. In 2018, while R&D spending was £587 per head in England, it plummeted to just £250 in Wales—in other words, the level of research on R&D in Wales was just 42% of that in England. I have no doubt that this is linked, to a degree, to the low level of investment and ambition by the Labour Welsh Government, but it also reflects the huge concentration of public spending in the golden triangle of London, Oxford, and—with due respect to the local Member—Cambridge. For instance, in 2018 London and the south-east received 49% of total R&D spending from the UK Government and UK Research and Innovation.

Such inequalities have also extended to the UK Government’s fiscal interventions, which of course have profound implications for research. Between 2015 and 2018, only 210 businesses in Wales benefited from the enterprise investment scheme. That is why I urge the UK Government to acknowledge that, if the rhetoric of levelling up is to have any substance, they should immediately commit to equitable funding, not least in research and development, for otherwise marginalised economies such as we have in Wales. Anything else would prove that, in yet another respect, the UK just does not work for Wales.